Philosophy: Nobody Cares

Nobody cares about philosophy. Oh wow, nobody cares. Nobody cares at all. If they say they care they are lying because not one person cares about philosophy. They say they care because they are one massive, gigantic, humongous tools who listens to Boards of Canada and cried at the end of The English Patient. They are that person and society doesn't care about them- just like how society doesn't care about philosophy.

The misconception that people actually care about philosophy has run rampart for far too long. Since the beginning of recorded history. It started with Socrates and him thinking people actually cared about what he thought. To illustrate this point I tried to read the Socrates Wikipedia entry but I fell asleep while reading it so there you go- that's that. Virtue and knowledge and arguments about nothing? He even said "I only know that I know nothing." What the fuck does that even mean!? On top of that, why should anyone even care about how Socrates knows nothing? You know what Socrates did all day? Socrates lounged on the steps of the Parthenon spouting nonsense to a bunch of middle-aged white guys with their dicks out. That's it. You know, Socrates probably had some kid out there, some wife, maybe a dog and a nice big front yard, hey maybe his grandfather lives there too! Sounds like a great life, right? Except there's one problem. A toddler walks up to his mother and says "Where's daddy?" He asks with those big blue eyes shining with unshed tears. She wraps him up in her arms and said "Daddy's not coming back, baby, daddy's not coming back."

What comes next is the people in Athens thought it was all such bullshit that they put Socrates to death. That's how little they cared about what he thought, they cared it drove them to homicide.

Socrates is dead! That was that- no more philosophy and things went back to normal and people went on living their lives without examining what their lives really meant or something.

Except not! Except people wrote everything they said down and talked about it all the time. What the fuck, people? Why do you do this to the world? I don't understand why you build schools to train people to be pretentious tools nobody likes. If I wanted to hang out with pretentious tools nobody likes I would go to a Bright Eyes concert, I don't want to have to see them at school. Why does the university I attend have to be a training ground for obnoxious dickwads? Explain that to me.

Solution? Package away all self-professed philosophers and ship them someplace nobody likes. Like Detroit. Or Canada. This is America. This country was founded on the basis of not giving a shit about philosophy. You know why the pilgrims left England on the Mayflower all those years ago? Because they were sick of self-righteous, pretentious tools nobody liked telling them what to do and what to believe. The only philosopher worth anything, William James, had only one thing to say: Choose whatever philosophy you want and then chill out about it. It's all chill, bros! Let's have a beer! He definitely said something like that, and you know what? He's right. If I have to listen to one more person discuss what the nature of 2+2 is then I will go on a murdering spree. Who cares what the nature of virtue is. Jesus. This is a real conversation I participated in with my philosophy class last year:

BIG TOOL IN CLASS: You know there's a 2000 page proof on why 2+2=4.

ME: (sniggers.)

TEACHER: What, Kate?

ME: That sounds like a colossal waste of time.

TEACHER: Why do you say that?

ME: Because it's useless. It's a useless document.

TEACHER: You used an interesting word there, Kate. Useless. What is the nature of that word, do you think? What is useless? What constitutes what is use-full as it was and what is use-less.

UGH. JUST UGH. Nobody cares. Not one person. Go away and leave us all be.