I sometimes wonder why philosophy is so underrated. I write about Nietzsche almost every day on this blog, it takes a couple of minutes to read it and maybe share your opinion. I haven’t got any response yet on those post while other posts have. I have hardly any readers, so I don’t expect mush, but still, it is somewhat disappointing. And it’s not only me and the quality I deliver, other blogs, podcasts, youtubers and books about philosophy are all relatively small. The people that attract larger audiences write often about there own lives or about other people and sprinkle some of their own opinion on it. The people I ask why they don’t read more philosophy tell me that it is to heavy, boring or difficult or they are to tired after work and want to relax and don’t want to struggle with a book and a subject they are not really interested in. And I can understand all these reasons, I too work and want to wind down when I come home, but that’s why I read a little bit in a philosophy book everyday and don’t try to struggle through a chapter if I don’t have the time. Another problem is that philosophy is not easily relatable compared to personal stories and opinions for instance. Philosophy is like algebra, it is not easy to understand, and you get through live by just knowing what 1+1 is. Like algebra, philosophy is one of the cornerstones of our society, and I admit that I don’t know much about algebra and math, but I don’t discuss a mathematician, but than again, we all have an opinion about society. A society that is as complex as a mathematical formula, a formula that most of us don’t understand but somehow, we think we can comment on it. By reading a couple of introductory books about philosophy you would quickly learn that life is not build upon opinions, that there is such a thing as a search for truth. And if most people in this world would understand that a search for truth means that you don’t have it yet, we would be more in agreement with each other.
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. Socrates
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. Buddha
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance. Confucius
The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool. Epicurus
Nochrisis 
For what it’s worth – posting 5 years later – I think a post on a philosophical topic will take much longer to receive a response, and will only prompt a response if it is about a tricky topic or passage. I found your web page based on the day 648 post, since it references a passage I didn’t quite understand, and then clicked this 649 post since it was titled “algebra” and I’m a mathematician. But your day 648 post didn’t actually discuss the passage at all, so I didn’t post there. You almost quote it verbatim in your ‘my take’ section, so it didn’t clarify the passage for me.
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Hi, the thought I had in day648 of being in a war and stepping over a man made border and you are not in a war is what made me wonder. I didn’t elaborate, maybe because of time or maybe I thought it would be understood. I don’t know if that answers you question. In day648 I basically wonder why we all have strong ideas about life with little questioning ourselves if what we think makes sense. The title mentioned algebra because I know little about algebra and I don’t go around sharing my opinion about it because I know that what I have to say makes little sense. Only by studying algebra I can start developing an opinion and share it. With life it’s more or less the same, we all have experience with it but if we want to connect the dots some studying might be necessary combined with some critical thinking. You know better than me but I don’t think there is much room for feelings in mathematics and though feelings are important in philosophy they have to rest on a basis of logic… If that make sense.
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Crap, sorry. I meant the previous entry “HUMAN ALL TOO HUMAN: 44. GRATITUDE AND REVENGE” which I mistakenly assumed was day 648 for some reason.
Certainly emotion doesn’t play any role in the correctness of mathematics, and its formalisation. It does however play a massive role in what sort of mathematics humanity creates over time. If it were merely a machine outputting candidate propositions, and randomly generating candidate proofs, which are then passed to a proof verification machine (this is highly practically infeasible without infinite time and infinite computational power) one would end up with a series of statements that noone would ever care about. Anyway, this all feels somewhat tangential on my part, and I agree with the content of your post and comment, anyhow.
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No problem. I think that emotions play a role in a lot of things we do that’s why I like to read Nietzsche who likes the rationality of science but is alway looking for the underlying squishy stuff. If you are interested in Nietzsche I can recommend going to this page on my blog: https://nochrisis.blog/aphorisms-in-one-sentence/
I am no philosopher but I attempt to read part of his work here in a… rigorous way. If you don’t know his other work it might be difficult to place it but it can still be helpful imho.
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