Almost. I know, what a cop out answer, right? Well, as far as I've been told by many people, including philosophy professors, philosophy is dead. I don't believe so, but I do believe that it is very close to being a dead subject, and I do believe that we can save it. In this article we are going to examine the how and the why as to the current standing of philosophy, so bear with me (Get it, bear? cause I go to Oakland University and we are the Golden Grizzlies? Okay back to the subject at hand) Again, as usual this is 100% my opinion, and if you disagree you are 100% entitled to that opinion!

I would like to start by saying that I am minoring in philosophy, and I absolutely love reading/talking about it, I have for as long as I could remember, but I was often alone when doing so. I remember being in high school and, like almost any other high schooler, I didn't want to be single. I remember seeing constant posts on social media about how women wanted someone that they could have deeper conversations with, and boy was I always excited, because I loved those conversations, until I would try to have them and the girl looked at me lie I had a third eye. About ten times in I finally realized that maybe they were talking about a different type of deep conversation, but I'll never know what about. You're probably thinking at this point "this has nothing to do with how alive (or dead) philosophy is" and you know what, you're right, it was just a lot of fun to put in there. It was also the first time I realized that not many people actually spend time thinking about these unanswerable questions, but why?

There are quite a few different reasons why people just aren't as interested in philosophy as they used to be. Everything from lack of work to lack of vision, but I don't think that those are the biggest reasons. I believe that the biggest reasons are that society taught us not to think this way, and we listened. basically we were taught not to think about these questions. I know, it's pretty ambitious to call out everyone (myself included), so I guess I should go into a little big more detail.

When is the last time you saw a popular tv show or a movie for kids where one of the characters were philosophical? You most likely can't name one, more or less a current one. Yeah, there are definitely these types of moments in tv, but they are rare to say the least. you may be asking why at this point, and the answer is very simple, no one likes those characters. That isn't (completely) the writers fault though, as they are just trying to gain popularity. For that, I would look towards both society and ourselves. It is very common nowadays for us to blame society for issues facing our modern world. But we are also to blame, which most people don't want to accept. People often get mad at how society idolizes people who don't deserve it (see: catch me outside girl, drake, ect.) but we are the ones who cause society to idolize them. We are the ones that boost the rating and sky rocket the wrong people into fame. If you want proof just look at tv/music ratings where everyone dotes over the dramatic and the violent and no one talks about the scientific or the philosophical. Just look at history where we brag about the courage America had to drop two atomic bombs on Japan but not one history book I read for school talks about Aristotle, and never spends more than a paragraph talking about how Ghandi freed a nation without firing a bullet. Society feeds us and we feed it right back, heck I almost didn't write this article because I was afraid that no one would read it because the word Philosophy was in the headline.

I'm sure it seems as if I just tried to take a huge dump on everyone, but that isn't the case. I think in majority of what I talked about above, we are just acting in the ways that we were taught. Very few times in life will people actually tell you to think for yourself, and I mean truly think for yourself. Whether it be faith, school, or parents, many people are told what to think, and what not to think about. We have been taught through the things listed above to cherish things of extrinsic value (money, cars, clothes, ect) because that is what would make us happy in the moment, and that is what would make us "cool." We have been taught to label one another based on the amount of these extrinsic things they own, and label their level of happiness based on these things (I mean, have you ever assumed that a rich person is automatically happy?). As people are taught to place these extrinsic values on a pedestal, they learn to see anything else as uncool (which was often used to describe me when I would rather talk about ethics instead of how drunk I'm going to get this weekend) It has gotten to the point where for some people it is almost uncomfortable to talk about these kinds of questions, because they've never had to, which is sad to me.

Now, I've spent about a thousand characters, or 7 tweets, explaining why philosophy is dying, but I think it's about time to explain how we can save it. The first step to saving philosophy is to put your phone down and stare at the night sky. Weird right? What would the sky tell me about anything? It wont, but it's a great way to clear your head and start to let your mind drift. Once your mind has drifted off, think about the fact that somehow we ended up on a rock plummeting through outer space, and think, why? As kids, we all naturally wondered things, so learn to wonder again. I watch this show called Black Mirror, and in this show almost every episode leaves the viewer with questions never to be answered, which freaks people out because they want to know everything. Accept that there are things you'll never know the answer to, and learn to embrace trying to find your own answer. Embrace having a different answer than the people around you, and don't be afraid to talk to someone who's answers are different. We are all made unique, and we are all made up of the universe, so as you learn to seek answers about the universe around you, you will find answers about yourself that you never even asked a questions towards. Just don't be afraid of your mind and the universe, because they are all one in the same.