Thinking on Freeways

After giving it some thought, I have decided to pass up my opportunity to become a subscriber to the “Great Thinkers on Cassette” series.

The subscription material said these cassettes were designed to make your driving time more rewarding. As I commuted to work, I could punch in the “Giants of Philosophy” cassette and hear the narrated works of Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, and the others. Or, I could punch in, “Giants of Political Thought,” and hear Thomas Paine, Jefferson, Hobbes, Thoreau, and so forth. If economics were my mood, I could punch in that tape and hear the essays of Schumpeter and John Maynard Keynes.

Naturally I declined. A freeway in Southern California is no place for great thinkers. I tried to imagine Soren Kierkegaard, driving along in the Los Angeles rush hour, thinking the thoughts he did, and I thought how quickly Kierkegaard would become completely uninsurable, assuming he survived at all.

Sure, I let my mind wander on the freeway. I don’t concentrate 100 percent on the pickups, SUVs and gravel trucks thundering by. But when you think about the concentration levels required of Machiavelli’s discussion of the Florentine Politic, I start to feel uncomfortable. I feel even more uncomfortable thinking about the driver of the black Hummer with oversized tires, who has become completely immersed in the thoughts of St. Thomas Aquinas, on Scholasticism.

I wondered what the great thinkers would think about this. I saw us on the freeway. I was driving. Thomas Jefferson was in the back seat, along with John Stuart Mill and Jean-Paul Sartre. Plato was riding shotgun. Jefferson didn’t say anything. He just sat and rolled the power window up and down. John Stuart Mill sat with his head down, thinking. Then he looked up and spoke:
“Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest,” he said.

“That’s profound,” I said. “Why, just in the last presidential campaign . . .”

Sartre, in a sour voice, interrupted me and said, “Keep your eyes on the road.” Ah! Divided opinions, I thought: Mill for great thinking on freeways, Sartre opposed.

Then Plato spoke: “There is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink.”

“Oh, shut up,” growled Sartre. I glanced approvingly at him.

“How quickly you pick up our clichés, I said.

“Well,” Sartre said, “we are great thinkers, aren’t we?”

Plato shrugged. “Until philosophers are kings,” he said, “cities will never cease from ill, nor the human race.”

I looked at Plato. “It would mean the end of freeways as we know them,” I said, just as we rear-ended a Toyota Tacoma.

“What in the hell were you doing?” said the Toyota’s driver.

“Talking to Plato,” I said.

“Tell it to your insurance company,” he said. I wondered what John Maynard Keynes would think about that.