real life

It is often said that a disproportionate obsession with purely academic or abstract matters indicates a retreat from the problems of real life.(also: life)

However, most of the people engaged in such matters say that this attitude is based on three things: ignorance, stupidity and nothing else.(also: stupid)

Philosophers for example argue that they are very much concerned with the problems posed by "real life": like for instance "What do we mean by real?" and "How can we reach an empirical definition of life?" and so on.

One definition of life, albeit not a particularly useful one, might run something like this:

Life is like a grapefruit: It's sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half of one for breakfast. (also: breakfast)

One of the extraordinary things about life is the sort of places it's prepared to put up with living. Anywhere it can get some sort of grip, whether it's the intoxicating seas of Santraginus V where the fish never seem to care whatever the heck kind of direction they swim in, the fire storms of Frastra, where, they say, life begins at 40,000 degrees, or just burrowing around in the lower intestine of a rat for the sheer unadulterated hell of it, life will always find a way of hanging on in somewhere.