Has studying history and philosophy influenced your worldview?

Yes, it has made me much more moderate in all meanings of the word.
Opened my eyes to let me see things from the point of view of both sides.
Ironically i was interested in history because i was very nationalistic, but history made me a staunch centrist.
I realized that there is no political party in my country that deserves votes, whereas i would have previously just voted for the only right option. I've noticed that every single political party here does nothing but spout memes to get votes and doesn't do a damn good thing once in power. The liberal ones disgust me, and the right wing one worries me too much.
Also, when i was a kid, watching 9/11 on the news, i was ecstatic, and i was even happier to see the USA retaliate and start killing Muslims. Now, my view has changed completely, and i feel mostly sadness for all the innocent people that died, both in the twin towers, and all the poor Iraqi and Afgani civilians. Also, i hate Bush for using 9/11 not only to invade countries, but also to use fearmongering to push the "patriot act".
I hate the double standards in international politics.
"It's bad when Russia does it, but when the USA does it it's perfectly fine, carry on."
It is NEVER fine.

I've thought about this long and hard and have come to the conclusion that anyone with a rational, logical mind who believes religion is a tool, created by the smart to control the dumb, then they should naturally arrive to the conclusion that nationalism is bullshit.

I believe nationalism is the belief that your nation or country is innately superior to others, while patriotism is being proud of the ideas perpetuated and adopted by your nation or country, not necessarily the country or citizens of the country itself.

Um haha yes, of course. Mein Gott, it really changed my [spoiler]pure ideology[/spoiler].

historical events stay the same, but the real meaning that people get from them is based on the viewers interpretation of events

see to my mind nationalism is just the belief that a people should put the wellbeing of their country first in all matters

having said that i could just be a faggot

A little.

>see to my mind nationalism is just the belief that a people should put the wellbeing of their country first in all matters
There are plenty of definitions. I call myself a nationalist because I think the nation state is a workable and reasonable form of government and I'm glad I live in one, but I don't think I should always put my country's wellbeing first.

yes i was once young and optemistic now im resigned and resentful, and somewhat beligerent

Yes, I lost faith in everything, I dont know what is right or wrong and I overthing every movie, book or conversation Ive had in past year.
Thanks humanities.

Fucking this.
I always thought studying humanities should help you clarify your opinion and goals and find a place in the world, but now It just all fells so bland... I want to be a stormfag again...

tip tip tip

>mfw no face

I didn't say I was an atheist.

No.

Nope

>disliking Christianity makes you a fedora

Good lord you people are insecure as fuck.

I doubt myself considerably more. I'm more considerate of the perspective of others. I'm more comfortable with myself. I'm more comfortable with my life. I've grown to realize that growth is a non-stop thing and that I'll never reach a conclusive, final, me.

This.

Before I was ambivilent on Germany, but now I understand that the entirety of human history has been the struggle of civilization against the German menace.

I'm going to need some more info on that.

This, more or less.

The more I studied the more I realized how ignorant I am.

It made me a skeptic in the old sense of the word.

Being real here. Learning history actually made me appreciate Germany more and give a better view of everything. When I started learning history out of passion as a kid I saw past the Nazi's and found a nation with a unique history. Not everything is black and white. Although I do kind of wish Rome had conquered Germania.

Before
>kinda racist
>"""fascist""""
>supporter of Euro/German nationalism

After:
>romantically involved with light skin chicks
>know the true definition of fascism
>realize nationalism and race are spooks
>more athletic

Yes, I'm more open minded and moderate in most respects. An exception is that I no longer have any doubt that we're headed for a singularity barring catastrophes in the near term.

This so much

Veeky Forums memes 101 incoming.

youtube.com/watch?v=4ztOV2wrrkY

I realized I am retarded.

After realizing that normal conceptions of sexuality were arbitrary after studying the greeks and maybe even a little spooky in general I stopped fearing the boipussy. I'm quite literally more gay.

That was pretty funny

Most things are spooks

There is nothing holding me back except myself

Nietzche and Stirner have motivated me

Yes, I don't know what to believe. I'm obsessed with the welfare of the common man as well as his liberty and safety. And most of my free time is spent pondering how to best secure all three without infringing on them. Currently I'm working on the dilemma of the need for self responsibility and determination contrasted with the average individual's vices and ignorance

They're being real too. Every historian knows all problems today spread from nationalism.

Environmental history has had a big influence on how I see nature and continues to do.

Historian Peter Turchin and essayist Nassim Taleb have been very influential to how I see the word.

Complexity science the biggest however, but it is not (yet?) history.

I've accepted the necessity of believing in something while acknowledging that I don't really know anything

Even if I trust the things I remember and what I observe, the world is still haunted by spooks.

The more you know, the more you know you don't know

I agree, I've found a lot of new books that I have yet to read and it makes me realize how little I yet know.
Not to mention stuff I can't seem to find any information on.

Or put in another way, reading makes me feel more stupid.

yesh

hold it Socrates

I realized that regardless of ideology or virtue, everything is basically a spectacular faliure

zizek has become a hot meme around me, or at least it appears like that on my facebook feed.

What is he? Should I care? I want to know if this guy is relevant, not just rely on his wikipedia page

Before reading history I hated Jews and Germans. Now I hate everyone.

He's legit, but he belongs to an incredibly dense and cryptic branch of continental philosophy that a lot of people have no stomach for. The memes surrounding him have mostly to do with his talks and film analysis, both of which deal with considerably more common subject matter and don't have all the Hegelian jargon and back references that make his normal work so impenetrable.

>What is he? Should I care? I want to know if this guy is relevant, not just rely on his wikipedia page
There's two levels of Zizek

1) The actually good philosopher. You'll need to read his books to get this, but it is there. He's one of the best modern political philosophers out there, but it'll be hard going if you're not familiar with Hegel and Lacan first.

2) Commentary Zizek. Much more accessable. Less rewarding, but pretty good. Makes 1st world leftist incredibly butthurt. Pretty good for stimulating conversations because, when he sees two sides in a debate, is very good at identifying the thing neither side wants to talk about. Also amusing jokes about dusty balls, and Montenegran Masturbation and so on and so forth.

>Makes 1st world leftist incredibly butthurt

lol this is true. I have a good friend who is a hardcore Marxist but I cannot talk about zizek with him. He just goes on about how he's a racist that uses fascist dog whistle rhetoric.

Lacan is a hack

German idealism was cancer

Sounds like have only learned Veeky Forumstory.

holy kek

>t. feminist

Phil major here. I study logic and mathematical foundations every minute of my wake life.

My brain is so into abstract concepts that i don't even care about the world anymore...

Knowledge brings you suffer.

Holy shit this!
I found out that socialists (marxian ones) are fucking idiots for beleaving that workers are disgruntled in their position in the means of production by the abstract concept of surplus value being abstracted. The workers back in Marx his days wernt angry for any abstract things like surplus value or true wages but more living conditions wich were literally shit tier. The only Marxian book that someone should read is Engels his ''Conditions of the working class in england'', and the fucking Marxists still dont know why the Worker Charter and Proudhon had more popularity than the rhetoric of the first international.

Also the Nihilist Movement in 19th Century Russia were rad as fuck!

I think it helped me mature quite a bit
I used to be marxist now i'm an egoist

No he really is, psychoanalysis is no longer valid inside the world of psychology.
I think Zizek is entertaining but I cannot take someone serious as someone who is:
>a communist
>uses hegel and lacan

I hate to say it, but Zizek is actually a charlatan.

Complexity science is where its at boys, we will soon ditch the incredible feeble minded idea of left and right (most likely not, but one can dream aye?)

what philosophy were you guys reading? what philosophy do you agree with or not agree with that made you come to this state of apathy and apolitical

Not them but for me it was the combination of complexity science and Taleb.

It changed most parts of me. I changed sides or I just gave up choosing sides on some situations. I just don't see the role of fighting over i don't know, religion for instance. I see it childish to fight over something we can't stand. There may be and not be any god at all. MAY. We think we know something about the universe but we don't know shit about us. I don't say that researches are usless but the fighting for who is "righter". I may seem describing as a special fag but i'm not. We all could not even exist.

I feel exactly like u. I just can't find the fun parts of things

>but I don't think I should always put my country's wellbeing first.
what are examples when you shouldn't put your country's wellbeing first?
more specifically, are there examples when you shouldn't put the wellbeing of the people of your country--the same people who are governed by the same laws as you, have the same rights as citizens, are part of the same national consent to belong to one another--first?

this was very enlightening until the very end. what did the video mean by up to their old tricks again? who is being kind to them that theyre mistaking for weakness? merkel is somewhat like hitler and bismarck?

Yes, realized Hitler did nothing wrong, and I was lefty as fuck when I was younger

I heavily researched Yugoslavia. From it's creation, over it's reshaping, to it's destruction.
I took note to read both Serbian and Croatian works. To blame either side is superficial.
I've read about the unification of Germany, Bismarck's foreign policy, and i've read about Germany on the onset of the great war. I also read about the deeper roots of the war.
In the same period i read about so much conflict, so much conflict that in hindsight could have gone differently, i read Locke and Rousseau. This drove me away from the right wing.
I read about the history of Russia, Ukraine and Poland-Lithuania, Kievan Rus.
I was also taking interest and reading articles, essays and analysis of geopolitics. That's where i grew contempt for both the US and Russia.
I also read Camus.
Also, look around you, witness the conflicts over the world at the moment. I got really depressed over the Ukrainian crisis.
I read all these things over the course of 2014.
In fact i would say the annexation of Crimea is what set this in motion for me. Also, it may have something with me maturing, since this started when i was 18.

what is complexity science?
wiki led me to complex systems page which seems mostly concerned with statistics. what were you studying before this? accounting?

what is taleb?
some ones last name?

Read similar things as you with different result. I always tried to stay neutral, but I don't see nationalism as something wrong.

what are your thoughts that rousseau help put nationalism in motion during the romantic era?

for sources please see references to rousseau in:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism#Romantic_nationalism

and references to nationalism in the below article:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau#Criticisms_of_Rousseau

>what is complexity science?
The study of complex systems, which can be society, the economy etc.
>wiki led me to complex systems page which seems mostly concerned with statistics
It isn't.
>what were you studying before this?
All kinds of stuff.
>what is taleb? some ones last name?
Yes, Nassim Taleb, he pretty much introduced me to complexity science since he uses it to back up his ideas. Note that Taleb likes to insult people so he is a bit controversial. He got famous for predicting the banking crisis.
I also got interested in chaos theory which also led me to complexity science.

I suggest to check out this if interested:

postgenetic.com/Postgenetic/Yaneer_Bar-Yam_-_Notes_on_Complexity.html

One of the books on complexity science that changed my view on economics was "the origin of wealth" by Eric Beinhocker.

There's a whole lot of more books on the subjects but it can be pretty technical. Taleb manages to make it readable for almost everyone, just that he likes to insult certain people (sometimes for a good reason).

Next stage is to realize that struggle is part of human existence, even between friends and family. Struggle is rooted in human existence and sometimes people must die.
Being in favor of peace does not nessecarily mean being against war because you can only control(to a small degree) what your group does but not other groups that might oppose yours.
You must also choose to either integrate other ways of life and views of the world or oppose them(if you ineed choose to have an opinion or stance) because even if cultural norms are relative you were still braught up under certain ones and can choose to support them simply becaue you are convinient with them and dont want to change or see others near you suffer as they are forces t obecome accustomed to different things.

Why do people start leaning towards the left or becoming more cosmopolitan?
Sure the internet creates a virtual cosmopolitan culture, which was much weaker before but that does in no way invalidate one's personal life that is embedded within a CERTAIN culture and a certain group and family and city and geographical setting.
Online I can be a cosmopolitan because that is the nature of online culture but offline I am still an ethnocentrist that BECAUSE of history chooses to enjoy the specific culture of his region and opposing others that try to overlap it or destroy it.
There is no reason to have one oppinion or one stance in all circumctances, rather different occasions and realities require a different set of understandings.
Reducing everything to "I love all people" or "I only love my group and hate others is silly.

I don't see nationalism as a bad thing per se, nothing wrong about loving your country.
I'm talking about the use and abuse of popular sentiments to drive conflict. And this conflict is perpetuated by the us-them dichotomy that arises from extreme nationalism. The dehumanization of enemies.
I'm generally a supporter of nation states.
I'm centrist, i dislike right wing parties because they often advocate for war, and war never brings anything good for civilians.

>Reducing everything to "I love all people" or "I only love my group and hate others is silly.
Why do you think in terms of people? I think in terms of culture.

Only for my own country I spread the ironic meme that I dislike certain regions and the people in them. I actually meme in real-life that I am a proud nationalist of my province but in fact my region is more culturally close to another province (same dialect and landscape).

Pic somewhat related.

Were regional languages still alive around 1900? I was in Germany during an excursion and the guy spoke a bit Low German and it was easy for me to understand since it is similar to my own dialect.
Regular German on the other hand I find hard to follow and also difficult.

I feel a kind of connection towards Germany.

I hear your point on nationalism. my question is: based on the 2 references and their description of the impact of rousseau, do you think rousseau advocates nationalism?

That's a tough one...
I'm inclined to say nationalism wasn't the intention, but birds of a feather flock together.

Yeah, it made me care less about things. Before I could go "We should stop that, that's bad" but now I can't bring myself to consider things bad since objective morality is a spook.

Might is Right is only law to the universe, life is an eternal struggle for survival. The only things that matters in life is having offspring and accumulating land and resource. Imperialism and Colonisation

>Anglos
>the best, the most human
This is what Anglos actually believe

Merkel is trying to destroy Europe like Hitler tried to do

>t. zizek

>I don't see nationalism as a bad thing per se, nothing wrong about loving your country.
Not the definition of nationalism

psychoanalysis has nothing in common with psycology except its origin and the root 'psy'
>a communist
what is wrong with that?

Zizek is a radical Marxist though.

But he said mean things about refugees ergo most of his kind hate him now. See for example what happened to him at the Left Forum

Most of them were chearing for him.

>psychoanalysis has nothing in common with psycology except its origin
Psychoanalysis was psychology until it got debunked. I cannot take Zizek that serious when he is using a pseudoscience for his philosophy.
>a communist
Read systems science and Friedrich Hayek to understand. I cannot take someone serious who wants to do away with capitalism. I am fine with manipulating or tinkering capitalism so it is not as destructive to the environment or vulnerable people.

> it got debunked
by whom? popper? it's just a criterion, you can't draw conclusions about psychoanalytic theoretical status and value using it.

It didn't get "debunked" in the sense that someone wrote a paper saying "This is why psychoanalysis is shit"

It debunked itself slowly over the decades by failing to show itself as being effective or evidence based.

Psychoanalysis is adrift, it is largely completely ignored by Psychology departments in universities and only kept alive because courses that aren't psychology and are in-general far less evidence based than Psychology is these days (Philosophy, literature, etc.)

You basically won't find a single modern Psychology education that will teach Psychoanalysis as an effective or relevant tool for treatment.

Psychoanalysis was abandoned in tandem with the neural research becoming more and more legitimate and established, it was left by the roadside with it's cousin Parapsychology.

>by failing to show itself as being effective
How so?
pacfa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Psychoanalytic-Review-V2-Ready-to-design-Final.pdf
health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/phi-natural-therapies-submissions-containerpage/$file/PACFA Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Lit Review.pdf
contemporaryfreudiansociety.org/information-resources/effectiveness-of-psychoanalytic-psychotherapies/
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1525087/#__sec3title
jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1028649
psycnet.apa.org/journals/amp/65/2/98/
>evidence based
when you study subject you can't do experiments. nevertheless psychoanalytic concepts are proved by clinical practice.
>Psychology departments
as i said psychoanalysis has nothing to do with psychology
>Psychoanalysis was abandoned
it wasn't. it's alive and well in europe. yeah govermant prefers cbt because it's bureaucratically easier and cheaper but psychoanalysis is still a very useful and the only tool for subject analysis