3) ———>

Some time ago a friend who writes posted a complaint on Facebook that no one was reading his work. Addressing his circle of friends, he announced that he intended to “clean house” among his Facebook friends and keep only those who actually read his writing—that is, those who at least liked some of his posts. If someone had no connection with what mattered to him, did not read his writing, did not like it or leave comments, he would remove that person.

Reading this declaration of possible expulsion—which fortunately did not include me—made me wonder why some of us take other people's likes so seriously. What do these likes actually mean? It is interesting that we all tend to think that if others like our photographs or posts, this means our photograph or writing has value; yet very often we ourselves like other people's photographs and posts simply because we think doing so is “the right thing to do.” Is it not curious that part of us believes our own photographs and posts are more attractive and valuable than those of others, and therefore that the likes we receive are entirely sincere reflections of our intrinsic worth and the value of what we publish?

If Nietzsche lived in the twenty-first century, how many friends do you think he would have had on Facebook, and how many likes would his posts have received? What about Hegel? How much would those likes have mattered? It is worth remembering that Nietzsche published much of his writing at his own expense, and many of his works found a wider audience only after his death. Describing his loneliness and comparing it with Hegel's, he says that when Hegel lay dying only one person was at his bedside, and Hegel told him: “Only you understood my philosophy—and even you did not understand it.” Nietzsche then bitterly joked that when he himself lay dying, not even that one person would be there.

But what did it really matter how many people liked him in those days? Nietzsche himself tells us that Aristotle once said that only two kinds of beings enjoy solitude: gods and monsters. “In my view,” Nietzsche adds, “there is a third group, made from a combination of the two: philosophers.” How many other great thinkers do you know whose fate resembled that of Nietzsche, Hegel, Spinoza, Pascal or Rousseau?

Every writer writes in order to be read. I too write in order to be read, and I would like to thank you if you have read this far rather than simply adding another like or view without reading. Yet if we write, paint, take photographs or compose music, for whom are we doing it?

I continually remind myself that I write because I regard writing as more valuable than not writing and remaining silent. Beyond that, this is part of who I am. But I also write in order to participate in the expansion of a truth whose rightness I believe in inwardly. Along this path I do not write for numbers. I write for “individuals”—for those particular people who read, or who one day will read.

I actively try to expand my audience too, not because the number of followers means something by itself, but because a larger field gives me and those individuals more opportunity to find one another. Some time ago I received an email offering, for a fee, to add fake Members and Views to my Telegram page. It even included a price list stating a set cost for each thousand views or each thousand members. Can you believe that we live in a world in which lying has itself become a trade, openly marketed as a business? I wrote back to the honourable owner of this business and said that I would be willing to make a deal if, instead of all those numbers filled with zeroes, he could find me just one of those “individuals” for whom I am searching.