Alex Bennett
2 min readNov 10, 2024

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Your poem is very compelling. There is a philosophical thread through each line, like a string of pearls, the pearls all resonating (to use your verb) with one another. If I were back in college, I could write a paper on just that poem.

Love the Descartes quote "It is not enough..." I hadn't ever run into that, so thank you for acquainting me with that. It is thematically very similar with my most recent piece:

https://medium.com/grim-tidings/societies-built-on-infinite-relations-fa46f6450699

although it talks more about Socrates.

An enthusiastic nod to your references to Ziggy Stardust (silly me, I gave it to my daughter as a present, and doubt she ever listened to it) and mind-altering substances (which have provided philosophical insights for me over the years).

I'm impressed by Pierz Newton-John's thought, especially in:

https://medium.com/philosophytoday/the-will-to-reason-925c097411f1

I don't know about the "one mind" though. It seems more aspirational than explanatory. It sounds like a good thing perhaps, but it doesn't refute Descartes' cogito.

Just to be quasi-scholarly, according to Copilot, Descartes didn't actually say “dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum":

"Descartes originally wrote the phrase in French as "je pense, donc je suis" in his 1637 work, Discourse on the Method. It was later translated into Latin as "Cogito, ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am). The rearranged version, "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am", was introduced by Antoine Léonard Thomas in a 1765 essay in honor of Descartes. So, while Descartes didn't originally phrase it exactly as "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am," the sentiment is consistent with his philosophical exploration of doubt and existence."

That said, your bringing up the "dubito" also resonates -- critical thinking and the huge existential significance of doubt -- the sense of uncertainty and the questions we ask out of uncertainty. It's a theme in late Heidegger that I think has a lot of power.

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Alex Bennett
Alex Bennett

Written by Alex Bennett

My goal on Medium has been to publish “Truth Units.” It took 1.5 years. I hope you read it. New articles will respond in-depth to your questions and critiques.

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