My mom and dad always make fun of me for my interest in literature and philosophy...

nothing is objectively anything you dumfuck

Is this the power of literature?

t. pleb who doesn't understand literature

>gobbling up the bait

Spooks: the post

I'm going to starve to death within a year. I'm running out of fat, and my diet is not nutritious enough to sustain life. I do not have the courage nor the strength to request help or to submit my self into the workforce. I don't believe that allowing yourself to waste away is truly suicide if it is, at least in part, involuntary; so I should not have substantial moral reservations about this.

i've considered starvation too user

Is eating until you explode suicide?

are you filipino or something, how can your family be this pleb. Move out lol

do people really have such horrible parents?

OP makes such a good post here, presenting a very believable depiction of the attitude that some people may have towards the humanities in the present-day, a post well beyond the quality of most frogposters, and this is how you reply to him. cmon dude, if he hadnt used a frog and used a different image you wouldnt have wrote this and wouldve respected his post because the content is actually important and brings up important questions pertaining modern day society and its overwhelming love for all things STEM/materialist

Keked at "its because youre frogposting scum" though

wait this isn't normal?

What kind of books do u read

Well just tell your parents what kind of a fucking JOB you are going to expect to have post-graduation. Just tell people you are studying philosophy to get a law degree and they will still take you seriously even if you decide to do something else. Then you can make fun of your brother for wanting to do some volatile silicon valley shit that will ultimately go to trash. After a time your parents will see you reading Plato and you can tell them that you are tying to understand the law. And, user, if you do all of these things, maybe you will eventually become a lawyer and have a decent life after graduating.

If not, people will still respect you as a guy who wanted to go to law school but found something more important to do. You'll of course have to not completely fucking suck at whatever you do.

It's very easy, OP: move out of the Midwest.

I have similar parents. Really weird about anything that hasn't been basted in approved blue collar American Protestant culture. I'm studying philosophy an they still want to sit me down and talk about what kind of a practical skill I should develop. They both dropped out of college so I don't think they really understand what an education entails. They can only offer me advice from pretty reasonable means. I'm not a fucking genius, but I also haven't dropped college despite the fact that most of my effort goes into avoiding work. I'm total shit at being a student and yet I can still maintain a good GPA. If this is all it takes to graduate, I can not understand how anyone fails to do so. It's weird and uncomfortable to be told that I "like to read" or something similar. That's idiot talk. It's really not a fun place for anyone with aspirations above a shitty trade-school job.

>tfw studying philosophy, political science, and French at uni
>Go to school in Southern US
>"What the hell are you goi-"
>"I'm going into the Army"
>"Oh, user that's fantastic, you'll make such a great officer!"
That tends to shut them up, OP.

I couldn't do that to myself.

Why not?

>>family is middle class so I have to major in mechanical engineering in college so that I don't starve to death
OR you could develop a skill. Socrates was a mason and William Blake was an engraver. You canlisten to things, and think things while fixing cars or doing the electric wiring.

It was a great post user. You meant for real or were you just trolling OP?

Maybe your diverse range of interests and talents will make you a great leader in the near future. In that case find me and I will be one of your lieutenants

That happened

>Americans

Sorry to hear that, OP. Well, you just have to hang in there long enough to become a bit financially independent, then you won't have to care what they think. I actually love STEM stuff, and I make a living as a software developer, but I'm also really into literature and philosophy and always have been. Sounds like your relatives only understand half of the picture. Hope it gets better.

>Your brother is making friends and engaging with the bold colorful human world and you are burying yourself in a dead grey impotent world.

In case you didn't read the post, OP said his brother is a computer science major.

>Literature takes up tremendous resources and basically wastes your potential as a person. It's exactly like video games: you spent countless hours and countless years becoming familiar with something nobody around you cares about and your human potential is squandered.

I swear that some people enter into a daze when they post and literally forget that they are saying all of this shit on Veeky Forums as they're back lurking here yet again.

Being an officer in the army is wrong. People only enter the army out of ignorance or sociopathy.

the problem is every retard and his brother in humanities thinks they're an artist or philosopher and flood the world with their own shit instead of just eating the shit of the ancients

>People only enter the army out of ignorance or sociopathy.
Edgy.

Joking aside, I certainly think your opinion is just too naive, user. I'd be curious to know how much connection you've even had with the Armed forces. Do you come from a military family?

seconding this, aside from (((ZOG))) BS, if you're in the army and you're in someone elses country, you're a fucking invader, and deserve everything that happens to you

my father was in vietnam, ended up killing himself
my grandfather (mom's side) was a marine lieutenant and a miserable alcoholic, abusing his wife and eventually dying from alcohol.

my dad's brother was in vietnam, too, and still takes meds because of it

i think you're the naive one, faggot

>I think you're the naive one, faggot
Sorry for your family's experiences, user, though I don't think your personal experience is indicative of all soldiers/marines, etc. wouldn't you agree?

As to my naivete, I'm afraid not, mate. I was born on a military base with a father in up until I was a sophomore in HS gone on 6 month rotations all the way through Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, yada yada.

I'm just saying that there are other reasons to join besides the kid who thinks "I'm protecting 'Mericuh FREEDUMS!!!" and the other kid with anger issues who just wants to "go shoot towel heads."

Weheell.... looks like we got ourselves a readah

Even your fantasy life is boring..

what other reasons? "honor"? "tradition"?
if you're joining for pay and/or free college, then, oh, semper fi, go kill some arabs

how about all the homeless veterans that line the streets of our major cities? what about them?

what about the miserable condition of VA hospitals? your own country doesn't give a fuck about you

the US military is one of the most evil organizations in existence, and it's got a bunch of "muh patriotism, muh free world" retards defending it

i guess we'll see each other in syria or germany or some other "shithole" when the draft inevitably hits, so i won't bother even arguing with you, we'll both see it first hand

>what other reasons? "honor"? "tradition"?
Not quite. In my case, it has a lot more to do with having real world experience overseas in other countries, on the ground, not in a tourist attraction, etc. Especially depending on what type of job you have when you're in. We're not talking about your standard 11b job here, user, and there's a reason I'd never even consider going "Muhreens!"

My uni is all covered by scholarships, but if Uncle Sam wants to pay for me to go to grad school as well, then I'll take it.

All I'm saying is your brand of cynicism is tantamount to that of an edgy 8th grader. Growing up, we had nothing but reasonable experiences with medical care (to include some siblings who would have otherwise been rather expensive for my parents), and I'm not saying it's perfect, but neither is private insurance and I think that's a fair point to raise, certainly it is.

>What about homeless veterans?
What? I'm not saying there aren't issues, user. That's not what we were talking about.

I'm just saying your asinine comment about the only people who go in etc is so arrogant and naive.

Why not go out in the world and fucking do something, user? I'm not saying you have to necessarily agree with everything, and I'm not saying you have to despise it either, but why not do something which has an actual effect on others, and which you can (at least to the smallest extent) change the way the job is done?

If you think shitty people are in the military, then why don't you get off your lazy ass and join to try to change the culture or perception? Get your degree, go in as an officer, do your time, get a job as an S3 somewhere?

What if you want to be able to authoritatively write on geopolitical conflicts or current events later on down the line? There's a reason journalists are embedded in with soldiers, rebels, etc. there's a reason journalists were in Sarajevo during the post-Yugoslavia clusterfuck, and now in the Middle East.

Go do something, m8.

>we aren't talking about issues regarding the military, so i better not talk about any then
>asinine, arrogant, naive, lazy
keep spewing insults friend

and if i want to "authoritatively" write about conflicts, then i should definitely hang out around the US military in warzones. i'll really get a good picture of what's going on :)

But we were not initially talking about issues with the military itself, we initially were talking about the types of individuals who decide to go in. And calling something an "insult" doesn't make it empty, user. While I agree they're not nice words to say about someone's stance, they are specifically referencing what I would believe to be the most justifiable explanation for holding such a position.

Obviously you're not attempting to show any reason to believe otherwise.

Either way, I'm out of this thread. That's fine if you don't agree with me, I was just hoping to be able to get you to think a bit more about some of the people going into the Armed forces, m8.

Not everyone is a redneck screaming for "Freedums" or wanting to go work out some anger issues and kill "sand niggers."

Enjoy whatever your line of work is, maybe I'll see you in Raqqa in the near future. ;)

>redneck
never used that specific word
i speculated on common reasons why one would join the military and used a few sarcastic quips about why one would
and you project so hard you literally build an argument in your mind that i'm making, i never said only "rednecks" join the military you idiot

you know what, judging by you, maybe our military is really full of rural and suburban retards.

yeah, you can join to get an international experience but first and foremost you're a US service member, to everyone it's like seeing a hella hood black guy. they judge you immediately. they will never see you as one of them, just some american fighting wars in their country that they want to end

see you in (hopefully Berlin) but maybe raqqa, fuck germany

>dad is a writer
>mum works in the art world (manager of a circus then an art gallery)
>sister majors in fine arts
>I'm majoring in maths
>none of my family understand what I'm doing at all
>get asked questions like "are you sure you don't want to do something creative on the side?" and "did you know that x artist uses maths in their work?"
>when you tell people you're studying maths they almost always respond with "I always hated/sucked at maths" or "What is 4235425 times 5435?"
>can tell people who actually do ask you questions are just being polite and normally not making an effort to understand anything you're saying
>people who are studying the humanities think that you're just a mindless calculator and they are the only ones thinking creatively

heh

Why does anyone know that you read? I've been told twice in the last month that I look very intelligent by unread people who knew nothing about my reading habits. I can't see what they see desu

>"What is 4235425 times 5435?"
I laffed

Producing good research in Math takes more brainpower than writing an excellent book, desu

I hate to break it to you but you can't let your future and education be decided by people you will most likely see several times a year after that. Only immigrant families stick together after graduation, because the old world values family. America is the New World, get with the program.

>follow your dreams!! :')
kys

This isn't about following your dreams, fuck face. It's about being man enough to decide for yourself what you do in four bullshit years. Plenty of jobs don't even give a shit what your degree is in, they just require that you have a degree in the first place. It's also vastly easier to get a high GPA in humanities than it is in M.E, believe me the first year weeds out everyone who isn't motivated to an autistic degree (yet the hit to the GPA often means foolish undergrads can't even switch majors anymore), and there are plenty of government positions and educational tracks that place much more emphasis on GPA than challenging course load. After graduation you will understand.

>falling for the humanities majors can actually get jobs and STEM is just a meme meme

How do you even know OP can cut it in engineering with no motivation? I know plenty of people who bombed out of engineering tracks because the school admitted far more students than they have actual spots for, and needed to cut the incoming freshman engineering class by upwards of 50%, which they usually do with 500 person weed-out lectures. Schools do this all the time. Kid comes in on a scholarship with GPA requirements, loses scholarship, does not even have the grades to transfer to a different school, and ends up going to that same school for 5-6 years while paying full tuition, without ever actually making it into the proper engineering major because of the entry requirements.

You might want to go on job sites like federal jobs and see the actual GPA requirements. They don't care about comparing apples to apples, anyone with a 3.0 makes the cutoff. It's also next to impossible to get into grad school with a sub 3.0, even if one took the most difficult courses and sacrificed grades to take challenging classes. It doesn't matter that someone who took challenging classes is actually better prepared than someone who got a 4.0 in Social Studies, the system is not designed to care about that.

Like I said graduate and experience the real world for a while.

I have the same fucking problem, the best theory I could come up with was that wr use "difficult words", that they usually dont, and thus it sounds kind of fancy to them. My glasses might help them think that too.

Sucks to be you my good man. My family are at least polite enough to feign interest in what I am reading. Some of them have even done a bit of reading themselves after they asked me to recommend books that they might like. I'm also smart enough to work on getting a "real job" and also work on reading and writing. I'd say just move out and never talk to your shithead family again. Then find people with similar interests, they're out there. Everything will turn out better than you expect so long as you are willing to work to make your life better.

>Dad once said "literature is just like video games but for rich white people"
Are you brown or is your dad some sort of self-hating white cuckboi?

fpbp

audible kek
kill me

I'm a linguist in the Air Force, and I gotta say, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

is the military a good career for linguists?

You get to learn a language that they choose for you. I learned Persian. It opens many doors if you take your language studies seriously during school and forever afterward. Working in military intelligence period will broaden your network immensely for careers outside of the military. The only issue is that you work with a ton of scum who lack work ethic and barely squeaked by in school, and they hold you down because the military sometimes does not choose the worker with most work ethic for promotion or leadership positions.

I should also add that it is not "linguistics" in the actual sense of the study of languages. You are a language analyst, but called a linguist because no one knows what a linguist actually is in the military. It's essentially a translator.

if "nothing is objectively anything" then "nothing is objectively anything" is also not "objectively" you dumfuck
in other words your statement is as objectively true/false as any other statement you hypocrite

>have wrote this
kill yourself

Wowzers user, I'm considering doing linguistics in the Navy. pros/cons/funny stories?

As I said previously, it is not exactly Linguistics, it is more a job of interpretation. I would definitely suggest doing it, if you have a mind to. You get to learn a language (from Spanish to Mandarin), which I believe is one of the most marketable skills in the world (unless you get Pashtu, then you are fucked). Of course, you must pass the DLAB, which tests you on the structure of an entirely made-up language, which if you fail, means you will not become a linguist. I believe the cons are that, at least in my experience, the schooling is the most difficult military schooling that one can go to (academically), and anytime you can fail out if you are not putting forth the utmost effort. Just some suggestions is that you should be open to different cultures, and have the capability to put yourself in someone-of-a-different-culture's shoes to understand them And the context of their speech. You will work with a higher caste of individuals in comparison to the rest of the military, but that being said you should put forth effort that will be noticed by your superiors that could put your forth among your intelligent colleagues.
You must be studious with your language, and always try to get better, because you are tested yearly on your proficiency.

Good luck, if you are actually going to go for it, because it takes immense effort to learn a language in the expedited training that is required.

Nah my mom is cool as hell, she loaned me her first edition of In Cold Blood and brings a stack of books for me whenever she comes to visit. Granted she's a bit of a scatterbrain and I have like 4 copies of The Sun Also Rises, among others. Thought that counts though.

Literally nobody does this. STEM majors have 100000x more respect than humanities majors ever will.

t. humanities major

but user theyre right. Its just that people have finally woken up to the fact that STEM majors are smarter and STEM subjects are more worthwhile because they aren't subjective trash. I love literature but studying it at school is such a waste of time because its all subjective.

You're a bad philosopher. Have you considered that reading books doesn't provide electricity to a block or repair a road?

Go do something of value for society. Do everybody a favor and stay out of trying to be a philosophy teacher of any sort, though. At least until you have a better answer to the question of how one ought to live their life.

>linguist
still a GI joe, fag

you're right user. when i tell people im majoring in physics they usually say
>wow you must be really smart hehe
to which i respond
>not really hehe
or they ask if i want to be an engineer which triggers me.

Maybe physics and math are the only ones this is true for, but it also makes people, especially women, noticeably less interested in you. When i try to pick up girls i tell them im some sort of engineer because its more normie. STEMfags are seen as autists in a way that huamnities people aren't. Also, all the best bitches are studying english lit, and if youre well read enough you can pretend you also study english lit and they will like you more.

Universities lose to independent study every time (bar perhaps lab/shop work), but it's especially true in the humanities. You wind up getting fed a single narrative which inevitably leaves out things that you ought to know.

They're also not career fields that can support a large number of workers, which makes certifications worthless. You study them as a hobby and to arm yourself intellectually. You don't study them for a job.

>being an autodidact

topkek, look at this brainlet

if you are interested in philosophy, why do you care what they think user?

>needs to be spoon fed knowledge and opinions

okay pal

>lashing out because he wasted insane amounts of cash on an area that you can literally solo achieve if you have the passion

kek

Why so salty autodidacts? Oh wait, that's because you are insecure about your lack of formal education...

>he doesn't even know what I'm working on nor why
>projecting this hard because he was meme'd on

positively fuming.

>I'm not mad! you are mad

Looks like somebody got memed on
give a (You) if you agree

>>I'm not mad! you are mad

but you are mad, friend. all i see are endless appeals to authority. you think more like middle management than any writer.

thanks for the (You), nice dubs

.. okay?

>brother makes fun of me for not wanting to make a start up
Your brother is an absolute normie
>It's getting ridiculous how little people think of humanities in this day and age
It's just better, op, it's just better.

Here's how I see it: If science is the answer to the question of "What is [x]?", then philosophy is the answer to the question of "What do you do with [x]?"

[x] in this case is your life. How do you help insure that the society that you live in isn't falling apart? How do you maintain relationships that will be vital to your stability in the future? You need to get a practical job. Good philosophers are smart enough to realize that they can't fixate on what they want RIGHT NOW. I don't think that your family is wrong.

>t's getting ridiculous how little people think of humanities in this day and age.

On the contrary, the degree programs are earning the nickname "barista degrees" for a reason, and it's not because schools are refusing to hire a sufficient number of history teachers. Worse, the people who are populating the field are often a bunch of self-absorbed, sheltered, spiteful Marxists (thoroughly demonstrated to be a catastrophically broken philosophical lens over the past century) who are the least qualified people to tell you how society functions.

The presence of humanities on universities are in need of a nuking.

>finishing an engineering degree
>study philosophy instead of getting a job
>parents are very supportive
>mum suggest I should aim for a master's degree even though I'm only 1 year in

I think it's because they believe I'm depressed desu

>If science is the answer to the question of "What is [x]?", then philosophy is the answer to the question of "What do you do with [x]?"
this is the opposite

This

How do you even figure that?

Science: What would be a highly efficiently mixture for fuel?
Philosophy: How do you apply that fuel for the benefit of society?

Science: What's the raw data behind this social issue?
Philosophy: How do we interpret and apply the data acquired by science?

Science: How do you make nanomachines?
Philosophy: How should we implement nanomachines in a way that's beneficial for society? What problems need to be solved by nanomachines?

Science: Describe the world
Philosophy: Describe how to behave in the world

Science is a spook

Philosophy without something that can be supported by science is just masturbation.

Science: What would be a highly efficiently mixture for fuel?
Economics: How do you apply that fuel for the benefit of society?

Science: What's the raw data behind this social issue?
Also Science: How do we interpret and apply the data acquired by science?

Science: How do you make nanomachines?
Also Science: How should we implement nanomachines in a way that's beneficial for society? What problems need to be solved by nanomachines?

Science: Describe the world
Philosophy: Describe how to behave in the world