Losing your field and becoming illegible

Warning: This is a long one (3,500 words). It's also heavily autobiographical. I would invite you to read it though, and if you are so led, I'd love to hear from you. Perhaps your words can be helpful to me. You don't know until you try.

I recently got in my head that I might want to do a PhD in Philosophy at Stony Brook University on Long Island. The department is known for their continental philosophy bent, and they even have a notable scholar of the Kyoto School, David Dilworth. It would be ideal in terms of my speculative interests. However, I also think it would be preposterous to try to live on Long Island. The cost of living is absurd.

This line of thinking prompts the question for me — why would I countenance the idea of asking my family to make such a sacrifice for the sake of me doing a PhD? Why do I keep coming back to this in my mind? Why can't I get away from the fantasy of doctoral research and the symbolic recognition it confers?

Dave McKerracher of TheoryUnderground said on a call earlier this week that a ‘field’ is the space where you compete for recognition and symbolic capital, all while craving love and belonging, and that this field typically has some sort of gravitational pull with a person or position at the center. This comment clarified for me a sense I've had for the past decade. I think that I've been experiencing a gradual weakening of my bonds with those fields which once gave shape to my life through their fantasies, discourse, and transferential relations.

As a boy, I aspired to symbolic recognition within a narrow ecclesial field of the Reformed theological world (if you don't know what that means, think 'Calvinist'). This meant mastering certain theological discourses, making connections within a real network, and also a practice of self-discipline and transformation. There were many positive aspects of what that community afforded, and I’m actually glad I’m writing this, because it’s making me want to recollect and think about those good things I received (and how I can carry them forward with me into the future).

When I encountered two interrelated online communities, Reformed Irenics and The Calvinist International, during my high school years, those intellectual milieus broadened my horizons, and introduced me to new perspectives, but also consequently weakened my ties with the community I grew up in. I saw the limitations of the particular Reformed way of engaging the Bible and the world, and realized that one could be a bit more eclectic in their approach, not only to theology, but also to thinking in general. At the same time, those groups also gave me the tools to get interested in non-theological discourses in ways I hadn't before. I began to realize the dignity and value of philosophical and political thinking which was not explicitly theological.

At this same time I was coming to comprehend the depth and complexity of my own tradition, I also became involved with a youth group at a local Charismatic/Pentecostal church. My friend had invited me, and I had reluctantly gone to a worship night to see my friend. I stood in the back with my arms folded and my eyes scanning the room, trying to make sense of what I was watching. Eventually, my walls started to drop, and I found a home there. I began to feel my way into the beauty and value of that space. This Reformed boy found himself standing with arms up, eyes closed, singing his heart out for 2+ hours on Friday nights. I was asked to teach on a few occasions, and I'm still connected with many people from that group. Coming to understand the differences in how people served God helped to loosen my own dogmatism around the Reformed way, helping me see that no one ecclesial practice can serve the full array of human needs or uses, and that some things are more appropriate for different times, places, and approaches.

I carried these transformations with me into college, where my curiosity and intellectual openness found more of a home amongst the philosophy majors than they did in the Bible/Theology department. While this was partially a function of a smaller and tighter-knit community in the Philosophy department, it was also clear to me that the philosophy majors were genuinely challenging themselves and thinking passionately in conversation with others. This attracted me, so I switched my major, and I’m glad that I did. Frankly, my only serious regrets from college are that I did not study a living language (I took Koine Greek to learn how to translate the New Testament), and that I wasted so much time watching anime.

When I graduated from college though, I was pretty burned out on all things Reformed. I had spent 4 years in a sleepy suburban Presbyterian congregation, getting very little out of the sermons and worship, and not deeply connecting with anyone in particular. I had also grown exhausted by the constant theological controversy within the denomination. So, when I moved into Chicago for my first real job, I found a small Anglican parish which was being organized by 20-somethings in Bridgeport under the direction of The Greenhouse Movement. It felt fresh and alive to me. The music had an emotional edge I had been missing from my Charismatic days, the liturgy was richer and informed by the tradition, and the everyday community felt more vibrant and organic. I still treasure my memories of that time with Bridgeport Anglican.

My switch to a philosophy major in college had also led me to an embrace of the insights from modern and postmodern philosophy, ideas which ran very counter to how I was raised. Although I had been brought up in a private Christian school and a parochial denomination, I was persuaded that the constellation of ideas and methods I had imbibed did not seriously wrestle with the involvement of the subject in the act of knowing, did not pay close attention to the structures which make understanding possible, and were generally not curious enough about how humans actually worked. My reading of Gadamer, then Nietzsche, and then of Žižek, took me on a journey of decisively breaking with the kind of presuppositionalism and dogmatic Reformed thought in which I had been raised.

This intellectual shift was exacerbated by my pivotal decision in winter of 2017/18 to not apply to graduate schools, instead choosing to apply for jobs in the private sector. As I had approached the prospects of matriculating in graduate programs, I was confronted by a number of problems. Chief among them being I could not make sense of where my interests fit into the academic constellation of disciplines. Did I want to study theology by doing an M.Div? But I didn't want to be a pastor, so what about just an MA in Theology? But it would be hard to do rigorous philosophy in that context, so I might not be a strong PhD candidate for philosophy programs. Should I just do straight philosophy? But my philosophical work has always been intimately informed by my religion… What about the academic study of religion? Well, my confessional piety would likely be unwelcome in those contexts. I’d have to downplay my spirituality in my work. And how rigorous of philosophy could I do in that contexT? To top it all off, which program and discipline I decided to proceed with would affect how I would be perceived by both doctoral programs and by potential future employers. I really felt unsure about what to do. Every option felt like I had to hide or shave off some important part of myself, and I didn’t like that feeling.

However, I think the decisive factor in my decision to try forging a different path was the information I turned up about how utterly abysmal the job prospects in the humanities had become. I’d had a vague notion of this during college, but had always brushed it off, choosing instead to focus on my interests and doing my best work. Even my professors had assured me that there would be a position for me, and that I was well suited for the task. But when the time came to take the plunge into graduate school, to actually invest my time and my money in pursuing that career, I couldn’t delude myself any longer about how bad things truly were.

If I had pursued the path of doctoral work in the humanities, I’d have been looking at 7-9 years of poverty wages as a teacher’s assistant, possibly student loans from my master’s program, and what would be waiting for me at the end of the tunnel? Competing with hundreds of other people for the same handful of positions, most of which would not be tenure track, and which certainly would not pay enough to support a family. I felt despondent as I worked out the implications, but I also knew that I couldn’t lie to myself and go through with it now. I couldn't un-see it. I had too much self-respect to accept the raw deal that was being offered to me.

So, I struck out on my own, having no idea where I was going. God provided for me though. He was watching over me, and prepared my next steps into a field which would offer good compensation and learning opportunities. I somehow landed in the world of software startups, and was lucky enough to meet an awesome mentor who taught me about thinking, problem-solving, people, and process. I’m truly thankful for everything I was able to learn in that role, even if it didn’t end the way that I would have hoped. Isolated and struggling with emotional and relational problems, the quality of my work began to suffer, and I was ultimately let go.

I’ve been let go from every job I’ve ever worked actually. I'm really not proud of that. My last one was a mass layoff, so not really my fault, but it still feels like a defeat because by the time I was laid off my commitment to the role and the quality of my work had become barely passable. I had long since checked out, but the company and the job were so dead easy and low-stakes that it hadn’t really mattered. I was floating along on inertia, too comfortable to make a change. Of course, this just fed my anomie more — who wants to think their work is mostly perfunctory and not very challenging? My attention had been shifted elsewhere since the start of 2023 when I had launched Samsara Diagnostics. My job was just something I tended to enough to keep the money coming in every two weeks.

Samsara Diagnostics had begun as a concept over a year earlier, but I launched this newsletter, and started writing my book about Silence, in tandem with Justin Murphy’s IndieThinkers accelerator in order to try my hand at the independent scholar model I had been watching Justin experiment with since late 2018. He had developed a proof-of-concept that one could build a lively and intelligent community of thinkers, artists, and doers on the internet through consistently writing and sharing ideas, as well as organizing live online course experiences.

At that time, it was becoming increasingly clear that academia was falling off a cliff — the value of its product was rapidly degrading, student quality was dropping, overproduction of teachers was driving down wages, research itself was rapidly stultifying, the ballooning of administration was making the institutions sclerotic, and the stranglehold of social justice/DEI ideology only continued to tighten its grip. Fear, censorship, and cancellation was rampant, and it had become clear that the personal and professional risks of trying to make a career doing free thinking in the universities was increasingly not worth it. The older model of academia where grinding during your early years as a doctoral student, and then an associate professor, could lead to you attaining tenure, allowing you to spend the rest of your career working on what you wanted had worked for decades, but we were watching that entire arrangement fall apart in real time.

In light of this and other developments, I can’t help but think that I made the right decision by not pursuing further graduate work. My decision has actually been vindicated. I should probably be less surprised by that than I am, but despite how calculated my decision sounds, it still feels like dumb luck. If I had decided to go to grad school, in all likelihood I would only just now be hitting the job market like my peers. Instead of that I now have 7+ years of career experience in technology businesses, a loving wife, two beautiful children, some modest investments (although still net negative wealth when accounting for my undergrad student loans), and an online presence with an email newsletter and email list of 350+ people. Plus, I’ve been able to write, present, and publish with other interesting people I’ve managed to connect with who I otherwise likely would never have met. I’m living some aspects of the scholar’s dream, but without the symbolic recognition or the leisure to devote more of my time to it.

In some ways though, it feels like this framing of “independent internet scholar” has kept me shackled to the field of the university, but in a twisted way where I will never be able to measure up. I’ll always be an oddity, always low-status, never able to go as deep as I want, and ultimately, secretly pining for the affordances of the university. When I decided not to go to graduate school, that decision was motivated not by a rejection of intellectual pursuits, but by the material and institutional conditions society offered for those pursuits. I think that in the back of my mind I always planned to “go back,” but with the condition that it would be on my terms and for my own enjoyment. It’s kind of like the neurotic who takes secret pleasure in feeling that they are stealing back the enjoyment which the Other has stolen from them. But I hadn't rejected the frame of the university.

This is where I find myself then today. I’m wondering about whether and how I should try to go back. I can marshal reasons why it might make sense to go back — I have more valuable experience now so I am not so precarious in my job prospects (I don’t need a job or want one in academia), I have a family network and some savings to help support my endeavor, my time away from the university has done wonders to help me clarify my interests and passions, the academy is crumbling so now is the closing window to get some while the getting is still good, and plundering the treasures of the Egyptians will equip me for what is emerging from the ashes of the university.

But the daunting problem, what haunts the entire discussion, is my anxiety, fear, and bewilderment at the prospect of moving beyond even this field which has structured the core of my self-concept since I was an adolescent. If I were to decide to renounce this fantasy of finding a way to do a graduate program, how do I mentally and emotionally move on? Because it’s all well and good to say, no, I just won’t do it, and then make decisions which don’t include that as a calculus. But the hard part comes after that. The true challenge is moving on in your heart.

How do you transform your desire such that this field, its fantasies, and its founding transference, no longer holds sway over you? If I am going to walk away, I want to truly be free of this, not say that I am walking away but continue to nurse some hope in my heart that perhaps someday… This is the torture I’ve subjected myself to for far too long. I want to be done with it. Which means I either need to go to graduate school or discover a path to free myself of these fantasies which plague me.

I’m full of fear as I stand on this precipice, because it feels like this is the last real field in which I experience some sense of belonging or identity, even if it feels painful and I don't feel up to the task. The prospect of shedding the field of the scholar, of the university, of the intellectual, feels like losing the last thread that I was holding on to. If I let go, I’ll vanish into nothing. What even am I? No field gives me a sense of connection or meaning with anyone else. I have no desire to challenge myself and compete, and I see no great adventures or rewards which call to me. Like a gas without a container, I'm dissipating into nothing.

These past few years, especially since Covid, I’ve experienced myself as becoming this illegible smudge, barely able to interact with others. I don’t talk about myself or my feelings for fear of imposing (it would all come out like a flood, everything entangled) or I fear that no one will even understand where I’m coming from. My interests are so niche and so intense that my community mostly consists at this point of either family members or quasi-parasocial relations with online acquaintances. I hardly have any friends in real life. Not only do I barely have any time between work, family life, and research, but I also got tired of being the only person to reach out. Of course, I was the one who moved away and came back, so I also don't really have license to complain. Other people have moved on.

So, we come back around to the question of the field. I make financial ends meet by working in a field where I'm gained some experience and understanding beyond the superficial, but for which I lack a passion or a sense of vocation. We are involved in a lovely Presbyterian church (not the same denomination in which I grew up) with faithful leaders and loving people, but I would really prefer to be in an Anglican church with a more robust liturgy, a greater role of the Eucharist, and presence of Church tradition. I don't engage in theological debate anymore, and I've basically just settled for an ecclesial arrangement that is safe and doesn't rock the boat. Ultimately, I have found myself in a constant state of change as I learn how to be the leader of my home, a loving husband, and a good father. These things alone pose enough of a challenge, even without trying to pursue rigorous research on the side.

I suspect that the gradual weakening of these fields has contributed to my increasing interest in politics, a lurid curiosity which the past year of American political intrigue seems to have inflamed. The national stage of politics, as it's constructed by the media and institutions, becomes kind of the most abstract field in which one can find themselves if they lack any intermediary fields. It's these middle stages of intermediary fields between family and nation where I'm most lacking, I think, as my work and my church fields are so fraught with emotional complexity. I feel estranged from any sort of guild. Of course, I realize that all this complexity mirrors the mess in my own heart and mind – they're just the inverse of each other. Things I haven't dealt with personally are playing themselves out structurally, and that disordered structure feeds back into my experience, and so and so on.

No decisions today. No grand actions to be taken. Just a torrent of words. I envision my life as a sequence of doors, each larger than the other, with each door opening onto a larger cavern than the one before. The perspective shift that comes from each new vista hits me before I've had the chance to process the last one. Everything seems to be getting more detailed, but I keep getting fuzzier. The world keeps getting bigger, but as more things make sense the less sense my own life seems to have in relation to the whole. At bottom of it all stands a solitary guiding fear – when the end comes, will I regret my life?