Three Wisemen by: Felt Habit Dedicated to: Eion “Bobby” Bryson (1936 - 2019) Three Wisemen - Felt Habit © 2020 1 Contents A Message For the Reader .……………….………………………..………………... 3 ​ Wiseman1: Thorstein Veblen (1857 – 1929) ……………………………….…...….. 4 ​ ​ ​ Wiseman 2: Alan Watts (1915 – 1973) …………………………………….…..……. 14 ​ ​ ​ Wiseman 3: Jordan Peterson (1962) …………………….……………………..……. 24 ​ ​ Three Wisemen …………………….………………………….………………….……. 37 ​ Acknowledgements …………………….……………………………...………….……. 42 ​ Notes …………………………………….……………………………...………….……. 43 ​ Sources ……………………………….……………………………...……...…….……. 51 ​ About the author …………………….………………………………....………….……. 52 ​ Three Wisemen - Felt Habit © 2020 2 Three Wisemen A Message For The Reader From Felt Habit ____ Early in the morning on the 8th of May 2020 I woke up, made a coffee, sat down at my piano and began to play. Before I knew it, I had recorded one long session of piano layered over an ambient background. There was no clear intention behind it. I just let the music flow, moving from one note to another feeling what to do, rather than thinking about it. The recording consisted of three distinct parts each in a different key. Each was it’s own song but part of a recognizable whole. I decided to name these the Three Wise Men after the three geniuses who have influenced my way of thinking: Thorstein Veblen (1857 – 1929), Alan Watts (1915 – 1973) and Jordan Peterson (1962 -). This book summarizes the wisdom I’ve gathered from reading and listening to them over the years. I wrote it in the hope of sharing their ideas with my friends and family. There are three chapters. Each one dedicated to one of the Wise Men and written in chronological order; but also in the order I first heard about them. Veblen and Watts have passed on; and that is why their chapters start with a short biography before I outline what they had to say. Peterson’s chapter, on the other hand, begins with the events that launched him onto the global media stage back in 2016. I then go over his ideas which have earned him a massive following worldwide, but have also attracted a loud audience that find his point of view utterly detestable. I’ve tried my best to write all this down in the simplest way I could so that it might be easier to follow as well as keep you captivated along the way. I’ve left notes at the end of the book with relevant links to YouTube videos and the sources from the organizations that are continuing the Wisemen’s legacies. This whole project is designed to align my passion for music and philosophy. And so each chapter is meant to be read accompanied by the music. That’s why I’ve also created a 1 hour’s long binaural ambience track for each chapter; to be listened to while you read. Binaural music uses alternating frequencies to make your brain focus better (*headphones required). It might sound weird and disturbing at first, but it will induce a trancelike state that will help you really immerse yourself in the words. I hope you enjoy the music and the book. But more importantly, I hope you find it useful. Three Wisemen - Felt Habit © 2020 3 Wiseman: 1 Thorstein Veblen (1857 – 1929) ​ ​ ____ Field of study: Sociology and Economics ​ Nationality: American ​ Archetype: Ruthless Critic ​ Best known work: The Theory of The Leisure Class (1899) ​ Binaural Music: Listen now ​ ​ Wise words: “The situation of today shapes the institutions of tomorrow through a selective, coercive process, by acting upon men’s habitual view of things, and so altering or fortifying a point of view or a mental attitude handed down from the past.” Thorstein Veblen (The Theory of The Leisure Class, 1899) ____ Thorstein Veblen: His Life Midway into the nineteenth century Thorstein Veblen, a boy from an immigrant family of Norwegian descent, grew up on a farm in Wisconsin. He was brought up in what seemed an estranged world with a foreign language; it’s culture forever perturbed him. His family possessed little, but still placed immense value in education in the hopes that Thorstein and his siblings might live a better life. Besides being gifted with a piercing intellect, his continual contention against adversity and the prejudices of the times led him to believe that he was, indeed, an outsider. As a philosophy graduate from Yale in 1884 (at the age of 27) his failed attempts to gain a meaningful appointment meant that he essentially spent the next seven years unemployed and confined to the family farm passing the time by reading books and fighting off disease until he was eventually accepted at Cornell and later the University of Chicago. He would go on to achieve great renown for his Three Wisemen - Felt Habit © 2020 4 academic career in Economics, but his story tells that these achievements came with unsuitable conditions attached to them and they never appeared at the times when he really needed them. In 1899 Veblen made his first breakthrough with the book that is remembered today as his masterpiece: The Theory of the Leisure Class. This scathing critique of high society in modern life examines how the rich, famous and powerful can afford to indulge in a life of leisure and consume plentifully without the necessity of earning a livelihood through manual labor. Their ability to live such a life is shown ostensibly¹ through the kinds of things they can buy and use; as well as the manner in which they spend their time². As a consequence, their decadent habits and the fancy items they have in their possession (like horse-riding and wearing expensive clothes) become themselves signals of status and serve to distinguish them apart from those who cannot live such a life. Veblen called this “conspicuous consumption”, which in today’s words might mean something like ‘showing off’. But even that doesn’t explain what he is trying to say. That’s because Veblen’s theory does more than just describe (with ruthless detail) the frivolous indulgences of the wealthy and well-to-do. Rather, Veblen’s concern was for how this ‘institution’³ came about from an historical and evolutionary standpoint. Only by looking at it this way can you make sense of it all⁴. The follow-up to Veblen’s first book came in 1904 with the publication of The Theory of Business Enterprise. If his initial argument stressed the hindrance that the leisure class plays on society as a conservative factor (preventing the progressive demands of present circumstances to direct the course of the future); his second book extended his critique to the realm of commerce and industry. In it he turns our attention to the threats which the interests of businessmen have on industry and society as a whole⁴. In other words, the damage that can be caused by business owners who pursue the growth of profit at the cost of all else. The need to cut expenses in an effort to keep profits up, by laying off workers for example, places limits on productive capacity and obstructs the operations of the industrial system (causing strikes and boycotts). These decisions by business leaders and the owners of capital are taken without consulting the technical specialists of industry; the engineers who understand the productive functions of these companies. In the end, Veblen argued that what industry makes and society consumes is at the mercy of men chasing power and profit and not the concern of industry nor society’s well-being⁵. Despite the thought-provoking and original contribution these books made to the discourse (prophetic, in retrospect, of where Western society would end up today), they did not bring Veblen immediate success when they were published. They didn’t even earn him a raise at the university where he worked. In the eyes of the academic institution he was not held in high regard. As a Three Wisemen - Felt Habit © 2020 5 lecturer there was a prevailing impression felt by his students that his teaching style was dreadful and boring. Amongst his peers he was considered a womanizer and ridiculed for his infidelity to the point that he was forced to resign from his post in 1909. Compounded with the prejudice committed against him for his openly agnostic views and lack of pedigree in the teachings of Christianity, this tarnished notoriety only made the prospect of future employment elsewhere more doubtful. In 1911, following the divorce with his first wife, some good fortune did present itself in the form of an appointment at the University of Missouri. However it came with less pay and at a lower rank than his previous position⁶. By the time the Great War had broken out Veblen published another two books. The first one furthered his views on the social evolution of industry and the other was the very timely and topical: “Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution” (1915). In this book he contrasted the authoritarian politics of Germany with the democratic tradition of Britain (which fostered a progressive political culture) and portrayed warfare in true Veblenesque fashion as a threat to industrial productivity (classing it amongst those interests, which stem from financial, national or private motives, as wasteful and unproductive). This contribution earned Veblen a space on a group of economic advisors commissioned by President Woodrow Wilson to analyze possible peace settlements that would see through to end to the war and thereafter. Up until his death which occurred on the cusp of the Wall Street Market Crash of 1929 (at the age of 72), Veblen would go on to publish more books and articles as well as serve as editor to a magazine in New York called The Dial. He was also fundamental to the formation of an intellectual movement called The New School which sought an “unbiased understanding of the existing order, its genesis, growth, and present working”.