Project Vision 21

Francisco Miraval

Recently, during a delightful Christmas dinner with some colleagues, I met a man who amazed me with his knowledge about popular music, singers, concerts, and songs, both in English and in Spanish in the United States and in Mexico.

Listening to my new friend, it was clear he could tell you who sang a given song during a certain concert and where (city and theater included) that concert took place and when. He also knows a countless number of details about the lives of many singers and concert organizers, and he explained the musical preferences of each of them.

Then, he asked me the unavoidable first question, “What’s the music you like?” “Tango, classical music, and instrumental jazz,” I said. I think I could have said “Alien music from Epsilon 6 and Plutonian jazz” and the effect on his face would have been the same.

He tried to recover the best he could and then he threw his second unavoidable question to me, “So, what do you do?” I think he thought, but not expressed, about including some additional words between “what” and “do.” I perhaps he was just trying to find some kind of explanation to my previous answer.

“I teach philosophy and humanities at two colleges,” I said. I think “I am from the Planet Epsilon 6 and my spacecraft is parked behind the building” would have been a better, more believable answer.

Then, he said something that took me by surprise. “I don’t know any philosopher,” said the man with a matchless knowledge of popular music. Before I could say anything, my new friend explained that, for him, philosophy was a synonym of confusion and, therefore, he rather focused on “the practical and concrete aspects of life.”

The conversation promptly faded away, but the expression “I don’t know any philosopher” began to drill into my preconceived ideas and it went from place to place inside my mind, turning thoughts on and off like the small metallic sphere inside a pinball machine.

I wanted to know how it is possible for somebody to say that he doesn’t know any philosopher. There is an obvious answer: college statistics. It seems that less than 4 percent of college students taking philosophy classes in the United States belong to a “minority” group and less than 1 percent of philosophy professors are Latino.

Therefore, it is unlikely that my music-knowing friend will ever meet another philosopher with whom he can share a Christmas dinner.

Another answer is that philosophy and humanities do not enjoy the respect and attraction they used to have and, as a consequence, many online career sites continuously discourage young people from studying those careers.

Whatever the reason, in my opinion the expression “I don’t know any philosopher” is both a confession and a wake-up call to tell us that we are allowing others to think for us and we don’t even care enough about that situation to start thinking for ourselves.  And you, do you know any philosopher?