Jawohl Staatssicherhei comrade! I shall follow your orders!
Philosophy made me less interested in politics and democratic principles. Being anti-natalist, in fact, efilist, I’d destroy the world in a heartbeat if I had the power. Before, all that mattered to me was the idea of a republic and fairness.
Glad you are not in charge. Why should anything be fair?
Antinatalist and efilist do not entitle you to destroy the world. I though both were voluntary positions?
These creeds are an ever declining ideology.
And if you are still alive you are a hypocritical efilist.
So what are you waiting for?
Perhaps in a manner of speaking, a good sound philosophical attitude, has changed the life of the person who’s image this is.
But YOU, Tyler Duden, YOU are a buffoon!!!
There is no doubt that since the 1960s when Down’s Syndrome kids were last just thrown in the 'looney bin"., a massive change in the philosophy of psychology has had a massive positive impact on the lives of millions of these people.
Sadly the change in attitude has not always managed to penetrate to all persons.
The Choice
W.B. Yeats
The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.
Does it mean anything?
My interpretation -
Yeats’ saying one must choose between the perfection of life and work.
Yeats distinguishes between the outcomes:
Life: All one’s concerns and worries will be resolved and become a thing of the past. One will feel they’ve hit a lottery with how satisfying and smooth their life runs.
Work: One will be wealthy, but isolated and never at peace. One’s life with feel like a struggle. At the end of one’s life, one will feel remorse. (Like they’ve neglected something fundamental, and their opportunity at redemption is gone.)
The relevance of this poem is that xzc is attributing philosophy to the perfection of life, thus the answer to the OP’s question: Philosophy has enabled xzc to live (or pursue) a satisfying and effective life.
====
Exactly how I feel! 
I came here two years ago from this exact point.
My foundation was, ‘I exist’. My question was, ‘Should I?’
A choice is involved in every great man’s life where they have to choose between their work or life, but Yeats takes a pessimistic view of it. By ‘work’ he probably means artistic of philosophic work, but the same goes for other techne as well, and by ‘life’ he means social life, e.g., wife, kids, house, friends, etc. The point is that an artist can’t have both, and history tells us as much. When you look at history, people either excel at one to the detriment of the other, or are mediocre at both.
If the choice is work, then they refuse the “heavenly mansion,” and instead end up “raging in the night.” You can insert Frost’s “Road Not Taken” at this point, though he’s being more general. The last two lines are ambiguous, and I can’t make them out. He could be saying that in the end, after a road’s taken and one looks back–and whether one succeeds in either choice is a matter of luck–, the perplexity of the initial choice seems like “an empty purse” in two senses. First in the sense that one cannot afford to go back and choose another, and second in the sense that both choices are meaningless, or that both choices lacks an essential ingredient. The last line separated by a comma is the problematic of either choice; the night’s remorse of the lonely artist, and the vanity of the social being.
And you relate to that pessimism, then?
And your answer is drastically different in regards to philosophy’s affect?
I think the pessimism is well-founded. History confirms it. The greatest philosophers have always had crappy personal lives.
Philosophy, proper, is always angst-engendering, because [real] philosophers, proper, are always agents of disruptive wisdom to, first, themselves, and secondly, others. That means you’re weird, an you make other people weird.
You can’t be an agent of disruptive wisdom if you have to deal with that asshole kid who’s bullying your kid at school, or with your friends gambling problem, or your aging mother’s Alzheimer’s, and your brother’s broke and is getting a divorce; it’s really hard on him, and his wife’s being a fucking bitch, so you’re the one who has to mediate between them because they have a kid. Oh, and your wife’s also not happy since you’re never home, so you have to plan a vacation for just the two of you soon, but your babysitter’s gone to college, which, by the way, you’re invited to her high school graduation party Saturday afternoon. You know that idea, that germ of an idea you had that day at the office in between reading the latest shitty dissertation chapter of the grad student whose committee you’re chairing and quibbling with the chair of the department through email over your mid-tenure track review…that idea, yeah, that idea’s gone.
I understand what you’re saying.
And I respectfully disagree.
But it’s 5am here.
So I’m getting too tired to formulate a convincing case for optimism.
Except this:
I only have seen further, by standing on the shoulders of giants.
We are constantly growing and learning more efficient/effective techniques and understandings.
As we learn how to act efficiently, we can do more with the limited power we do have.
We’re only growing broader and higher shoulders.
I do not think philosophers have more difficult lives than others. One thing does distinguish them; they are smarter than average. You have to be to understand what all the fuss is about. Given that people who know that life is not straightforward; that the shit they are taught does not always add up; tend to ask the questions that lead them to philosophy or other forms of study.
Smart people also avoid others to rule their lives for them, an can find a series of moral justifications why they ought not.
Given what you have said above, it’s not philosophers that have poor lives, and have the ‘disruptive wisdom’ to avoid it.
If it is possible to generalise, maybe we could name names?
Hume lived alone and uncomplicated life; Rousseau was the only one that made his life a misery and then for a short time; Rousseau has a simple life avoiding his parental responsibilities. Kant and Plato avoided personal complications in their lives, also Newton (probably gay).
Shop was a miserable old fucker, and so was Nietzsche and like Sartre loved screwing around.
Any more from any more?
Best to understand where both the shoulders and feet of your ancestors are, so as to not stand on their toes.
Those giants stood on the shoulders of other giants. It’s not just one pair of shoulders and it’s a long way to the top.
It may well be a long way to the top, but as we all know it’s turtles all the way down, and the guys at the top have longer to fall.