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Illusion of knowledge; Crisis of thinking

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Illusion of knowledge is one of the important elements in the intellectual crisis of the young generation. Many young people think that they have reached a deep understanding of existential crises by reading a few philosophical books or coming across to some modern Western literature; but in fact, this superficial reading only leads to an illusion of understanding, if they have actually read.

Because many are satisfied with spelling the name of the book and its author, they count it in the list of read books and guess the content of the book based on its cover and title.

After listening to Sadiq Hedayat, they become acutely depressed and consider sleep and isolation as the last refuge of a person. They start using the words sad, depressed, ambiguous, and symbolic, and mention the pains that eat away at the human soul… They have trouble pronouncing some names, but they claim that he understood the essence of existentialism. And they suffer from existential anxiety.

Without reading “nausea”, they become “strangers” with everything, because they heard the name of “Camus” where people and things upset them. They like “Kafka” because they have heard that he is a famous writer. They post pictures on social networks to say that they have become full-fledged feminists, while not knowing what the content of that book is.

They don’t have the patience to read “Said Zarathustra”, but they consider themselves friends of “Friedrich Nietzsche” and announce the “death of God.”

Their swimming with Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hume, Hegel, and Socrates is as much as hearing their names and reading a few pieces of their words in the virtual space, and they don’t even know in what context and time they lived; Hegel was a contemporary of Socrates or Nietzsche was a student of Hume!… They have heard of Kant, Neumann and Phenomenon, and they use them every now and then, but they don’t know exactly what they mean.

We need to have courage to “read” and courage to “think”

They read somewhere that Immanuel Kant said to have the courage to think, so they publish a picture with a book by Proust or Haruki and write that all the problems of our society is that our nation does not have the courage to think.

A significant part of our young people considers hearing the name of the school, people, books and terms as equal to understanding it.

Rather, they claim to understand it after reading Fafka’s metamorphosis, and before they see being and time closely, they consider themselves Heideggerians… They don’t talk about Jaspers, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, and others, because they don’t know them and don’t know that there were people with these names where they left a fundamental impact on philosophy and literature.

The reason for not knowing them is that maybe they haven’t read anything about them on social media platforms yet… Of course, they don’t know about today’s currents, otherwise they would criticize Zizek and Umberto.

We don’t know anything about the philosophers on this side of the world

The saddest thing of all is that they like the “smell of the West and the taste of the beans”, because they think that whoever deals with Westerners and English names, the absolute truth of their past will be revealed and approved by everyone.

We don’t know anything about the philosophers on this side of the world, who, according to Hafez, even if they are the full point of existence, and they even declare reading it equal to intellectual and cultural backwardness.

This illusion of knowledge among a large part of the youth, which indicates an intellectual crisis, has finally led to a lack of sustainable meaning. In the modern world, where the traditional foundations of meaning have collapsed and given their place to relativism, and young people who do not consider anything to be right or appropriate from any school or thought, they find themselves faced with infinite options. This obsession with choices has led to a kind of existential paralysis and has taken away the stable meaning from them.

According to Jean-Paul Sartre, human beings are condemned to freedom, and this condemnation means that man is free in his choices, but this freedom ultimately puts a burden of unbearable responsibilities on his shoulders.

Human beings are condemned to freedom, and this condemnation means to have right to think 

By reading superficial novels and hearing the names of philosophers, today’s youth quickly enter a stage where they question the meaning of life and everything else; But they do not have the ability to create a new meaning for themselves. They strip “wade” before they get “new clothes” for themselves.

This is where “emptiness enters their lungs with oxygen”, and in Camus’s words, this “emptiness” becomes a stone that they can’t bear and finally stops them from moving.

As a result, awareness of this crisis is perhaps the first spark to get rid of the chains of illusion of knowledge — because facing this illusion and recognizing weaknesses not only requires the courage to enter the world of deep thinking but is also a step towards deeper self-awareness.

The young generation must go beyond superficial appearances and slogans, boldly step into the world of original thinking and real questioning.

Without serious reading and critical thinking, one can’t hope for better tomorrow

This entry means crossing the paths of “ready” thoughts and facing “darkness and cognitive doubts”; A step that is possible only by careful reading and reflection on the hidden layers of every thought.

By using critical thinking and a philosophical view instead of imitating ready-made formats, one can escape from the trap of illusion of knowledge and instead, open horizons of meaning and awareness that are rooted in self-awareness and fundamental understanding.

This effort is not only a way to escape from the existing intellectual crisis, but it can initiate a deep transformation in the individual and society; A transformation that returns the spirit of search and dynamism to today’s man and saves him from confusion and instability. It is only in this way that we can find a way out of the current situation and hope for a good future. Without serious reading and critical thinking, one cannot hope for the future of thought in this country.

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