"It is what it is" means the same as "A is A" or A=A. These happen to be fundamental philosophical postulates from Aristotle.
At its base those statements are objective, i.e. a thing IS itself.
Reality is what it is, NOT what you would falsely think or are deceived into thinking or believing what it is.
Thanks for commenting! I agree with Aristotle’s empiricism. If something exists than it has certain characteristics that define it and these characteristics make up its reality, whether we have the wisdom to recognize them or not. I’ve always found the challenge with this is that A=A assumes I am able to recognize A as A, which for a variety of reasons I might not be able to. Because I feel compelled to throw my lot behind a material viewpoint of the world (I.e world exists and is not a product of thought realizing itself) I fully agree. But because we also move through the world as cumbersome luminious beings and the world moves through us in both perceptible and imperceptible ways, I’ve always ended up in the critical realist camp= An objective reality exists independent of our knowledge but when it comes to social life we won’t be able to grasp its true relation and must rely on theories that are useful rather than readily true.
But anyways as the post argues, people aren’t using the phrase in the Aristotelian way but to imply ambiguity and a social order that is beyond any form of knowledge.
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