...and the river in question is called...philosophy. And the great thing about philosopheee...is that it is freee! for everybodyyy....
Ok, enough of the larking about. But it is true. My words speak the truth in abundance and are pregnant with the bastard child of wisdom. Any idiot can be a philosopher you know. It doesn't require a qualification. Nor does it require any specialist training. Or a brain the size of a planet (though it may help). You don't have to be the owner of an enormous IQ, nor be a Noble Prize winner, or a graduate of Imperial College (though it may and will certainly help). The truth is, that we can all be philosophers. Yes every single dumb-stupid-fat-skinny-ugly-pretty-freakshow one of us. Even the fat man working in McDonalds and the part-time accountant who thinks he's rather cool. All it takes is a healthy skepticism. An enquiring mind. A wry sense of humour. A sense of the absurd, an appreciation of the profound (like a good relationship with God and Queen) and finally...a nice bottle of red wine, preferably a vintage Rioja, to zzap those brain cells into profound oblivion.
Philosophy though, I admit, has a bad reputation. It is oft considered stuffy, and anachronistic, and a dusty old profession that nobody really takes seriously anymore. This view is not helped by the philosophy books you find in the library. They seem to be written in a foreign idioma and in a style that is deliberately obscurantist and designed to put you off your stride before you've even begun! Forget the books. Forget them. Leave them in the dusty old library vaults. You don't need them. Why should you? As I said all you need is to be alive (which you are as you're reading this. If you were dead you would not be reading this, right?) and you also need to be in possession of your senses (assuming of course you have not drunk the entire bottle of Rioja). We can all be philosophers. Let's think of a problem, a topic, a subject matter, and let's analyse it, and study it, and crack it open, and peer inside, and see what lies within, or what lies without.
Now the first thing to do is pick a topic. Any ideas? Anyone? I would like you to pick a topic, doesn't matter what (as long as it's not sexually explicit or obscenely gross in nature - or maybe it can be sexual? I don't mind). I will let you decide. It's your class. It's your life. Once you have picked a topic, I will show you how, without delving into a book, or an academic course, you can use the tools at your disposal (your brain and your senses), to scrutinise - analyse - decipherise - and finally, to reach a conclusion so startling, so original, that it will leave you speechless, and change your life from here onwards till the day you join the angels. Oh yes, I mean it. The thing is we all too often forget what fun it is just to be alive. To be able to think - it's such a joy! I know you think I'm crazy don't you? - there are times, many times, when I am walking along the pavement, often whistling, often mumbling, usually jaywalking, and I am struck by a thought (sometimes I am struck by bird-shit but that is an altogether different matter), or I am on the bus or the train, or in a cafe, or on a plane to someplace in the mountains, and I'm philosophising, and it hits me (no not the bus - though that can happen too), and it hits me, some thought of such (and I'm going to use a BIG word here) profundity, that I am left gasping in sheer exhilaration. It's almost as if I am breathing in pure oxygen from the top of Everest, or some gas that regular humans don't breathe, and it's such a wonderful feeling. I want you to feel that. I want you to feel how I feel and see how wonderful it is!
Well maybe I am mad? So what? I'm the better for it, and you my dear friends, the luckier for having a crazy fool like me as a teacher. The best teachers are the mad one's. I used to have a chemistry teacher at Secondary school and he was pretty radio ga-ga/radio blah-blah - and I learnt much from him - about carbon atoms and the Periodic Table and a shaggy haired Russian chemist called Mendeleev. But anyway, what I was saying was that you need to pick a topic so we can pick a pocket and pick a fight with. I want to show you the good stuff in-between the gaps in your lives, and show you how it resembles, when you look a little closely, the infinite space between the galaxies...
[to be continued]
