Academic philosophy is primarily an experience in constant rejection and criticism. Everyone is taught how to brutally attack the arguments of everyone else. Have you ever hung out with someone that disagrees with everything you say? Philosophy conferences are pretty much like that. All the time. It's a never ending parade of people attempting to one-up each other in verbal combat.
Not my experience. What do you call the instruction to interpret your opponent's arguments in the best light possible, when writing an essay? You will be penalized if you interpret your opponent's arguments superficially, like most people in real life are prone to do. Philosophers don't do that. Philosophers listen. They are in fact taught how to listen.
And I hear you! The main reason I didn't follow an academic career is exactly because academic philosophy - though I adore it - is locked up in its Ivory Tower instead of out in the street where it's possible to cause social change. Shows like Family Guy or The Office do more to change people's opinions (their creators being famous atheists, for instance) than the most that a hundred professional philosophers could do in a hundred lifetimes.
At some point, you wanna become a bearer of good news, and evangelize about what you've learned at uni. Implement philosophy.
I think philosophers should adapt and become popularizers of philosophy. In whatever way. Ricky Gervais whom I referred to above, studied philosophy (and biology, if I recall). I think philosophers should push themselves, find a way, any way, to get their message out there. Via the mass media preferably.
When I used to tell people who asked what I did that I was a philosopher, a common refrain was "So what's like your favorite saying?"
Lol! The question I mostly got asked about was "what's the meaning of life?" I answered either with "I don't know" or like a logical positivist "it's a meaningless question". Who would've thought I would come up with a whole theory about the subject only a couple years later, and by accident, simply by thinking about what makes people depressed.
There are books published and conferences about "metametaphysics". The deeper into the world of abstraction the better. The less connected to real world issues the more pure it is.
What makes it unconnected to the real world isn't its abstractness. Look at David Lynch's movies! :P People don't mind abstractness. What makes it unconnected to the real world is .. that it's unconnected to the real world! If David Lynch can make movies that are good even tho they make no sense, then a philosopher can find a way to make metametaphysics popular. Look at the Matrix movies. Few people understood the first part when it came out. And it fucking rocked their world regardless. Philosophers simply need to adapt and change the way they interact with this world.