Reader Response - Proverbs for Paranoids
15 Jun 2025This week, I’m responding to some thoughtful comments someone sent me regarding my last post. They pointed out a couple spots in which I was imprecise with my wording to the point that my argument became untenable, or where I just got caught up in the heat of the moment and said something that, on reflection, can’t be defended well. Here, I do my best to defend my argument where I can, and where I can’t, remake the argument as necessary. The reader’s questions are in blue, my responses in black. Praise, condemnation, questions, and comments can be sent, as always, via email
The name’s [Redacted]. Long time listener, first time caller. A couple notes/questions on your most recent blog post.
Q1: A motif in Catholic moral philosophy is that virtue is the mean between two vices. Cowardice, Fortitude, and Foolhardiness are all different levels of the same trait, two of which are clear vices, one is a clear virtue. What you are advocating for, especially in the conclusion, is not paranoia, and I think it is wrong to classify it as such. Just as it is not cowardly to refrain from running into a burning building to save your wallet, it is not paranoid to have a healthy skepticism about some parts of the world you live in. Paranoia is a vice, and it should be treated as one.
I think this is largely correct, depending on how radically the word paranoia is construed. If we take paranoia to mean only the extreme state of being totally immersed in paranoid fantasy without any checks or balances, then yes paranoia is certainly vicious. It is also correct that what I am advocating for is not this extreme state. My choice of the word paranoid is, to some extent, an homage to Pynchon. Nonetheless, you are correct that in normal usage paranoia does refer to the extreme state that we agree is undesirable. Thus, I feel I should at least try to defend my word choice.
Healthy skepticism is a rational process; a paranoid fantasy is not. I think it is possible for someone to make decisions and plan for the future based purely on rational thinking alone, but I doubt that anyone, even the most analytic of analytic philosophers does. Here, I am more concerned with the irrational, pretheoretic systems that develop in response to being bombarded with information than I am with rational processes that can be used in a process like deliberative decision-making. Part of being human is dealing with the fact that emotions, fantasies, childhood slights, peer acceptance, etc. all play a role, consciously or subconsciously, in our decision-making processes. Having an analytically sound process to make decisions is important, I am not advocating for a total discharge of rationality. Rational ground rules are often the only thing keeping our irrational impulses in check.
Paranoid fantasies are one of these irrational systems that develop in response to being bombarded with information. I don’t think they are inherently vicious or virtuous, nor am I even sure that moral reasoning should apply to them. The thing I am describing is less severe than a case of clinical paranoid schizophrenia, but I think I have done enough in describing the nature of a paranoid fantasy to justify the use of the word paranoid. There are characteristic marks of paranoia in a paranoid fantasy: there’s some person or group of people who are deliberately colluding to frustrate your ends or the ends of people like you. There is not the same level of delusion or a belief in the same level of breadth and specificity of conspiracy as you might find in a clinical case of paranoia, but the broad strokes are there.
In summary, you’re right that I’m not advocating that people act like they have a clinical case of paranoia, but I nonetheless maintain that “paranoid fantasy” is the best way of describing the phenomenon I am picking out. I am advocating for people not to reject their paranoid fantasies, but to find some sort of a balance with them. I don’t think that this is vicious, nor do I think it is virtuous, I think it is nothing more than the best way to respond to a natural psychological phenomenon.
I will, however, concede that in the last section, the last sentence especially, this is not clear from what I wrote at all. The last sentence, if I could go back and rewrite it, would instead say something like “The best we can do, it seems, is to buy into the paranoid fantasy enough that you are motivated to buy home insurance, but not buy into it so much that you are motivated to don the tinfoil hat.”
Q2: History is not dumb luck. The fact that unlikely or unplanned things happened as they did does not make it “dumb luck.” The specific details of events may seem like it at times, but I think it’s dangerous to remove agency from the world, and ignore the persistent social and political environment that “history” has happened in. Sure, it’s “luck” that a certain fella got kicked out of art school, but you can’t ignore the climate of the times. You can’t say the same thing would’ve happened, but you can point to a lot of forces pushing the world in a certain direction.
I cannot, in any meaningful way, prove here that there is or is not a metaphysical force that constitutes what we call ‘luck.’ It may be that, if one were given a complete description of the initial state of the universe and all the physical laws that the universe obeys, one could derive all future states of the universe either indefinitely or until the universe ends.
So, if I’m going to defend the existence of dumb luck, I need to defend it in a somewhat weaker form. What I will defend is the idea that even if the universe is completely deterministic, it nonetheless seems as though some events come about through luck, chance, randomness, etc. I think this is relatively easy to defend, so I won’t spend much time on it.
Think back to November 2016. Trump’s first election certainly seemed like a fluke. It felt like he got lucky, Clinton got unlucky. Most (left-wing mainstream intellectual) institutions were at a complete loss for how to explain it. Now, with the gift of hindsight and some more data under our belt we can see his election in the context of a global rise of populism, or attribute it to a rejection of mainstream institutions in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, or to a rejection of globalization. From the historian’s perspective, the principle of sufficient reason holds. But in the moment, things can certainly feel as though luck plays a role. The paranoid fantasy helps us deal with this feeling of chaos, it gives us a way to remove that chaotic feeling that God is playing dice with the future and invent some reason for something to happen.
I must, of course, concede that this is not what I wrote. I wrote: “History, by my lights, is ninety-nine percent the result of sheer dumb luck playing out at a massive scale. In the construction of a paranoid fantasy, one can eliminate chance and attribute the day-to-day happenings which make up history to either the Master’s nefarious grand plan or the frustration thereof.” This absolutely implies that there is such a force as luck and that it is what drives history, not the watered down concept I have presented above.
I do, however, think that the account I have given above could be substituted here without any change to the broader analysis in the post. I should also note that I agree it is important not to remove agency from the world. Sometimes bad people do bad things and should be held responsible for it. I am only interested here in defending the notion of a paranoid fantasy, not in absolving people who may (correctly or incorrectly) be part of the paranoid fantasy.
To wrap up, I’ll offer a quote from another Pynchon book, V.: “Life’s single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.”
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Q3: “Lack of Paranoia can incline one towards assuming the status quo will continue indefinitely.” The second section makes it seem like you are inclined towards assuming the status quo should continue indefinitely. This is not connecting in my head. The status quo, an environment which brought about this big bad “master,” is the way things should continue to be? Make it make sense, respectfully.
I don’t mean to suggest that the status quo should continue indefinitely. What I was trying to get at is that without a paranoid fantasy, you might ignore institutional, societal, cultural threats to the things that you think are important. That is to say, without a paranoid fantasy you might not question whether anyone is out to get you, the people like you, or the things you hold dear.
I should also point out that when I’m talking about Trump as the “Master” that’s not intended to suggest that he actually is the mastermind of some conspiracy, or that he’s the only person around whom paranoid fantasies are constructed. That’s me trying to be up front about what my paranoid fantasy is and the perspective that I’m coming from when analyzing this stuff. If you’re a January 6th participant then the Master for you is probably Joe Biden or the Clintons. If you’re a supporter of RFK Jr. then the Master might be Anthony Fauci. The capacity to hold a paranoid fantasy is not unique to any one political disposition.
Conclusion
I would like to thank the anonymous reader who sent in these questions for pointing out some rather obvious errors and asking some sharp clarifying questions. Despite my massive ego, I am not an infallible genius. It’s good to be reminded of that.
If you liked this post, please let me know! If not, also let me know! Thanks for reading!