Can Philosophers Still Be Useful Today?
Hardly — but they should be!
When there is junk food, tobacco, drugs, supplements, cosmetics, social media, dating apps, video games, Netflix, alcohol, porn and various other things that, as I have discovered through my research, people can use as coping means to find comfort and cope with who they are, how their life is, and what the world around them might be;
When people can use some of the aforementioned things as substitutes for what they really desire;
When people can utilise their mechanism of self-deception to create absurd, ungrounded but nonetheless very convenient illusions about themselves, other people, the world around them, the future, and even their past as an additional way to cope with their life and avoid a reality that would otherwise frustrate them;
then, I have to ask: what is the need for the philosopher, the social scientist, or the psychoanalyst anymore? Who is going to listen to us, with the prospect of actually improving their life? We seem, indeed, to be quite useless and irrelevant. But we only seem to be so!
It may be true that it is easier and convenient to be mediocre, decadent, weak, lazy, afraid, envious and find comfort in various coping means that can sooth one’s situation, than to overcome one’s problems and strive for actual change.
The amount of time and effort that one should devote to (i) listen and understand what philosophers and social scientists say and (ii) actualise what we say — namely, deal with the deeper causes of your problems; strive to become what you potentially can or want to be; strive to transform society in such a way that a beautiful life could finally thrive — is a thousand times more than the amount of time and effort that the various coping means that exist today need.
Here is the thing, though. Even if it does take more time, effort and courage to do what philosophers suggest people to do, and even if some of people's fears and concerns about actual change are indeed valid, it is still worth striving for actual change than staying stuck in comfortable coping means that maintain and reproduce a mediocre situation. It is worth trying because only then one can begin living a truly interesting and fulfilling life.
The possibility exists — this is what I can tell to the reader. And philosophy, sociology, and psychoanalysis can function as guiding stars to actualise that possibility. They can help us understand ourselves better, slowly change ourselves, and change the society within which our lives unfold, affecting both how we live and who we are.
My hope is for the reader to read this text again, carefully reflect on themselves and their life and realise, using the article’s insights as a reference, that many of the things they do are, indeed, used for the reasons I describe. And then, once this is realised, slowly try to resist finding comfort in those things and pursue actual change.
Because life, truly, is too short. It would be a waste to let it go to waste when it can be so beautiful.