I’ve struggled with social anxiety my whole life. I was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder by a psychologist 7 years ago. Only recently (like last week actually), I realized that I have been going about things all wrong.

First off, the psychologist recommended as therapy for my disorder to initiate short conversations with strangers a few times a week. Check out lines, waiting at bus stops, etc. I never did it but this is the actual professional advice in this situation. After reading some of these posts about “social reps” I am resolving to do this now even though it’s been years since it was recommended.

What I realized only recently (through an in depth conversation with ChatGPT haha, I recommend it), that I have performance based social anxiety, meaning I only clam up, turn red and hot when the talking stick is handed to me to make my mark in an employment or performative environment. I came to understand that I was \*counting every conversation as if I was being judged and that I needed to keep up\*, impress or prove to the other person(s) in the conversation that I was worth talking to.

I also happened to learn by happenstance earlier this summer that this related back to the social rejection I experienced in grade 7 upon being moved to a new school. I only realized the significance of this in my life when I was confronted with one of those girls who rejected me being a parent on my child’s sports team, who I had to see not only in passing but twice a week for three months. This experience forced me into the realization of how important social acceptance was to me, and how it had defined every facet of my social life for years and even continuing at 40 years of age.

No parting words of wisdom except be true to yourself, realize your worth, and put yourself out there whenever you can. Experience is the only thing that makes it easier, and there is NOTHING shameful about being inexperienced with it.

I remember a YouTube from years ago that used simple animations for philosophy concepts. One I’m trying to remember talked about blame being a non- useful emotion or basis for justice. The more important basis for law was “will they likely do this again if freed?” Does that fit school of modern philosophy?

Nietzsche's critique in the Genealogy doesn't work by refuting Christian morality's claims. It works by tracing them to ressentiment and treating that origin as discrediting. The move presupposes something: that exposing where a value came from undermines its claim to authority.

The problem is that this principle doesn't stay put. Nietzsche's own valuation of strength and self-overcoming is just as historically situated as the morality he's reducing. So if genealogical exposure defeats a value's authority, his own commitments should fall to the same treatment, and you could plausibly read them, in his own terms, as the ressentiment of a sickly man toward the health he never had. But if genealogical exposure doesn't defeat authority, then tracing Christian morality to ressentiment just explains how it developed and leaves the question of its validity alone. Either way the critique is in trouble.

There's a Nietzschean reply worth taking seriously: that genealogy was never meant as a universal refutation, only as a kind of therapy for a reader who's already halfway out of his old values. That's coherent, but it costs him a lot. It shrinks the critique from something that defeats rival moralities into an exhortation aimed at people who already agree. The clean opposition Nietzsche stages between the exposed believer and the free spirit who has seen through it starts to look like it was never really there.

I worked the full version out here if anyone wants it: https://open.substack.com/pub/sharpenthoughts/p/nietzsche-couldnt-escape-his-own?r=88upn2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

I wonder if others might be able to agree with this as it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. I hope this post isn’t against any guidelines as this is my first time posting, but thank you for reading through my rant.

In my opinion everything we do as humans is selfish. Obviously there are a lot of things that we do just for ourselves, for example hobbies that give us a sense of fulfilment, or jobs that people have to earn money. Even if you work in a field that you chose out of passion, you do it to feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. I think that even jobs that are seen as selfless, such as working in healthcare, gives a person a sense of “being good”, or better that others, even if that person is someone who is an inherently “good person”.

But not just one’s profession can be used as an example. In my opinion even very human experiences such as friendships are selfish. When you’re friends with someone, you help them, talk with them, are a shoulder to cry on, and someone to laugh with, but only because you expect the same. A friendship, or any relationship for that matter, is an exchange of some sorts. You aren’t in a relationship with someone just so they aren’t alone, but so that you aren’t alone either.

Even things we do without thinking oftentimes i would class as selfish. As an example I like to think of everyday interactions with strangers. If you see someone has dropped a bag of shopping when walking, you might stop and help them pick up their things, but you’re doing it selfishly. Even if you’re doing it to be kind, there is always a deep rooted human nature that makes this action selfish. Some people help because they hope that if that happened to them someone else would help them as a way for the universe to return the favour, as a sort of karmic reward. Others might do it because it gives them a sense of “being good”, it gives them a sense of fulfilment.

don’t get me wrong, even though i don’t necessarily agree with the guy, reading him is fascinating. However, all he talks about it peace and his state is the opposite of that. I GET that it’s supposed to control people’s natural state and everything, but cmon don’t tell me he didn’t see the flaws in this

Imagine we begin with a structure so large that it stops feeling like a structure at all.

Picture an immense hotel.

Not a hotel in the usual sense, but one stretched beyond imagination. Infinite floors, infinite hallways, infinite rooms. Electricity hums through every wall. Water runs endlessly through pipes no engineer remembers installing. Food appears in cafeterias that never close. Entire civilizations form inside it. Not just guests, but generations of guests. People are born, live, argue, fall in love, write philosophy, build religions, stage revolutions, conduct science, and die.

And all of it happens inside the hotel.

Now here is the first important detail: every person inside this hotel believes the hotel is the totality of existence.

They have no access to anything beyond it. No windows that show “outside.” No doors that open into a sky, a forest, or a void. Every hallway only leads to another hallway. Every elevator only moves between floors. Every investigation into the building reveals more building.

Still, the question emerges anyway.

“What is outside the hotel?”

Some people reject the question entirely. They say it is meaningless, because “outside” is not part of their known reality. Others insist there must be something: heaven, nothingness, God, chaos, another layer of reality, or a hidden maintenance world that sustains everything. Others become skeptical of the question itself, arguing that “outside” is just a linguistic trick, a phantom concept created by curiosity but unsupported by evidence.

And notice something subtle here.

Every answer is still produced inside the hotel.

Even denial is a product of the building.

Even certainty is confined within its architecture.

Now, let us slowly turn the thought experiment.

We, as observers of this idea, are not inside the hotel. We are imagining it from somewhere else entirely. We can describe trees, oceans, stars, language, and consciousness itself. We can say, “this hotel is not the world,” because we implicitly stand in a reality where a world exists beyond it.

But inside the hotel, none of that vocabulary is available in a grounded way. “Tree,” “sky,” “planet,” “galaxy,” even “outside” itself, would be theoretical ghosts—words without sensory anchors. Language would be built only from internal experience: rooms, doors, corridors, elevators, ceilings, electricity, hunger, sleep, noise.

So here is the critical inversion:

Inside the hotel, reality is complete.

Not because it is total, but because it is all that can be referenced.

And this is where the philosophical pressure begins to build.

If every question, every theory, every belief system, every contradiction, and every scientific model is generated entirely within the hotel’s structure, then any attempt to describe “outside” is already constrained by “inside” logic.

So the question shifts shape.

It is no longer simply: “What is outside the hotel?”

It becomes: “Can a system that contains all of experience ever meaningfully point to something beyond itself?”

Some will answer yes, arguing that hints, anomalies, or logical necessity imply an exterior. Others will say no, arguing that “outside” is just a grammatical echo with no referent. And others will remain suspended, noticing that both positions still depend on the same shared limitation: they are speaking from within the system they are trying to transcend.

Now we arrive at the final step of the thought experiment.

Imagine a resident of the hotel becomes aware of everything: every hallway mapped, every rule understood, every pattern recognized. They realize the hotel is infinite in all directions. No exits exist. No windows exist. No structural breaks exist. Only continuation.

At that point, the idea of “outside” does not disappear.

It transforms.

It becomes an unlocatable concept, something the mind can form, but never verify within its own environment.

And so the conclusion quietly settles in:

If you are inside a system with no access to anything beyond it, then “outside” is not a place you can find, reach, or disprove. It is a limit-form concept created by the system’s own ability to imagine boundaries, even when none are accessible.

The hotel does not need an outside for the question to exist.

But it also does not need an outside for everything inside it to feel complete.

And that is the strange edge the thought experiment leaves you on:

A fully enclosed infinity, where the idea of beyond is real enough to be spoken, but unreachable enough to remain forever unresolved.

If we live in the best possible world (the problem of teodicea/ theodicy in Leibnitz), what exactly is that world, and what should it be (considering there is evil in it)? Please describe the best possible world, using examples as Descartes, Hume, Sartre, and Beauvoir and Nietzsche did in their philosophy? To anybody who has already done it, I am forgetful; please remind me. And if you are interested too.

Reality is a single continuous system. Everything that exists, thoughts, language, emotions, perception, disagreement, interpretation, and experience, is part of that system.

The mind does not experience reality all at once. It breaks experience into parts: ideas, categories, opposites, symbols, and perspectives. Language works in the same way. It separates reality into pieces so it can be communicated and understood.

Because of this, every statement about reality will always be incomplete from some perspective. Different people organize experience differently based on beliefs, values, and personal interpretation. This is why almost any idea can be understood differently or seen as a contradiction depending on the observer.

But this does not mean reality itself is broken or contradictory. It means perception and language are limited tools for describing something larger than themselves.

Everything you think, everything you agree with, everything you disagree with, everything you fear, everything you value, and everything you judge as right or wrong is part of reality. Not because it is meant to be right or wrong, but because it exists within the system itself.

Reality does not operate based on human approval, belief, or interpretation. It operates on its own conditions. Whether something is seen as good, bad, normal, or abnormal is a human layer added onto experience, not a fundamental property of reality.

Some people also experience reality in symbolic or mystical ways. They may interpret events as signs, meaning, or patterns from the universe, or from something like God or a higher order. These experiences are also part of reality, because they are part of human perception and interpretation.

In that sense, the world can feel like a mirror reflecting how a person sees it. Attention, belief, and interpretation can shape what someone notices and how they connect meaning to events. This can make it feel like reality is responding or aligning with a person’s thoughts, reinforcing their worldview and deepening their interpretation of experience, whether in a practical, psychological, or mystical way.

We are not separate from this system. We are part of it. In that sense, we are like gears within reality, and reality is the system that contains and moves through all of us.

Because we are the gears of the system, and the system of the gears.

The reason why we go in circles, the reason why we can never find one final answer, heaven or hell, simulation or reality, God or no God, isn't necessarily because one is right and the other is wrong. It's because understanding itself depends on comparison.

Without the left, there is no right. Without the right, there is no left. Without both, there is no middle. Without my perspective and your perspective, there is no perspective at all.

You can't have God without humans. You can't have Earth without space. You can't have stars without gas. You can't have a car without an engine. You can't have a body without a mind. You can't have a heart without veins. You can't have a soul without consciousness. You can't have existence without nonexistence. You can't have an answer without a question. If there's no question, there is no answer. You can't have a debate without an argument. You can't have a teacher without a student. You can't have a parent without a child.

Religion without atheism is just religion. Faith without doubt is just faith. Heaven without hell is just heaven. A man without a woman is just a man. Pain without pleasure is just pain.

Everything depends on something else to be understood. Everything is defined by its relationship to something else.

When you look into a mirror, you're looking at yourself. When consciousness asks, "Why am I here?" or "Why do I exist?" it's consciousness recognizing itself. The one asking the question and the one searching for the answer are the same thing.

What is duality without division? What is division without duality? What is reflection without deflection? What is unity without friction?

If you can't answer those questions, it's because those ideas only exist in relation to each other. You can't have balance without imbalance, because balance has nothing to compare itself to. You can't have imbalance without balance for the same reason.

Everything reflects everything else. Everything defines everything else. Nothing exists completely on its own because meaning itself is relational.

Reality forces the mind to choose. Left or right. Yes or no. Or the middle ground between them. There is no stepping outside the structure itself.

An atheist remains an atheist. A Christian remains a Christian. A believer believes. A skeptic doubts. None of these positions exist without their opposite. Belief has no meaning without disbelief. Religion has no meaning without the possibility of rejecting it. Agreement only exists because disagreement exists. Good because evil. Right because wrong. Beginning because end. Existence because nonexistence.

This isn't a flaw in reality. It's how reality functions.

The world isn't broken because people disagree. Disagreement is one of the conditions that allows meaning to exist in the first place. That's why religions emerge. That's why philosophies compete. That's why myths, legends, holidays, traditions, and even campfire stories persist. Every one of them is an answer to the same reality viewed from a different angle.

Reality doesn't ask everyone to choose the same answer. It asks everyone to choose an answer.

There will always be things you love and things you hate. Ideas you'll embrace and ideas you'll reject. That's the point. Reality presents the whole pie. You decide which slice is yours, or you taste every slice. Either way, you've made a choice.

And if you say, "I refuse to choose," you've still chosen. You've chosen neutrality. You've chosen the middle ground. Refusing to play is still a move within the game.

That's the part people miss. You cannot escape the structure by denying it. Every thought, every belief, every disbelief, every acceptance, every rejection, and every silence is another position within reality itself.

There is nothing more. There is nothing less.

Existence or nonexistence. Belief or disbelief. Agreement or disagreement. Left, right, or the middle.

Reality doesn't force your conclusion.

It only makes sure you cannot avoid making one.

It explains why wars happen, why people argue, why people agree, why people choose, why people hesitate, why people decide, why people do nothing, why people protest, why people riot, why people vote, why people commit evil, why people commit good, why people are called right, and why people are called wrong. None of these stand outside reality. They are not exceptions to it. They are expressions of it.

This is not a rule we invented. It is part of reality's structure. It cannot be deleted, overwritten, or rewritten. It can only follow one of two paths: it either stays on its course, or it is rerouted. Even rerouting is still a route. There is no third option outside the system.

We are the gears inside the clock, not standing outside watching time pass, but creating its movement. Every thought, every action, every belief, every doubt, every revolution, every tradition, every agreement, every contradiction is another tooth of a gear meeting another tooth. We turn. We twist. We grind. We move one another whether we realize it or not.

It does not matter whether we know what we are doing. It does not matter whether we know we agree or know we disagree. The gears do not stop because the gears become aware they are gears. Awareness changes nothing about the fact that they still turn.

Reality continues.

Every religion turns the gears. Every atheist turns the gears. Every philosopher, every scientist, every government, every law, every revolution, every empire, every civilization, every birth, every death. Every "yes." Every "no." Every silence between them. They are not outside the mechanism trying to explain it. They are the mechanism explaining itself.

This is why every argument eventually reaches the same wall.

You can argue for one side forever. Someone else can argue for the other side forever. Neither escapes the structure they are using to argue. The debate itself is proof of the thing being debated. Agreement and disagreement are reflections of the same framework. They define each other. Remove one, and the other loses its meaning.

This is where the road ends.

This is the deep end.

This is the cliff.

This is the edge.

There is no step beyond it, because beyond it is simply reality reflecting back at itself.

Right now, your eyes are looking at symbols. Your brain translates those symbols into English. English becomes meaning. Meaning becomes thought. Thought becomes awareness. Awareness becomes another turn of the gear. Reality is observing itself through you while you believe you are merely reading words.

The message is not entering reality.

The message is reality.

Reality is like a color we can never see directly. We can measure its wavelength. We can describe its properties. We can compare it to every other color. But the color itself remains beyond the language used to describe it.

The same is true of reality.

We know its patterns. We know its structure. We know its consequences. We know its reflections. But the thing itself remains forever one step beyond every definition we create, because every definition is already inside the very reality it is trying to define.

The final contradiction is this: the moment reality tries to explain itself, it must use reality to do it. The observer is observed. The thinker is the thought. The question is part of the answer. The answer becomes another question. The beginning creates the end, and the end recreates the beginning.

Not because reality is trapped.

Because that is what reality is.

Did anyone else find it difficult to finish this one? It feels like Hume got through most of his ideas in the first 80 or so pages and should have ended in the portion regarding liberty and necessity.

Have you ever played The Landlord’s Game?

Probably not.

Most people haven’t.

But you’ve definitely played what it turned into.

It was created in 1904 by Elizabeth Magie. And it wasn’t originally meant to be just a game. It was meant to be a demonstration, something you feel while you play. A way to show how money concentrates, how rent traps people, how ownership quietly decides who gets to keep going and who gets eliminated.

It already had the bones of what you’d recognize today. Property. Rent. Penalties. A loop of accumulation and loss.

Then something happened to it.

It got simplified. It got rebranded. It got turned into something easier to sell.

By the time Parker Brothers released it as Monopoly, most of what made it a critique had been stripped away. The system stayed the same, but now it wasn’t trying to show you anything anymore. It was just something you played on a rainy afternoon.

And that’s the part I want you to notice.

The meaning didn’t disappear.

It just changed owners.

What you call Monopoly is not the beginning of the story.

It’s the latest version you were handed.

And that pattern doesn’t stop there.

It shows up everywhere once you start looking closely.

Take music.

In 1965, The Beatles released Yesterday, one of the most covered songs in modern history. Even its melody caused quiet debate in music circles because Paul McCartney reportedly composed it subconsciously, later confirming it bore resemblance to earlier ballad structures he couldn’t initially place. It didn’t emerge in isolation, it sits inside a long tradition of pre-existing harmonic progressions that were already circulating through classical and Tin Pan Alley songwriting.

By the late 1960s, Led Zeppelin became one of the most cited examples in music plagiarism law. Their track Whole Lotta Love (1969) closely mirrors lyrics and structure from Willie Dixon’s blues song You Need Love (1962). Dixon eventually sued, and the case was settled out of court in 1985, with later releases crediting him. Many other Zeppelin tracks would also later be subject to legal scrutiny over uncredited blues adaptations.

In 1970, George Harrison released My Sweet Lord, which was taken to court in the landmark case Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music. The judge ruled that Harrison had “subconsciously” copied The Chiffons’ He’s So Fine (1963). He lost the case and was ordered to pay damages, one of the first major legal recognitions that even unconscious similarity could still count as infringement.

In 1977, The Rolling Stones released Some Girls, an album deeply rooted in American blues, country, and disco traditions. While not defined by a single lawsuit, it existed within a broader pattern of British rock bands drawing heavily from African American musical forms that had already been repackaged and commercialized across decades.

Nothing here is purely original.

Everything is recombination.

Even in more modern disputes, this pattern continues. In 1992, Radiohead released Creep, which was later involved in publishing disputes with Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood, the writers of The Air That I Breathe (1972, The Hollies). The claim wasn’t about direct copying of lyrics, but about melodic and harmonic similarity strong enough that the writers were eventually credited as co-authors and granted royalties.

So what looks like invention is often a rearrangement of inherited structure.

Borrowed rhythm. Borrowed phrasing. Borrowed emotional shape.

Not theft in the simplistic sense, but continuity that sometimes crosses the legal line once it becomes too recognizable to ignore.

And music is only the clearest example because it is easier to measure.

The same pattern appears in law, in language, in storytelling, and in religion.

Judaism preserves earlier Near Eastern covenantal traditions and reinterprets them into monotheistic form.

Christianity emerges as a reinterpretation of those same texts through the figure of Jesus of Nazareth.

Islam later repositions many of the same prophetic figures into a new theological framework.

Each one is historically traceable.

Each one is internally distinct.

And yet each one is built from shared narrative architecture.

Not copies.

Not opposites.

Successive reinterpretations of a shared source field.

Even institutions understand this instinctively.

“Either the church is true or it is a fraud. It is the church and kingdom of God, or it is nothing.” This is Gordon B. Hinckley, the 15th President of his church.

That kind of framing forces a binary choice onto something that history rarely presents in binaries.

Because systems don’t usually survive by staying unchanged.

They survive by adapting just enough to remain recognizable.

Which brings us back to the same question underneath all of this:

If ideas survive by changing, then what exactly are we evaluating when we call something “true”?

Are we judging origin?

Or are we judging the most successful version of a story that refused to stay still?

And perhaps what’s being described is also quietly doing the describing.

Reality is strange.

We wake up, make coffee, grab our keys, go to work, come home, and repeat. We question our jobs, our relationships, and our purpose, yet we rarely question the stage on which they all appear.

Not why the Sun rises or the Moon sets, but why there can be a why at all.

How can a question exist? How can there be both an answer and no answer? How can being conceive of non-being, and non-being define being? How can I exist while imagining my own nonexistence? Every answer seems to become another question, as if they endlessly exchange places.

My thesis is this: reality itself is not what confuses us, our interpretations do.

Consider color. We know that red corresponds to certain wavelengths of light, but no scientific measurement has ever captured the experience of "red" itself. Instead, we attach meanings to it: love, rage, danger, passion. Black becomes evil or emptiness. White becomes purity or innocence. Yet none of those meanings belong to the colors. They belong to the minds interpreting them.

Reality functions the same way. We mistake our descriptions for the thing being described. We stack beliefs, labels, identities, and stories onto reality until we confuse the map for the territory.

Someone might object that interpretation is unavoidable. After all, we cannot experience reality without a mind interpreting it. I agree. But that does not mean the interpretation is reality. A map is necessary for navigation, yet no one mistakes the map for the landscape. The usefulness of an interpretation does not make it identical to what it interprets.

This is why the deepest philosophical questions often refuse to stay answered. The moment we define reality, we have already replaced it with a concept about reality. The answer becomes another question because every explanation is still an interpretation.

Perhaps reality cannot be fully spoken because language transforms experience into symbols. Perhaps it cannot be fully thought because thought divides what simply is.

If that is true, then the closest we come to reality is not by collecting better interpretations, but by recognizing their limits.

Reality does not need our meanings to exist.

Only we do.

Happiness is defined by the greatest psychologists as living life in flow state, the state where challenge and ability are in the perfect ratio known. Argued to be the only remedy to the insatiability of man. The best way to grow is through the psychological theory of deliberate practice. One pushes themselves past flow state to the limits of their capabilities to achieve more progress at the cost of enjoyment. These psychological states match almost perfectly the philosophical positions of Nietzsche and Aristotle.

Aristotle's theory of happiness: eudaimonia, states that happiness is the end of all aims, which lies in rationality. Rationality in turn demands of one to live a life of virtue(living within the golden mean). The golden mean is the principle of the middle point between vice and virtue. Flow being the midpoint of ability and challenge, suffering and pleasure is perfectly fitting of this description.

Will to power follows the principle of overcoming. It is based on the condition of life. Natural selection being the process of life overcoming constraints and that being the underlying reason behind all drives. Flow fits into Nietzsche's philosophical worldview as the very purpose of happiness and pleasure are to be evolutionary traits beneficiary to overcoming the constraints of our environment. The difference lies in Aristotle identifying happiness to be a necessary natural conclusion of living out life's purpose(a life of virtue). While for Nietzsche overcoming(will to power) could lead one to a life of misery. As he describes in genealogy of morals(third essay:"What is the meaning of ascetic ideals?") when talking about the optimal lifestyle of the philosopher(The ascetic lifestyle which he describes as most of the time leading to a life of misery).

Nietzsche defines the good as "All that heightens the feeling of power in man"- The Antichrist (Aphorism 2). Where power is measured, whether in military conquest or in art Nietzsche leaves up to the individual. In what makes something great and powerful however there is a metric he applies regardless of the field. It is in overcoming, through the noble act of turning suffering and constraints into strength and power. One may be miserable but if in misery their optimum of power lies, then in it is their purpose.

Nietzsche's philosophy fits the theory of deliberate practice where one forces themselves outside of their golden mean of challenge and ability(flow state), and enters the optimum of growth where they are exposed to the hardest challenges that they can still handle. This is less enjoyable then flow state and may even lead one to misery, but if growth ranks to one above even their enjoyment then it is the right way of life for them.

One point both Nietzsche and Aristotle would agree on is that happiness is an internal state of mind based less in action(circumstances of the world), then reaction(how one interprets the world). Thus through practice one can alter what makes them happy to fit certain lifestyles. One could grow to love the suffering of deliberate practice, they could learn to love suffering and love fate. This is achieved through expanding the zone in which one is in flow state so that one day the greatest suffering is a challenge they can take and enjoy. If the happy slave is worse the the miserably king, the happy king is better then both and the most sublime existence.

Life, Death, and the Search for Peace

If a person tries too hard to overcome death, they may lose themselves in the process. But when someone learns to accept death, they may finally find peace. Happiness is difficult to explain, just like death itself. Yet many people seem to reach the end of their lives with a sense of acceptance — not because everything was perfect, but because they have come to terms with who they were, what they did, and why they did it.

Maybe the struggle against death is what causes suffering. We spend so much of our lives trying to escape something that is inevitable. When someone becomes obsessed with defeating death, they may forget how to truly live. But when they accept that life has an ending, they can focus on what gives their life meaning.

This leads to another question: if society decides someone is wrong or broken simply because they think differently, is society protecting people or limiting them? Where is the line between deep thought and losing yourself? Is society helping us find happiness, or does it sometimes distract us from it?

I could spend forever thinking about life, death, happiness, and society, but I may never find a perfect answer. I have accepted that — at least partly. Still, there is always a small part of my mind that questions everything. It wonders if life is supposed to be this way, if we spend too much time chasing things created by society while forgetting what actually makes us happy.

How can someone find happiness in a world filled with corruption and suffering? How can someone reach the end of their life feeling at peace? Maybe the answer is not found in changing everything around us or escaping death itself.

Maybe happiness comes from finding peace within yourself.

Btw I made this myself tell me what you think about it

Hi everyone,

I’m aiming to become an analytic philosopher. Unfortunately, I didn’t get proper training in philosophical writing during my BA, and I feel quite behind compared to others.

My main goal now is to do a Master’s that gives intensive training in writing philosophy papers, so I can become competitive for a PhD in a strong philosophy department and eventually publish academic papers.

Given this, what would you recommend as the best MA programs in the UK for this purpose? And would a taught MA or a more research-focused program (like an MPhil/MPhilStud) be better for this path?

Ive studied philosophy since the age of 11, im 17 now and i yet to have understood the female mind, wait that would be more psychology... oh well, anyway my girlfriend broke up with me after she spent 42 days in a drug rehab... we were together for exactly 100 days today. I mentioned I had a bit of acid when she went away and then the next day breaks up with me. Remind you she asked me to buy her substances while she was in rehab... and she was smoking Marijuana today with her friends. Anyway this whole situation cant help but remind me of one of my favorite philosophers, Epicurus, I know if he was here he would tell me to not sweat it and to just go run in a garden naked and sunbathe 😭 but that also reminds me to live life to the fullest. No matter the hardship you face u shall never falter, wait that reminds me of Fredrich Nietchzes "Ubermench" lol. Im sorry this dosent mainly contain philosophy but this is kinda a vent

Do people have any responsibility to help strangers, or do we only have obligations to those we know? Where do you think our responsibilities to other people come from, if they exist at all?

Hey everyone,

​I've been thinking about the philosophy of time, and there is a massive logical contradiction that comes up whenever people talk about the universe being "created."

​In our everyday lives, creating something always requires a timeline. If you build a house, there is a time before the house exists, a process of building it, and a time after it’s finished. This is how our brains understand cause and effect.

​But here is the trap: if you define the universe as all of spacetime, meaning every single moment of past, present, and future that will ever exist is already inside the package, then the universe could never have been "created" in the normal sense of the word.

​To "create" all of spacetime, a creator would need to exist before time started, wait for a moment, and then make time begin. But you cannot have a moment "before" time. The very word "before" literally requires time to already exist! This leaves us with a mind-bending conclusion: the universe couldn't have "come into being" because there was never a time when it wasn't here. Notice 'all of spacetime', so even if there are multiverses or time didn't begin at the Big Bang, this would imply that the universe didn't begin at the Big Bang because there would be a different timeline and wherever there is time, there is universe.

​This also reveals why looking to modern physics, like quantum gravity, doesn't actually solve this problem for us. Physicists often use the fancy phrase "emergent spacetime" to suggest that space and time aren't fundamental, but instead "grow" out of a deeper quantum layer.

​But when we think about it deeply, that explanation doesn't explain anything at all. It hits the exact same wall. "Emergence" is a word that inherently requires time. You can't have a deeper state turn into, give rise to, or become spacetime without a timeline already existing to allow that change to happen.

​Honestly, "emergence" seems more like a placeholder word for stuff that people can't actually explain. What does it even mean for a universe to emerge from an atemporal, non-spatial reality? It sounds like linguistic magic rather than a real explanation.

​Instead of spacetime "emerging" over time, it makes more sense to talk about structural dependence.

​Think of a massive stone arch. The top stones don't "emerge" from the bottom stones over time, they depend on the bottom stones right now for their existence and stability. The entire structure exists simultaneously.

If the universe depends on a creator, or if spacetime depends on a deeper quantum reality, it isn't a historical event that happened a long time ago. We are forced to change our definition of creation and emergence entirely: it is a relationship of timeless, structural dependence, where the foundation sustains the whole fabric of reality all at once. Is the concept of "emergence" just a shield for a lack of explanation, and does shifting to "structural dependence" actually fix the logical trap? But even in the structural dependence case, I am not sure how it is grounded because I am not sure how particles can exist absent space, and I think even under that view we can still make the statement that 'Universe cannot be created'? Hmmm, feel free to correct me if my understanding is wrong, which I am sure it might be, haha!

​Curious to hear your thoughts.

I know he didn’t truly espouse of any conceptual framework regarding philosophy, but his influence across multiple generations, genres, and artistic mediums is truly a once in a lifetime achievement.

Save your applause, I'm not finished.

I'll start by telling you two things. One, I'm not a philosopher, and I have no extensive knowledge on philosophy. This all might be the dumbest shit you have ever heard, and if it is, I deeply apologize. Two, which connects to number one, I have no idea if this is original. Please tell me if some fucker 200 years ago has already thought of this. I'll be disappointed, but you have my permission to rip the band-aid off.

I have a plethora of thoughts about morality, but I think there are two that are most important to what I'm about to talk about. I have looked them up and I'm pretty sure you could consider them to fall under moral relativism and socratic intellectualism. I think that one's perception of the moral quality of another's action is entirely subjective, and that, at least at the very moment an act is committed, it is always thought to be morally right to they who commit it. Pretty please feel free to engage with me on those ideas, but what I'm particularly wanting feedback on is my justification for those ideas.

Although I think "morality is subjective" when referring to the actions of *others* is an easy enough thing to say, I feel as though there must be a real reason as to why *we* always think *our* actions are morally right. Socrates would tell me that non-virtuous acts come from a misunderstanding or ignorance of true virtue, which stems from justice or some shit, but I've always been keen on the connection between biology (which I think is the correct field of study to refer to here?) and philosophy, so I've been thinking something like this instead: We view our own actions as morally right, because all actions we commit are committed for the sake of satisfying one or more vital biological desires.

Something I'm still thinking about is what the list of those vital biological desires actually consists of, but obvious ones to me are food, water, health, safety, joy, and reproduction. Something which I think is an important detail is that I believe these to be *desires*, not necessities. At least in the moment we do it, we believe eating junk food, drinking alcohol, or fucking somebody's spouse are morally right actions because we, by our biology, feel a desire to, not because we necessarily need to. I also think that these biological desires are not constant in their strength, and when one overpowers another it may lead to an action which ignores or harms another. The action is still personally justifiable given that it is in service of a desire, but it just might happen to fuck over another. Like, imagine you're pretty hungry, and being chased by a tiger. Unless you're some fearless bastard (in which case ignore me) you're probably scared shitless and the desire for safety heavily outweighs your still very real desire for food. So, instead of wasting time foraging or even foraging while you run, you *just* run. It will likely leave you more hungry afterwards, but you would have considered your decision in that moment morally right because you were acting more out of your desire for safety.

There is more that I could explain, but frankly I don't know enough about my own opinion myself and am just kind of bored writing this, so if there is anything you want clarified, pretty please ask. This all might be put together terribly anyways given that I've more or less just vomited my thoughts onto a digital page, but I hope what I've written is coherent? There will likely come a day where I format everything like a pro and can post something of which I am fully sure of, but today is not that day. For now, all I want is some opinions on what I think so far and/or knowledge on if anyone famous has thought of this already.

Thank you, I love you all.

Looking for information and advice on the internal/external locus theroy and what patterns to look for to help shape your perspective?

Our thoughts cannot be determined by physical laws alone; therefore, we have free will.

For example, suppose there is an apple here, and I think, "There is an apple here." The reason we regard this thought as true is not because it was determined by physical laws, but because it corresponds to the actual state of affairs.

If the meaning of a thought and its truth-value were determined solely by physical laws, then a random thought such as "dvshxjsjsnsjsk" should be no different in meaning from the thought "There is an apple here."

To put it simply, if the word "cup" were accidentally inscribed on the surface of Mars by the wind, we would not regard it as containing meaning. If all of our thoughts were determined entirely by physical laws, then our thoughts would be no different from such accidental markings on Mars. They would merely be physical patterns, not meaningful thoughts that can be true or false.

Throughout the course of history, the job market has changed every time a revolutionary or groundbreaking technology has come along. Something is invented, people panic, the market adjusts, society creates new jobs, and the world accepts its new normal.

Take the 1440's for example. Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in Germany. This caused a great amount of fear within the Catholic Church, who controlled what was read and by whom. The printing press eliminated the need for monastic scribes who spent their lives copying manuscripts by hand. The mass printing of books enabled people to become literate and educated in ways never seen before. Then in the early 1900's the invention of the automobile put blacksmiths and horse related vocations permanently out of business. The people in those trades panicked and were genuinely afraid. Interestingly, the automotive industry ended up needing far more employees than the horse economy it had just replaced. The same could be said about the railroad, the telegraph, and the internet.

The AI era, however, is unlike anything the world has ever seen before. Artificial intelligence is currently viewed as a useful tool that benefits our everyday lives. We have been told that it is here to make our lives easier and simpler than any previous generation of humans. What mainstream Silicon Valley CEO's fail to mention is that this is just the beginning. At the moment, AI is highly efficient at simple tasks but much less proficient at solving complex issues without being prompted. The ability to match or exceed human cognitive abilities at every task is being called AGI, otherwise known as Artificial General Intelligence. This is not science fiction. The world's largest tech giants are investing billions of dollars into building the first AGI prototype, including OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta AI. AGI is no longer a distant hypothetical. It is an emerging reality that is closer than most people realize.

Think about what it would mean to have your job become obsolete with nowhere to go. You would probably do what humans have always done and go find something new. But that is exactly the problem. AI does not create new opportunities the way other technologies have. Every time it advances, another wave of careers and industries gets permanently eradicated. It is like a snowball that only grows larger as it rolls downhill, except in this case the slope never ends and there is nothing there to slow it down.

You might think this sounds pessimistic or far off, but it is already happening around you. Look at the very companies building this future. Anthropic’s own engineers report that virtually 100 percent of their code is now written by Claude. Due to this radical shift in how software is built, entry-level computer science majors are already experiencing a 50% decrease in hiring, even though the AI era has only just begun. The CEOs and billionaires who are campaigning hardest for AI will not be the ones who have to suffer the consequences of an entire labor force being flushed out by machines. You will. Historically, technological revolutions automated physical labor, thereby placing displaced workers in new roles that required human intellect, judgment, and creativity. Some will argue that AI will do the same, that new categories of work will emerge that we simply cannot imagine yet. That may be true for a period of time. But unlike every previous revolution, AI can now think for you, analyze data, write code, and draft content. When a machine can do everything the human mind can do, there is no next category of work waiting on the other side. All I ask you to think about is when that happens, which it inevitably will, what will be left for us?