Dying Philosophy

Over the last couple of decades the concept of philosophy has been reduced from what it was at its height, tools for critical thinking, down to trivia information about when certain philosophers were born and what they thought of certain concepts. Western society particularly doesn’t teach the ability to think critically. They focus on these trivialities rather than educating the individuals on how to formulate their own opinions and ideas with the tools of philosophy. We’ve successfully obstructed what philosophy really is, which is a way to acquire perspective. And now we’re faced with a western society incapable of processing complex information. It’s become common place to delegate opinion development to media and social medial platforms and sources. The development of philosophy has been left to politics and business. Opinions are now a profitable ventures for conglomerate corporations at the expense of the public intellect. At the expense of the integrity of politics and reliable journalism. “Click bait” and “headlines” are the new formulators of opinions. Society has allowed for this corruption to take place. So long as the fast food and Netflix are still functioning and in business there are no argument.

Terrifying is what the future will appear to be in response to this. As the ability to think critically and philosophize about our place within our culture continues to shrink and disappear the powers that be grow stronger and more controlling. The ultimate goal seems to be a total loss of individually cultivated identities. Identity will be manufactured for populations and individuality will cease at this rate. Let a headline decide our emotions and a click-bait article choose our points of view. We act and respond as expected and as desired by some company profiting off of our behavior. And it’s all because of our submission and lack of ability to think our way out of the built box. We are where they want us and we are aware and willing to sacrifice ourselves regardless for our immediate satisfaction. We strive to collect meaningless hoarded garbage. Collect fictional numbers and buy crap we don’t need because it comforts us and makes us feel accepted within society, yet out intellect suffers and we run nothing. We only think we own anything. And those who have learned to philosophize and critically think with a perspective outside the box will continue to rule our every move because they can think ahead of any move we believe we’ve thought up. After all, they came up with the move and gave it to us.