Curtis Dahlgren recognizes the trouble one can encounter when thinking becomes a habit, and begins to take over a life. Like all good satire, his essay published at Renew America has painfully accurate overtones. A few examples:

I began to think on the job. I knew we weren't paid to think, but I couldn't stop myself. I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Kafka and Orwell. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is WRONG with people?"

One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." [....]

I headed for the library, in the mood for some de Tocqueville or Gibbon. I roared into the parking lot with Rush on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors.

They didn't open. It was Martin Luther King Day, so the library was closed. I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. Leaning on the unfeeling glass, thirsty for some early American history, a poster caught my eye, "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?," it asked.

Thankfully or not, he joins Thinkers Anonymous, and finds some relief:

The final ("12th") step is attending a joint lecture by Ward Churchill and Kevin Barrett (Islamic studies lecturer at the University of Wisconsin) , and reading some New York Times editorials without throwing up. You can see why this is a life—long battle. Once a thinkaholic, always a thinkaholic. One is never 100 percent "recovered."

Our readers are hereby warned of the dangers of continuous reading of this site.

Thomas Lifson, editor