Homeless Story of J, 6

This is entirely a work of fiction. The author in no way implies any endorsement of the ideas inside. Homeless Story of J, 6

"The superior person seeks what is right, the inferior one, what is profitable." -- Confucius

The great irony of my vagrancy is that it provides ample time to engage in a street version of my old profession: philosopher. Yes, it’s true, there is some small, flimsy place in this country for the humanities.  Back when I was a college lad, naïve and spoiled, I chose for my major the most impractical yet ideal: philosophy. It was considered whimsical to study philosophy even then, a time that seems so long ago.  Today, of course, the whole spectrum of humanities is under siege.  In any case, study in the humanities has mostly been the prerogative of the rich.  Now that the U.S. is faltering, the shortest-lived Empire of them all, so is the opportunity to study any form of knowledge not directly related to money-making. Truth and wisdom, even in the best of times, have always been considered secondary; and in periods of want and strain they become loathsome pariahs.  Those who who dare advance, say, the lessons of history, or the passion of poetry, earn exile and scorn.  Here I sit, homeless, with, yes, a Ph.D. in philosophy. Plenty of time to think and observe.  It shouldn’t bother me that no one cares about my perceptions.  And yet it does.  One thing I can tell you about philosophy--I'm speaking to you, my unreal interlocutor--is that it is dangerous to the soul. The first thing you learn, in the discipline, is that reason--the essence of the quest for wisdom--is the enemy of the powerful. Indeed, the powerful control the masses by discarding reason for its deceptive enemy:  sophistry. Almost every argument from a politician is sneaky and specious, geared to goad irrational fears.  Indeed, none of the rhetoric of the overlords is ever analytical and valid.  Once you study philosophy with any modicum of rigor, you learn the horrible truth:  how mentally yoked the bulk of the people are. How easily they are led around like puppets, yanked by chords tied to flammable emotions. Take note, though:  Emotion is not the enemy. No no no no no.  If you think of an argument as a house, then a philosopher is a good carpenter, the sort who checks the foundation to make sure it is solid before turning it over to the customer. Sadly, every house built by the rhetoric of senators topples from the first gust of deep thought--or the sort of emotion that embodies such thought. Wise philosophy makes you emotionally accurate. Once so enlightened, you can’t go back. You are no longer in the Matrix of the Zombie followers of patriotism. Hollow pageantry and false paeans to freedom no longer advise you. Yea, if you are a true philosopher, a rootless philosopher, you see that conformity eschews wisdom, and instead  prioritizes two things:   day-to-day survival for the poor; and the pursuit of  ‘resources’ for the rich.  Resources, you ask?  Resources are anything--people, animals, ideas, the Earth, the land, technology--that can be reduced to an empty object and brutally exploited .  Resources are the trophies, in a mad, frothing competition, in gain great piles of gold.  Yes, humanity is that stupid and shallow and trapped.