Aneesh Sathe<p><strong>The Plato Plateau</strong></p><p>This post started off as a joke. I was attempting to snow clone the Peter Principle for philosophy. It led to a longer thread of thoughts. But first, the snow clone: </p><p><strong>The Plato Plateau:</strong> People philosophize to the level of their anxiety.</p><a href="https://aneeshsathe.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-from-rawpixel-id-459434-jpeg.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"></a>Smoking farmer with branches by Kono Bairei (1844-1895). Digitally enhanced from our own original 1913 edition of Barei Gakan.<ol><li>Anxiety is the realization that you have absolute choice over life – Kierkegaard. Anxiety, in this context is not nervousness. It is a positive thing when harnesses. We harness it everyday. </li><li>Anxiety is a generative. Anxiety creates identity by locating stable places to launch exploration.</li><li>Action, exploration, and anxiety are a motor. Anxiety → exploration → action → refreshed identity. Inaction leads to identity death</li><li>Realizing you are radically free to choose can also lead to a forest of perceived signals. These can be an overwhelming inbox or simply overloaded ambition.</li><li>When anxiety overwhelms it becomes difficult to tell signal from noise.</li><li>Tools like GTD crash anxiety. When overwhelmed, GTD works well. When there is too little anxiety identity becomes ephemeral. </li><li>GTD isn’t a means to nirvana: GTD integrates 10k, 30k foot views to reintroduce future anxiety.</li><li>When your identity is smeared across too many anxieties you declare anxiety bankruptcy and crash your identity in some safe spot. Journals, sabbaticals, quitting.</li><li>Like the parable of the rock soup, vaporized anxiety needs a <em>place</em> to condense onto. Ideally something disposable but sufficient to let your identity create an “ordered world of meaning”</li><li>Life examination occurs with identity crashes. Philosophy provides just enough of a toehold in the abstract to spur action in the actual. </li><li>Philosophy is a way to spur action absent anxiety/identity. We pick the philosophy depending on the degree of identity loss.</li><li>Philosophy can be broadly sorted as:<ol><li>Survival – laws and tactics oriented</li><li>Social Cohesion- harmony, virtue ethics, etiquette </li><li>Systems level order – algorithms and protocols oriented</li><li>Self Knowledge and Meaning – reflecting on existing and consciousness </li><li>Meta-systems – theorizes about theories</li></ol></li><li>Most scientists and builders work best at level 3 systems level order. Going lower, i-ii, for environmental crises and higher, iv-v, for internal crises. </li><li>Complexity of selected philosophy is not superiority. A rung’s usefulness matches your identity state and environment, not some civilizational high score.</li><li>Philosophy as Periodic Maintenance: Crashing and philosophy sampling are maintenance actions on the place called identity.</li></ol><p><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/action/" target="_blank">#action</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/anxiety/" target="_blank">#anxiety</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/business/" target="_blank">#Business</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/existential-anxiety/" target="_blank">#existentialAnxiety</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/existentialism/" target="_blank">#existentialism</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/exploration/" target="_blank">#exploration</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/gtd/" target="_blank">#GTD</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/identity/" target="_blank">#identity</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/kierkegaard/" target="_blank">#Kierkegaard</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/life-design/" target="_blank">#lifeDesign</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/mental-models-2/" target="_blank">#mentalModels</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/personal-development/" target="_blank">#personalDevelopment</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/peter-principle/" target="_blank">#PeterPrinciple</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/philosophy/" target="_blank">#philosophy</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/plato-plateau/" target="_blank">#PlatoPlateau</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/productivity/" target="_blank">#productivity</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/self-improvement/" target="_blank">#selfImprovement</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/stoicism/" target="_blank">#stoicism</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/systems-thinking-2/" target="_blank">#systemsThinking</a></p>