Studying philosophy well, and actually learning how to do it, makes you a better thinker. Yes, just like running will make you a better runner.

However, doing it poorly, will make you worse. Lots and lots of casual consumers of philosophy dont’ study it. They just read it passively and parrot it back out. Sort of like running for 200m and feeling like that is as good as running a 2km.

social pressure and accolades.

i have a low-pressure good-wage job. I get ton of casual feedback from everyone in my life that I am ‘wasting my life’ by not working in a higher paying job. I’ve had multiple relationships end, because I prefer to stay in my stable & rewarding job than seeking more money and climbing some corporate ladder. etc.

I may be quite happy with my life and my job. But other people tend to look down on that and it has negative consequences for my social/romantic life. They are often jealous of my conditions and/or condescending that I am not ‘optimizing’ my earning potential. A lot of people can’t fathom living outside of a toxic/stressful work environment and regard people who don’t as ‘lazy’ or ‘lacking ambition’.

Yeah I find people to be far more amendable in educational contexts than they are generally. My Russian class is the only place anyone seems to think my interest in Russian literature is cool.

What I struggle with is that I don’t use IG and other social media. And a lot of people’s polite/casual conversations are entirely based on that stuff.

I notice I have an easy time talking to people over 50, but under 40… it’s like I live on a different planet. We have nothing in common to really talk about because they just reference social media stuff and I have no context for it. I quit a bunch of stuff recently because all the new people coming in started straight up being rude/insulting me because my life isn’t governed by chasing social media trends or agonizing about response times like theirs is. I get told off by a lot of new people because I don’t text back fast enough and they take it as a personal attack or something when I said ‘well if it’s that important why not call and have real time voice conversation’.

It might would. could be a disaster.

plenty of volunteer communities are full of insane gatekeeping types of people.

sanctions on russia don’t ban russians from traveling.