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(no explicit content warning necessary, though there is suggestive language)

We often regard philosophy as dry, useless, abstract, and most of all removed from everyday life, but this could not be more wrong. Philosophy is quite moist and gushy. The scratchiness of a sound. The feeling when your body sticks to your shirt because of sweat. The textures of different candies, and the feeling on your teeth when you eat so many of those sweets you can practically feel them rotting out, are experiences most of us have encountered. Though you have likely not considered their relevance to ontology, that is the area of philosophy that deals with how things exist.

Let's take an example from a modern day living philosopher, rather than a dead famous one with a beard.

American Philosopher Graham Harman has a refreshing spin on some ideas that go all the way back to Ancient Greece. He does not agree with either of the modern day philosophical trends of idealism, or materialism. He thinks objects are real, and are not just accidents of human imagination, or amalgamations of tiny pieces.

Harman says that his philosophy (called Object Oriented Ontology) is not really about objects but really about the tensions between objects and their qualities. He is literally telling the truth, but it is harder to explain his ideas that way, so let’s start in an easier place.

Object Oriented Ontology (OOO, pronounced triple oh) is about the withdrawn nature of objects. When I stare at a soda can I only see its metaphorical surface, or appearance. I am not experiencing its full range of abilities and possibilities. Just by looking at the soda can, I cannot feel the bubbles on my tongue, and I cannot feel the satisfaction of crushing the can underfoot. Therefore, you can never fully do away with this withdrawn potential of the object. The withdrawn real depth is all the parts of an object you are not seeing, even if you know they are there.

This is not a human centered philosophy, because objects and animals have hidden potentials and wild experiences too. Harman uses the example of fire and cotton to explain how even objects can never exhaust eachothers withdrawn depth. If fire burns cotton, then the fire is only accessing the flammability of cotton, not the smell, or the sight of cotton. Think of how a baseball thrown through your neighbor’s window shattering it experiences the fragility of the glass, but not the transparency, because baseballs can’t see.

OOO is about the relationship between appearances and hidden realities. Which are called sensual objects, and real objects respectively. Not to say that sensual objects don’t exist, but that real objects have an internal mystery that sensual ones lack.

The relationship, called a tension, can involve how there is a disconnect between appearance and reality. Yet at the same time as this disconnect occurs, sensual and real objects are necessarily linked to each other. This relationship is the key to seduction, and intimacy. Because seduction relies on something that has not happened yet, or some hidden potential, despite seduction relying on appearances.

The sensual object is the part of the object that is intimately close with the observer. Imagine yourself watching a good movie, totally immersed. actually imagine inside your head yourself immersed in a movie. You are intimately acquainted with your own experience of the movie, and nothing is closer to you than your experience, because you are in the appearance of the movie. You feel each moment of the movie as if it was something that was happening to you. You are touching the sensual object directly, unlike the real object which is removed from experience.

Or think of your intimate relationship with a friend or partner. You can hear them speak, and you can see them. Nothing is more intimate than appearances, because appearances are direct. You cannot connect with something hidden real and deep, without knowledge about it. Appearances are literally close to you on a metaphysical level. Think of the example of the rock thrown through the window, and how the baseball is not close to the transparency of the glass.

Seduction is the second step after the intimacy of appearance. Once you know all about someone, you start to have inside jokes. You know how they act, and you can tell about social cues (which are quite similar to jokes, only they are serious). You become aware of potentials that are not on the surface (appearance), and the intimacy of the surface becomes a hint at potential activity.

For example, your partner is lying on their bed making eye contact with you. What does this appearance signify? Something not totally on the surface. This particular tension, which is a connection between the sensual object and real qualities, is called Eidos by OOO.

If Harman’s philosophy is to be taken seriously then the intimate sensual side of existence is basically half of it. Harman takes art criticism, such as often mocked wine criticism, very seriously. This is because art criticism is concerned with the sensual details of objects. Art does not function without sensuality because art without an observer is not art.

Moreover, the seductive aspect of art has been the most interesting and controversial historically. Art is very powerful and draws people in. Think of each time your favorite TV show has distracted you from your work. Plato believed that art was too seductive and would ruin the rational part of people’s minds. He even believed it ought to be banned.

Seduction (which requires sensual intimacy or our closeness to our own experience or immersion in our own experience), or attraction, is highly important to philosophy, because of how much human beings deal with it.

Human beings are the entities that ethics is concerned with the most. Seduction is relevant to ethics (an area of philosophy), because the whole process of persuasion relies on it. The idea of someone being a good person relies on them not being seduced over to the dark side, like Anakin in Star Wars.

Corruption (which is a type of seduction) is an intimate meaningful experience. When you have your entire worldview changed because of how powerful, sweet, and important to you the temptation is, then you are being changed by an experience.

Imagine a politician being corrupted by money. For the politician everything makes sense at the moment. Chances are the politician starts with small bribes, but moves to greater and greater sums. Eventually they are changed, and seduced. They felt much pleasure from their money, to the point where their original aim is not there (if it ever was). This seduction was a very close and powerful experience, almost close to the point of being blindingly blurry like how when you’re close enough to kiss you cannot see your partner's eyes well. Intimacy with an experience is blinding in comparison to the subtlety of potential.

Philosophy is all about seduction, and experiencing things. Although its writing is admittedly often written by nerds like myself who speak in terms like experience in a dry abstract way, rather than one filled with green life and muddy passion. Anyone interested in philosophy can think of a time when they had become drawn to a specific thinker or an idea without the ability to stop learning. The seductive force is present in dry words also. There is a creative philosophical essay called Breaking Up With Deleuze, in which Eve Tuck talks about her experience reading the dead man’s (French philosopher Gilles Deleuze) books in the way someone would talk about ending a relationship. It is humorous and talks about the anxiety of being influenced by older renowned philosophers.

Whether or not academic philosophers have succeeded at making philosophy seductive, it is still the case that that philosophy has that potential. Often this potential is abused by poorly researched self-help videos, and related effortless articles, but it can also be used for the good. Philosophy is ultimately closer to arts criticism than to physics or mathematics, despite the fact that so many materialists want it to be physics. So it would not be inappropriate for more philosophy to take into account literary value, to prevent the dryness of pages.

It was not wider than ten feet. Her room was strewn with clothing, coins, open makeup containers including eyeliner pens, orange sticky notes used and unused, coffee grinds, old 3DS cartridges, abandoned books, and sneezed in crumbled tissue/napkins dumped from her purse or backpack onto the floor.

One faulty light bulb was on, giving a dim orange hue to the windowless brick walls that she had tried paint many times, each attempt left as a fuming failure.

Her phone was present after a long days work, giving the professionally dressed women a color changing halo.

She was doing what she would call “nothing” but she was still sitting on the edge of her bed with tense muscles. She was out of breath from living her whole day, but had drunk too much coffee to sleep, so she was alone and stuck in a restless nightmare between two dreams, one of which was her hard-won internship and was becoming harder to do.

Her makeup had slid, making the once bold armor become a beard. She was arched over, so she looked wound up like a spring coil in a children's cheap metal toy.

Her phone’s faces looked up at her as she into it. Her eyes' focus did not falter.

Despite her close attention, she couldn't care less about anything she was looking at. Fliping down and down and away, her finger in the perfect position to move. She had enjoyed a few of them, even laughing. One video involved two men toss large pieces of metal on screen and she fliped away and a sketch involving the same person acting out each role with text over there forehead and she flipped before the punchline and “the latest marvel movie is good because...“and she flipped away and a highlights of a ridiculous reddit story that could not have happened and she fliped away and a video of wild animals jumping onto the deck of a boat and she watched its full three seconds and she realized she had to go to bed because she had a meeting the next morning and she flipped away to another video maybe try to check out Instagram next? Maybe she'd watch the latest documentary on YouTube but important educational politics stuff popped up. She'd watch the documentary after this last one. Maybe this next one is the last one?

There are three types of magic.

1. Magic that Gandalf does when his staff glows.
2. Magic that I do when I amaze and inspire you with my awesome blog posts.
3. Magic that rocket scientists do. I HATE STEM.

So let's talk about the first and the second. Not the third because I HATE STEM

(and because it's probably just a really convoluted version of the second one).

part one: The first type of magic: Magic

Gandalf is a fictional character despite how many Gandalf/reader fics you degenerate scum are reading. Sure fictional characters are real, but that's because concepts are real. A a concept Gandalf is real, but Istari wizards are not flesh and bones touching and having sex with you. Get a grip kiddo, Magic is not real.

But like in that last paragraph I was being really mean and cruel to you. Infact I was deliberately imitating the style of youtuber CJ the X who is copying/satirizing the old dad mean man archetype who tells you what to do. I was being really mean to you, my reader, right there.

I should be nicer. Magic with a big M could be real. Like I mean I have no idea if it is real, or not.

Living French philosopher (not many of those) Quentin Meillassoux thinks that literally anything is possible to happen at any moment. His entire philosophy is based on it. For him everything exists in hyper chaos, apparently. I have not actually read his book. So Magic could just pop into existence, even though currently we cannot see any Magic. He might be wrong though.

part two: The second type of magic: magic

magic is real. When I am watching a video by CJ the X I paying full attention whether I like it or not. I tried doing homework while watching CJ, but CJ is just too powerful and attention grabbing. They are literally controlling my mind.

magic is real, and it can be conjured through rhetoric, shiny pretty lights, and the allure of a deeper mystery. This is because art is magical, because it has something non-physical that controls behavior.

Money is very magical. People melt when they see money, and they become like Odysseus's men turned to pigs by Circe.

Goodness, like most vices, is very magical. You want to be good, don't you? You probably want sleep at night instead of dying over your sins and guilty feelings. You want Jordan Peterson to tell you that you are a good person or something like that.

A movie is like a ritual that draws you very close to it's beautiful metaphysical surface. This is because magic is an effect, or relationship. It's what draws you into something, or banishes you out with a circle of protection.

Anything can be magical though.

part three: The state of super nature

In days of yore, people ran free in the state of nature. The state of nature was when everyone was free, and killed each other. It's an idea some old British men conceived of to justify the existence of the monarchy. it's a bad tyrannical idea that misunderstands human nature.

There was/is also a state of super nature, as in supernatural power from the second magic.

In days of yore, the people and the spirits of the wilds ran free. People bent like the reeds under the feet of mighty lions. Demons ruled over our willpower like opium over 18th century nobility. These events are accurately depicted in The Legend of Korra, sequel to Avatar: the Last Airbender. In the past people lived in fear of magic's power and were squashed constantly. Eventually magic was exiled and banned, reserved for the church, and the academy only.

Should this ban be the case, or should we return to the state of super-nature? Or are we already in the state of super nature? Have we ever left? Does it still exist because bodies of propaganda rule over us? Are we in a state of super nature. Is this story even coherent?

I have been an envious sower of anger and correction When I have perused the views and birthrights of others I have started to attack and send malediction There is no sound, except for breathy wuthers Reason’s fury boils without the final effortful battlecry of a lobster Only inaudible moans, and bitching, slowly sickening in jealous pain. Forming criticisms instead of winning deeds, I, a leech-blooded spinster prick my finger with my needle each time I scold “shame”