"Quit being so insistent."
"Hmm, that's a curious thing to say. What do you mean by it?"
"Quit trying to get your point across with such, uh, erudition. It just bores the shit out of the rest of us."
"Are you speaking for everyone?"
"I'm representative of a shared sentiment, yes."
"You are the elect of the group?"
"No, just the spokesman."
"Does your authority come from the group? Or have you surreptitiously usurped it?"
"See, this is what I mean, the endless polemics and rational baiting. Can't you simply converse without all of this contrivance?"
"Its simply inquiry. Half of life is inquiry..."
"And the other half is experience without all the preponderance, you know, sensuality, frivolity, and mystery in the raw. You have made a habit of appointing yourself the Royal de-bunker. Just let things be in the meantime, it'll become clearer with time."
"I'm no hedonist."
"No one is telling you to throw all caution to the wind. Just look at the other side. Without Dionysus, Apollo would be awfully listless. Without darkness, light would be awfully unimpressive. And so on."
"The task of the philosopher is to search for truth and to teach. The philosopher is not to engage in any activity unrelated to this pursuit of knowledge."
"There are many paths, friend. Not all of them can be formalized. Actually, the best ones cannot be formalized as doctrine or as truth(s). There are paths which neither known or unknown, which can be understood yet arouse perplexity. These are the paths of life most vibrant and vivacious. These are paths of life lived and not simply contemplated."
"Truth is knowable. Life is unknowable. Only when truth is indistinct from life can the philosopher finally rest."
"Phooey, let go of your dialectics. Boot Hegel and Marx from your consciousness. They have clouded your faculties. There can be no absolutes for us beasts of burden and necessity. We can only grasp fragments. Ah, what boredom must burden the man who believes he has reached all absolutes and attained the endpoint of all pursuits. Such delusions are beneath you, friend."
"But without a final end, a grand unity, meaning disappears. This is endless relativism and fruitless striving, as man's particularized mis-perceptions lead no further than shadows dancing along a cave wall."
"Ah, the sun. The little parable left out one consequence: staring at the sun can damage your vision. Blindness. Myopia. You stare at it long enough and it'll be true, if only because you cannot see anything else. Look elsewhere, the forms are there as well, but not purely as forms."
"That is patently silly. It is an allegory, not a parable."
"Ha ha ha, fair enough. But, enough with this. Let's get you a drink and we'll start this great divergence."
"Great divergence?"
"It happens all the time, every moment of every day of every life. We just can't keep track of them all, because, like with anything, you have more fun when not keeping score."
"Beer me."
"Gladly."
