Oooooh did my ragebait work? Are you steaming at the title, frustrated that I’ve lumped you, oh wondrous philosopher, in with all the rest? Are you here to hate-read my work? Or (on the other hand) are you popping in because you’ve found some shoddy literature that may, as the title suggests, serve as a form of echo chamber to toss your already-formed notions right back at you?
Aight, I’ll quit being an ass (for a few minutes). Before I really get the ball rolling here, I want to clarify the title. As you probably know if you’re deranged enough to keep up with a blog that could only have been produced by a large number of monkeys banging away at typewriters for a sufficiently long period of time, I quite enjoy many areas of philosophy and I’ve written about it on that same blog. (Which blog? This one, of course.) I won’t pretend to be someone formally trained in areas of philosophy outside of my own computing credentials, and thus it’s quite likely I’d be relegated to the armchair by those more deserving of recognition than I. My words are often nonsense. But you know what, my writings are for me and quite frankly, you’re just along for the ride.
So I should note that philosophy is for everyone — really, all areas of learning should be accessible to everyone and I want to be clear that I don’t want to pretend to be a gatekeeper of any sort. And I want to note that there is much respect to be had for both older and more contemporary philosophers. This post is more or less to point out my annoyance at the distribution and prevalence of groups that are simply not what I’m looking for when it comes to deep discourse, and not to shit on philosophy as a whole. Just to be clear.
Okay cool, so what am I bitching about then? So I’ve lived in my current metro area for nearly five years at this point. And I’ve found decent communities of computer hackers, people who crochet, little book clubs, etc. I mean, there are pros and cons of each of the different groups and I can certainly complain about anything I put my mind to, but for the most part these folks are fascinating and fun to be around. I can’t say the same for philosophy groups that I’ve tried to get involved with. The ones that I have found seem to take one of two forms.
The first form is obnoxious, stereotypical, and downright harmful to the discipline in my opinion. This is the circle-jerk of quasi-academics that come together (pun intended) to compete in quoting their favorite western philosophers, removing both literary and historical context in the process. I must remember to increase my fedora budget to that I can gift each of these “well actually” neckbeards an article to don that at the very least wouldn’t significantly derail the very well-known public image they seem to have worked so hard to construct for themselves. The barrier for entry is high, and these groups are barely welcoming. They advertise themselves as book clubs but tend to instead behave in a fashion reminiscent of the evangelicals that spout unrelated lines of biblical nonsense in an effort to one-up each other. Every single participant leaves the discussion room holding the exact same opinions they had when entering in the first place. As you may be able to tell (though I tried oh so hard to hide the fact), I maintain an immeasurable amount of distaste for such groups.
The second form is less obnoxious, but they make me sad. These are the groups that masquerade as philosophy groups, but in the end are really just self-help groups. Some of these groups describe themselves as “practical philosophers” but quite frankly I find that the questions discussed are never remotely deep, and the people who participate very rarely have the patience for anything abstract, nor the mental capacity for any deconstruction of posed arguments. I find them less harmful than the first group, but I simply find them lacking in their abilities to be intellectually engaging.
It is perhaps my own fault that I seemingly only run into these two paradigms, as I’m not currently in an academic environment that would foster more appropritely stimulating discussions. Perhaps if I was taking a class I’d have the ability to talk to academic peers or professors or whatnot, and perhaps that would be less insufferable. Nevertheless, it appears quite difficult to weed out the various philosophy groups by their levels of pedantry or intellectual offerings. Quite frankly, I really just would like to find a good philosophy group made of experts that engage in good and welcoming discourse, a group that challenges me to think critically, in an environment that fosters a true desire to learn without encouraging dick-measuring contests.
That’s really all I had for this one. I suppose that in the meantime, I’ll keep looking, writing, working, whatever. Or maybe I’ll give up the search and realize that I either need to explicitly reengage with the academic world (in a university setting, for example), or I’ll need to admit that my hopes are a fantasy and that modern philosophers really do just fundamentally suck.