Alright, time to make some people angry.
People love their schools of thought and religions,
their esoteric practices,
their philosophical idols —
and for many, those ideas are their personality.
Their identity.
Their safety blanket wrapped in Latin quotes and Sanskrit verses.
But we here, we’re gonna sample, mix, remix, loop and put a fat beat to
the background of what actually is pretty good wisdom and advice, insight and words to live by.
And who knows, maybe by the end of it we can see how philosophy could apply to real life.
Yeah yeah, the greeks are stale,
Nietzsche is hard to type and spell,
Christianity has 2000 years of edits and comment sections
(and maybe salvation, idk, depends),
and all of them have made their ideas pointlessly boring to read (every old man wrote like the soul was optional),
or self-righteous as fuck.
But I love to think about the big questions,
such as is there free will in a deterministic world,
when does good turn into evil and evil into good,
why can’t we poop without peeing, but we can pee without pooping?
And yet, every time I feel like reading smart people giving their two cents they manage to squeeze the soul out of it.
Timeless wisdom is often found in a food dryer.
Not to mention, every time you open one of those texts, someone forces their opinion on you, or even promises eternal damnation if you dare defy it.
I feel like Indiana Jones running from a boulder of shit etched in dogma while carrying a grain of meaningful insight I somehow managed to excavate.
Pro Tip Time
Religion in general is a fucking trap.
In the middle, spirituality, something we crave for, yearn.
It lures you in, promising meaning. And then BAM:
eternal torture,
demons,
a smiting eternal old man who sounds like the meanest dad,
a dad to beat all other dads,
then your mother,
and then you, too.
But it was never religion itself that ruined stuff —
the people exploiting man’s yearning for meaning did.
It’s not the spirituality that’s the problem,
it’s the interpretation and weaponizing of it by those in control.
When spiritual teachings are used to manipulate or control, they lose their transformative potential and become tools of oppression, fear, and division.
Religions contain philosophy. It is never wasted time to study religions,
to see what they are about.
To read the stories.
You can, in fact, read “holy scripture” and not believe it.
Yes, religion has caused bad stuff.
Religion also causes good stuff.
Philosophy and history are essential to a thinking person to begin to understand where we fit into the picture.
Yet, philosophy has become a joke in the eyes of many.
A degree of philosophy is seen as a requirement for working at McDonald’s. That is fucking criminal.
Deep thinking is something we should all engage in.
But, if you cannot speak plainly, your ideas are worth fuck-all.
And throughout history, philosophy has become less and less accessible to those who actually need it.
It has become academic masturbation.
I bought a copy of the Dao De Jing and the translation had a 70 page introduction, every chapter half a page’s worth of comments at minimum, whereas most chapters of the Laozi text are barely half a page long.
Philosophy as a field seems utterly allergic to experience and life-as-is.
And they have invented a language that strives for clarity that is understandable only to those who understand the language. How ironic.
You know what, let’s draw an imaginary line between people who actually have something to say, and people who want to sound like they have something to say.
What’s the difference?
Maybe we’ll find out.
Why am I Doing This?
Right, so, i’m here to remix ancient knowledge into something alive.
Because somewhere in the dogma, the fear, the scrolls and the scams,
there still is a pulse.
Religions and esoterics exist for a fucking reason. Let’s go find it instead of just saying “religion stoopid, horoscope bad.”
We have religions, science and philosophy because of esoterics.
Yes, even fucking science itself.
So if your worldview gives you peace, pour yourself a glass.
The rest of us are raiding the fridge for something stronger.
Let’s make the littest mixtape of lo-fi timeless wisdom to listen to during an existential crisis, and get this party started.
Welcome to the fucking “temple.”
There’s a rave in the basement.
The playlist?
Dead philosophers, unburied.
Ancient religions, remixed.
If you’re here for polite footnotes and passive voice, bail now.
If you want to find the pulse behind the dogma, follow the bass.
So let’s steal the fire, remix the hymns, and see what burns clean.
Don’t worry, I already chucked the intro by some dude who translated a book and felt the need to share his opinion while justifying it in 70 fucking pages.
And the comments.
First up on the playlist: musty old men.
This series isn’t just mockery to be edgy — I wouldn’t bother roasting these guys if I didn’t think there was a living pulse somewhere in their corpses.
Spoiler alert: we’re gonna explore the thoughts of lots of men.
Apparently life is easier for women, because they don’t need existential dread to keep on living.
Must be the ability to bring meaning into the world in the form of our actual legacy: children, love, care, creation, transformation.
Or do women just have to do everything while the man contemplates his own existence?
Maybe there was a time period we are still struggling to climb out of where men didn’t give a single fuck about what women had to say.
Hmm, hard to say.
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