Jacob Peter Gowy, “The Fall of Icarus,” 1636-1637
We are living through the most perverse decline of intellectualism since the Renaissance. Our world is full of paradoxes—some more fascinating than others—that amaze me every day. Yet I cannot find one that is more mind-blowing than the fact that the greatest democratization in access to ideas, information, and knowledge thanks to modern technology has unfolded hand-in-hand with the most dire degeneration of the human mind and spirit. There is no scarcity of ideas, opinions, or data, and yet we are somehow more thirsty for truth than ever in humankind’s history. A thirst that our intellectual debates—if they even exist—no longer seem ready or willing to satisfy.
I was a curious child. Every moment, every event, and every encounter or experience in my childhood was an observation. As a child, I used to think that mine must have been a strange mind, so I generally kept the myriad of questions I had about everything to myself, choosing instead to observe and think silently rather than voicing what was in my head. In a post-Soviet society that instilled in children and students a view of education as a path to office jobs and material success, I wanted to learn because I wanted to know. It is poetically tragic that I eventually found out that the more one learns, the less one knows. True learning produces more questions and more confusion than answers.
That is not, however, the view that many in our society—most notably the false prophets who seek to take our attention and chain our minds—hold. The more time I have spent at the world’s top universities, the more I have been amazed by the close-mindedness, lack of curiosity, aversion to criticism, and outright intellectual bankruptcy of those at the highest echelons of our society. Material interests, dogmatism, virtue signaling, and deep psychological insecurities now drive most of the public and “intellectual” debates on some of the key questions of our time. There are notable exceptions, of course, but by and large, the quest for truth seems to have lost its appeal as a worthy endeavor.
It is not my intention to denounce formal institutions of higher education altogether. For one, I have met some of the most incredible and bright minds—both professors and fellow students—with whom my exchanges, debates, and intellectual engagements have profoundly shaped my worldview. If not for the university, I would have never met them, and for those rare exceptions, I am grateful.
But the reality is that this is no longer the rule—it is the exception. This sad reality is particularly true in social sciences, such as political science and international affairs, my areas of specialization. In a discipline where I thought I would find the most thoughtful, challenging, and unorthodox intellectual exchanges and discussions, I have come to find mostly recycling of headlines, Twitter slogans, ideological rigidity, and a rejection of tolerance, or even worse—apathy.
This is what I mean by the decline of intellectualism. In a world where we refuse to dig beneath the surface, go beyond the conventional ideologies, question the endlessly repeated arguments across all forms of media, and inquire thoughtfully about the big ideas that bind us together or seek to tear us apart, we are bound to fail—both as a society and as humankind.
I recognize this is not a fault of formal education alone. In fact, the greatest contributor to this generational decline in how we think is the unprecedented creation and expansion of information itself. In a sea of data, the treasure island of knowledge seems harder and harder to pinpoint.
In this pivotal time in history, Icarus is my humble attempt to partake in the quest for truth on some of the most pressing questions we face. I will bring in my personal, professional, and academic experiences, studies, and observations to produce reflections on the key puzzles we face. I cannot promise to get it right, but I can promise to be vigorous and thoughtful to Icarus’ mission, breaking down the most complex subjects—from the political upheavals to the breakdown of the international system, from the technological innovations that shape our daily routine to the cultural shifts that will determine what kind of world our children will live in.
I am by no means claiming that what I write should be taken as truth. In fact, in most cases, it will be a semi-successful attempt at uncovering at truth at best, so it should be criticized, debated, challenged, and never accepted at face value. Unlike others, I do not seek blind believers in my ideas or ideals, but rather challengers whose powerful rebuttals can bring us closer to knowledge than we are today.
Writing has always been my passion. Ever since my childhood, I found it the best way to communicate my thoughts and reflections. I have been keeping a diary since 2016 in the hopes that if I am to ever forget things, it will come in handy. Becoming a writer was a dream when I was a teenager, and while it may not be my day job today, I have been writing for years. But I have come to a point where publishing analyses, op-eds, and articles for different outlets is no longer the right forum for me to express the kind of deep thought and reflection that I believe are essential to the public debate on the big-picture issues of our times. Simply put, I have chosen the more constraint-free way of sharing what is in my mind with the world.
In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill wrote, “Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.” Unfortunately, I see more people refusing—either deliberately or subconsciously, which strikes me as a sort of heart-warming self-defense mechanism—to think, really think. My hope, then, is that Icarus will be an invitation to reverse this self-destructive trend.
I loved mythology as a kid. I always found great symbolism in the legends and myths that our forefathers invented to convey wisdom to future generations. These stories—and what is life if not a collection of stories we hold and tell each other?—contain incredible clues as to some of the most fundamental questions of life and humanity. The ancient Greek legend of Icarus was and remains one of my personal favorites. Overtaken by awe and the power of the wax wings his father made for him to escape the island of Crete, Icarus ignored his father's warnings and flew too close to the sun. The wings melted, and he drowned in the sea, giving it the name we still use today—the Icarian Sea.
Too often, the critical and deep questions I grapple with are intertwined with our collective desire for freedom, progress, and innovation. And yet, sometimes, we tend to fly too close to the sun. Many of the topics I intend to discuss will revolve around this theme, which is why I have named this blog and newsletter Icarus. My humble hope is that, before our wings melt, we at least take the time to reflect on how close to the sun we may really be.
Welcome to Icarus.