Philosophy First

This is an intro to philosophy by Das Niel. While I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to give anything but their own perspective on life, others will claim that there is an objectively best way to present this information.

I say fuck them, and here’s my way.

I do truly hope it helps you, but if not, there are plenty of other places to learn philosophy, and I recommend you find some way that resonates with you.

Philosophy is the art of thinking. It’s not about arriving at any specific conclusions, but the process of refining and shaping thoughts itself.

There are a lot of ways to think about things, and thinking about things differently develops new neural pathways in your brain.

While you may not agree with a certain conclusion, some of the sourcing, etc., understanding different philosophies gives you bits and pieces of logical frameworks that you can use later on in a situation that’s more relevant to you.

Much like a rock musician who doesn't intend to create blues music may study the blues to help develop their unique sound, you can study other people’s philosophies to help shape your unique perspective.

The only difference between philosophy and any other art is that it’s universally produced and consumed by all humans. Thus, it’s fundamentally the most powerful.

A thought can transcend the language that it’s written in, jump off the page, and into your soul. The internet and ability to instantly translate anything gives people the ability to communicate powerful thoughts with billions of other people instantly.

And this is why no one teaches common philosophy. It’s all svunty academics gatekeeping the good stuff with a bunch of rich white dude takes on being a piece of shit.

Academic philosophy has become entrenched with our society’s needs for absolute answers to justify being shitty to each other. Academia in general has become more about telling people what to think than how to think.

Instead of teaching philosophy like the diverse art that is, encouraging everyone to shape their own perspectives, they dogmatically assert what is the best form of reasoning and dismiss all the rest.

And that’s at the collegiate level, while they hardly give kids access to any philosophical education before college.

When you finally get there, you follow some arbitrary curriculum designed for thousands of people, which is no way to learn such an intimate thing. It also heavily favors certain political and socioeconomic outcomes.

How you think shapes your entire reality. As humans, we don’t experience reality, we experience our perception of it. And our perception is subconsciously determined by our neural pathway availability.

If we haven’t thought about something in a certain before, we can totally miss things that are happening in the reality that we experience every day.

You have more influence than you could have ever thought possible without the tools that philosophy offers you.

And those tools aren’t just guidelines for morality or daily habits as philosophy is often reduced to today. It’s about giving your mind more food. Understanding different people’s perspectives, even if you disagree with them, helps you greatly. Not because it helps you address that perspective directly if you need to, though it does do that, but because neural pathway development is a very real thing.

When we consume and create philosophy, we’re creating pathways that our brain can then use to process reality going forward. It’s not about accepting any conclusions, it’s about recognizing thought structures and nuance. In doing so, we give our brain more neural pathways and the ability to subconsciously and effortlessly understand situations and make decisions better.

I’m a critical realist and an omnist within that perspective. If you read though my subsection on this page, I’ll explain my current philosophy to the best of my ability.

But I bring it up here to say this; humans are dumb as shit. Even the smartest ones are just picking their preferred way to be stupid, and you absolutely have every right to do the same.

However, just as it’s rare for an artist to pick up a guitar or a brush and be a virtuoso without practice, you should consider studying some of the billions of people who came before you copy someone else’s style or fall into classic silly logical traps.

Philosophy helps you express your soul in ways that the most people possible can understand. And it helps you understand others in the same sense. It’s the root of all science, all study, and all society.

I’m not afraid to rock a tinfoil hat, so I have no problem with saying that philosophy is marginalized specifically because of the fundamental power it gives everyone to express themselves and see through other’s bullshit.

Your philosophy is how you think. If you haven’t trained your mind properly or spent time ruminating on your own morality, you’re just skating through life with whatever bumpers society offers, which is currently terrifying consumer authoritarianism.

This section will present you with tools that society does its best to keep from the masses, so you can truly decide how to think for yourself.