As if

Pencil sketches of six faces and profiles on paper including bearded men and a woman with hair tied back.

Two puny words shoulder a substantial, if diffuse, philosophical outlook: as if. Epicurus was perhaps the first to put this unexceptional construction to good use. He felt that life was about attaining whatever passing happiness we might find, while avoiding as much pain and suffering as we can. In neither endeavour will we be very successful, but one strategy he suggested was to adopt values that increase our joy and diminish our sorrow, and live as if those values were actually true, though they may not be.

So began the history of as if, which flows through the Western tradition, intermittently emerging in the thought of thinkers from disparate schools. The idea, at bottom, that we should embrace beliefs or stories that may not be, strictly speaking, true but are to some extent useful or good. In the 18th century, Immanuel Kant held that we must act as if we have free will, even though science might one day demonstrate that we do not. The American philosopher William James’s pragmatism leans heavily upon living as if certain things were true, including meaningful human lives. The most prominent expositor was Hans Vaihinger, who attempted in his book The Philosophy of ‘As If’ (1911) to show that life is lived atop a teetering tower of ever-changing fictions.

All this resonates with my understanding of the way we tumble through existence. The phrase captures the latent but necessary hopes that get us over the numberless obstacles to living well and living happily – even if those hopes are, when we get down to it, preposterous. So, if it’s a question between truth and goodness, then I’ll take the latter and chuck the former. I’m satisfied to live as if it’s all worth something – whether or not, in the last analysis, it really is.

by Sam Dresser

FIND OUT MORE

Read Tereza Matějčková’s short but harrowing piece about the philosopher Emil Utitz, the Theresienstadt ghetto, and his reflections on ‘as if’.

For a contemporary take on the work that this philosophical outlook is doing today, this review by Thomas Kelly of Kwame Anthony Appiah’s book As If (2017) is a good place to start.


A brief escape from social media

A switched-off smartphone on a bright yellow surface with fingerprints and smudges on the black screen.

Earlier this year, I took a break from my phone for a full week while on vacation in Mexico. My somewhat impulsive decision to forgo an international plan and leave my phone in my hotel room led to one or two tricky situations. But mainly, it was refreshing to live in the present moment. I had been feeling fatigued by social media before the trip – Instagram being my particular vice – so by the end, it truly felt like I’d gone through a detox.

When I inevitably returned to my device, I felt newly, palpably aware of how much time I was wasting on social media. Why was I so easily consumed by parking lot spats, celebrity interviews and videos with captions like ‘___ will leave you speechless’, none of which had any real significance beyond holding my attention? The feeling reminded me of a quote I’d once encountered, about how easy it is to be distracted by disposable content. It perfectly summed up what’s so quietly frustrating about social media these days, but the irony was that I couldn’t remember the exact quote, or even where I’d seen it, due to the sheer amount of content I regularly consume.

I looked everywhere for the origin. I revisited my YouTube history and Instagram posts I’d ‘liked’, feeling horrified at how much time I had spent in the digital world. I thought for sure it was a quote from the YouTuber Mina Le’s insightful video ‘Why Is Social Media Not Fun Anymore?’, or from an audiobook I’d enjoyed. No, it must have been mentioned in one of the countless Instagram Reels that the algorithm has calculatedly served me. Eventually, I gave up my search, a decision that, in itself, was its own relief from the endless cycle of content consumption.

by Tamur Qutab

FIND OUT MORE

Evan Puschak, aka The Nerdwriter, who in my opinion is the best video essayist out there, explores this topic with humour and relatability in the essay ‘I Think the Internet Wants to Be My Mind’ from his book Escape into Meaning (2022).

If you, too, have an urge to change your relationship with social media, check out the Psyche Guide ‘A Psychologist’s Tips for Getting a Grip on Your Social Media Use’ (2024) by Daria J Kuss.


NOTE TO SELFTRAVEL

Why ‘false authenticity’ is so unsettling

Aerial photo of Würzburg, a European cityscape with historic buildings, church spires and a clock tower under a partly cloudy sky.

The past is vividly alive in the Old Town of Würzburg in Germany. Walking the spindly streets, I felt transported to the medieval days: I could practically see the ruddy burghers going about their business in the shadows of aged church facades.

Often when we engage with things of the past, with the material lives of our forebears, we’re in search of a sense of authenticity. Seeing the actual items that people, long dead, dealt with in their day-to-day lives seems in some way to bring them back: what they’ve left behind invigorates our historical imagination of what their lives were like. The things that populated the lives of expired generations gives us a visceral connection to them, and Würzburg amply provides the material for that sense of intimacy with the vanished past.

Historic photo of a European city with a stone bridge, people walking, and buildings with spires in the background.

Würzburg c1900. Courtesy the Library of Congress

Or so I thought. The same day I so romantically strolled through the Old Town, I learned that it’s not old at all – younger, in fact, than me. The Allies bombed the place to annihilation, destroying 90 per cent of the city (more than Dresden). After the war, the Würzburgers rebuilt the Old Town exactly as it had been, a project not completed until the 1990s. So while it seems that you’re engaging with the world of yesteryear, in fact it’s a reproduction.

And that shattered the connection to the past. But why? Walter Benjamin called the uniqueness of a work of art its aura. An identical poster of The Scream (1893), even if arranged the same way as the original, will resonate far less if the viewer knows that Edvard Munch’s brush never touched it. Its aura is gone. So, upon learning of its recency, the aura of Würzburg’s Old Town dissolved – and I was left instead with a sense of falsity, nothing but an unsettling replica of authenticity.

by Sam Dresser

FIND OUT MORE

Stimulating reflections upon similar lines were recently offered by Elizabeth Kostina in her incisive Aeon essay ‘The Replica and the Original’ (2025).

On the perennially intriguing topic of art and authenticity, check out another Aeon essay, ‘Is it Really a Leonardo?’ (2018) by Noah Charney.

To learn why ‘Place authenticity is an important, overlooked part of life’, read this 2024 Psyche Idea by Ashley Krause.


NOTE TO SELFHAPPINESS

Where are you on the ‘happiness curve’?

An elderly man seated on a city street as skateboarders perform tricks around him.

As I approached my 40th birthday, I came across a chart that would – without exaggeration – alter my life’s course. Known as the U-shaped ‘happiness curve’, it plots life satisfaction across adulthood. It suggests that people are, on average, happiest in their 20s, and in old age. The bit that bothered me was the middle: according to the chart, my 40s promised to be my glummest decade.

Shortly after I saw this graph, I made some major life changes – determined to buck the averages. I took a career break, lived abroad for a year, refocused my attention on family, and decided to write a book. Generally, I think it worked: I’m about to turn 45, and now feel pretty content.

So imagine my surprise to learn recently that the chart is more debated than I assumed. While the evidence (600+ papers, apparently) supports the U-shape, its applicability to you or me, well… it depends. For example, in some countries, older age doesn’t necessarily bring greater contentment, particularly if welfare support is lacking (and in some societies, midlife is the peak of wellbeing). There may also be gender differences: the mid-40s slump could be skewed by particularly unhappy men.

This year, the entire shape of the curve has been questioned. It seems the young may be unhappier than previous generations, which is flattening out the classic smile-shape into something more like Mr Spock’s arched eyebrow. In sum, it’s more complex once you dig into the data.

However, I have no regrets about making midlife decisions based on a chart. The real power wasn’t in the curve’s accuracy, but in how it gave me permission to make positive changes. And growing older has taught me that, sometimes, life’s big choices must be made with imperfect information.

by Richard Fisher

FIND OUT MORE

Fixating on happiness itself may not be the way to go, as this Psyche Idea argues: ‘As a Psychiatrist, I’ve Seen How Chasing Happiness Leads to Misery’ (2023) by Rafa Euba.

To learn more about the collapsing U-shape of the happiness curve among young people, watch this New York Times explainer video.


The eerie phenomenon that keeps popping up

A man in a tweed jacket viewing a framed German wanted poster on a wall in a museum or gallery setting.

Browsing Spotify for music to pull me through the slog of a grey February in New York, I came across the work of Labi Siffre, a 1970s artist I had never heard of. I was immediately taken with his delicate voice and simple, intimate musical arrangements.

Shortly after my precious discovery, Labi Siffre turned up in random places. I heard his crooning in coffee shops, a friend put him on at karaoke, and the singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus mentioned him as an artist who epitomised yearning. Labi Siffre was following me. Or at least that’s how I’d think about it if I didn’t know better. Instead, I thought: Baader-Meinhof.

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, also known as the frequency illusion, is a type of cognitive bias where, once you learn about something – such as a word, person or concept – you start to notice it more frequently. Your best friend clues you in on a slang term, and suddenly you see it endlessly in your feed. Your brother recommends a supplement, and you start repeatedly hearing ads for it. It feels eerie, especially if you don’t have a name for what’s happening.

Terry Mullen recalled feeling similarly when, after learning about a 1970s terrorist group called the Baader-Meinhof Gang, he encountered another mention of them the next day. He wrote to a newspaper about it in 1994. About a decade later, a Stanford professor proposed that a mix of selective attention and confirmation bias explains why something you are newly aware of might seem to happen all the time.

I first learned about this phenomenon in a psychology class at university. Today, when I feel it in action, I mutter ‘Baader-Meinhof’ under my breath. It helps me notice what I’m noticing, and the knowledge that my brain is primed for recognition dispels the feeling that I’m being sent some coded, mystical message – musical or otherwise.

by Hannah Seo

FIND OUT MORE

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is just one type of weird apparent coincidence. For a deeper dive on the subject, see the Aeon Essay ‘Are Coincidences Real?’ (2023) by Paul Broks.

For more on illusions and how attention can be misleading, check out the Psyche Idea ‘Sometimes, Paying Attention Means We See the World Less Clearly’ (2021) by Henry Taylor.

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