Pink or Swim

Pyrrho, a philosopher and the father of Greek skepticism, left no written works when he died.  Pyrrho’s teachings are therefore his legacy.  Pyrrhonism developed from the idea that it is impossible to reach absolute certainty of knowledge.  He advised sophists to suspend judgment about all beliefs. According to Pyrrho, encouraging a lack of views, adoxastoi, would allow people to achieve ataraxia, an ongoing state of freedom from distress or worry.  

 

Through a Pyrrhonian lens, the eclectic nature of knowledge contradicts how human beings interact with society.  It is in our nature to organize people based upon our judgments, in an effort to efficiently understand who we are and who others are.  Research shows that it is assumed that the crux of how we are perceived is built upon the knowledge of two separate entities: social value and evaluative knowledge.  Evaluative knowledge creates a dynamic of an interviewer and interviewee, aiming to see how a person acts in the present moment to determine who they are and predict how they will be. Social value is composed by a two-component framework: social desirability and social utility.  Social desirability is considered how valuable a trait or characteristic of a person is within a social group, while social utility is how useful something is to satisfy interpersonal needs within the given social structure.

 

How would Pyrrho be socially valued? Our innate tendency to create judgments is problematic in a world that, according to Pyrrho, should be operated by perpetual doubt. 

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What makes a Barbie doll is that she does not know she is one.  The value that Barbie had, before my sister diabolically threw her into the fire, was the same value that Barbie had once she was a melted piece of plastic.  Barbie was always plastic, but the knowledge that she was plastic had to be implicit for me to want her.  I wanted to be Barbie, because I believed being Barbie would allow me to be anything, while still being desirable.  But when Barbie is taken out of her Dream House and measured against the world, she is just a hollow, plastic figurine, susceptible to the laws of physics like every other doll. 

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Society continuously fails to heed Pyrrho’s advice. But this failure extends past conflicts over disputes in opinions, it creates a backdrop for our decision making which ultimately impacts everything.  Ever-changing contexts and variables aside, this is a subconscious, existential-like crisis that has manifested its way into all our lives, whether we realize it or not.  While our problems look different and range in intensity, they are all a battle between satisfying the self and the other.  The method by which we commit to this process is inherently flawed.  Since everyone participates in this process, it is dangerous because our judgements make us complicit in the construction of our own problems.  

 

More specifically, this is a battle between agency and communion.  In social psychology literature, agency is predicted by self-profitability and communion is predicted by other profitability.  Agency is more relevant and desired for self, and communion is more relevant and desired for others.  Our strife to achieve success is tainted by the idea that this success is determined by how we compare and contrast to those around us.  In a society that puts such massive emphasis on social perception, we are often led to believe that making decisions for others will in turn benefit the self. We actively ignore what can directly benefit us in the hopes that indirectly, other’s perceptions of ourselves will build in our favor. 

 

Pyrrhonists view their philosophy as a way of life: gather all arguments of equal strength and ultimately conclude that there is an unresolvable disagreement.  I propose there are three pathways on either side of the battle between the self and the other that possess equal strength. 

1. Only acting for the self instead of for the other, to value agency over communion. 

2. Only acting for the other instead of for the self, to value communion over agency.

3. A combined approach: to hold ‘good’ and ‘honest’ values and act for both the self and other through those values. 

The paradox of desirability has shown us that all three pathways would ultimately result in a flawed argument.  Human beings are flawed, and our perceptions, values, and cognition are all subject to uncertainty.  It is an innate tendency to cultivate identity and to operate with positive values, for our prosperity.  This desire for identity is what leaves everyone naked and afraid, constantly making mistakes and adapting with learning. 

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Synonyms for “desiring” are inadequate, imperfect, defective, flawed, and other words that imply falling short of a standard.  Our Western Culture fosters a sense of attachment to control how we measure against this standard, so we want, crave, desire what we do not have.  In Buddhism, desire is the root of all suffering.  Buddhism says that the only constant in the Universe is change, and desiring is the result of our attempt to control that change.  This produces the ultimate paradox of desire: the desire to be desire-less of desire.  The realization that there is no solution to the paradox of desire will allow Buddhists to reach nirvana.  Letting go, or suspending judgements, is the condition of desire-less-ness.  

 

There is no good way to prioritize agency or communion.  Due to the flawed model of social desirability, there is no good way to combine our prioritization of these two groups either.  The mirage of freedom that exists, whether it be in choosing agency or communion or both, is a starker, more demanding freedom than we were sold.  In order to achieve ataraxia, or Nirvana, we must realize that there is an unresolvable disagreement to this issue. 

 

The solution is complex but a simple answer; There is no Barbie Dream House.  

Letting go of our insecurities, and releasing the motivations we have to construct or support our identity is key to this process. This requires to let go of what we think we know and to be open to the opportunities that life has to offer, rather than compromising ourselves to get there.  Knowing this, where would Pyrrho, Siddartha Guatama, or even Barbie fall on the scales of social desirability?  Despite his lack of all beliefs, Pyrrho would be forced to agree that we must let go of the idea that we are justified in believing anything.  

 

Pyrrho’s own outlook differed from that of his followers who adopted Pyrrhonism.  Rather than suspending judgment because of the differing perspectives that possess equal strength, Pyrrho simply declared reality to be inherently indeterminate.  His recommendation: describe everything in such a way that captures this indeterminacy.  

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We may not be able to escape the fact that some measure of our self-direction inevitably reflects the society in which we operate.  We must be able to reflect on the origin of our own wants, regardless of how authentic they are to our individual self.  While we cannot fundamentally change our desires, we have the power to change our attitude toward our desires.  

 

Once we understand our desires in such a way that captures the indeterminacy of our self-direction and identity, we can achieve an ongoing state of freedom from distress or worry.  Interrogating our motives will allow us to distance ourselves from them.  However costly it may seem, the price of being conscious of an identity is a corresponding freedom from that identity, with an ever-present responsibility for continuing or denying that identity. 

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