Science (Philosophy) is bad | an Essay

originally published on 08/12/2022

Introduction

This is an “essay” with an inflammatory title so that it may grab the attention of the reader even before it begins. Naturally, what this text aims to do, after grabbing the reader’s attention, is to explain what it means whenever it makes use of its title as its main thesis.

In short - science is bad. In parentheses I have provided Philosophy as a primary example of science’s badness, however, due to the fact that Philosophy is a science (as are all other sciences), it will be a universal example, being appropriate for all possible fields of science.

While I am claiming that science is bad, I am not claiming that science IS bad. Science, as a concept, as what is described in the dictionary whenever one’s curiosity is piqued and they check the definition, or even science as what people think science is, is not actually bad. Science IS, and the fact that science exists is not bad - in fact I’d say that it is good.

Unfortunately, there are many things that are good in theory and are bad in practice. Or, rather, there are many things that exist in theory, however every attempt at implementing them into practice, every attempt at making them real and tangible, rather than being just theory, has been very bad and ill-fated. Science, similarly to those aforementioned things that you doubtlessly wound up associating with something (as an example, Communism), is good in theory and bad in its implementation.

With that distinction being made, I will now regale you with the tale that led me down the path of science and, ultimately, forced me into making this unflattering discovery that I have come to share with you today. After fleeing the United Kingdom’s dreadful Higher Education System, which sought to wrench any and all individuality and soul away from me as an attempt at turning me into an efficient worker drone, capable of exclusively following orders and doing things as I was told to do them, I wound up back in my homeland.

With the knowledge that anything related to a craft, when studied in university, would lead to dire results - castration of one’s imagination, an immeasurable stunting of one’s ethical apparatus and a pronounced regression into a less sapient being - I resolved to pursue other things. Among those things was Philosophy, which had advertised itself as the thinking man’s endeavor, as the task of those who defined the world, as the means of discovering truth and unveiling the mysteries of reality on a level beyond what other sciences were capable of. That’s good advertisement, and I was swayed.

Not exclusively, of course. I had, and still hold, desires to pursue writing, to dabble in literature. Thus, I concluded that I needed to read and write. A lot. Where does one do that? In university! But maybe I did not want to do a lot of technical writing, as that would not be conducive to an improvement in relation to the telling of stories. So I found the least technical thing I could think of - Philosophy, for it supposedly involves exclusively thinking - and signed up. I would read a lot of stuff, and I would learn how to formulate my sentences and how to ask meaningful questions. After all, Philosophy is known for doing just that - asking questions.

And then it started dawning on me. Slowly, but with an irreversible certainty, I started realizing that I had been wrong. Sorely mistaken, in fact.

Before I proceed, a disclaimer - this is not a proper essay. This is not a proper text of any sort that I know of, with the possible exception of a “think piece”. I just had a thought, sat down and expanded upon it over the course of a day that wound up being relatively free. Maybe that thought has some merit, or maybe it doesn’t? Either way, I feel as though I am going to uncover, or bring attention to, a very big problem with the way things work in contemporary society.

So here I am, trudging onward, taken by an inescapable ennui, studying Philosophy (NOTE - treat Philosophy as a placeholder and know that it can be replaced with any other field of science without losing the context of what is being spoken of). What does that entail, though? Well, that’s what I am here to tell you, am I not?

Good and Bad

Unfortunately, before we get into any real talking about why X is bad (X in this case being science, or more specifically, philosophy), I must tell you how good and bad will be treated in this essay.

As is known, there are many ways of treating something as either good or bad. Some might even state that good and bad are not appropriate words, as they are so muddied by the vast number of meanings they are associated with that it is far too unproductive to make a distinction. For that reason I will simply tell you what good and what bad is, in the context of this text, and I will hope that you understand what I am saying.

Good will be applied to things that have a beneficial effect. Bad will be applied to things that have a negative effect. Good are those things that improve other things in a quantifiable way. If not quantifiable, then in a comparative manner. Bad, then, would apply to things that lead to a degradation of other things, again in a quantifiable or comparative way.

So, an example. A good thing is the increase of the clarity of sound accumulated by a mobile phone - the microphone of that mobile phone. It is comparative, and even quantifiable, for a phone from the year 2004 has a certain microphone, with a quality of X, whereas a phone from the year 2020 has a different, far superior microphone, with a quality of X + Y. The change is beneficial, because it provides clarity to the audio that is recorded by the microphone, meaning that when talking to another person on one’s phone, both participants will hear each other better, when using phone models from 2020, than they would have heard one another if their phones were models from 2004.

A bad thing would be, if we make use of a phone as our example, the degradation of the sturdiness of phones. A phone model from the year 2020 is prone to breaking in such a manner, when dropped, that it is going to lose out on just how functional it is, as it has no buttons and its screen is what one interacts with. A phone model from the year 2004 is far less prone to breaking in a manner that affects its functionality, as the screen is not only smaller, but framed by a built-in casing that protects the phone from damage. Additionally, if the 2004 phone model falls apart, it can be put back together with far greater ease than the 2020 phone model.

So, I have presented two examples of good and bad things. Note that these things are not indicative of the overall goodness or badness of the object they pertain to - I have not made a conclusion on whether or not the phone from 2020 is bad or good, I have simply pointed at something that is part of that phone - be it its microphone or its proclivity to remain whole - and have decreed which is good and which is bad, via quantification and/or comparison.

To state whether or not the phone from 2020 is wholly bad, or wholly good, I would need to examine all of its components with great care, concluding whether they are bad or good, and then I would need to make a comparison between the number of good things and the number of bad things, with whichever winds up being prevalent being awarded recognition - if there were more bad things than there were good things, then the phone from 2020 would be recognized as bad. Via recognition of a thing as good or bad, it is made either good or bad, thus the phone from 2020 would be bad.

Science’s badness (and all interconnected reasons)

Let us not waste any more time defining things before getting to them. It is time to point at things within science, to recognize them as bad and thus render them “bad”.

The first thing I would like to take a look at is the language utilized by science. It is well known to almost anyone who might wind up reading this text that science makes use of terminology, of a specific jargon. That does not extend exclusively to science, but science is the worst offender.

So, by utilizing terminology, science erects a barrier around itself, presenting an arbitrary requirement that could easily be removed if there was a semblance of desire for its removal, which arbitrary requirement necessitates the existence of universities. But I am getting ahead of myself, if only slightly.

When a person is presented with an unknown word, they try to glean what it means from the context of the sentence it was presented within. If they cannot do that, that person is prone to being unable to understand the meaning of the sentence that is presented to them. If that sentence contains a multitude of unknown words, then that person is more and more likely to be unable to understand the meaning of that sentence.

It is, essentially, the crux of other languages. I might understand the grammatical rules of another language, but if I do not know what the words mean, then I can not understand that language. I might understand the grammatical rules of English, and I might be able to speak English, but whenever a sentence in English contains 5 words and I do not understand 4 of them, I am prone to being unable to understand that sentence. In fact, it is not just a proneness, but, rather, a certainty. I will not understand the sentence that is being presented to me.

So, then, let’s return to terminology. Terms - those being words - make up terminology. The quality of dictionaries worldwide is astounding, as whenever an explanation is provided through the utilization of the word that is being examined… The explanation is far poorer than it ought to be. But let’s ignore that fact and head on straight to the important thing - terms are words with meaning.

Terms can be the same words as other words that show up in the language spoken by people. However, those terms do not need to have the same meaning as the words they are identical with. One could have the term for postmodern… Which would have a different meaning from the word postmodern. After all, there is postmodern art, there’s the meaning of the word - after the modern - and there’s postmodern philosophy, or a plethora of other postmodern things.

The meaning, or what that term denotes, is different. Postmodern in art is not the same as postmodern in philosophy. That’s okay, however, because if we make use of dictionaries we can solve that problem, much like the manner in which we solve the problem of not knowing a word in a foreign language.

Yes… But no, not really. Here comes the funny part, as I have decided to dub it, even though it is more sad than funny. There might be a philosophical dictionary somewhere out there. There might even be a “Terminology of Art: An art theorist’s Dictionary”, however… Well, those are not as useful as ordinary dictionaries. Why?

Because every theorist uses words in whatever manners they desire. One might have history as it is according to Hegel, then there might be history as it is according to Dilthey, then there might be history as it is according to Marx or Aristotle. Those are only four possible definers of history - and there are more than four philosophers. If we were to compile all the definitions of history provided by all the philosophers who have written or spoken of history, we would have an entire book.

Thus, compiling a dictionary that sheds light upon the meaning of the terms used in Philosophy is going to be a nigh-impossible task, and then it would be an impossibly impractical dictionary to use, as it would probably take up an entire library. So we can’t have a philosophical dictionary, right? As unfortunate as it is, it appears as though that’s not a possibility.

Now, we had one thing that created a line of separation - the distance between the person who understood the terms and the one who did not. It was a bit teeny and quite tiny, but it was a line of separation, as people who can speak a bit of Spanish are not treated the same as people who can speak Spanish fluently. Fortunately, though, the former could grab a dictionary and walk through that line with no great issue. Thus, the separation was faint.

However, that line thickens when the absence of one’s ability to use a dictionary appears - and not because folks don’t know how to use dictionaries, but because there just aren’t dictionaries. Now, the only way for a person to understand the meaning of what is being said to them is to have the other speaker transition to a language that is spoken by the understander. The Spanish speaker starts explaining the meaning of those Spanish words to the person who can’t quite speak Spanish… In an understandable for the other person language.

That works, because words tend not to be too complex, they tend to have easily graspable meanings. However, in Philosophy, that’s not the case. Some terms in Philosophy require hours upon hours of explanation, and even then they might not be understood by the one listening to the explanation… Because to explain a term, people really like using other terms.

Thus, we discover the first BAD thing about Philosophy. It uses a language that is far inferior to other languages, due to the fact that it is far more complex than those languages. But why is that so? Why is it that in Philosophy, there are terms for all kinds of things, which terms are then explained through the use of other terms? And why must someone else tell me what that term means? Why does the user of the term not explain what the term means?

The question here is why doesn’t every philosophical work that makes use of terminology come with understandable explanations of the terms contained within? Why is it that these ‘great’ philosophers have deemed it appropriate to use terms without first defining said terms clearly?

The line that separates people grows ever thicker. To read a book, a person does not need a dictionary. To read a book in a foreign language, a person might need a dictionary, depending on how skilled at using the foreign language they are. To read a book about Philosophy, that person will either need to read a number of other books before reading said book, or they will need to have someone explain the book to them over an amount of time greater than what would be needed to read the book.

Is that a good book, then? If one can read a book without requiring other tools, and can still derive understanding of something out of said book, then why is it that that same person needs to read another book with a plethora of tools so that they can derive understanding of something out of that book? It seems as though something has happened, and that thing has led to degradation.

But let’s not be hasty, we can not compare ordinary books written in 2020 with philosophical books written in 2020. In fact, we can’t call a book ordinary, or rather we can’t call it non-philosophical, seeing as philosophy permeates everything, but let’s allow ourselves to do it. Let’s take a look at a philosophical book from 1781 AD and compare it to a philosophical book from 375 BC.

You might notice that the book from 375 BC is written in such a manner that it is digestible and understandable, and there is a very pronounced lack of unexplained terms within. You might also notice that the book in question is Plato’s “The Republic”, but that is beyond the point. When we take the book from 1781 AD, you will notice that it is so heavily packed with terminology that is loosely explained, that is so indigestible and incomprehensible that it requires at least three re-reads before any semblance on understanding of the subject matter can be gleaned. You might also notice that the book in question is Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”.

So then we have a clear-cut case of something bad - because the understandability, digestibility and clarity of the subject matter in these philosophical books is comparable, but, unfortunately, the comparison is not kind for the latter. The understandability, digestibility and clarity of the “Critique of Pure Reason” is bad, for it, as a philosophical book, exhibits an impressive degradation from what is displayed by “The Republic”.

Right, so I have presented one reason as to why Philosophy is bad. However, whilst doing so, I also presented another reason, even if it was a bit veiled.

Separation. People who speak the language of Philosophy, who wield its terminology, are prone to wind up incomprehensible for those who do not. If I were to approach a Philosopher and attempt to speak to them, they will use terminology that is foreign to me, and thus I will not understand what they are trying to tell me. As a result of that, I am likely to find the encounter unpleasant or pointless, as a result of which I will conclude that I cannot talk to that person about a plethora of things that I can talk to other people about, purely because of the fact that they will talk to me about it in a manner that is incomprehensible to me. I will, then, be more likely to avoid interacting with that person than I would be if I could understand everything that was being said by them.

But let us not be convinced by that. Let us take a little gander at something else that is bound to the first reason. Someone else needs to explain the terminology of the books to you, so that you can understand the books. In fact, that someone is explaining the books to you, not the terminology. Who is that someone? A university lecturer, of course.

Whenever a person goes to university to study Philosophy, their lectures are all a vast collection of explanations of terms and books that the person, now a student, needs to read. Instead of reading the book and understanding it myself, I need to read it, fail to understand it, go to my lectures, be told what the book means, and then understand it. Or, rather, learn what my lecturer is telling me to understand so that I may later reproduce it on the test - courtesy of “Standardized Testing, all humans are the same and work in the exact same manner, and their value can be measured by their ability to stuff information in their craniums as well as to reproduce it - you are not a human being, you are an USB drive that contains information”... Oh dear, I went on a bit of a tangent.

Either way, as stated, the lecturer explains their understanding of the book or the terms in the book. It could be some common understanding of said book and/or terms, but it is still someone else’s understanding. It is being presented to the student who is then forced to lap it up like a starving dog, for if they do not reproduce that information on the test, they will fail. Of course, there is the alternative of understanding the book by oneself, but that will take a lot of time. And time is limited, especially for a student, such as myself, studying Philosophy.

Let me provide you with an example. This hypothetical student has 7 days in a week, each made up of 24 hours. That would be 168 hours total. Now, that student needs to sleep - that is well known - so let us subtract 8 hours out of every day, because this person would like to not worsen their health. We subtract 56 hours out of that 168 and are left with 112 hours.

Then, it is appropriate to subtract around 30 minutes out of each day for use of the Toilet - healthy people tend to use the toilet more than 2 times a day, and not exclusively for urination. So let’s say that this student drinks as much water as is recommended daily, and needs to urinate relatively often. In addition to that, the student needs to visit the toilet for the purposes of excretion once per day, too. We will be generous by saying 30 minutes, even if it might take less, as we will add the time needed to wash one’s hands after the ordeal.

So, that’s 3.5 hours. We are left with 108.5 hours. A person needs to eat, so let’s subtract a number from that - let’s say 1 hour per day for the consumption and procural of food. We are going to assume that this student is affluent and can perpetually order food, without having to cook, as that would boost that aforementioned hour to 2 or more. We subtract 7 hours from the 108.5 that we have and are left with 101.5.

Then, personal hygiene. A person probably does not shower every day, even if I’d deem it appropriate to shower daily, but let’s say that this person takes their health seriously - including their dental health - meaning that they take around 10 minutes to do their morning preparation and another 20, on average, to do their evening preparation (included a shower every other day). Another 3.5 hours, and we drop under 100 for a total left of 98.

So, this student goes to university. Unfortunately, this university (which is TOTALLY hypothetical) does not have a proper campus, instead having two different locations that are at around 45 minutes worth of distance, from one another, on foot. But, let us face it, the student we speak of does not live right next to one of those locations. Let’s be generous and say that the student lives at a location that affords them the ability to reach either destination in 30 minutes.

How many times must the student visit these buildings in a week (hypothetical, of course)? Well, location 1 has 4 visitations, while location 2 has 2. That’s 6 times 30, times 2, as the student needs to go back home after being done with studying. Subtract 6 hours out of that 98, down to 92. Then, we’re going to take into account how much time the student spends at these locations.

6 hours for Monday, 4 hours for Tuesday, 9 hours for Wednesday, 9 hours for Thursday, resulting in a total of 28 hours. Subtract that from the 92 that we had and we are down to 64 hours. But one does not exclusively go to lectures, no. Students have to prepare for their lectures. And preparing for Philosophy lectures involves reading. Reading a lot.

Let’s make use of a random week in this hypothetical student’s student life. For this week, that student is tasked with reading 15 pages of Descartes, 20 pages of Kant (so essentially 60, because that author had no regard for the time of his readers), 12 pages of Devitt, a generous 6 pages of Herder, 18 pages of Schutz, the ENTIRETY of Guardini’s “The End of the Modern World” (95 pages), the ENTIRETY of Kozelek’s “Sediments of Time: On Possible Histories” (153 pages). That makes for a total of 319 pages. If we take the average reading speed to be 250 words per minute, and if we take the average number of words per page to be 400 (as philosophical texts tend to despise pleasant formatting), we are left with 510 minutes worth of reading for that week.

But who goes to university and reads stuff just because? No, if you are going to read stuff at university, you read it so that you either remember it, and are capable of reproducing it, or you read it until you understand it. After all, half of the lectures this student is going to require that they take part in discussions and demonstrate an understanding of the material. So they won’t need 510 minutes of reading, they’ll need to read everything AT least twice. That 510 minutes turns into 1020 minutes.

So there go another 17 hours, leaving us down at 47. Did I mention that this is all mandatory reading? Did I mention that there is also recommended reading? Did I mention that the hypothetical student at this hypothetical university also needs to present a text, or a section of a text, at a lecture… Roughly once per week?

How long does it take a person to prepare themselves for the presentation of, say, Hegel? Or Kant? They definitely need to read the text a few times, until they have, at least, gleaned an understanding of it. Then they need to write down some notes… But it would be a lot better if they did not write down some notes and, instead, just wrote their presentation - which is not done in PowerPoint, by the way - in their notebook or on some word processor of their choice.

Let’s say that the speed at which a person writes in-depth essays or articles, which this student of ours is essentially doing, is 5 words per minute. Let’s consider that this student needs to write 1000 words (roughly 4 pages) for their presentation. It would be 3 hours and 20 minutes, but I’ve not met any person to write a proper essay in 3 hours and 20 minutes, so let’s say… 4 hours, and we’re being very, very confident in that student’s abilities to analyze and then synthesize philosophical texts that feature single terms which take up more than 120 minutes to explain properly. But let’s be confident.

We are down to 43 hours left. I did not consider the recommended literature, but we could argue that this is a very good student - after all, we were confident enough to consider them able to write a good presentation on Hegel in 4 hours - so they will doubtlessly read the recommended literature. Let’s double that 1020 minutes I mentioned.

Down to 26 hours. But it was mentioned that this person lives somewhere. Does this person need to clean their dwelling, wash their dishes, do laundry, get dressed? If so, well, that’s more time we should take away from them. Cleaning one’s dwelling can take up a decent amount of time out of a day, so can doing one’s laundry, so does washing dishes. Getting dressed and undressed also takes some time.

So 30 minutes per week for housekeeping, 30 minutes per week for laundry, 5 minutes per day for dishes - for 35 a week, 10 minutes per day for getting ready to go out - for at least 40 per week - that’s more time that’s being cut off that 26 hours until the amount of time left for that person is less than 24 hours.

But what is the purpose of this lengthy and seemingly pointless exposition? It is meant to showcase a mathematical conclusion reached by whoever was devising the schedule that is to be provided to students. In theory, it is possible to do things in such a manner so as to allow oneself the luxury of having at least 23 hours of free time.

However, that theory ignores one important tidbit. Humans don’t really do things like that. If I were to take myself as an example, I would say that 8 hours of sleep is not quite enough - especially not when I am awakened by an alarm, which is an artificial awakening and leaves me groggy. I would also posit that one needs to spend a lot more time on eating their food, at least 30 minutes per meal, because eating quickly is not healthy. I would posit that one needs to brush their teeth thrice a day, not once, and I would suggest taking a shower once per day, not once every other day. I would also suggest engaging in physical activity - doing sports, if one can so call it - at least three times per week, otherwise one is prone to worsening their health.

In fact, it would appear that a lot of the things that were taken into account when that calculation was made did not consider the well-being of the student. Or, rather, it did consider the well-being of that student… At the expense of their life.

Here comes the second reason for Philosophy’s badness. The destruction of one’s life. This hypothetical student is left with a few hours out of this whole week, but they aren’t a whole portion of time - one does not get the entirety of Sunday and Saturday off, one gets an hour of free time in the morning, an hour in the evening, and maybe more than that on the Weekend, but definitely not the whole Weekend, as there’s work to be done. That means this student can not really do anything with the free time they have left after doing everything they need to do to be a student.

That’s all well and good - one could argue that around 24 hours of free time, if interspersed sporadically throughout a busy week, can be enough for winding down and deriving joy from living, if with a bit of difficulty. Unfortunately, there’s a catch. A person does not remain a student for their entire lifetime. In fact, even this affluent student will not remain a student for all their life. They, supposedly, need to think of a career.

Thus, they need to work on being more than just a student. And that would be additional work that needs to be done, on top of the already considerable amount of effort that is being invested into being a student. A Philosophy student has 2 whole options - either become a teacher or continue down the path of Philosophy.

To be a teacher - which entails being a school teacher, not some other, funky type of teacher - one needs to take a plethora of additional courses and do a lot of extra work. Let’s say that this hypothetical student of ours has to add 6 hours per week to their schedule, which 6 hours are dedicated to visiting lectures. Then, let’s say that this student increases the amount of reading and preparation they need to do by a large margin - as being a teacher involves not only knowing the theory, but also being able to present it to people.

People, mind you, who do not have the time or patience to deal with the terminology of Philosophy, who will most likely wind up being bored to death by the theoretical drivel that one might present to them, and who need to be kept engaged through use of various techniques. Thus, the student needs to take some additional psychology classes, or, if there are none available, they need to do research on their own. They also need to get into children’s psychology.

But why, one might ask, would a person need to do that much extra work? Well, because that student wants to be a good teacher, for all people have dignity and would like to consider themselves dignified (otherwise they can’t really live with themselves), and doing things in a manner that is considered not good is undignified, for this student has once been a schoolkid, and that same student has gone through many teachers, and has had the opportunity to compare their methods to one another, thus concluding which were good and which were bad.

So if that student were to approach the task of teaching in a certain manner, it could be bad, which is undignified, and the student, nay, the human does not desire that. Thus, the student will invest great effort into becoming a good teacher, so that said student can have peace of mind. But how many hours are left for themselves? Well, it looks like the amount that had been reached has wound up even smaller than before, perhaps two times tinier. 12 hours, spread across 7 days, in tiny pockets.

That’s not enough time for a human being to function properly. After all, there’s the concept of leisure-time, and 12 hours of leisure time per week are too few. So preparing oneself to become a teacher is very rough on one’s psyche.

But what about those who want to be Philosophers? Well, they will need to figure out how to make money - after all, money is life in contemporary society (as of December, 2022) - and doing that in the field of Philosophy is quite challenging. They could either pursue academic goals, to remain within the university and become a lecturer, or they could find realization outside of university.

In both cases, however, they need to do something that is at least one margin greater than what a student who is being a student for the sake of being a student is doing. They need to excel and strive for excellence. Positions in universities are SUPPOSEDLY awarded based on competencies or contests - and to become competent enough to compete with others, one needs to really ham it up.

Read more than just the recommended literature and the mandatory literature. Visit lecturers in their offices. Interact with colleagues and develop rapport with them. If the people working in the university like that student, they will probably be more likely to give them a position when the time comes - after all, bias is a very powerful thing.

The amount of time needed for that is far greater than what a student has at their disposal. In fact, it is far greater than any human being has at their disposal, as the act of Networking is an infinite thing - one makes a connection and needs to maintain it, otherwise it degrades and stops being a connections, much like friendships - and the MORE connections one has, the higher their chances of succeeding are.

Or the student could be planning on leaving university and pursuing other opportunities, though ones still related to their field of study. Philosophy might award them with the option to: write for academic journals; write academic works; devise a means of utilizing it in another field.

But writing for journals means that the individual interested in writing for these journals must first find out that they exist. Unfortunately, that’s a task in and of itself. Then, that person needs to find many such journals, so that they might have more opportunities to write things and to make money off of those things, as their articles might get denied in one journal. That requires networking, as well as extra time spent researching the topic of the article-to-be-written and the time it takes to write that article.

Time required? Infinite, because, once again, there’s the aspect of required excellence. Competition exists, still, and thus one needs to be absolutely immaculate, incredibly good at doing what they’re doing, otherwise they’re not likely to get what they want.

Writing academic works will, most likely, require that the student gets married and treats their spouse as the breadwinner, while that student spends years writing a book which, if approved for publishing, winds up purchased by very few - those being other Philosophers and people interested in the field, but not professionally entangled with it.

The hypothetical student will need to do that, because the amount of effort required for the creation of an academic work is incredible. The aforementioned “Critique of Pure Reason” took Kant a staggering 12 years to write… Well, maybe 11 years and a half to conceive of, half a year to write, but still - it took him a LONG time to do so. Due to the fact that stuff needs to be considered good to be published by a publisher, that’s what the competition for this student’s academic works will be - Kant and company. So there’s a lot of work that needs to be done for that level of quality to be reached… Which requires immense amounts of time. More than 24 hours per week.

But, if we make some concessions, that student might be able to do those things. That student might be able to dedicate all their time to accomplishing those goals - most of which are not set by them, but rather by the conditions of their existence, and as such are external and do not provide an internal drive for that student, which drive would allow them to derive joy and pleasure from the activities themselves; after all, one NEEDS to have a diploma, because that opens up new opportunities for job finding, for the discovery of BETTER jobs, which provide MORE money, thus making those students’ lives better - but what then?

After becoming a teacher, does that ex-student get to relax? No, not really. After becoming a lecturer, does that ex-student get to have some time to breathe? No, not really. Not unless they want to allow themselves to be deposed by someone better than them. Thus, they need to constantly work on maintaining their goodness. That might be a bit off-topic, but it is still related. Either way, it is possible, in theory, to be a good student.

However, it appears as though being a student is quite different from being a human being, let alone being a good student. After all, a student has no need for social connections, especially not ones outside of their field of study. In addition to that, the student has no need for leisure and recreational activities. Maybe that creature does have the need for either of those things, in small quantities, but they definitely have no need for both of them.

So students are not actually human beings. Or, rather, being a student robs one of their humanity… But no, becoming a student is treated as a choice, thus becoming a student necessitates a descent into inhumanity. Though let’s not be so rude to students (and myself), maybe they do retain their humanity via social encounters and what little enjoyment they can derive from scrolling social media (as there’s barely time for anything aside from that in regards to recreational activities)...

Naturally, one can’t have a good social encounter that doesn’t last at least an hour, if not more. There are dynamics to those that necessitate a length of time. There’s ice that needs to be broken, even if the people in question know each other, but prior to that ice’s shattering one needs to follow etiquette, so realistically this student, who is conscious of their health, will be able to have 1 outing with a friend.

But people don’t have 1 friend, no. They have many friends, right? They do… But a friendship needs to be kept up, does it not? And people keep friendships up by interacting with those who consider them friends. However, if the number of people with whom one can meet in a week is 1, then that person will either wind up forced into having 1 good friend OR a number of friends.

Then there’s this other issue. If one has no time to do anything but engage in Philosophy, what will that person talk to their friends about? They’re not reading fiction, they’re not watching shows or playing games, they’re not keeping track of the World Cup, they’re not doing things that would render them likely to wind up in situations that can then be retold… The conversations that can be had between these friends grow fewer and fewer, since that student can talk all about Philosophy, but their adoption of the terminology associated with Philosophy leads to them being incoherent for their friend, meaning that they can’t really talk about Philosophy.

And even if they try simplifying things, even if they manage to overcome the issue of terminology, the student has no guarantee that their friend will be open to the approach that is taken by Philosophy. Philosophy likes delving into uncertainties and questioning things. People, however, like having certainties and don’t like it when the foundations of their lives are prodded, be it by questions or other implements. Thus, talking to a wannabe-Philosopher about Philosophy, and not being a Philosopher, or a wannabe-Philosopher yourself is not entirely enjoyable.

There was a line of separation that I mentioned a while ago, and I said that it thickens with every passing word you, dear reader, read. Indeed, it has become so girthy that it is similar to a road’s lane, rather than a line. That’s the line of separation between a Philosopher (read: “Scientist/Expert”) and a person that is not such. One’s friendships from before enrolling in university fall off like ripe pears and then waste away or are collected by someone else, and the Philosopher is left on their side of the road…

With the other Philosophers. That creates the fabled bubble. Philosophers communicate with Philosophers and, rarely, other people. Thus, there’s a group - the group of the Philosophers - and another group - the group of everyone else. With the lack of understanding that everyone else has of the Philosophers, and the thinly veiled contempt that many Philosophers display, be it consciously or not, for the uneducated masses, the separation only grows.

And so how is it a good thing for society, which is characterized as good due to its unity, to get chopped up into different groups that have their own interests, which do not coincide with one another, who have reasons to dislike one another, and who are largely separate from one another? It is not. It is a bad thing.

I suppose I could go on and on about that. The separation between the common human being and the Philosopher. One who is blind to “the truth”, one who sees “the truth”; one who is uneducated and downright stupid and one who is the pinnacle of what humanity has to offer; the sense of elitism and superiority that wafts off one group at the expense of the other - that’s been spoken of.

I could mention how many good things Philosophy is doing, but I’d rather not. Because sure, it could be argued that the theories developed, or the technologies released, are potentially very useful and quite good, but what they wind up being used for is an entirely different matter. Actually, the moment that allowed for Philosophy to easily be replaced with “Science” has passed, because Philosophy creates nothing. It produces nothing. It might produce teachers, teachers who have a good set of ideas as to what they’re going to do when they get to teaching, but Philosophy will be thrown to the wayside by schoolchildren and common people alike, all the while everyone involved in writing stuff related to Philosophy will be so deep in terminology that the only audience they will find is going to be other Philosophers.

So no, there’s really no good thing that I can put against these two bad things, as a result of which Philosophy winds up bad.

Science, on the other hand, might have good things, but let me provide an example. The improved ability of phones to be found via geo-location could be considered good, but is it good in the context of that location being treated as data, which data is gathered without the explicit consent of the phone’s owner and is then sold for profit, none of which ever reaches the owner of that phone? And then what is that data being used for? To twist the reality of that phone owner through the placement of advertisements which make generous use of logical fallacies, to surveil the owner with greater ease, or to survey how often certain roads are used? This already lengthy text would wind up being far longer than I’ve any desire to make it.

Of course, it could be argued that the fault is not found within science, but in other, less worthy things, but I’ve currently got no desire to point at the well-known boogeyman and redundantly inform you that the boogeyman is evil.

I’ve said my piece.