Some people are "interested" in philosophy in the same that tourists are interested in the countries they visit, which is to say very little as soon as it inconveniences them, and as such we could call the former 'serial ideologues', 1 because they hop around between worldviews like tourists hop around the world, only scraping the surface so that they can wear a badge on the coat of their personality that they broadcast to others.
One way to see how virtuous someone is is to see how much they are willing to pay for their virtues. If they are not willing to be in pain for their ideas, the purifying pain of the truth, then it is not philosophy, just intellectual masturbation. Likewise someone who is not willing to make the reader face themselves is not interested in the truth either, they are merely looking for an accomplice to be mediocre with, which is why so many writers present themselves as "humble", because they have no interest in truly changing themselves and want to feel good about remaining small.
People genuinely interested in philosophy have a burning desire to answer some important questions in their own life, like why does evil exist, how to be a good person in a world full of compromises, why are people so blind about the most important topics in life, why is our society in constant denial about individual and collective death, why is love nowhere to be found, and how to live well amidst a collapsing society, amongst many questions.
Serial ideologues on the other hand are stuck in an eternal chase of the newest thing that will peak their curiosity, which is why their writing is profoundly tainted by whatever they are currently reading, such that most of what they "write" is merely commentary in between long passages of their current obsession.
If the work of those genuinely interested in philosophy can be compared to a small but well-built house, with solid foundations, a stable structure and a harmonious design, ultimately the type of house you would want to live in, the work of serial ideologues is more like a long row of half-built houses, most of which crumbled under their own weight because none of them stood the test of time, because none of them were built to be lived in, they were just built for appearances.
The serial ideologue then looks back and thinks to himself how far they've come, because they've hopped from Atheism, to Occultism, to Buddhism, and then finally to Christianity, but the hollowness of their mere interest never strikes them as such, because all they can see is shallow appearances, because that's what they are, a mere personality. 2
Not that there is anything inherently good about staying with the same worldview for your entire life. As is often the case, the self manifests in seemingly opposite poles which take root in the same hollowness. People who constantly hop between worldviews, and those who are attached to one because of the identity it provides are both unconscious, which is why they are so attached to the mask that they wear. Some prefer the stability of wearing the same one their entire life, and some prefer the constant novelty and the sense of "progress" that comes with frequently changing the mask, but unless there is a profound surrender to something beyond yourself, then it's just cosplay.
This is the difference between a real culture and those who ape the past. The former will use the shared forms, whether the rituals, or the outfits, or the habits, or the stories, as a way to live for something beyond their mere self, in harmony with other people, whereas the latter can only see the forms, which is why they obsess so much over minutia and not the much more important work of living more consciously.
The self loves to focus on details so that it doesn't have to change, which is why modern "Christians" love to argue about what constitutes a sin or not, what is demonic or not in our modern world, what aspects of the doctrines apply or not to our times, and who is or isn't a proper Christian, but they so rarely talk about love itself, because it is not something you can merely describe, but something you have to embody.
All of this is to say that you cannot learn much about someone's character just from their outward personality. Character, like a great story, reveals itself through time, whereas the self advertises itself through space. You need to see how someone deals with hardship, pain, loss, confusion, or plain old boredom, to really get an idea of who they are. You can find very conscious atheists, and conversely very unconscious and dogmatic Christians, Buddhists, Taoists, Spiritualists and the likes. You can find more love from regular people who know nothing of spirituality, than from so-called "spiritual" masters whose ego is fed by their audience.
There is really no shortcut for discernment. Even a general heuristic that I find true more often than not, the idea that people who had to live through a great deal of pain tend to be more conscious, can be blatantly false. Some people find a wealth of inner strength from the hardships of their life, other people open up to being very loving people, finding great compassion for others because they have known their struggles from their personal experience. But some people only close down from Reality when faced with pain, and become more bitter, more selfish, more entitled for their life to be easy.
Understanding the self and how it maintains itself can never be a science, its own nature and the mechanisms it uses are far too subtle for our own minds to grasp. But one thing to be sure, those who constantly bolster their personality, as opposed to their character, cannot be trusted, because in times of difficulty we must rely on our own courage and love, which come from our character and not the mask we wear to present ourselves. Human beings might care about your personality, to the point that you might acquire great fortune and fame, but Death does not, and whether you like it or not, we all stand naked in front of it, all equal no matter our wealth, and with only our courage to accompany us.
1 A term by Darren Allen, in one of his journal entries from November 2024:
My point [on ideologies of irresponsibility] is that people who pin the ultimate cause of their suffering on something outside of themselves have no real interest in the truth. This is why they have no real difficulty swapping the ideological props they use to keep their false self standing. Some are serial ideologues, jumping from one to another every few months, others move more slowly, but nothing really changes. With restless intellectual curiosity and a superficial appetite for novelty (part of the job description of the bourgeois thinker) they may be interested in the truth, but such interest is a way of avoiding the truth, not of approaching it, and so it doesn’t last for long before the elastic of the ego draws the butterfly self back to its base state of boredom, ennui, melancholy, anxiety, anger or whatever other form of misery it is temperamentally given to.
2 See also Narcissism rules everything around me where I also used the term 'serial ideologues'
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Philosophy Worldviewhopping Sophistry Racketworld Character Personality
2026-03-29