Why Smart People Don't Care About Social Life - Schopenhauer

[Uncle Joe]

Have you ever wondered why some of the smartest people prefer solitude over parties? 🧠 In this video, we explore Arthur Schopenhauer’s fascinating philosophy on why intelligent individuals often withdraw from social life—not because they hate people, but because they find most interactions shallow and draining.

[leftstreet]

1. "free from the exhausting performance of social approval"

Schopenhauer rocks! (rocked)

Thanks for posting this

[GenThePerservering]

2. Read Schopenhauer's 'On Women'

he definitely does NOT 'rock'.

[leftstreet]

3. Well, he was born in the late 1700s and had Mommy issues

so there's that

[littlemissmartypants]

20. Thank you. ❤️

[SocialDemocrat61]

4. Maybe because they ask themselves

[Harker]

5. Schopenhauer held that one's tolerance for noise was in inverse proportion to their intelligence.

I suppose that made him feel better about himself.

He also stated that women were the perfect caregivers for children because they themselves remained children throughout their lives.

Being a philosopher doesn't mean that one's smart and doesn't preclude their being an asshole.

[Dave Bowman]

21. I know way more men who are immature so screw him.

[3825-87867]

6. (Yawn) Was gonna check this out but...

didn't seem it's THAT entertaining!




/s (In Case)

[spike jones]

7. As someone once said, if you really like to be alone in a room, it is not enough that no one

Last edited Fri May 2, 2025, 08:51 PM - Edit history (1)

is in there with you, there has to be empty chairs.

[Orrex]

8. That's not true. I love isolation.

[allegorical oracle]

14. Same here. That's why I live in the middle of nowhere. Just trees, birds, twinkling fireflies, clean

air, spring water to drink, the call of sandhill cranes migrating north, aroma of newly mown hay, sunrises, sunsets, full moons, deer with their fawns, bubbling blue springs, fragrant magnolias, calving season -- with all the little ones playing like puppies in the fields.

So, it's easy to be alone if you know what to look and listen for.

[Rebl2]

29. That sounds

like heaven to me!

[allegorical oracle]

32. It is. But I have to keep reminding myself of those nice things. It's so easy to get caught

up in the terror of the news and our politics. Didn't appreciate how much calmer and kinder it was when Biden was in office.

[Rebl2]

27. Me too

I have always been introverted when it comes to parties. I can’t stand them unless it’s a family gathering. When I was young I did go to bars with girlfriends, but wasn’t crazy about it. I would have rather been in an interesting class at college than a bar.

[Aristus]

9. We're just dismayed by how many stupid people there are in the world.

And just really, really sick of their shit.

I'm staying home. Best way to avoid the 'the world is run by the lizard people' people.

[Texin]

10. I'm a natural introvert and prefer my own company (and my husband's and dog's) to others.

I don't hate people, but I don't like to mingle in larger gatherings with people I don't know and don't really care to know. Cocktail party jibbering just makes me tired and anxious.

[John1956PA]

30. I am the same type of person as you. I prefer talking with my close acquaintances about history and culture.

[littlemissmartypants]

11. Have you read 'An abridged version of Arthur Schopenhauer's famous essay On Women' Uncle Joe?

An abridged version of Arthur Schopenhauer’s famous essay
On Women

Updated translation
The nature of the female
One needs only to see the way she is built to realize that woman is not intended for great mental or for great physical labor. She expiates the guilt of life not through activity but through suffering, through the pains of childbirth, caring for the child and subjection to the man, to whom she should be a patient and cheering companion. Great suffering, joy, exertion, is not for her: her life should flow by more quietly, trivially, gently than the man’s without being essentially happier or unhappier.

Women are suited to being the nurses and teachers of our earliest childhood precisely because they themselves are childish, silly and short-sighted, in a word big children, their whole lives long: a kind of intermediate stage between the child and the man, who is the actual human being, ‘man.’ One has only to watch a girl playing with a child, dancing and singing with it the whole day, and then ask oneself what, with the best will in the world, a man could do in her place.

Natural weapons
In the girl nature has had in view what could in theatrical terms be called a stage-effect: it has provided her with superabundant beauty and charm for a few years at the expense of the whole remainder of her life, so that during these years she may so capture the imagination of a man that he is carried away into undertaking to support her honorably in some form or another for the rest of her life, a step he would seem hardly likely to take for purely rational considerations. Thus nature has equipped women, as it has all its creatures, with the tools and weapons she needs for securing her existence, and at just the time she needs them; in doing which nature has acted with its usual economy. For just as the female ant loses its wings after mating, since they are then superfluous, indeed harmful to the business of raising the family, so the woman usually loses her beauty after one or two childbeds, and probably for the same reason.

Female truth
The fundamental defect of the female character is a lack of a sense of justice. This originates first and foremost in their want of rationality and capacity for reflexion but it is strengthened by the fact that, as the weaker sex, they are driven to rely not on force but on cunning: hence their instinctive subtlety and their ineradicable tendency to tell lies: for, as nature has equipped the lion with claws and teeth, the elephant with tusks, the wild boar with fangs, the bull with horns and the cuttlefish with ink, so it has equipped woman with the power of dissimulation as her means of attack and defence, and has transformed into this gift all the strength it has bestowed on man in the form of physical strength and the power of reasoning. Dissimulation is thus inborn in her and consequently to be found in the stupid woman almost as often as in the clever one. To make use of it at every opportunity is as natural to her as it is for an animal to employ its means of defence whenever it is attacked, and when she does so she feels that to some extent she is only exercising her rights. A completely truthful woman who does not practice dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility, which is why women see through the dissimulation of others so easily it is inadvisable to attempt it with them. – But this fundamental defect which I have said they possess, together with all that is associated with it, gives rise to falsity, unfaithfulness, treachery, ingratitude, etc. Women are guilty of perjury far more often than men. It is questionable whether they ought to be allowed to take an oath at all.
Snip...
https://heretical.com/miscella/onwomen.html

[Uncle Joe]

15. Do you believe a person can be right about one thing and wrong on another?

I don't agree with his reason toward women.

[littlemissmartypants]

22. I believe that one man can be deeply disturbing and disturbed. ...

I also see that there's no "right about one/wrong on another" disclaimer on this OP. So, that's a bandaid question and it's leaky.

[Uncle Joe]

23. The OP isn't about women. n/t

[littlemissmartypants]

25. But just smart people...

[Uncle Joe]

26. and introverts along with the need or lack of need for social interaction.

[58Sunliner]

19. An incel!

[Dave Bowman]

24. Lol, yeah he was a pioneer in red pill nonsense. What a dick.

[littlemissmartypants]

12. I worry about you.

[Uncle Joe]

16. I worry about all of us.

[littlemissmartypants]

18. I'm not sure about that.

[Cherokee100]

17. Religion?

'Religion is the opiate of the masses', per Karl Marx. Along with the term 'Critical Thinking' in my opinion, reinforces the above. Think for yourself.

[UTUSN]

28. Knr

[chowder66]

31. I wonder what he would have said about left handed ambiverts.

[electric_blue68]

33. Hey.... that's me! 😄👍

I am an ambivert, and left-handed. 😄

[electric_blue68]

34. I'm considered quite high IQ . I enjoy having a social life. First had to do w testing as a kid to see if different....

new different oxygen levels in the incubators [7 wks premature] to prevent blindness (like how it affected Stevie Wonder) might have affected IQ.

Then later on as a ?teen tested by a psychological student neighbor reinforced this.

Anyway, I enjoy chatting with people. I have a lot of interests so I can find something to talk about.
Otoh, I've been shy at parties at times bc for a lot of my life I've felt not lived up to my hopes, dreams, life expectations, and goals so I've felt "less than".

Always had a bunch of friends to talk with.

I do enjoy my alone time for reading, making art, and doing crafts all my life.