Flamingo highway

"What good is philosophy for the people?" asked my dad on a car ride back home from a holiday trip to Mexico City. What was perhaps intended as the beginnings of an ejoyable conversation soon became a yelling fight about philosophy lectures where simple answers were demanded (there are no simple answers, as philosophers well know); who was or wasn't listening to whom, "tricking" the question into something complicated; interruptions, shortage of patience, increasing volume; breaks, the ignition put down, the designated philosopher driver, fuming, jumps to the back of the car and we are stranded on the highway. Fumes.

I go up to the wheel and we continue on the road, my brother sullenly reading in the back of the van. I try to explain to my father the method of philosophy in answering questions, something I learned from Garret Thomson's class: philosophy tries to understand and make better questions by unpacking them, seeing what conceptual loads the question bares, and subsequently investigating into the kind of answers the question demands. By unpacking the question (unnecessarily "complicating" it, in my dad's opinion) one can understand it and ask exactly the question one wants to ask knowing precisely the load one puts into it. That is broadly the structure my brother was using to unpack what "good for the people" could mean.
Well. Not good enough. Dad wanted a simple answer that he could work with and comment, not a lecture, and in his opinion, its no good when a PhD student can't talk about what he is studying without getting f#ing pissed off(!). Fumes fumes smogggg arising.


A thumb flashes on the side of the road by a funny-looking hat packed with colorful objects. Beneath is a bearded man with long hair and obnoxiously bright orange shorts in the appearance of a swimsuit, bushy blond hairs curling along his legs.

-Stop the car! says dad, bring the hippie in! Hippies can be more respectful then my own children and they're nice and talkative(!)

We stop the car. My other brother runs down the highway and the hippie is brought into the car. He turns out to be Siberian, a Russian nationalist in french accent full of poetry, stories, samovars, photographs, historical comments on wars and people... The 13 hour ride extended into what has been 4 days of living with Kostya in the house.
We found this about him on the web today:

http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_europe/2010-08-13/164806794188.html