Modern Knowledge: Pornographic
If you can gaze upon the naked emperor and call him out with the serene indifference of a Zen master tossing a koan into the void, you’re free.
Truly free.
Not the fake freedom peddled by the digital hucksters, but the kind that doesn’t flinch at the mob’s jeers, the censor’s lash, or the executioner’s axe. You’re not shouting “The bastard’s naked!” to puff yourself up, to hawk a Substack screed, or to curry favor with the emperor’s rivals.
You just say it and move on, with no agitation, like that holy monk who saw a beautiful woman riding naked on a horse. The other monks lowered their eyes. He stared, later telling the monks that he looked because she was beautiful: not “hot” or “bangable,” just beautiful. There's a big difference. Beauty is orans-like transcendent; hot is graspingly masturbatory.
To see the emperor’s nakedness with no agenda, that’s the old, forgotten freedom of the liberal arts, what Newman called “gentlemen’s knowledge.” It’s knowledge chased for its own sake, not yoked to purpose or pimped for profit or power.
The right hemisphere revels in this purposeless pursuit, drinking deeply from the well of the unknowable. It’s been part of the Western canon since Aristotle started his Metaphysics with the freedom of useless knowledge.
But the left hemisphere? It’s a bean-counter, a machine that demands every insight come with a payoff. To it, knowledge without a point is like looking at Penthouse without lust. The modern cracks open books like the jerk-off unfolds the centerfold: with intense purpose.
Our world is a left-brain dystopia, a carnival of purpose-driven drivel where even our proudest universities—once sanctuaries for the free play of the mind—churn out nothing but courtesans for the corporate grind and money treadmill slaves.
We’re a society where all knowledge is like porn: sacrificed to purpose. In a pornographic movie, all elements of the movie—plot, dialogue, character development, even acting—is sacrificed to sex. Likewise, today all knowledge is sacrificed to purpose.
Like a pornographic movie, it’s dreadful.