Fundamentalist-Rationalist Schism
Long-waged is the war between, on the one hand, fundamentalists of the Abrahamic religions, and on the other the post-enlightenment era rationalists. Each side claims (tacitly or otherwise) that there is a dichotomy between them and the others; that it is strictly binary, and that theirs is superior. Churches drive away many people for various reasons, one of them being that the attitude of their most devout members is oftentimes self-defeating and blatantly anti-scientific. Even the most milquetoast skeptic, with a mind and heart wide open to other points of view, can be pushed away for failing to meet the standards of blind and unprincipled belief.
I'll give you an example: In the LDS church, lay people usually assume some sort of leadership position; it is a dialogue moreso than one man in a pulpit telling you what to believe. Even with this more grassroots and open-ended approach, however, dogma seeps into the churches. During a Sunday school teaching, one of the members of my church professed, as if it were established fact, that climate change is a hoax and a con used to raise taxes. He also said essentially that testimony trumps science, science isn't important, and that you can receive all the answers you need directly from God. He then went on to discourage intellectual activity as vain and disparaged knowledge for knowledge's sake.
This was an incredibly ignorant move, and sadly not uncommon. Yet, on the other side of the spectrum, there are atheists who reject God on all levels, and believe themselves to be the most rational sort of person. This is also ignorant, because the purpose of religion is not to replace science as an end-all-be-all dogma. Rather, science and religion are not meant to be unquestionable and unassailable, brute facts, which in the best cases compliment each other and work in tandem to create a more holistic lifestyle.
I am dumbfounded whenever I hear a religious person denounce science or a scientifically-minded person dismiss religion as inferior, because I do not make hardline distinctions between the two the way others seem to. To me, this would be like picking an eye to see the world with; if you're blind in one of them, it might be an easy decision, but for the majority of us, it's a ludicrous idea. Vision is a co-operative process between the two.
Motivating Recherche
Modern thought has become too fixated on objectivity, and academia in particular has many well-known problems, including publish-or-perish mentalities, financially corrupt incentive structures, exorbitant competitiveness, etc. Yet, if we look back through history — Isaac Newton, Aristotle, Carl Jung, and many other of the deepest and most interesting thinkers all had very intricate relationships between faith and reason. In some cases the lines between mental and spiritual labor were blurred to no trivial degree. In some cases, like Leibniz offering an alleged proof of God, there may seem to have been less nuance than in others, but in almost all of these individuals there seems to have been a more holistic way of thinking than the current predominate mode.
In academia it is mostly taboo to ask certain questions, such as about the nature of God, and one is encouraged to focus on only the most sanitized and public-facing aspects of their investigations, depersonalizing their work and leaving out the affective aspects.
I will write now, that I believe that while there are good reasons for this hardline stance, it has become almost psychopathical in its presentations. Academia is a machine that takes in humans and spits out robots: the exact opposite of an institution that leads to wholeness. However, it certainly has its place. So, I am left to write that, whatever this place may be, it shall not be to monopolize inquiry and discourse that is respectable or considered serious.
Many people have conceived of alternatives to academia, and none of them have really panned out. We have not been tender and graceful enough as of yet to handle the thorns of the rose at hand. The reality is that a true alternative to academia, in that it would simply repeat the follies that led us to the alternative to begin with, will never be useful. We do not to flat out replace academia, but instead supplement it, and in the process change the culture from both the inside and outside.
Towards Recherce
Truth is not just a cold and lifeless thing, but a living, breathing one, and that is beautiful; and beauty requires not mere formality, but intimacy, and in this case this means allowing for personalized and challenging studies that do not always conform to the traditional norms and narratives.
When I say, "academia needs to be supplemented," I do not mean we need Khan academy or coding tutorials on DailyMotion. While those are awesome and have their place, they still reproduce the same type of structure that canonical academia represents, only they are more accessable to a wider audience. I am afraid that in today's age, the solution to our problems is not as simple as access; we already have an abundance of ways for learning.
The problem of today's age are friendship, community, creativity, and camraderie. Bowling Alone famously documented the decline of third spaces that begun in the 90s, and it is no secret that, since then, America and its allies have become more lonely than ever. I am not naïve enough to believe that creating a recherche community will solve all of these problems, but I do think it is not a small step; and on top of that, we hit two birds with one stone: the drives for depth and richness in our lives, and the drive for community.
What this means in practice, is breaking down the barriers of academia. When someone goes to college, they get access to a full community of potential peers, mentors, and collaborators; yet, when someone completes a Khan academy course, what among these things are gained? Certainly not mentors or collaborators; professors will likely ignore or reject you if you reach out to them. No peers either, I'm afraid: you're on your own, and it's a lonely road.
We are Rechercherians
I propose the term "rechercherian" for this uncanny-valley sort of role that I and many others find ourselves in. This word is is doublefold in meaning: firstly, recherche is literally just the French word for "research;" so, a rechercherian is a researcher. Yet, recherche also is an English word that means rarified or obscure; this represents the factions of mystics and other types, along with their personalized and esoteric pursuits. Every niche blogger, hyperfixated Aspie with special interests, and independent scholar, is doing their part in this post-academic ecosystem.
Once you swallow the tough pill of decentralization, you realize that its side-effects are actually superpowers. We are not just authors of some bland white paper, but auteurs of a higher, emerging narrative; weavers of culture.
Recherche is powerful because it is both personal and collaborative, both to the highest degree possible. The decentralized nature of recherche means that we will build many little sub-webs along the way; little tiny, granular coteries that represent our core "covens" (if you will), where collaboration is meaningful and constant. At the center of each coven is you, dear rechercherian: a museum of exhibits which, on their own may be rather mundane, but when assembled together in such a way are completely novel.
Academia and the church still have a place, but it's place should be, first-and-foremost a gatekeeper. This is what academia apparently does best, so we might as well come forward and embrace it. Nothing gatekeeps better than these two institutions (with the possible exception of the government), and nothing else can or should replicate them. Academia, the government, etc., are tribal, whereas these softer hotspots for recherche are cultural. I am not trying to de-legitimize these institutions, but rather I ask that more legitimacy be granted to this neophilic strand, which previously remained so neglected so as to have no name.
Final Word (For Now)
I consider this blog, the discussions I have with friends and family, the documents found on my Google Scholar page, etc., to all be extensions of myself and constitute a single type of thing: recherche. These interlocutors are nothing short of colleagues. I am breathing real life into this movement, and it's not just a blind theoretical construct. Many of us are fumbling in the dark trying to go down a path like this, but we haven't really got a solid unifying corpus yet.
Some key figures I would like to mention are Kirby Urner, The Active Inference Institute (and in particular D. Friedman), O. Hancock, who has floated the idea of a "renegade academy" and collaborated with me intensively; James Sirois; Curt Jaimungal of Theories of Everything for bringing together so many vibrant souls and minds into a single Discord channel (I will never forget the discussions I've had and the people I've met); Andrius Kulikauskas with his Math4Wisdom project. All of these people have an amazing knack for bringing people together, organizing communities, and inciting collaboration.
I believe that, myself, alongside those named here and too many others to mention, constitute a form of life worthy of apologetics, and I believe this movement will only grow stronger as time passes.
I would like to give a shout out to a Weco, an emerging platform with many outside-the-box thinkers, many of whom are rechercherians. The whole website was built on strong metamodern philosophical foundations, and the principles are solid, but it would benefit from an influx of people.