Too many philosophers in the forum

· Wholesomedonut's blog


Put your grapes down #

This is something I've been deliberating on for a few months now, as I've watched the rhetoric of our public discourse on many topics become increasingly soured and divisive.

I've struggled to find an accurate or mostly-inclusive reason as to why everything's political, disagreement is now evil, or why running away from the past instead of learning from it is a virtue.

Barring that covering all potential motivations and stories would be improbable? I think a mostly accurate answer is good enough as a simple bellwether of the situation. I can't really find one. And I have a simple answer for why.

I'm not a freaking philosopher. I'm not a logician or a psychologist either.

And it stands to common sense that likely neither are you. If you're seeing this I'm more than willing to wager you've got some sort of technical experience, and furthermore you're a dude like me. At least according to the general demographics of tech stuff, and who uses it most often and finds websites like this.

"But I took a class once!"

No, that one class in Philosophy or Logic you had to take as a general Humanities credit in college 10 years ago doesn't count. I know, because that's what I did. That does not make me a philosopher. Though now I do know buzzwords like "straw man" and "argumentum ad hominem." Yay.

The thesis I'm putting out here is that there are way too many faux philosophers in the forum, and not enough among them are realizing that they don't have the answer to everything. Nor do they take well to criticism. And that makes everything unnecessarily spicy online nowadays.

I posit that it may be wise to scale back a bit and develop ourselves, our families, our communities into what we want them to be, instead of trying to shout out admid the rest of the world as they try and define who everybody should be.

TLDR? #

I find it's better to live my ideals and share how good they are through the results they bring me in my own life and that of my community, instead of just saying how awesome they are and demanding you accept that reality.

I want to share results of things I can change, not hypothetical silver bullets to problems I can't solve myself.