Summarize how reading/doing philosophy has affected your life please

it didn't make you these things. it only made you even more oblivious to yourselves.

>It made me an incredibly indifferent, live-and-let-live bohemian nihilist.

Congratulations, you are now the same as 99% of modern mankind.

>oblivious

I'm guessing you meant something along the lines of 'self-aware'.

Oblivious is not the word you're looking for.

it was the right word. it's made them even more unaware of what they are with the added layer of bullshit. now they're even further from the truth.

The way I see, that's what they really are, only they think philosophy has made them that way.

Which is probably close enough, the end result is the same.

>reading philosphy

made me think I was smarter than i was

>doing philosophy

made me realize how poorly i adhered to my supposed "convictions" and "principles." doing made me realize what principled living was and i understand now a sage is someone who has mastered this level of reality. wisdom is another word for self-knowledge and the auto-conscious individual directs himself from a higher plane of thought, situated in the guiding apollonian light of reason

It made me realize that everything is MALIGNANTLY USELESS.

Made me rethink myself and finally accept myself as a being made of time and space, once I've made that clear, philosophy made me realize that morals, religion, essence is nothing but subjectiveness and will all go away into the depth of the universe once I die.

Thus I am here looking the truth that will never burn out.

So far :
> Socrates, Platon, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud (???), Sartre, Heidegger
+ Social anthropology, psychology and neurosciences

Basically it just gives you a "meta" awareness, as you're living life you understand a new dimension of the world that you calculate and it makes you sad to see people forgetting this dimension.

Made me realize that philosophy is one big circle jerk that hardly takes notice from other sciences around. Additionally it made me realize that philosophy is pretty much irrelevant and proto-dead.

It convinced me that postmodernism has gone too far, and benign mysticism is a healthy part of the human experience.

It literally did nothing except entertain me learning about it.

Mostly it has been a disappointment. Philosophy can be reduced in many ways to superficial psychological phenomena but the philosophers willing to admit it are few and far between. The ones that get it inevitably throw a tantrum and plummet into asperger/isolation/degeneracy while the rest have their philosophical blinders on which has frustrated me ever since I started pursuing sophia. It's 2016 and we still give literal niggers like Chalmers intellectual airtime. The philosophical zeitgeist is just not there where I am yet.

On the plus side I feel really smart now and my explanation of everything is confirmed every day. Feels good seeing predictions come true consistently.

Whats a good intro to becoming a woke degenerate like yourselves? Most of it all just goes over my head

I became a lot more optimistic

Reading The Last Messiah ruined my life and made it impossible to talk about my beliefs with friends without them thinking I'm kidding. I'm just read philosophy in hopes of finding something more optimistic that I can cuck my brain into believing.

Read a lot of books.

try Marxism.

>cuck my brain into believing

That isn't the approach you should be taking, mate.

I hate pretty much everything now.

>he fell for the neuromaterialism meme

You aren't cut out for philosophy. Don't even both with it.

>Read Thus Spoke Zarathustra
>Actually ended up becoming The Last Man

I fucked up.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_man

I learned that there is no way to combat the inherent evil on society and reach joy in a non-vapid way.

Look at tge Edge on that one! Get out, neckbeard philosphy freshman!

Did all of y'all learn philosophy from education or did y'all just go 'fukc it im gonna lern about the human condition'

me

I used to be an avid consumer of pop-sci. If philosophy has changed my outlook in any way, it's shown me that science is not an infallible endeavor making steady progress and that its goal in all but the most profound cases isn't to make truth claims about reality. I like metaphysics now

made me think of things i never thought of and in ways i never considered.
not to sound even more pretentious but it helped me look at things from more than the narrow perspective, regardless of the thing itself

the nothing nothings

I've missed a lot of buses.

I might be the odd man out with this post, especially it being a board about literature. Im not a person who enjoys reading literature, and how this has effected my life is Im a person with a big imagination, but im just unable to put my ideas onto paper. I have read very few books in my life, LOTR, along with the hobbit and World War Z are truly the only books I have read for my own enjoyment, and not because I was forced to like when I was in school. My lack of reading I believe is a direct cause for me to be unable to write the stories in my head, because I see it being equivalent to someone who wants to direct a movie, but does not enjoy watching them. How can one learn something when they dont study the source it self?

I have a high reading level, I can grasp concepts rather quick, but I just dont understand why I cant just sit down a read a book and enjoy it like many other can.

bruh if you're interested in a thing, read about it. it's really that simple. you know you're not really obliged to read certain books just to be considered a book-reader, just read what interests you and you'll enjoy it

At first it made me feel smart for coming to the same conclusions as famous philosophers.
Then it made me realize life was pointless and I became even more smug.
After some time I mistook 'life has no point' for 'no point to live'.
Then I discovered Nietzche and became an obnoxious cunt (Übermensch hurr durr).
Eventually I realized truth is unattainable, all attempts at universal ethics are groundless and even the hypothetical ones are fruitless, all goals we claim we have are just spooks, even acting in self-interest.
Now I'm an absurdist (not an existentialist because I believe creating meaning is impossible).

I like to argue philosophy, but believe it's all mostly unfounded beating around the bush. I also gradually lost any hope I had in ideologies and designing a system for a functioning society. I'm not interested in politics, but I like to discuss it.

audiobooks exist.

Audible dot com has over 10000000000000 books!

Those who complain that philosophy made them feel lost were already lost in life but did not know it. They already had no backbone, but were made to try to walk.
If philosophy does not give direction, it directs toward itself: try again, and again. Many don't.
Whenever you ask one of these people that scorn philosophy why they live as they do, they have no answer except poor philosophical ones, which have far more to do with obedience, conventions, comfort, and simple laziness than what is actually said. It is the same as mathematics: too hard to be of any use to the lazy.

Is listening to audio books really the same as reading?

No. But if you want to combine reading with driving/walking/cycling/whatever, it's a conditio sine qua non.

I'm now seen as too blunt. My opinions based on my philosophies often don't mesh with peoples idea on reality or how they believe other people should behave towards them. People often don't like thinking about stuff I say because it makes them question the important things in their lives and the potential that they may have made mistakes.

I'm well liked as a person but I have few friends and fewer allies.

you should read a book you have enjoyed and deconstruct it. Give yourself a gramar lesson say and then read a chapter and look for examples of that tool or language style. Repeat for different elements of the craft until you recognise how an author has built the structure of the prose. After and during you doing this you can then start to look at the abstract parts of building a story. WHY the author has done what she did - what does in achieve in terms of character - plot - environment and the conflicts between them etc etc.

I see this as reverse engineering and since I begun to learn to write this has helped me alot think about WHY I'm writing what I'm writing. I'm still shit but you know I never give up. (26 year old Engineer here so anyone can do it if I can)

Don't forget to never tell people what to think or what to do.

It made me love life. It is difficult to be specific because it is a dominant part of who I am now, but I am happy with who I am.

The only downside is loneliness. Over time I have developed the presupposition that others will not be interested in philosophy and will have difficulty trying to articulate their thoughts to me. Their values have not been reflected on and they quickly harm others when it suits them. So I just hung out with less and less people. I saved time by not hanging out with those people but I also could have made more and better friends by now.

Too much time being doubtful and skeptical makes you forget how important having courage is.

If I didn't have Veeky Forums I would be one lonely mother fucker

I always tell them the cliche 'Look into it yourself', 'my opinion' etc. I also never discredit someone who disagrees with me or ignore a compliment even though I don't take good / bad feedback (stoic) to heart. I think I'm seen as too intense for many people. My close friends usually are the same, intense political, economic philosophical debates etc. I found dating very hard since I begun my study.

It seems like you have very high expectations of others. If you can live with that, fine, but I hope you realize this might become a source of inconvenience in your life. There's an easy fix: if you stop caring about other people, it's a lot easier to accept them.

I feel morality 'doing right' holding me back from what I know I can achieve If I went 'Full Machiavelli' I feel giving this up is like going to the dark side. Like doing what right 9/10 times is harder then doing what would achieve the same ends but is 'wrong'. This is the biggest thing holding me back I think.

How do you do philosophy?

Why does the reduction of an idea to a psychological phenomenon invalidate it?

practical application of philosophy means living it. Its harder for some new stuff that isn't meant for practical application, a 'way of living'. For instance as a stoic I may mentally disregard people opinions of me or their slights. I will no longer be angered when a rude person is rude to me, 'why get mad at a barking dog' its a dog, dogs bark. etc etc.
If I was a cynic I may give up my Audi for a 10 year old Honda or instead get the bus to work. Etc.

It answered the question, "Who's your daddy?"

I'm not trying to brag or say I'm prodigious or anything but the notion of the absurd is something I felt quite strongly from a really young age (maybe 8 - 9?). I felt it but I didn't know what it was and growing up I'd occasionally attempt to communicate thoughts of the kind to my friends only to receive strange/bemused looks. When I finally stumbled onto Camus and the like (on here maybe?) I felt incredibly validated and that was when I actually decided that reading literature and philosophy would be worthwhile. To have that alienating feeling elegantly described and given a place just felt amazing and was nothing like what I'd gotten from years of STEMfaggery.

Again I'm not trying to say that I have some great depth. In fact I realise now what probably inspired the feeling were bouts of depersonalisation/derealization that for whatever reason I've suffered from for as long as I can remember.

Reminds me a bit of The Catcher in the Rye, when that gay teacher or whatever tells Holden he's not the first nor the last to ask questions about human endeavours, and some of them have even written down their thoughts. The only way to mature that wonder and potentially answer it is to read those thoughts, their discussions and problems, and eventually make up your mind. In short philosophy. It gives you insights mere science could never generate.

I couldn't have put it better.

it took off the fedora from my head

I don't think I can attribute it solely to literature, but if there's one thing I've become truly convinced of, it's the total absence of human agency.

I dig. It's one of those ideas that isn't explicitly proven but is continually reinforced the more you come to know.

Thank you for the input, its great advice I will take. Thank you.

Are you saying theres no freewill?

It made me feel like a cool smart guy.

There can be choice and an absence of free will.