system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Current climate surrounding Eastern Philosophy

A trend that I have been picking up on lately is a shift towards more acceptance and seriousness taken toward Eastern Philosophy.  I know that there was some aversion to it being taken seriously in some departments and subreddits, but lately i've seen a trend toward studying eastern philosophy as a more legitimate philosophical genre.  Do any of you know what is responsible for the previous aversion to it and why it is moving in the direction that I have seen recently?
gpt
I mean, it might sound awkward to say but one reason for it being taken more seriously is probably quite literally just racism decreasing. In the past a lot of people thought eastern philosophy was just vague nonsense. And some others thought it was real philosophy, but is not really worth considering since the modern west took off faster in terms of this type of scholarship, and has everything covered. But the problem is that its becoming more obvious that there's a lot of depth in the east, and some parts that have trends heavily different form the west. But more importantly that these trends come from divergences that started hundreds of years ago rather than anything new discovered by modern western philosophy. Making dismissing their relevance come off highly racist as if its just a given that western philosophy was always more accurate in a way that makes everything done outside of it irrelevant.

Take open individualism for example. Its a mainstream position in parts of the east. In the west its been more or less barely considered by most people, other than indirectly by spinoza and directly by schopenhauer. But neither of those people are read for this reason when read. Bringing it to light in the modern relevant sense is done by someone who is still semi obscure named daniel kolak. The truth is that philosophy got to modern day without actually even considering it that much. And at this point its hard to ignore that this is something way different than how the east played out, and that it definitely has racist connotations to not accept that these people were right that its more worth considering.