When the world is going crazy and folly envelops us all, philosophy becomes once more what it originally began as: a subversive activity.

To think. To refuse manipulation. To take a stand on truth, or uncertainty, whichever is available. To eschew simplemindedness.

To speak up. To question. To insist on clarity, or at least an open acknowledgment of confusion. To move beyond easy assumption.

To strip away rationalization, deception, illusion, empty rhetoric and callous intellectual laziness. To insist on what's real.

To demand honesty and precision. To show sloppy thinking for what it is. To reveal prejudice and display its utter unworthiness.

There is no greater civic duty required at present than to link hands with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and insist on the sharp steel edge of wisdom.