What I Think About Philosophy- Jersey Flight

Marx has this famous quote...

"Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." Theses On Feuerbach, paragraph 11

Philosophy has a direction. I posit that philosophy leads us back to life, which in turn, leads us back to the world. If philosophy is good for anything then it must be good for awareness. But what does this mean? It means we awaken to the reality in which we exist (some might call this a system); it means we realize our oppression... after all, what good is philosophy if it cannot make us aware of oppression? What if it can only oppress? If this was the nature of philosophy then it would have no distinction from that of religion. (Given) there are many different directions that one might go in philosophy, but my claim is that there is a hierarchy, in this sense philosophy must make contact with life, precisely because life is what we are, precisely because philosophy is life (without life there would be no philosophy).

It is a strange game to gamble on the semantics of words like truth, only to be the subject of a system which denies the power of this game. This makes us stupid, and I contend that philosophers are supposed to be wise.

What I will call "systems of power," these literally dominate our lives. A vision of reality is injected into us, and very few understand at the level of this injection. We mistake our impressions of the world (our injections) for the world itself... but how foolish and naive are we... what about the controllers? What about those who figured out how to inject us with what they want us to believe? Does the direction of our philosophy make us aware of control or does it make us the subjects of control? [Indeed, who can perceive this?]

Philosophers are largely stupid because they pit mind against mind, they do not know how to work together (this limits the ground they can cover, it restricts their ability to accomplish).

I contend that philosophy is premised on life and life is premised on the world. A philosopher then, is one who is concerned with the nature and quality of life, and thus, the nature and quality of the world. I am the subject of a social system of power, but if I am a good philosopher I will strive to deconstruct this system, not only for myself but for the good of my fellow creatures, even as my good is bound up in the good of the whole, I will seek to free myself from that which restricts my life. However, it seems that philosophy (what it has become, or perhaps has always been) is the kind of game one plays in order to forget that one is the subject of power. Philosophy (in its present bourgeois form) is the kind of game one plays in order to restrict what one sees. Instead of feeling the authenticity of a lament at the clattering of one's chains, one has learned how to be complacent; one has learned blindness, one can now utter that one does not have chains! No, my friends, this is not philosophy, philosophy learns to see the terror and ugliness of the world, it teaches us to resent our chains; it teaches us where and when to apply resistance; it offers a more calculated and targeted response to the systems and agents of power; from it and though it, we learn that resistance is moral because it acts in favor of life!

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