The perfect analogy and how I came up with it

Some time ago i witnessed a discussion about the legalization of drugs. While i don't really care about it one way or another, this particular conversation caught my eye* because of the sheer ridiculousness of the arguments in favor of legalization ("alcohol is more dangerous than crack"). One such claim especially made me think:

- people use drugs to achieve altered states of consciousness, it can be a mystical experience and can lead to significant spiritual advancement and government doesn't want this

Whatever "spiritual advancement" may be - i thought - it is certainly not something that you can get a prescription for. Regardless of who you consider spiritually advanced - be it Jesus or Dalai Lama or Gandhi or Feynman, I'm pretty sure they didn't get to where they got by munching on magic pills. Of course, people on drugs may think they are one with the universe, but they also think that giant pink spiders are out to get them. I didn't say any of it in the discussion though because this spirituality business is so vague it is impossible to really prove somebody wrong, no matter how dumb they sound.

Then I recalled that various nutjobs - hippies, New Agers, ufologists etc. often claim that while high/meditating they not only became better human beings but also gained some mystical knowledge about the universe - usually revealed to them by aliens, dead ancestors or other spiritual entities. These people always claim they were given the answers to all possible questions - including scientific ones - but they invariably have nothing to show for it. They are the most enlightened human beings, yet somehow they fail to cure cancer, perform cold fusion, prove the Goldbach conjecture or do anything even remotely useful for that matter. When asked directly about something that can be verified, they either babble some mystical nonsense or are too high to understand the question or both. It seems like their infinite knowledge is restricted to subjects that cannot possibly be verified (like beings of the n-th density or life in the Andromeda galaxy) and occasionally conventional morality ("aliens told me that we should all get along"). When two such wackos meet they may be able to convince one another of their respective delusions but the (sane) rest of us know the truth: just because you feel wiser doesn't make you so, it's all an acid trip and it's all in your head.

Then it struck me. This is exactly how philosophy works.

*yes, it was a fb discussion - did you think i'm some freak who actually talks to people IRL?