You're no Confuscius, Just a Doofus

Given the miniscule scale of this town, on nights out, it can feel like everyone pours out to party along with you. Luckily, this means you have a decent chance of bumping into some good acquaintances. Sadly, with the yang comes the yin. It also means that you have the painful potential of being caught out by unexpected opps. Only recently, though, have I been made aware of a hidden enemy, one that lies among us, waiting to pounce. This is the pseudo-philosopher, a pestilence that stalks the darkness, waiting to unload their innermost monologue on an unsuspecting victim. Their ideas are obviously insanely profound and absolutely necessary to hear. In my experience, these deep-down thoughts are sometimes immured for a reason, and I plead that we refrain from pouring them out to whoever happens to be sitting next to us in the smoking area. 

Allow me to clarify. The pseudo-philosopher materialises when you least expect (and want) them to. Often inebriated and always armed with a flurry of ‘deep’ talking points, it feels as though they seek you out to pull you into a conversation you want nothing to do with. Forget about your missing friend and listen to this boring man talk at you about how people are like stars. Sweating to death and you need air? Okay, but it will come at the cost of a breathy rant about what happens when we die. Will we ever know? Isn’t that truly one of the biggest shames of life? No. The biggest shame is that I made the god-awful mistake of thinking I would not be accosted by you, pretend-Plato. If you’re on a night out, approach me, and even think about starting a sentence anywhere along the lines of, “Do you ever think about how…”, I urge you to stop right there. I assure you that there is a good chance that I have had that thought, too, but, unlike you, I do not wish to suck people into a very boring conversation that truly leads nowhere. 

Please don’t accuse me of anti-intellectualism. I refuse to believe this is the best philosophy has to offer us, and if it is, then truly we have made no strides. Additionally, I am not referring to people who drunkenly unload their trauma onto you on nights out — I think they get enough self-inflicted shame the morning afterwards. Sure, counterfeit Confucius is well-entitled to speak his mind, no matter how mentally taxing it is to listen to his ‘um’s and ‘ah’s as he tries to remember why he began his sentence. Yet I also have the right not to listen — this right is continuously denied me as he creeps closer and closer. With no escape, I struggle to find the antidote to this pox. I’ve tried numerous approaches, believe me. I’ve indulged their ramblings and asked them more questions, in the hope they weren’t expecting to be interrogated and give up. I’ve argued back, and hoped the unstoppable force would meet an immovable object. Against my nature, I’ve been silent and wished that my visible aversion to their conversation would force a surrender and retreat. In all cases, the enemy has won, as I have somehow been coerced into spending time with them. 

The only possible solution I’ve found is to locate another one of their kind. However, this raises its own challenge of having to go out of your way to interact with more pretentiously profound people who have the next deepest thought no one has thought of yet. Moreover, like magnets, there is a chance that the two phony thinkers repel each other. The relationship between the thinker and the innocent victim is parasitic, and the thinker depends on the unwillingness of the victim to survive. I’ve gone into the mind of a killer and forced myself to have these complex ponderings to best learn how to cure this blight. 

To the pseudo-philosopher who forces deep conversation with me at midnight: you are the bane of my social outings, and I hope one day you will be forced to experience the same flurry of boredom, anger, and disdain as I have felt sitting there listening to you.

Illustration by Alice O'Sullivan