Ideas in the Wild: Philosopher Travis Corcoran is Restoring Reason to an Overwhelming World
Frustration. Confusion. Anxiety. Despair. These are the symptoms of sensory overload, a state of mind in which we increasingly find ourselves. We’re drowning in data supplied by entities with no regard for our best interests.
Our intellectual freedom is at stake, threatened by everything from academia and Big Tech to the media and government. Fortunately, there’s a way to take back personal control, and it’s a solution founded upon ancient philosophy.
In Restoring Reason, philosopher Dr. Travis Corcoran demonstrates how the liberal arts provide us with a skillset to evaluate knowledge and draw our own conclusions for clarity, confidence, and freedom. Dr. Corcoran explains the trivium — knowledge, understanding, and wisdom — and the foundation it lays for making high-quality decisions for a high-quality life. I recently caught up with Travis to learn more about why he wrote the book and the ideas he shares with readers.
What problem do you see people struggling with?
I regularly talk with people who aren’t making progress with their business or career, have trouble navigating relationships, can’t make confident decisions about their health, and are deeply frustrated with politics.
On an even more basic level, many people are troubled by the thought that they aren’t in control of their own lives. Instead of being a self-possessed person of reason who makes good decisions, many fear they’re wasting their precious lives trapped in emotional turmoil.
The bad news is they are absolutely right to be troubled. That deep sense of unease is because they’re being manipulated by big institutions that impact all our lives in toxic ways, and they lack the intellectual tools to defend themselves. If they’re feeling personally like you’re not in control, it’s because they likely aren’t. They’re letting themselves be dominated by too many differing internal emotional voices.
The good news is that there’s a way out. It’s not the latest self-help fad. It’s not based on the teachings of a charismatic guru, or some recently discovered social science research that will fade away in a few years.
It’s grounded in ancient truths about how our minds actually work. It’s been around for centuries, and it can restore reason to its proper place. If enough of us start practicing these ancient arts again, it can also begin to restore reason to our chaotic culture.
What’s an idea you share that really excites you?
The key to restoring reason is to learn how to practice three ancient liberal arts that together are known as the trivium. The trivium refers to the first three and most important of the seven liberal arts: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. A helpful way to talk about grammar, logic, and rhetoric is to call them by their ancient names: knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.
This is how the ancient Greeks thought about these concepts. Grammar is equivalent to knowledge, logic is the same as understanding, and rhetoric is how you express wisdom. To put it in even more modern terms, you can see these arts as input, processing, and output. Input is the knowledge in, processing is how you order and understand that input, and output is how you express those results.
Understanding the key role logic plays in a life of reason evolved for me into an appreciation of the importance of the other two parts of the trivium. Logic sits at the center, but a full awareness of how to practice it requires a solid grasp of grammar and rhetoric.
When I began to apply the trivium to my own life and decisions, everything improved. I used the trivium to help make decisions in my business, and it skyrocketed. I applied it to my relationships, and they took a turn for the best. I also started thinking about the trivium in relation to decisions about my health. I could analyze what the “experts” were saying with logic and come to my own conclusions. And sure enough, as I close in on the sixth decade of my life, I’m in better health than I was at half my age.
The bottom line is that restoring reason with the trivium works. It did for me, and I’ve witnessed firsthand how it works for others. I’ve now built a large team around me, and I regularly give workshops on these topics. I’m sought after for mentorship and coaching.
Practicing the trivium leads to real transformation, and it’s liberating.
How will following your advice improve your readers’ lives?
The trivium is the sure path to an increased quality of mind, and therefore a better life.
That’s what’s on the line. It’s an opportunity to transform the quality of your life by restoring reason to the center of your decision-making.
Restoring reason in your life means you’ll stop making impulsive decisions based on whatever emotion is pulsing through you at the moment, and instead become more deliberative and logical in your thoughts and actions.
We live in an age of cultural chaos and a time dominated by big institutions that don’t have your best interests at heart. In fact, they don’t want you to succeed in gaining control of your own mind. If you do, they won’t be able to easily manipulate you. And if they can’t manipulate you, they lose power over you.
The five dominant institutions in our lives are: Academia, Big Corporations, Big Government, Big Tech, and Legacy Media. If you don’t control the quality of your mind, these institutions will be happy to do it. You need to defend yourself against their influence if you want to have any chance of liberating your mind and staying free of their manipulations.
So one way to use this book is as a manual of intellectual self-defense techniques against the relentless efforts of huge institutions to control the culture down to the level of the individual. Knowing and practicing the trivium is an antidote to their poison.
Grasping these arts and practicing them can dramatically improve the quality of your mind. And once that happens, your life will change for the better.
