If You Are Going Through An Existential Crisis, These 50 Funny Philosophical Memes Might Help

Philosophy, or, from Greek, “'love of wisdom,” is one of those concepts where we all sort of know what it means, but actually defining it can be tricky. Some enjoy vague platitudes like “philosophy is thinking about ideas,” which is so vague as to encompass nearly every single thing you can imagine.

There are and likely will be countless texts on what philosophy actually is, but one, more concrete detail that we know, is that the term was likely coined by Pythagoras of Samos. Some of you might be familiar with his theorem for calculating the three sides of a right triangle.

In English, the word, as usual, was “loaned” from the French language in roughly the 11th century. Even then, its meaning differed from person to person. Some wrote that it was the "advanced study of the speculative subjects (logic, ethics, physics, and metaphysics)," while others believed that it was best described as “deep wisdom consisting of love of truth and virtuous living.”

Which is all well and good, until you actually ask for specifics, then you will get as many suggestions as there are people. Maybe even more, as some people are just indecisive. This is not a criticism of philosophy as a concept, but just a reminder that it’s a constantly shifting and evolving field.

With mass media, the internet and a comprehensive system of universities, academies and schools across much of the world, it’s really not that hard to get some recognition if you have an idea. You’ll just have to push your way to the “front of the crowd” as ideas and theories are a dime a dozen now.

Similarly, as low-brow as they might seem, memes are a wonderful way to spread ideas. After all, a meme contains a kernel of shared knowledge or understanding, so a joke or concept can be communicated with a very simple image. Blocks of unparsable texts are out, memes are in, for better or worse.