Philosophy Addict

Justin Leiber

I have an addiction. An unhealthy, uneconomical, sometimes stale but unshakable, obsessive, decades-old, mind-warping, friend-alienating and all-surrounding addiction. And not one of those classy, exciting, romantic and relatively easily-shaken movie & media addictions like cocaine. No, it's an embarrassing addiction and one, unless I succeed confessionally this time, that I have only happily owned up to once before in my life.

The once before was at a 1950s-style 3 p.m. downtown Chicago luncheon counter, sometime summer in the 1960s. The only other guy at the counter, three-piece suited, was trying to get the unbusy waitress to play the match game called Nim. You have rolls of one, three, five and seven matches. You and your opponent alternately take some number of matches from a row. The person who has taken the last match loses. The most convenient algorithm for the game involves converting from familiar ten-base numbers into those computer-favored binary numbers: that conversion tells you what moves will keep him a loser so long as he makes the first move or makes a mistake.

The three-piecer was pushing the waitress hard to play. She was resisting, knowing that such invitations are normally the prelude to humiliating defeat. I looked over from my coffee, displaying a mild curiosity. He offered to explain the game and I patiently received instruction. Suggesting that I found the game somewhat daunting, I 'asked him to make the first move. Looking up defeated, five painful moves later, he asked, “Are you in computers too?" With nary a blush I owned up to my addiction. "No," I said," I am a philosopher." Well, there, it's out.

A chemist can say he's a chemist. An MD can say she's a physician. Engineers, lawyers and locksmiths can be engineers, lawyers and locksmiths. The only time someone seems likely to say, “I am a philosopher" is in a bar at two in the morning, and once he says it you know he’s either going to pass out immediately or solemnly deliver some sentiment worthy of Rosanne Rosannadanna and then pass out.

Me and my fellow addicts we just tend to smirk a bit and say "I teach philosophy" or "I do philosophy" as if one could excuse being a heroin addict saying “I teach heroin addiction" instead of saying “I am one. "

It isn't my fault, you understand, I didn't mean to be one. I was a victim of circumstances. When you arrive in this world as a kid, the first step is to figure out what's going on, second you assess you strengths and weaknesses and decide what you ought to do, third you start doing it . . . Well, I'm still stuck in the first step. I just want to understand the whole business, what it all means.

Spinoza said happiness was the, union of the mind with the whole of nature. Hey, that's right isn't it! I mean all this business about making money and success and kicking people around is really fundamentally foolish, ain't it? I mean you don't think it was an accident that the apples were knowledge, that knowledge is the only addiction worth the loss of paradise? Hunker down, you old addict you, philosophy breeds company. 'Tis the proud mark of Eve & Adam and it's on all of us.