Philosophy Ain't Dead Yet

Philosophy gets a bad rap nowadays because it's misunderstood, not because its useless and boring,
Most of us spend at least a little time during a week philosophizing without realizing it. Don't believe me? Hang around a local bar just before closing time, or listen to a mother trying to explain to a teenager why school work is important. Philosophy gets a bad rap because we haven't updated its definition. We still picture a philosopher as an old guy in white baggy pajamas setting on a porch with nothing to do but think up dumb arguments about dumb things. From our modern perspective the history of philosophy is bit like this, but philosophical thinking is still with us and very much alive. It just needs a new definition for us to recognize it
First let's make clear what philosophy is not;
   Philosophy is not Science.
Science is a disciplined approach to examining, interpreting and describing the world and universe around us, including the "us" part.
   Philosophy is not Religion;
 Religion is an individual commitment to a factually unsupported group belief in a supreme being, or beings living on a mountain or in another dimension to whom we are subservient and are obligated to worship.
   Philosophy is not magic or sophistry or mysterious. It's as simple as looking out a different window in your house and describing what you see. Looking out an upstairs window presents a different view than looking out a basement window and we are all looking out separate and different windows. Even when we look out the same window we will notice different things and describe what we see differently. It is interesting and historically informative to read ancient Greek accounts of what they saw from ancient windows and some of their viewpoints have carried forward and persist in our moral codes and forms of government.
    Philosophy is an Art.
PHILOSOPHY IS THE ART OF CREATING USEFUL INSIGHTS AND PERSPECTIVES
    Circumstance, discussion and use decide if an insight or perspective is useful. Formalizing the insight or perspective uses language as a paint brush, and like a painting, it will be seen and interpreted differently by those who read, hear, and attempt to interpret it. A small point made just before the bar closes can hit home with an individual made receptive by a second or third martini and repeated in more sober terms spread and be inculcated in a group of friends, a community or a Country. Philosophy echoes through even simple exchanges of opinion or perspectives and effects us all, like it or not, it ain't dead yet.