Alex Tarnava on why ancient philosophy still matters, how deception becomes civilization, and what’s coming in The Grand Illusion.
The Saturday Exhale is a mixed media project dedicated to discussing readings from my book StressHacked and upcoming works. I recorded extended readings of my writings and I am joined by my editor to discuss them, covering topics from philosophy to science to pop culture. Check out a reading from StressHacked today and follow the discussion below.
Vadim Gershteyn, PhD, MPH served as my editor for StressHacked and contributed writing to my upcoming book The Stone Wall. He joins me for this discussion.
VG: In your upcoming book, The Stone Wall, you write, “It’s commonly said that a different version of us exists in the mind of each person we have encountered; I’ll take this line of thought further and state that a new version of us is created in each moment.” In a reading from StressHacked, you connect this idea to Socrates. Who was this philosopher? Was Socrates Plato’s idealist metaphysician, who advocated something like the Theory of Forms, or was he Xenophon’s “respectable life coach” (as you put it in StressHacked) who was simply trying to help the youth flourish (of course, if Xenophon’s version was true, Socrates wouldn’t be tried and executed, as you also note in StressHacked)?
I remember over the course of writing StressHacked, where you first started to engage with Plato, your editor Ljubomir stated something to the effect of, “Why Plato?” He was expressing incredulity that this several-millenia old thinker had some relevance to the current day. I sided with the idea that Plato is still (unfortunately, I think) highly-relevant. Why do individuals in 2026 need to know about Plato, or Socrates? What should they take away from the mystery of who Socrates was?
AT: A phenomenon that has occurred throughout history, which speaks greatly to our nature, is the reality that almost always the “wrong” thinkers emerge victorious from the battles of their day—whether it be Durkheim’s triumph over Tarde in the field of sociology, or the enduring influence of the great deceiver, Plato. These victories often stand for decades, centuries, or in the case of Plato, millennia. Fortunately, deception, which can be extremely influential and enduring, can never prevail forever. The truth will always emerge.
We must shine a light on these ancient thinkers, especially those who have insidiously woven their lies into the fabric of our civilization, through their esteem during their own time, and the subsequent elevation they have been afforded posthumously. When it is the truth we are after, nothing and no one is sacred. Everything we believe, and especially the beliefs we hold dearly, must be questioned ruthlessly and relentlessly. Plato’s influence on the West has been nothing short of defining. There would be no West, not in the manner we currently experience it, without Plato. Much of what is wrong, the lies we hold as foundational, were put forth in Plato’s works, either seminal or original.
For these reasons, we must understand Plato. We must also seek to piece together Socrates, for, the myth of that man stands for something antithetical to what Plato became. Plato is power through deception; Socrates represents ultimate sacrifice for the truth.
VG: In Republic, Plato advocates something like an enlightened dictatorship. There are elements of democracy in his vision, in that councils of learned individuals deliberate on decisions akin to a legislative body, in addition to what could be considered today “social justice” initiatives (such as the inclusion of women as philosopher-kings), but Plato’s vision is fundamentally anti-democratic. It’s anti-democratic because Athenian democracy, which was flourishing in Plato’s time, is what killed his mentor Socrates. And Plato never got over this nor forgot about it. In this reading from StressHacked, you tease that you have an upcoming work (The Grand Illusion) that elaborates on a wide social vision akin to what Plato produces in Republic. Can you foreshadow a little bit about what you will talk about in The Grand Illusion and how it relates to questions of democracy and dictatorship in ancient Athens?
AT: There are similarities, as you and other editors have pointed out, but I believe my conceptions are wholly original syntheses, substantially different from Plato’s Republic. Because this final piece, what I intend to be my 8th and final book—my magnus opus—is too important to give key details too early, I must remain cryptic.
My conception, a new political theory, accomplishes a few things: it undermines democracy as we know it, while simultaneously delivering something that upholds the spirit of democracy in a way our current models in the West have inarguably failed at; it is neither purely Marxist, nor Capitalistic, but through clever mechanisms it hypothetically accomplishes the goals of both, namely equality of opportunity, and the elevation of meritocracy, better than any framework endeavoring to accomplish either ever has. Finally, it upends everything we think we know about wealth, redefining what the word means, and constructing a way in which we can all transparently pursue it as a tool to advance ourselves, our kin, and humanity as a whole.
VG: Another thing you state in this reading that is of critical importance is the following: “A person’s biography has no bearing on the truth of ideas attributed to them. If the ideas hold power, they transcend their vessel. That said, there is a critical consideration: to truly understand the ideas from any thinker, one often must psychologize the author.” For someone who hasn’t read StressHacked, can you explain to the reader of your newsletter why 1) “A person’s biography has no bearing on the truth of ideas attributed to them” and 2) “To truly understand the ideas from any thinker, one often must psychologize the author” are not mutually exclusive? On its face, this may seem to your reader to be a contradiction.
AT: Truth is truth no matter who it originates from. Each statement and observation must be judged on its own merits. That said, in order to understand how a particular individual came to the conclusions and interpretations they did, we must psychologize them. We must understand how they think in order to fully comprehend why they think as they do. The prevailing “wisdom” in society is to do the opposite: to judge an individual’s thoughts on their credentials, not the thoughts themselves, but then to engage in a form of doublethink by referring to any attempt at psychologizing the thinker as an ad hominem attack. There is a difference between stating “so and so is crazy, so nothing they say can be listened to,” an ad hominem attack, and “the statement so and so said is unhinged and incoherent. Of note, so and so is mentally ill, which could explain how they arrived at this incoherent interpretation,” which is decidedly not an ad hominem attack, rather an observation grounded in reality.
VG: I mused about this point in The Stone Wall where we authored an interlude titled “Simone Weil and The Limits of Liberalism.” In that interlude, I made the case that the limits of liberalism—that is, the problems inherent to our current world order which is predicated on unlimited human economic freedom—are so obvious that even a lunatic like Simone Weil could get it, who of course famously caused her own death by starving herself in solidarity with a political struggle. In my view, the way Weil put these limits is extraordinary. She has a way with language, and hearing it from her sometimes “hits harder” than hearing the same points from an individual explicitly opposed to this ideology, say Alexander Dugin (whose work we also address in The Stone Wall).
The power of psychologization is in explanation, which is related to the effect it has on our understanding. People might be shocked at the ideas put forward into the public space; Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus comes to mind: a book celebrating schizophrenia as a site of resistance against capitalist exploitation. But ideas even as deranged as this come from somewhere, and it usually comes when someone has something to gain from expressing them.
Wisdom is not knowledge but knowing how to use knowledge. This is why I think psychologization is necessary to not only understand but to be wise, as Friedrich Nietzsche rightfully recognized.
AT: I must remain coy again, as you are leading to something you know is in an upcoming work. This time, the book which will be my 3rd installment, likely released late 2026, Manufacturing Minds: The Education Systems War on Free Thought.
For me, there are more than a single consideration regarding knowing how to use knowledge; the first, which most are aware of, is the act of execution. The second, which is becoming increasingly rare, is the ability to deconstruct and analyze precisely why the knowledge executed led to the result desired, and with this understanding, the wisdom to create new systems that drive for further knowledge and better outcomes.
Speaking of these better outcomes, in Manufacturing Minds I argue our society and education system creates what I term “epistemic schizophrenia,” where the way we are taught to synthesize reality internally is incompatible in how we are taught to externally present our knowledge and understanding. We need to untangle the manner in which we learn how to perceive, how to think, and then intentionally teach ourselves how to synthesize everything we have learned.
VG: That’s right, I remember your idea of “epistemic schizophrenia.” I recall this led to an objection from one of your editors, Marta, that it was an inappropriate use of a clinical condition to make a metaphysical point. That’s when I brought up the aforementioned Anti-Oedipus, to show that schizophrenia has a long tradition of being used, appropriately or not, to make metaphysical points. But just to drive the point home, Deleuze and Guattari would say something like your “epistemic schizophrenia” is optimal, because it prohibits people from entering the capitalist mode of production. After all, genuine, clinically-diagnosed schizophrenic people reliably suffer from productivity issues; they have a hard time holding jobs, and so on. And what’s needed to usurp capitalism is to ‘opt out,’ according to Deleuze and Guattari. The schizophrenic opts out, in no fault of their own, from rational sense-making; and it’s possible the implementation of “epistemic schizophrenia” on a social scale is making us collectively opt out.
The last thing I’ll say on this point is to reflect on your concept of ‘Learning From the Loathsome,’ which you introduced in StressHacked. I close the epilogue of The Stone Wall with quotes from Deleuze on Spinoza. Having bad ideas is one thing, having complex bad ideas is another, and being able to reflect on how one implements said bad ideas in their own cognitive processes is yet another thing. Deleuze understood the third item, and so his works on individual philosophers, Spinoza being one, Nietzsche another, are lucid and full of genuine insight. I think this speaks to what you’re saying “that the ability to deconstruct and analyze precisely why the knowledge executed led to the result desired, and with this understanding, the wisdom to create new systems that drive for further knowledge and better outcomes.” This is exceedingly rare. I wonder if having this insight can still lead to the wrong conclusions, as it perhaps did for Deleuze (and Guattari) in the case of Anti-Oedipus.
AT: One final point: I muse in The Stone Wall, when discussing the almost inarguably loathsome Otto Weininger, that the value in his writing is his attempt to synthesize. Weininger worked to infuse what he understood about physiology, society, and individual behavior into a complex systems theory. I’d argue he was largely wrong; however, his attempt to construct this gives others, myself included, the opportunity to deconstruct and elucidate how, why, and where he went wrong. This leads to novel revelations, the kind that may not have occurred without confronting what was ambitious but misguided.
