• 0 Posts
  • 6 Comments
Joined 17 days ago
Cake day: September 5th, 2025
  • Adverse_Reaction@anarchist.nexustoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•Why does philosophy education make people uncomfortable?English
    582·
    3 days ago

    Here is a quote, taken slightly out of context, that I believe speaks to what you are experiencing:

    “The clinical picture of a person who has been reduced to elemental concerns of survival is still frequently mistaken for a portrait of the survivor’s underlying character.” - World Health Organization. (May 31, 2016). ICD-11 Beta Draft (Joint Linearization for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics).

    Extrapolating from that in this other context, we can assume more and more people are simply losing their capacity to entertain “loftier” ideals than immediate survival. For all too many, there was never any other choice.

    I studied philosophy at university in the 80’s, and remember the endless jokes about what restaurant job I would be able to get with my degree, etc. It speaks to the hidden framework of capitalism that confines us all. It’s only gotten worse in my lifetime.

    I look back at my parents, who were able to buy their own house and raise two kids with a single earner, blue collar wage. My mom did eventually work as well, which allowed us children to go to college.

    Now I am close to retirement, and I have nothing to show for it. No house, no car, no big retirement payout waiting. I ‘squandered’ my money and time being an activist and humanitarian, living in the moment and refusing to produce or hoard wealth for the capitalist machine just because.

    I try to use my philosophical insight as a practical methodology to remove myself from the clamor for crumbs. I am a minimalist, an environmentalist, a gardener, a handyman and helper, a teacher - a papa smurf to my community and philosopher to my peers. I wouldn’t trade it for all the money in the world, but I would be remiss to ignore the looming economic circumstances that threaten the future of humanity, myself included.

    But I will forge ahead into this wilderness. As Deleuze and Guattari would say, forget reading someone else’s map, become your own cartographer. Philosophy is a great basis for profound understanding of the human condition. It won’t make you rich, and it certainly won’t be respected or understood in this modern world - but it will enrich you. If you follow your heart it can show you a path through the madness that does not require that you shed your humanity or reduce yourself to that of an economic survivor, victor, or victim, and can serve as a beacon for others less fortunate to have been afforded such a perspective.

    I often share the story of Taigu Ryōkan, the Zen Master, who perfectly illustrates both the value of philosophical introspection, and it’s liberating effect from the confines of the material world.

    https://laspina.org/the-thief-and-the-moon-a-zen-tale-in-ryokans-haiku/

  • Adverse_Reaction@anarchist.nexustolinuxmemes@lemmy.world•Which stage are you at?English
    31·
    15 days ago

    This probably outs me as an old fart, but my first computer experiences were with assembly and BASIC intepreters, then things like COBOL, Fortran, and Pascal.

    I remember when Bill Gates got his panties in a wad over people sharing MS BASIC and always tried to steer clear of M$ products from then on, although I did have the common misfortune of having to use Windows in several work environments throughout my career. Luckily, the last I ever had to touch as an admin/user was Windows 7.

    My personal desktop OS history is as follows:

    Solaris -> OpenBSD -> Slackware -> Debian -> SuSE -> Mandrake -> Gentoo -> Redhat -> Fedora -> Sidux -> Arch -> OpenSUSE -> Mint.

    I stick with Mint because I don’t want to spend my time tinkering on the OS, and it makes helping all the noobs/non-techies I have convinced to switch to Linux over the years that much easier. This is well over a hundred at this point, and you know who most of them come to when they have a problem. With Mint, they seldom have any issues.

    The years I spent tinkering taught me a lot, especially on the rolling OSes, but these days I appreciate having a system that just works reliably, so I can spend my time tinkering on my own projects instead. I have VMs for other OSes as needed anyways.

    Now you damn kids get off my lawn!