Whispering Philosophy to a Hidden Worm

Stay under the radar, do not seek recognition, stay low. This is the mantra for those who do not want to be in the limelight, those who prefer to go unnoticed through life. Not for some nefarious reason, not to do something and wanting to stay outside of the radar, no. This is not at all this. This would amount to the total opposite of the mantra I started the post with. No, that would mean you just want to do something without someone watching. That is something else. Staying under the radar and not seeking recognition is instead akin to a worm, like my little friend to who I whispered all of this, who uses disguising mechanisms to go undetected because that is merely a way to survive the world in which you are constantly barked at and sometimes bitten.

I stuck my finger in the spekboom plant, as I always do, to touch the leaves. I always touch plants, even though I know this is not always safe to do. I touched something soft and it moved underneath my finger. It was not a stem without leaves! It was Fred, the little worm on the spekboom plant. It sat so still and with the camouflage, I did not see its head. It really looked like a spekboom stem.

From this perspective, you cannot see Fred unless you really look hard. And this is when I began to talk with little Fred about staying under the radar. Yes, one might see him eating the spekboom as something nefarious or illegal, but that would not make sense because he wants to live and needs the food and drink. So little Fred is constantly trying to evade predators from eating it. It stays out of the limelight so that it might continue to eat carefree. And this is what I strive to sometimes do, to merely "eat" (read: carry on living) without the worry about getting into trouble of any sort. Because why do we want the extra stress, I ask my little worm friend, when we can carry on rather stress-free?

This is when I told my little worm friend about the philosophy of Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus. For these philosophers, the goal of life was to reach a sort of point in which they could live without stress; they called it ataraxia. It is not that you actively search for this lifestyle, this would bring about new forms of disturbances and anxiety (e.g., what if you do not get this life? how would you recognize it?). Rather, you live your life without the belief that your life is good or bad, you seek a kind of indifference to things. This is obviously a crude oversimplification of the philosophy, but my little worm friend wanted to eat and I only had so much time before he hid himself again.

Therefore, similarly to my little worm friend hiding himself, I follow a way of life that does not require constant justification, of life that hides itself under copious amounts of papers and books. I do not justify this life by referring to theories or metaphysical reasons, I do not enforce it on anyone else, I merely hide myself like my little friend in order to just go about my day and my life. It is a special type of indifference. One might, in a similar vein as philosophers of old, critique this indifference as blatantly ignoring the plights of others of that one might merely walk off the edge of a cliff (because in this caricature I cannot be bothered to live (which does not make sense)). But all of these counter-arguments focus on outside perspectives, on things beyond my control. The most damning counter-argument is sometimes that the Pyrrhonian would kill a child if a king ordered it. But this critique always neglects the disposition of the king who would in the first place order such a heinous crime. What world are we living in if a king would order the killing of a defenseless crime?

That is when I lost my little friend. He hid himself because these whispered philosophical musings did not tickle his fancy. He did not want to listen to me rambling on about things he actually lives. His disposition is to hide and live stress and carefree. I am merely talking about it with him. He did not understand it because he intuitively lived it. How funny.

Alas, the little worm friend I dubbed Fred moved on, living his carefree life whilst I still carried on talking it. Maybe I should talk less and live more like this? In any case, I hope you enjoyed this rather strange philosophical musing post. Hopefully, you and Fred are doing well and staying safe (from predators and people who would want to influence you in a bad way).

All of the writings are my own, albeit inspired by my little Fred friend. The photographs (and video) are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and 50mm Nikkor or 300mm Tamron zoom lens.