#208： Trout Fishing, Boredom, and the Meaning of Life
Episode Stats
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Summary
Mark Kingwell is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and author of the book, Catch and Release, Trout Fishing in the Meaning of Life. In this book, he explores a broad range of topics including masculinity, boredom, procrastination, the active versus the contemplative life, and what fishing might teach us about these sorts of things.
Transcript
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we're at mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so
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fishing has been used as a backdrop in literature film about finding meaning in life coming of age
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stories you know a river runs through it comes to mind but oftentimes these fishing as life
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metaphors that are made are become tropes they're trite things they consequently they lose some of
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their significance my guest today uh wanted to write a book about fishing that's not about fishing
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um to suss out different a broad range of philosophical ideas and just life ideas
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without making fishing uh trite or you know making it a trope um and i think he did a good job with it
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his name is mark keenwell he is a professor of philosophy at the university of toronto and
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his book is called catch and release trout fishing in the meaning of life and in this book mark uh
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explores or shares his his growing love of trout fishing that that he developed as an adult and
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explores a broad way range of topics including masculinity uh boredom procrastination the active
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versus the contemplative life and uh you know what we can possibly learn from fishing and what fishing
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might teach us about these sorts of things uh anyways we have a fascinating conversation where we
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discuss fishing manliness uh why style is an important aspect of manliness uh how you know
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the philosophy of boredom and contemplation and um also the philosophy of procrastination
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so it's a really in-depth broad conversation i think you're gonna like it if you are a fisherman
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you will certainly like it even if you aren't an angler you will get something out of this podcast
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uh give you something to chew on and think about so without further ado mark kingwell catch and
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release trout fishing in the meaning of life and after you listen to the show make sure to check
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out the show notes uh for links to resources we've mentioned so you can explore these topics even
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more at aom.is slash kingwell mark kingwell welcome to the show hi thanks for having me on uh so uh
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read your book catch and release really interesting book uh where dovetails philosophy with fly fishing but
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before we get into uh the book uh can we talk a little bit about your background because you're a
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philosophy professor uh i'm curious what's your area of focus in your work as a philosophy professor
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yeah i i'm a philosophy professor at the university of toronto and um most of my academic work is in
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political theory uh i write about issues like social justice and distribution schemes and things like
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that i also write a lot about philosophy of art uh and architecture so i kind of branched out into
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urbanism and the built environment but i see those also as part of the basic political theory
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investigation uh so this this book the fishing book is obviously off to one side from those scholarly
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interests right so i'm curious what what caused you to write about fishing because you talk about in the
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book that as a child you weren't really fond of fishing and that you had to be seduced by it later
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in life yeah i actually had some some early scarring experiences uh with respect to fishing in fact
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literally scarring uh there's one that i recount in the book my my father was an avid fisherman a spinner
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and he uh used to take me and my brothers out basically as helpers you know as factotums to to fetch and
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carry things and i remember one one uh trip on prince edward island where we were living at the
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time he was in the air force and he was stationed there and he'd forgotten his tackle box in the car
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so he sent me back to get it and uh so you know trying to be compliant uh i i ran back and was running
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back to where he was standing on the bank uh of this little lake and i tripped and fell and in the
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process of falling uh smashed the tackle box open and then rolled down into this kind of
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ditch and rolled down uh all of these you know triple double barbed hooks and and uh lures and
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various things became entangled in in my fall and uh i couldn't i could actually literally i remember
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this i couldn't move without something digging more deeply into some part of my body so i was lying
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there yelling for help and he came over and was thoroughly disgusted by my incompetence
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and uh early uh experience with fishing that didn't leave a good impression um but you know
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the the book is is actually a lot about my father and my brothers um later in life much later i was
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actually living in new york i was on sabbatical for my teaching job here and my younger brother
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uh organized this trip uh to go fishing in british columbia and we my brothers and i and
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my father all live in different cities uh around north america so this was a an opportunity our
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father's uh was getting older in the 70s now in his 80s uh so i thought yeah i'll make the effort and
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go on this trip and even though i won't be into the fishing i'll you know do it as a good son kind of
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thing and maybe enjoy the fellowship and it turned out um and this is really what the book's about it
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turned out that i i love fly fishing and it's become one of the chief joys of my my non-working
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life uh since then yeah but it's funny because one chapter you have is that it's called you say
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fishing is stupid um it's like bluntly said you also talk about how golfing is stupid too which i
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thought was funny as well but uh why did you think fishing was stupid and at what point did you start
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thinking that it's not so stupid after all i think i thought fishing was stupid for all the reasons that
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most non-anglers do and when you look at it from the outside if you if you remember even once you
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become a keen fisherman if you take one step back there is something absurd about this project and
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there are different kinds of stupidity i guess i should try to be analytic about it uh you know
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there's there's the stupidity of the kind of overbearing um technology heavy bass fishermen maybe
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professional uh which is really a kind of just mastery of of nature through the force of of
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technology and aggression and there's really no art to that uh so you're catching a lot of bass which
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you're not going to eat anyway and it just if you weigh them and win some kind of contest i think that
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strikes a lot of people as kind of stupid uh but then there's the other side of it which is on the far
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end of of fly fishing a kind of self-conscious aestheticization of the experience where again
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you're maybe fishing catch and release so you're not going to even eat the fish uh so you're doing
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it all as a sort of self-indulgent um art form i guess of some kind and i thought that was stupid too
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uh and even even just the basics you know why are we using these these tiny pieces of tackle
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to to try to land fish uh even if we're going to eat them they're surely more efficient ways of
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going about it so i i just i from from the outsider's point of view i just couldn't understand
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why people would would find this so uh interesting and even something that they were passionate about
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uh but then that something gets inside you and i think it's like learning to say appreciate baseball
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if you're if you go from being a non-fan to being a fan or in a different context cricket or some
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some game that isn't obviously sort of brutally appealing like um american football or you know
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boxing or something that just has sort of crude physical appeal but instead depends upon a certain
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amount of abstraction and conceptual play and i started to see uh fishing in that light and then
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i thought well this is this is actually a natural extension of my my day job as a philosopher i mean this
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is what i do is conceptual play and uh so now i'm doing it um alongside this physical activity which
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is uh sort of attenuated or fine-tuned to a point where it almost doesn't matter whether you catch the
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fish it's all about the performance and i know that sounds kind of goofy if you're if you're not
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an angler but um i think if if there are any anglers who are hearing this they'll i think almost
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certainly relate to that immediately yeah i think it's interesting i mean we've talked about how
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i mean which kind of you've already touched on how fishing lends itself to philosophy a bit uh because
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it's sort of this combination we can get into this later of contemplation but activity at the same
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time but i think it's interesting is that you you quote these like anglers from the like 17th century
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books on fishing and like they very they're very philosophic about uh fishing and sometimes like
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esoteric even uh it was interesting i mean what i mean is that what is that why fishing lends itself
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to philosophy is that it's both contemplative and uh active at the same time i think that's a huge part
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of it and when you look at the tradition uh the tradition is vast and deep of thinking and writing
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about fishing in both western and eastern uh philosophical and literary uh streams you know it's
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a key part of confucian thought for example uh you see uh confucius often depicted as a fisherman and
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and the idea of of being a fisher in the christian tradition the fisher of men and how the apostles were
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were fishermen uh and then you know into uh the period that you mentioned in england especially during
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the period of the english civil war isaac walton who writes uh the complete angler which is probably the
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most famous book about fishing certainly in english maybe period and when you read a complete angler
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what you realize is walton sets the standard because it's not a book really about fishing although
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there's plenty of fishing advice in there uh some of it quite bizarre and arcane you know he um
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he used little balls of dough as bait and uh you can still see kids doing that and when they're throwing
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a hook over a reservoir or something but a lot of it is about uh the changing nature of england
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it's about politics and culture and what you what you get with walton especially is a kind of
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crystallization of this combination of contemplation and action where yes fishing is an activity but it's
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also something that opens up a space of thought and since you spend a lot of time sort of uh not not
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so much waiting for things to happen but making uh a kind of opening or clearing in which things are
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possible and in that clearing of course you you know the the end point might be crudely put
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hooking a fish but um there's also a lot of other things going on there because after all we're we're
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complex creatures and our consciousness is restless so i think that's what started to appeal to me also
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and then there are other things that um to go back to my my baseball comparison you know there's a lot
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repetition uh especially in the cast in fly fishing for example the cast itself i write a lot about this
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in the book the cast becomes almost a performance that has its own intrinsic value as you perfect your
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cast record nobody really is perfect but as you try to get better at it uh and it's it's a bit like
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you know taking grounders and and throwing to first there's sort of you want to build up the muscle
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memory and make it almost a kind of thing of beauty in its own right and that then becomes
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interesting at the kind of uh i don't know what to call it this sort of i don't then like is too
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cliched but sort of um making yourself more automatic and exploring that uh that relationship
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in your own mind between reflection and automaticity uh is is just endlessly fascinating to me yeah i thought
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your section about the fly cast was interesting um because there's that age-old question of form
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versus function right can something but be both beautiful and useful at the same time yeah yeah and
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of course it is beautiful in the sense that a better cast is a more accurate and a longer cast
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but a lot of times you know you can get your fly where it needs to be in a very ugly way and there you
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know there are there are ugly casters out there lots of them and i'm sure i was one for a long time
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i'd like to think i'm a little better now uh but then then when you start to appreciate just that the
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art of the cast all by itself uh it's not that the the instrumentality falls away i mean obviously you're
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still trying to get the fly to to be somewhere in particular in a certain manner you know especially
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if it's a dry swine you want it to light on the water as if it were a real insect but the the um
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the experience of it the physical experience of it is is quite you know i don't know beautiful really
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from the inside and it has that quality of uh a certain sort of i don't know transcendent i guess uh
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feeling that you are you beyond trying i think this is another kind of philosophical aspect of this
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this is more maybe dow than ven if you try too hard with the cast you'll you'll muck it up because
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you'll push too hard usually on the rod that's one of the common errors you have to let the cast sort
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of cast itself and you're you're the uh the agent but not the controller and uh so this is very
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interesting as you you know spend a lot of time on the water working on that so you're trying not to
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try yeah exactly yeah and that paradoxicality i think is really something that you can see reflected
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and lots of those kinds of activities you know that's uh you you're thinking but you try not to
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think too much because if you overthink or over try uh that way lies disaster and uh so there's a purity
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there this sort of sweet spot that you're trying to get to put yourself in in a position to experience
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that uh and it's really quite wonderful mark you had this one section of your book that i thought
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was interesting because um you know oftentimes with fishing and or sports in general there's this
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tendency to um make analogies to life right like here's this lesson we can get from fishing to apply
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to our life directly or this is what fishing represents and sometimes we fetishize it you know
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philosophically fetishize it so how do you strike that balance between
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just appreciating the you know the fishing for what it is you know because it's just fishing
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um but at the same time making room for that i don't know for that intellectual play that you're
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talking about yeah this is a really interesting question i guess maybe in a way it's a meta question
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because when i was thinking after that first trip i mentioned to british columbia about writing it uh
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about the experience i uh i talked to an editor uh at um one of the national papers here in canada
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the national post i said i'm really not sure about this because isn't this especially after a river
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runs through it and you know this this vast literature of trout fishing especially fly fishing
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you know isn't isn't it almost like an enclosed space that you can't enter without falling into
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cliche and and the worst kinds of cliches you know a sort of forced significance kind of thing
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where we find life lessons on the water and so on and and she said no you know look at the really good
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stuff uh and not that i i um think that it's my stuff is anywhere near this but if you read
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uh mclean or if you read thomas mcgwain for example uh some of the the john gear act that some of the
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great contemporary writers about fishing uh it's just like anything you know how do you write about
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sex without making it seem at once cliched and overblown how do you write about relationships
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love family i mean it's it's the challenge that every writer faces about every subject really so uh
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it's back to the drawing board in a good way and yeah you have to avoid all the kind of common
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errors of saying well there's there's you can immediately track fishing over to significance
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in this you know uh whatever anglers make better business decisions or something silly like that
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uh and once you get past that kind of thing then you're into the at least the interesting territory
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where you're challenging yourself and saying well you know how do i describe in words an experience
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which is entirely without words and try to find some ways to convey what's interesting and beautiful
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about it without falling into any sort of um you know ham-fisted correspondence theory and uh
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i think that's the challenge i mean that's why i've i've i haven't done a lot of fishing writing
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since the book but i've done some and each time i try to make sure that i approach it as if for the
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first time and and avoid all that that too literal kind of temptation right so they kind of take a
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kicker guardian indirect approach yeah yeah i guess that that's kind of pretty yeah i guess okay i've
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been reading kicker guard about his indirect communication lately so made me think of that
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um so i thought there's another interesting section about you you talk about one of the
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writers i think it's the same one uh from the 17th century talks has like this parable between uh
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a fisherman and a falconer and uh i thought it was interesting you kind of use this to explore
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hegel's idea between uh you know the relation between master and slave uh can you talk a little
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bit about that yeah i mean in the original version actually there's a um a fisherman a falconer and a
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hunter and it's an extended meditation it's become a kind of classic trope in the literature about
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uh humankind's relationship to nature through these different uh outdoor pursuits and isaac walton
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um following charles cotton uh says argues persuasively that that angling is the most
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um satisfying the superior among those three because it is the one that is freest and most open so the
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both the falconer and the hunter are using other animals in nature against nature so the uh the falconer
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is using falconer the hawk to whatever to bring down rodents or you know to demonstrate the fact
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that the hawk can be trained and the training is everything in falconry and falconry i should say
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by the way i find fascinating and beautiful and my younger brother who's responsible for these fishing
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trips is also a falconer and i talk about that a little bit in the book and that's quite amazing to
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me but um walton says that the falconer and the hunter if the hunter is using uh dogs as was um
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traditional at the time that he was writing nowadays hunters use you know weapons only i guess
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uh i suppose they still use retrievers but anyway um in both the hunter and and the falconer you're
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using elements of control and mastery so the hegelian point is you know famously in the phenomenology
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of spirit hegel writes that one of the key stages of development in consciousness is realizing that
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when you are the master of a slave in a relationship of dominance any any relationship of dominance and
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submission actually it is the the slave position that holds the real power because it's what defines
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the master as master and therefore the master is beholden to the slave in a in a curious way because
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can only fulfill that identity insofar as the slave is present
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and so that hegel suggests that at this moment we start to realize that
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these relationships of dominance and submission are are fundamentally limited and we have to pass over
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into more equal um and equally recognizing forms of relationship uh i mean that might seem a bit of a stretch
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but i think it's really a poignant insight because insofar as we try to master things or have them do
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things for us we are ourselves mastered you know we are tools of our own tools and uh there's something
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that that needs to be acknowledged about this and and too frequently isn't and and simply in the
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performance of of instrumental control so whether that really means fishing is superior i don't know
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i mean i i know lots of anglers who are kind of enthralled to their own gear uh but at least you know
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there's no issue there of training something or dominating something it's more like
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the the rod and and the line are extensions of yourself and and maybe there is something a little
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more free a little more pure in that but anyway it's an occasion for for an argument which i think
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is the key point yeah i mean i thought there was a poignant scene when you talk about how your younger
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brother when he trained try to train his first falcon and things were going well and like you said
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like he depended upon the falcon to do the hunting for him or eventually but one day the falcon
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left right and like yeah it's showing that he's showing that dependence right he depended upon that
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falcon yeah it was it was really i mean it's a vivid memory that i have because we this is hard to
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credit now because the suburbs around this city are so built up but we used to drive out into the
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near countryside from our suburban townhouse and and catch these wild kestrels and he would try and
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train them and the first time he did it and he was premature he was we were young he was i think
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13 or 14 and i was 16 or 17 and uh and yeah he got into this i'm sure many falconers have a version
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of the story where he uh he he tried to get too much out of this bird too soon and uh it didn't
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return to his his fist you know with a glove um and and sort of at first uh perched on a power line in
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the backyard of our house and stood looking at him you know and he had the little chunk of raw meat
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on the glove and that's how you you know get the birds to come to you and it looked and it looked
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and it looked and he stood out there and eventually tears were streaming down his face with this this
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sense of futility because he couldn't get the bird back and eventually it flew away and uh it's i mean
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to me it's just it's it's a great story in so many ways because it's like can you imagine there
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aren't that many places left where suburban kids can actually do that kind of thing um and and then
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this this really deep thing about you know nature is nature you know you you can over master you you
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can overpower through training the natural instincts of a wild animal but it will always be a wild animal
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and it's something really worth remembering in that so mark besides taking us down paths of with
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heidegger and hegel uh in your book you also talk about masculinity uh in fishing and using fishing
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sort of a platform to talk about that and one section i thought was really interesting is you
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talk about uh canadian masculinity um i'm american so i have kind of my idea of masculinity and we're
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not too far you know culturally we're not that much different but i'm curious what do you think are
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some of the differences between american manliness and canadian manliness because i think a lot of
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people imagine canadians like you know they're lumberjacks playing hockey you know typical manly
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things um but is there some kind of is there a subtle difference between the two well i you know
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i i make these generalizations in in a spirit of fun i hope right yeah of course yeah so a lot of
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people get too serious with stuff but yeah this isn't this isn't sociology but uh gender studies
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you know i i i think one of the things that struck me was um and has has always struck me about
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the men that i know even the most macho men that i know yeah you've got this kind of lumberjack
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hockey player thing and then there's this weird kind of sweetness and almost dandyish quality which
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goes along with that and uh and you hear stories about say canadian soldiers in the second world war
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being notoriously ferocious but also pussycats when they were you know off the battlefield and i think
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there's something that that at least in our own self-image i think canadians cherish this idea that
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yeah we can be as tough as nails when we want to but basically we're all just you know nice guys next
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door um plus and increasingly in in recent um years anyway this this um dandyish quality so um you know
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what we would now call lumbersexual uh vision of the bearded hipster um not that bearded hipsters
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aren't found everywhere i guess they are but uh i don't know it struck me and i told a couple of
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stories and it tells a couple of stories in the book about exchanges between canadian men where
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there's something almost um homoerotic or or uh what's the word i want i mean kind of um
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i don't know flirty uh which may sound weird and without any loss of of masculinity or manliness
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taking on a different part of the spectrum of of manly behavior maybe and i i mean i'm fascinated
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by this and i know you guys are because um you know the podcast you know what is manliness what
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is virility these are really interesting questions that keep getting reframed and uh i think we're well
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beyond sort of crude notions of machismo especially in current realities when you look at
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you know partly the hipster thing partly the you know this just the changing norms of what it means
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to to look up to somebody as a male ideal you know barack obama say is is to many people doesn't seem
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manly enough because he's not tough talking he's not you know brutal uh on the other hand for for many
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other people i think he's a paragon of of manliness because of his his other virtues so i think this is a
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really interesting debate and we keep having to figure it out there's no not one answer yeah it's
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been going on for a long time and for centuries millennia yeah absolutely yeah going back to
00:26:04.640
this kind of this dichotomy this this tenuous balance between being virile and full of vigor
00:26:10.900
but at the same time this dandy or fastidiousness right um i mean there's like this point where like
00:26:16.360
you know too much fastidiousness like too much emphasis on your clothes or how you look and etc is
00:26:21.980
like it's unseemly in men um for some reason um even i think it could be in women as well
00:26:28.440
but i mean why why is that why do we find when men are too over concerned with their appearance
00:26:35.160
and we're like uh i don't know i don't know about that yeah it's it's a really interesting question i
00:26:41.080
you know in the book i talk about um spreczatura which is this great uh concept in in italian history
00:26:48.280
and culture uh especially as a as a uh a norm for uh renaissance italian courtiers or or gentlemen
00:26:57.960
and spreczatura captures something really important and that's you know it's the fine carelessness or
00:27:03.200
the making things that are hard look easy and it's not just high spiritedness it's it's more like a
00:27:09.440
kind of elegance where uh you don't call attention to what it took to execute something or to look
00:27:16.980
good or whatever you just do it and i think a lot of a lot of people just admire that and if on by
00:27:24.540
contrast you are primping and preening in a way that's to call attention to what's going on and so
00:27:31.800
that fails the test of fine carelessness it's it's exhibiting the care rather than the careless and i
00:27:38.540
think that strikes people as pushing it in a different direction so the the actual self
00:27:44.380
presentation in in one sense might be the same you know two men and two beautiful suits say
00:27:49.840
uh but one one wears it the way cary grant wears it you know as if he just put it on that morning and
00:27:55.480
didn't think about it too much and the other one is you know constantly uh checking his cuffs to make
00:28:00.260
sure they're whatever 100 one and a half inches below the um the jacket sleeve and you know things
00:28:05.360
like that and i think that that just strikes us as as unseemly because it seems like you're not really
00:28:10.600
um concerned with what you're there to be concerned with you're not there you know to to be useful to
00:28:17.620
be of service or to be present socially uh you're only there kind of in your own mind and i think maybe
00:28:24.100
that's the root of this and that goes back to the the fly cast right you want to make it look great
00:28:30.020
but you don't want to look like you're trying too hard to make it look great yeah that's exactly
00:28:34.820
right and uh and i can i can tell you um among fly fishermen watching other people cast is is uh as
00:28:42.920
as much a judge of character as as anything that you can imagine certainly like you know the way
00:28:48.540
golfers watch each other you know golf has a revelatory of character the cast and fly fishing is
00:28:53.260
exactly the same thing who who is the guy who has the you know the perfect double haul cast but
00:28:58.140
makes it look easy every single time uh never calls attention to it who's the guy who's constantly
00:29:03.520
you know shouting about how long the cast is even when a long cast isn't what's required
00:29:08.220
uh who's who's the duffer who you know somehow manages to to toss some line out despite everything
00:29:14.420
uh every single person that reveals themselves when when they do that and i think it's it's really
00:29:19.760
part of the fun actually of being uh you know with other people fishing right so yeah it's kind
00:29:25.380
of manliness i think what you kind of hit on the book is like doing things but then doing looking
00:29:29.880
like doing them well doing it with a little bit of flair yeah and i you know i i mean i don't think
00:29:36.240
we should ever underestimate this that the pleasure in doing things well and especially uh if you can
00:29:42.440
if you can achieve that really that pinnacle of doing something well and making it look easy
00:29:47.420
i mean really it's the you know there's that all that tradition of thinking it's not just
00:29:53.260
male thinking but it's been dominated by male voices you know hemingway's grace under pressure
00:29:57.720
uh you know odysseus right like or achilles yeah it goes back to them right to be to be a clever
00:30:04.400
problem solver to to uh to get where you you're going against all obstacles to all these things
00:30:09.960
and to be stylishly engaged in that i mean we we all strive for this i think yeah so what is it about
00:30:17.540
fishing that allures men right like i mean i don't fish i'm not a regular fisher but i i like the idea
00:30:26.260
of fishing for some reason like the i don't know the image of it and like like fishing gear like i
00:30:32.120
don't fish but i have like i can appreciate a well-stocked tackle box for some reason i mean what
00:30:38.740
what is it what's going on there do you think part of it you put your finger right on it and that is
00:30:42.960
gear and i think we should never once again we should never underestimate the male fascination
00:30:48.640
with gear and just the idea of having tools for specific jobs and having the right thing for the
00:30:54.120
right purpose and and then to use them skillfully you know it's it's the pleasure you take whether
00:31:00.600
it's yourself or somebody else and you can watch somebody i don't know fix a kitchen leak with the
00:31:06.700
right tools and admire the skill of applying the tools in that that situation uh or or to you know
00:31:15.160
to extend it further you watch soldiers fighting for example and the way that they use their gear
00:31:20.500
and keep their gear in the condition that it has to be because their lives depend on it
00:31:25.740
there's something really intrinsic to our you know homo faber identities or our existence as users of
00:31:33.060
tools and so the gear itself becomes a big thing and you know again i think you can overdo this
00:31:38.960
uh i recently counted how many rods i have in my collection and and i'm embarrassed to say it's now up to
00:31:45.640
17 and clearly well i think it's clear i don't i don't really need 17 different rods but they're all
00:31:53.680
different lengths they're all different weights and they all have specific purposes that i might one day
00:31:57.680
put them to uh of course i have hundreds and hundreds of flies and reels and lines and there's
00:32:03.580
something just kind of just fascinating and beautiful about that too you know and for me when i look at my
00:32:09.100
own history the hobbies that i used to pursue you know i was really into skill modeling i was really into
00:32:15.080
other things where you making small objects using very very particular kinds of skills uh this just
00:32:23.820
seems like a natural extension it would be the same thing if i you know i don't do auto repair or hot
00:32:30.240
rodding but you could imagine you know somebody who was really into that for just the same reasons
00:32:34.340
you know to have that well-stocked tool chest and to be able to strip down a car or an engine and
00:32:39.840
create something so i think that's really basic uh the fishing adds the other thing that adds of course
00:32:45.600
is the outdoors element and uh that that's pretty atavistic for us you know to the smell of the
00:32:50.820
campfire the lake water the sky seeing the the rain come in over you know the the edge of the lake
00:32:57.760
all that stuff is really powerful at least in my imagination right um so a lot of folks don't like
00:33:05.200
fishing uh because they say it's boring but you argue that well that's not such a bad thing that's one of
00:33:11.180
the appeals of fishing so how can boredom be a good thing you know i've written a lot about boredom
00:33:18.700
both before and since the fishing book and i'm really i'm one of those philosophers who find
00:33:23.740
boredom endlessly fascinating you mentioned heidegger earlier heidegger has one of the greatest
00:33:28.400
discussions of boredom ever uh and and you know you can take that as a starting point where
00:33:34.000
what's happening in boredom is some failure of desire so we're not being satisfied in some way and
00:33:41.620
a kind of chasm opens up under our feet and in this condition there's there's a possibility of a
00:33:49.080
kind of existential crisis uh self-examination you know why am i bored what is it to be bored
00:33:55.620
why do i find the world unrewarding at this particular moment and i think that's really deeply
00:34:02.660
profoundly indicative of of the human condition uh you know boredom is it's sort of really ever
00:34:10.260
present if you think about all the things we do on a daily basis to distract ourselves from being
00:34:16.020
bored keeping ourselves occupied and stimulated uh what is it that we're so afraid of it seems to me
00:34:22.280
we're afraid of those moments where we don't have anything in particular to do we don't have a desire
00:34:28.260
that's specific but we have a desire for a desire or a wish for a desire as a psychoanalyst once put it
00:34:36.160
and uh that's that's really um you know that's something very uh um serious about who we are and
00:34:45.200
what we're like we're desiring machines uh but we we rarely reflect upon the structure of our own
00:34:51.800
desires we spend a lot of time trying to satisfy the specific one so it's in those moments when we
00:34:57.160
don't have a specific one when we feel like we're at a loss that may be the most uh
00:35:02.480
um what the most furious the most um indicative things about us are revealed so yeah i'm i'm i
00:35:10.440
think boredom is something that we shouldn't we should pay a lot more attention to and if people
00:35:14.140
think that fishing is boring then you know so much the better i do say in the book i never felt bored
00:35:20.540
when i was fishing i thought i would but i actually didn't and that was the first uh indication to me
00:35:27.580
that maybe this was going to be something that i was passionate about i would have welcomed it as boring
00:35:32.120
for the reasons i just said but it turned out it wasn't boring for me so i mean and you also talk
00:35:37.460
about procrastination um how is boredom and boredom and procrastination linked well it um there's this
00:35:46.220
sort of there's a little bit of technical analysis but the basic idea is imagine that that you have two
00:35:52.440
orders of desire so the first order desires are the ones that are active i i you know i want something
00:35:58.200
i do something about that wanting and then there's a second order which is your attitude with respect to
00:36:03.840
those first order desires and in in normal situations those two orders are aligned so i want
00:36:10.920
something at the first order and at the second order i want to want that so i'm okay with that
00:36:15.580
right so i don't know i'm hungry that means i want to eat something and at the second order it's okay
00:36:21.860
to be hungry i'm happy with being hungry because i know that you know it's good for my body to feed
00:36:26.280
itself uh but then sticking with with food suppose i have a first order desire for an ice cream cone
00:36:33.000
after i just ate a huge lunch uh i have the desire but at the second order i don't want to have it
00:36:39.280
i'd rather i didn't feel like i wanted an ice cream because i know it's bad for me at that point
00:36:45.060
it's unnecessary calories so there's a conflict between first and second order i'll extend that over
00:36:51.380
that that basic analysis boredom is the condition in which there's no first order desire i don't know
00:36:57.360
what i want but there is a second order desire that i should have a first order desire so that the
00:37:03.060
conflict now is not between a desire i have that i don't want to have but rather between a desire i
00:37:08.820
don't want to have i don't have but which i wish i did have yeah and and once again we feel a painful
00:37:14.620
experience procrastination is an interesting thing where uh again it's very close to boredom in some
00:37:21.000
ways i don't have the first order desire to say fill out my tax return but of course i do have
00:37:26.460
the second order desire that i did want to fill out my tax return because i know you know it's against
00:37:32.480
the law not to file one so all of these things have really interesting affinities and sorting out
00:37:37.760
very very interesting but but common experiences according to this metric is is really the kind of
00:37:44.260
thing that that philosophers do and to me it's very interesting because it reflects on on real life
00:37:49.800
with with with tools that maybe can help us understand ourselves a little bit better
00:37:53.160
you know i'm i'm not a procrastinator by and large uh but i i i do feel like a lot of people i feel
00:38:00.640
first order desires that i don't want to have so uh you know i'm not to the point of addiction
00:38:05.540
though that would be an extreme version of that right i want the heroin but i know i i shouldn't want
00:38:10.820
the heroin uh but we all feel different conflicts between those first and second orders very rare is the
00:38:18.000
person whose first order desires and second order desires are consistently and constantly aligned
00:38:23.360
it's much more common i think most of us know some version of some kind of conflict or or uh
00:38:30.840
contradiction between those orders no that was really fascinating and i guess then if that's the
00:38:36.320
case that most people have this conflict it's part is just part of human existence maybe we shouldn't
00:38:42.140
beat ourselves up so much about procrastinating well yeah i agree with that and in fact like
00:38:47.680
boredom it seems to me that procrastination is rich territory for philosophical reflection but also
00:38:53.280
self-reflection you know why why if i'm a procrastinator why am i a procrastinator what's going on there
00:38:58.600
and then there are other you know i've written a lot about this again before and since the fishing
00:39:03.800
book uh are there ways to overcome it well clearly the the most effective way to overcome
00:39:09.280
procrastination is to do something else so uh the philosopher john perry has written about what
00:39:15.080
he calls structured procrastination you know if the thing i'm supposed to be doing is filling out my
00:39:19.660
taxes there's no way in the world i'm going to be able to do that just through sheer force of will
00:39:25.540
at the second order if that were true i would have done it already so what i should do instead is some
00:39:30.960
other useful thing for which i have no conflict so you know maybe now is the time to do the laundry
00:39:36.660
or the dishes or or you know work in the yard because though it's not the thing i'm supposed to
00:39:41.880
be doing at least it's a useful thing to do and i don't have any conflict around that at the moment
00:39:46.720
and the moment i do have a conflict you know the moment i don't want to be working in the yard well
00:39:51.780
maybe that's when i can sort of slide over and do my taxes uh so there are lots of tricks that you
00:39:56.800
can do uh on yourself really to to make yourself frankly happier and less conflicted and self-punishing
00:40:04.920
about these these things so they really are basic to our our our condition as desiring agents and how
00:40:11.980
does this tie into fishing like you know this this this high level stuff we've been talking about
00:40:15.640
uh with boredom and procrastination is there some way the activity of fishing itself sort of uh you
00:40:21.980
know solves these problems like it kind of cuts through them it doesn't have the you don't have the
00:40:26.360
issues with boredom and procrastination i don't think it solves them no but i do think for me anyway
00:40:31.980
and this is what i kind of hope to achieve in those parts of the book it it's an opportunity
00:40:37.600
to think it through and it's it's like any kind of philosophical thought experiment it uses something
00:40:42.780
that is easily comprehensible something from everyday life to try to draw a larger conclusion
00:40:50.300
and i think you know most of all uh this this reflection on our our condition as desiring
00:40:56.640
uh agents or entities uh is is really something that a lot of the extant literature especially the
00:41:04.120
you know self-help literature and things that people often turn to even the therapeutic
00:41:08.620
stuff uh when people turn to these things they often don't have they don't get the philosophical
00:41:15.480
resources they need to to really plunge more deeply into it and have deeper insights about their own
00:41:22.060
problems so i'm not saying fishing is therapy but um there is something in in this this peculiar
00:41:28.880
activity non-activity this this combination of action and contemplation that does open up this this
00:41:34.820
space for thought and for me anyway it's been very illuminating and i that's what i hope to share
00:41:39.960
when writing about it well mark this has been a great conversation and we we scratched the surface
00:41:44.980
of it but we got deep in some parts i loved it um where can people find out more about your work
00:41:50.040
uh there is a i have a page on the university of toronto department of philosophy website and you
00:41:57.000
can just uh google my name mark kingwell k-i-n-g-w-e-l-l uh to get to there and um most of my books are
00:42:04.580
available on amazon.com or other online sites if people want to check out my my written work
00:42:09.400
uh i should say this might be a long shot but the um the french translation of catch and release the
00:42:14.880
fishing book we've been talking about is coming out this fall so if anybody likes to read french
00:42:19.640
uh it will be there awesome well mark kingwell thank you so much for your time it's been a
00:42:23.700
pleasure oh a pleasure of mine thank you my guest today was mark kingwell he's the author of the
00:42:28.540
book catch and release trout fishing in the meaning of life it's available on amazon.com and bookstores
00:42:33.280
everywhere and check out his other books he's written extensively about uh boredom and procrastination
00:42:37.580
um really fascinating topics the sort of the philosophy of it you can find those on amazon as
00:42:42.740
at as well and make sure to check out the show notes at aom.is slash kingwell for links to resources
00:42:48.860
we mentioned throughout the show so you can dig deeper into these topics
00:42:52.600
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:43:09.580
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy
00:43:13.260
this show i'd appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher that'll help uh spread the
00:43:18.340
word about the show as always i appreciate your continued support and until next time this is