lukass

So I am beginning to think that Heracleitus may be correct about philosophy, it may be mental masturbation at the end of the day. That isn't quite correct, it feels less like masturbation than it does something akin to a harpsichord brought out to entertain company. It is certainly not a serious pursuit, but rather something done to provide a moment of novelty to those nearby. I guess that would make it mental mutual masturbation. While I like the alliteration of the phrase, I can't help but imagine that there should be more to it. It should not merely be an activity to show how well educated or well read you are, but something more than that. It seems like it is never done to provide answers, but just done to ask questions that make the asker seem clever because they are poorly worded and stupid. What makes me more infuriated is that any attempt at having any kind of deep or meaningful discussion of the nature of anything is met with one of two responses. Either it is immediately read as the aforementioned attempt to be clever, is acknowledged as such, and then there is some reciprocation of an off topic nature (since meaningful discussion would interfere with our philosophical cock measuring contest) and then the conversation goes back to meaningless smalltalk. The other response is of frustration with why anyone would want to talk about the nature of anything. While I certainly understand the pragmatic or hedonistic impulse, I find it depressing that I find myself talking about nothing so often. I wish this had a point other than merely expressing my frustration with this phenomena, but I am afraid that I am a huge hypocrite and I have just said nothing.

/L