implode
07-22-2005, 11:32 AM
preface: i read "the apology of socrates" for the first time, last evening. this is where i make a joke about going to high school where they stored the junior varsity football equipment.
leeway: everybody may leave the thread right now, if you are so inclined.
continuation: thank you for sticking around, tom and koba! i will try to make this clear and concise, to the best of my abilities, even though i'm composing it now in this very window and tend to have great difficulty with getting to bloody point, already. but this shouldn't be too hard. i think i'll actually find the most trouble in making this topic capable of being responded to.
AHEM. oh. out of coffee? one moment, plz.
<c><b>backstory</c></b>
ALRIGHT THEN. for those of you who have stuck around unexpectedly and are unfamiliar with the story, let me review it briefly, so you might know what the hell i'm talking about: socrates was born an athenian philosopher sometime around 500 B.C. (yes, even in the womb, he composed such deep musings as "how frail this uterine wall might be, if thou ist capable of only 9 solid months of lodging") his mission, as he had chosen to accept it, was not to teach but to learn. <b>the only human knowledge he claimed to be sure of was his own ignorance</b>, and therefore would reject any baseless attempts of the populace to claim him a "wise" man. he would, and i state this well aware of my own ignorance on the subject considering i've read his apology and nothing else, basically go around bothering people on a daily basis, engaging them in conversation and judging them to be either wise or foolish ("pretentious" might be the more appropriate word.) part of the desire to do this no doubt came from a desire to learn from any available subject willing to teach, but in his "apology" (which was actually his defense, which i'll get to) he went further in exposing his motives behind what must have been considered to be getting really fucking irritating among the general population of rome: he was following a divine decree.
he claimed to be a deeply religious man, as all romans were, and therefore held any actual communication from the gods and figureheads in the highest regard. during some sort of gathering around a demigod who's qualifications seemed rather murky in my only carousing of the novelette, a contemporary of his asked that demigod "is there any human on this planet wiser than socrates?" to which the god (somehow) replied "no, there is no other."
socrates, of course, took this as a challenge to decrypt the oracle, as he knew himself that he was not a wise man, and therefore devoted the rest of his life to searching for a man "wiser" than he. he would do this by soliciting them for conversation, regardless of what they were doing at the time, and thus became an enormous pain in the ass. his reasoning went as follows: first he would visit the acclaimed philosphers, whom he figured must have been the most appropriate parties to search for wisdom in. but in doing so, he found that these men were not as wise as contemporary belief would have them claim, and, in fact, were committing the most hideous crime of all when it came to the pursuit of knowledge: they all considered themselves to be wise, although they weren't. they believed that in mastering their craft, they "knew" more than the average human being did. but socrates didn't see it that way. therefore, he would publically call them out on it: basically admonish them, like a disagreeable child, for claiming to know more than they did and claiming to be more than they were. this, naturally, brought him enemies in places where you probably didn't want them back in 500 B.C., and so his story continued.
and then he petitioned the poets, to the same ends, and then he petitioned the artisons, with the same result, all the while gathering a small following of children and teenagers in rome, who found great humor in watching these renown men being humbled at socrates' hands. these children would actually accompany him on his individual quests, which led to the eventual charge of "corrupting the youth of rome" being filed against him, among other things, when he had finally pissed off too many of the wrong people. he was tried and eventually convicted, and put to death for the charges filed against him. his defense was, as it were, that he was merely follwing the will of the gods (one of the charges against him was publically being an athiest, which in that era would probably equate to "publically being a terrorist" in this one.) seeking out a man more wise than he, and when, finding none, he would chastize them for claiming to be wise when they were actually not, he considered that to be nothing more than following through on the will of both the gods and himself: the only thing he felt capable to accurately establish was the truth.
-end backstory-
<c><b>how the backstory relates to this thread</c></b>
socrates made a huge deal out of his ability to see the truth. it was all he felt confident in doing, it would appear, and so he would do so, publically, and without any fear of reprisal from those who might not have wanted to hear it. he considered himself a "gadfly" - you see, the roman empire was the horse, and as all horses were, it had a tendency to grow stagnant in it's constant tedium... and he was, you know, the fly that bit it in the ass every now and then to keep it moving, to articluate what his divine vocabulary would not permit him to do.
he believed that the truth, and therefore right and wrong, were the only things worth defending in this world. he would make allusions to battlefield horrors, where the opportunity of turning tail and running would present itself to him, but instead, he would plod on and avenge his friends death, for being dishonorable in life was a fate worse than any other. even death was a malady that you must confront if it stood in the way of doing the right thing. he justified this very nicely, but i'm not going to summarize it, for anyone who's gotten this far probably already knows the specifics and it would take up too much space that i need to make my final point. basically, he believed there were two things in the world at any given time: right and wrong, and it was his duty to do what was right no matter what the consequences of doing so might be. all very nice, right? a precursor to a christ, even? well.
BUT.
he makes mention in his apology of how he never became a politician, and why he never did so: his logic was that a person with a disposition such as his, one incapable of doing or articulating anything that wasn't right and/or truthful, had no business engaging in matters such as politics, where the right thing was shuffled under the rug with such incredible frequency that he felt his days would be numbered if he did so. this (being killed prematurely, i must assume) he considered to be folly, for "he would be no good to anyone" this way.
AH BUT, MR. SOCRATES. is this not picking and choosing your battles in a manner which you just vehemently denounced? though you claimed that you had no natural disposition towards staying alive if it meant doing the wrong thing, is not looking upon a grand structure of lies and deceit and choosing to turn your back on it and continue doing your own thing the "wrong" thing to do, under your strict definitions of the word? this was also his logic behind never becoming a "public" figure - he would rather petition people privately, one on one, than publically call grand meetings to order via public access preacher man style, helping as many people at a given time as he was capable of doing.
this leads me to believe that contrary to his claims (which i have no problem dismissing - the man was on trial and about to be executed, fer chrissakes. you can contradict yourself all you like when you're that good of a person.) he did have a shred of self-worth in there, somewhere, and knew that keeping himself alive would be more beneficial to everybody than simply petitioning the truth in <i>any circumstance imaginable</i> would be. he knew that his battles were to be chosen wisely, were he interested in continuing to choose them the next day, and the reason he was so damned interested in making enemies at the end was simply because he was trying to figure out the divine oracle that the god had presented him. and eventually, he did. it went something like "man is incapable of knowing anything. the spirit was simply using me as an example of that." from there he was killed and went to elysian and blah blah blah, leaving nothing in writing but his actual "apology" (which i believe was just his testimonial at his trial) and what knowledge of nothing he had managed to pass on to his associates (plato being the most widely known of them.)
<c><b>actual purpose of this thread</c></b>
i know that on this messageboard more than anywhere else i occasionally frequent, there is no shortage of good and just people. people who do the right thing, regardess of inconvenience to self. people who understand that to do a good deed is in itself a reward, and that by telling the truth and being righteous it does not matter if they are improving the conditions of self, for self is a force to be disregarded when you consider the potential benefits that one single good deed can bring upon the world. to look beyond the self for the sake of what is right is a beautiful thing, no doubt, and were it more slick and MTV oriented, maybe it could be the next fad of our day and we'd have VJ's telling TRL artists to stop singing about their goddamned vagina, already.
but. the truth is a touchy thing. and as socrates already knew (though he would have disavowed upon hearing, i have no doubt) there ARE particular instances when telling the truth would not be beneficial to anyone, in comparison to the other feelings it would conjure.
so i ask of you, o people of moosetopia, when is "telling the truth" or "doing the right thing" the wrong thing to do?
leeway: everybody may leave the thread right now, if you are so inclined.
continuation: thank you for sticking around, tom and koba! i will try to make this clear and concise, to the best of my abilities, even though i'm composing it now in this very window and tend to have great difficulty with getting to bloody point, already. but this shouldn't be too hard. i think i'll actually find the most trouble in making this topic capable of being responded to.
AHEM. oh. out of coffee? one moment, plz.
<c><b>backstory</c></b>
ALRIGHT THEN. for those of you who have stuck around unexpectedly and are unfamiliar with the story, let me review it briefly, so you might know what the hell i'm talking about: socrates was born an athenian philosopher sometime around 500 B.C. (yes, even in the womb, he composed such deep musings as "how frail this uterine wall might be, if thou ist capable of only 9 solid months of lodging") his mission, as he had chosen to accept it, was not to teach but to learn. <b>the only human knowledge he claimed to be sure of was his own ignorance</b>, and therefore would reject any baseless attempts of the populace to claim him a "wise" man. he would, and i state this well aware of my own ignorance on the subject considering i've read his apology and nothing else, basically go around bothering people on a daily basis, engaging them in conversation and judging them to be either wise or foolish ("pretentious" might be the more appropriate word.) part of the desire to do this no doubt came from a desire to learn from any available subject willing to teach, but in his "apology" (which was actually his defense, which i'll get to) he went further in exposing his motives behind what must have been considered to be getting really fucking irritating among the general population of rome: he was following a divine decree.
he claimed to be a deeply religious man, as all romans were, and therefore held any actual communication from the gods and figureheads in the highest regard. during some sort of gathering around a demigod who's qualifications seemed rather murky in my only carousing of the novelette, a contemporary of his asked that demigod "is there any human on this planet wiser than socrates?" to which the god (somehow) replied "no, there is no other."
socrates, of course, took this as a challenge to decrypt the oracle, as he knew himself that he was not a wise man, and therefore devoted the rest of his life to searching for a man "wiser" than he. he would do this by soliciting them for conversation, regardless of what they were doing at the time, and thus became an enormous pain in the ass. his reasoning went as follows: first he would visit the acclaimed philosphers, whom he figured must have been the most appropriate parties to search for wisdom in. but in doing so, he found that these men were not as wise as contemporary belief would have them claim, and, in fact, were committing the most hideous crime of all when it came to the pursuit of knowledge: they all considered themselves to be wise, although they weren't. they believed that in mastering their craft, they "knew" more than the average human being did. but socrates didn't see it that way. therefore, he would publically call them out on it: basically admonish them, like a disagreeable child, for claiming to know more than they did and claiming to be more than they were. this, naturally, brought him enemies in places where you probably didn't want them back in 500 B.C., and so his story continued.
and then he petitioned the poets, to the same ends, and then he petitioned the artisons, with the same result, all the while gathering a small following of children and teenagers in rome, who found great humor in watching these renown men being humbled at socrates' hands. these children would actually accompany him on his individual quests, which led to the eventual charge of "corrupting the youth of rome" being filed against him, among other things, when he had finally pissed off too many of the wrong people. he was tried and eventually convicted, and put to death for the charges filed against him. his defense was, as it were, that he was merely follwing the will of the gods (one of the charges against him was publically being an athiest, which in that era would probably equate to "publically being a terrorist" in this one.) seeking out a man more wise than he, and when, finding none, he would chastize them for claiming to be wise when they were actually not, he considered that to be nothing more than following through on the will of both the gods and himself: the only thing he felt capable to accurately establish was the truth.
-end backstory-
<c><b>how the backstory relates to this thread</c></b>
socrates made a huge deal out of his ability to see the truth. it was all he felt confident in doing, it would appear, and so he would do so, publically, and without any fear of reprisal from those who might not have wanted to hear it. he considered himself a "gadfly" - you see, the roman empire was the horse, and as all horses were, it had a tendency to grow stagnant in it's constant tedium... and he was, you know, the fly that bit it in the ass every now and then to keep it moving, to articluate what his divine vocabulary would not permit him to do.
he believed that the truth, and therefore right and wrong, were the only things worth defending in this world. he would make allusions to battlefield horrors, where the opportunity of turning tail and running would present itself to him, but instead, he would plod on and avenge his friends death, for being dishonorable in life was a fate worse than any other. even death was a malady that you must confront if it stood in the way of doing the right thing. he justified this very nicely, but i'm not going to summarize it, for anyone who's gotten this far probably already knows the specifics and it would take up too much space that i need to make my final point. basically, he believed there were two things in the world at any given time: right and wrong, and it was his duty to do what was right no matter what the consequences of doing so might be. all very nice, right? a precursor to a christ, even? well.
BUT.
he makes mention in his apology of how he never became a politician, and why he never did so: his logic was that a person with a disposition such as his, one incapable of doing or articulating anything that wasn't right and/or truthful, had no business engaging in matters such as politics, where the right thing was shuffled under the rug with such incredible frequency that he felt his days would be numbered if he did so. this (being killed prematurely, i must assume) he considered to be folly, for "he would be no good to anyone" this way.
AH BUT, MR. SOCRATES. is this not picking and choosing your battles in a manner which you just vehemently denounced? though you claimed that you had no natural disposition towards staying alive if it meant doing the wrong thing, is not looking upon a grand structure of lies and deceit and choosing to turn your back on it and continue doing your own thing the "wrong" thing to do, under your strict definitions of the word? this was also his logic behind never becoming a "public" figure - he would rather petition people privately, one on one, than publically call grand meetings to order via public access preacher man style, helping as many people at a given time as he was capable of doing.
this leads me to believe that contrary to his claims (which i have no problem dismissing - the man was on trial and about to be executed, fer chrissakes. you can contradict yourself all you like when you're that good of a person.) he did have a shred of self-worth in there, somewhere, and knew that keeping himself alive would be more beneficial to everybody than simply petitioning the truth in <i>any circumstance imaginable</i> would be. he knew that his battles were to be chosen wisely, were he interested in continuing to choose them the next day, and the reason he was so damned interested in making enemies at the end was simply because he was trying to figure out the divine oracle that the god had presented him. and eventually, he did. it went something like "man is incapable of knowing anything. the spirit was simply using me as an example of that." from there he was killed and went to elysian and blah blah blah, leaving nothing in writing but his actual "apology" (which i believe was just his testimonial at his trial) and what knowledge of nothing he had managed to pass on to his associates (plato being the most widely known of them.)
<c><b>actual purpose of this thread</c></b>
i know that on this messageboard more than anywhere else i occasionally frequent, there is no shortage of good and just people. people who do the right thing, regardess of inconvenience to self. people who understand that to do a good deed is in itself a reward, and that by telling the truth and being righteous it does not matter if they are improving the conditions of self, for self is a force to be disregarded when you consider the potential benefits that one single good deed can bring upon the world. to look beyond the self for the sake of what is right is a beautiful thing, no doubt, and were it more slick and MTV oriented, maybe it could be the next fad of our day and we'd have VJ's telling TRL artists to stop singing about their goddamned vagina, already.
but. the truth is a touchy thing. and as socrates already knew (though he would have disavowed upon hearing, i have no doubt) there ARE particular instances when telling the truth would not be beneficial to anyone, in comparison to the other feelings it would conjure.
so i ask of you, o people of moosetopia, when is "telling the truth" or "doing the right thing" the wrong thing to do?