Plato's The Republic, Book 2 Discussion, Part 1⧸2 (3uaM0JpBiS4)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=3uaM0JpBiS4

Yeah, I forgot my chief hat. I think we’re all good. So I was looking over my notes and the notes were talking about the efficiency, right, like the goodness, like, how do we qualify goodness? And I think in book two, that argument is being remade, but in somewhat of a different frame. I kind of, I’m trying to connect that to my week, right, like, because I’ve been hanging out with kids, like, which is the opposite of efficiency. There’s a quality where you’re boosting what is in the moment, right, you’re highlighting the thing that can be constructively participated in. Yeah, so I didn’t really bring much of last week into the week. But I do have some things that popped up during my reading. And one of the things that came up for me is this justice, right? And then it’s being contrasted with good and bad, with better and worse, and a good and wrong, right? So there’s all of these ways in which you can contrast the world, right? And some of those have have moral implications, and others don’t have moral implications. And I think, I think we should spend some time on that today. Like, what is this? Because a lot of times when we’re talking, people perceive morality in what we’re saying. What is a healthy way to to deal with that? So what, what is my intention this week? Well, my intention for participation this week is, is going to be diffusing what is happening, I want to like, draw things onto a bigger picture. So that we may be getting more angles of understanding. So I’ll be focusing on that this week. Danny, do you have some reflections on the intention? Can I go last? You can’t go last. I’ll go order eaten because he’s he’s not ready. Because what we read last week, how have I seen it implemented or affect my life? Yeah, just the whole relativism. I shouldn’t you know, cautioning myself against that, you know, making sure I’m not making everything relative to myself. What is the intention that you want to participate with? Participate in the telos outside of myself. So we’re doing things doing things not because they’re good for something doing things because they’re good, not for anything beyond that. Like, like, doing this and participating in this because participating in the good not because I’m it’s a means to some other other thing that’s going to end up back towards myself or whatever. Do you have a felt sense of how to achieve that? You don’t have to explain it if you can. Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if I could, I don’t know if I could explain that quickly. But you do. Yeah. Okay, cool. It’s actually when you think of things that way, it’s, it’s actually more satisfying when you do things. It actually feels good when you’re submitted to something. It’s a it’s not. Yeah. So there’s there’s an affirmation that allows you to recognize whether you’re doing it or not. Yeah, like when you when you’re doing you mean when you’re doing something for as a means into yourself as opposed to a means until the end to the good. Yeah, definitely. Okay. Mark, yes, you’re up. Yeah, so I think last week’s reading for me was, you know, it gives it provides contrast with concepts like the depth of the text, right, the difference between the depth of the text and the depth of the text, right, the difference between we’ll say a modern piece of literature and something like the republic that is so deep that there’s no essential meat. The whole thing is meat, right? The whole thing is nourishment. It’s all protein. There’s no wasted wasted words and no vegetables. No veggies, no veggies, right? I’m a carnivore. I’m a philosophical And that’s something that’s sort of lacking in later works, in my opinion, right, as the printing press makes writing cheaper in some sense. Then, then people get sloppy. They get lazy. And you know that sense from this book. Like if you type in a recipe on Google, like a waffle recipe, you’re going to get like a whole bunch of information about the history of waffles and all that garbage. Or somebody’s personal story about waffles, which can be great, except I would have typed in personal story about waffles and not recipe for waffles, which is what I actually wanted, right? And so there’s that dichotomy between the utility of science. I just want recipe waffle. I just like how to make it. I don’t want story waffle. I don’t want history waffle. I don’t, right, it’s the modifiers. And that actually was exemplified, I think, in last week’s reading. So my intent, having caught up this morning, which is what I, I’m deliberately doing this in order and not having read ahead. I’ve never read the book before. I, my intent with the, you know, is always, but also going forward here is to point out all the things that like we’ll say people are missing. So for example, in my reading this morning, just before I got on here, Gnosticism is right in book two. It’s right there. It’s plain as day. I’ve never heard anybody mention it before ever. Why? I would say the most important point in book two is Gnosticism. That’s what I would say. It’s not the only super important point, but like if you had to pick one, which again, I think is completely ridiculous, it’s all super important. The statement of Gnosticism is sitting right there in the middle of book two. It’s right there. It could not be plainer by any particular means. And also the scaling, like the scaling issue is right there. And I know one ever talks about this and I’m like, well, if this is all in the Republic and everyone’s talking about Heidegger and Kant and, you know, Nietzsche and this is all the basic stuff that you need that’s important. Like what, why does nobody talk about, oh yeah, Plato talks about scaling. Plato talks about Gnosticism. Plato talks about, you know, nobody, nobody says that. And I’m puzzled as to why. If you read the book, why isn’t this important? So my intent is to explore more of that because these things are right there and I am lost as to why people don’t talk about them more. So. Jack, do you want to share about your insights and set your intention? I think William might be preoccupied with his kids outside maybe. Definitely very preoccupied and haven’t really done much reading this week. So really I’m here to, to, to build the habit and also just to pick up what I can. So I tend to be more prepared next week. So I’m happy to be here. That is an intention. So thank you for sharing your intention. Now Danny’s on the hook. Excellent. So I hadn’t actually considered last week. Last week was awesome. I think it’s a good time to do that. I think it’s a good time to do that. It’s awesome. I don’t know if I can comment on last week, but I have one intent that I have is to gain a better understanding of the scaling issue because I don’t have the best eyes for that. That’s something that, you know, Mark has brought to my attention, but I’m also the last two weeks are really rough. I’m in the middle of major course corrections in the process of changing my relationship with my job and no job is perfect. Like, you know, you always have to play the game to some extent. And so like, you know, this, this, this talk on justice versus injustice, learning how to actually navigate that. I’m in the, you know, this is, this is related to that. So, I mean, that’s, that’s one intention. You know, just kind of understanding, gaining a better understanding of what you’re, what you’re, you know, what you’re willing to draw lines around. Like, like I think Peterson says on bad jobs, like if you’ve already made a hundred compromises, you can’t just come out and tell people to go to like, maybe your boss, let’s say to go to hell, right? That’s, you’re actually deceiving yourself. You’re actually not, you know, like, so like the relationship with resentment, understanding resentment. And then also just, you know, relationship to career can be complicated sometimes. And so I’m kind of in a process of thinking through that. And that’s a little bit related to some of these themes here. So my intention is to form some confidence. Feel free to share your wisdom on that regard. Hmm. Since they would feel free to share your wisdom in that regard, after you come out on top of that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Mark, Mark’s actually been super helpful. Mark has some great wisdom on career, specifically, you know, on computer in the computer world. So Mark’s already been really useful talking to him. So I’ll leave it at that for now, though. So. Okay. So yeah, like the thing that I, I did is I listened to an audio book. And then I started reading. The audio book was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there was, there was this, this element where I was somewhat caught up in a, in a, in a level of this, this interest. Um, I think, I think when you’re listening, you don’t really have to face the words or something. Um, because, because when you’re reading, you can look at the word and then you can see in what context it is. Right. And it’s like, okay, like this word was used before. And so now you have two words and it’s like, okay, but like there’s also this other word, right. And then it’s like, well, there’s a choice, not for that word, but for this word. And that seems for me to, to generate a depth that I can’t, I can’t get from the audio book at all. But it also requires a lot of me. So I can’t really keep up that way of attending for a long time. Um, so yeah, a couple things that I noticed is, uh, there’s elements where, where things are being brought in. And we already talked about, uh, about this before where, uh, for example, the financial thing was, uh, was introduced. And also I think the handing over, right. So there’s, there’s these, these concepts that literally have an embodied, uh, representation first. And then later on, they, they get referenced as, as a principle or, or as, as, as a means to, uh, to understand an abstraction. And, and, and so there’s just something happening in the chronology where, where you’re, you’re, you’re being primed to, to have a certain type of engagement. And yeah, like if, if Socrates could do that intentionally, right. Like I’m, I’m just gonna like lay the seed or just, in other words, lay this landmine and have, have people like, uh, 30 minutes later walk on that landmine because I, I know I’m going to go there. Uh, that sheds a whole different light. Um, but, but since it’s a text, I’m, I’m not so much, uh, inclined to think that he did that, not to say that he, he wouldn’t do that, but I think it’s more like a literary, uh, style and, and technique. But that would happen in a play. Yes. That’s why I mentioned that before. Like, yeah. And there’s a big difference between listening, the problem of listening to an audio book with, you know, there’s nothing wrong with that per se, but the reason in particular why, why I don’t do well with audio books is because I have to go back and reread things. And part of that is the pacing, right? The timing. So I speed up and I slow down when I read based on, although this is all slow, you can’t just not pace at all. Every word is super important, right? And because I’m dyslexic, I often misread words and then I have to go back and, oh, no, no, I must’ve misread that word because context in the future tells me, oops. So I have to go back all the time. But when I go back, uh, I can go back without misreading a word, but with misunderstanding the emphasis that’s, that I read with, and you don’t have that option with audio books. The emphasis is the emphasis of the person reading the book. And so, so there’s two things you don’t control the pacing and the emphasis and, and that, that, that’s a real problem for my retention. Um, like I listened to all the Harry Potter books cause I was commuting. I, nah, I got nothing. I, I like, I know the basic outlines of the story, but I don’t, I don’t, you know, somebody says like, oh, this happened in book, whatever. Like, no, I don’t remember any of that. It’s all gone. It’s all gone. And then, you know, look, I was driving, you know, no harm or anything. Again, there’s nothing wrong with the audio book, but there is a limitation. So that, that, that, that to me is, is interesting. But I think, yeah, I mean, if you read this as a play, all of a sudden that, that setting that you’re talking about, I mean, a play, you’re getting more drawn in. There’s a lot more buy-in than a book where you’re approaching it on your terms. And there’s less buy-in in some senses, more constriction with an audio book, which is sort of interesting. You get the, you get to choose when and how you listen to it while you do something else. So the second half of the book, in fact, I was standing up instead of sitting down and reading, which I found interesting. I’m like, oh yeah, I’m just going to stand up and walk around the house and read the book. So, yeah, there’s different levels of engagement based on the reading versus the listening. Yeah. I, I, I haven’t gone to plays in a long time and I, I did so a couple months ago and I just remember, right? Like, cause when you’re in front of a play and this was a play with like more than 30 people or whatever, right? So like there’s so much happening at the same time. And then the way that you can interact with all of these things, like is, is also so much that I was, I was just sitting there and I was like, I don’t know what to do. Right. And I’m just an observer and I like, I’m, I’m like, I don’t know what to do. Like there’s too much. I don’t, I don’t know what and how to attend. And, and, and so, so that’s interesting, right? Cause like when you have an audio book or whatever, right? And like, I want to, I want to draw this actually into conversation because like I, I talk to people a lot. When I converse with people, I, I almost remember everything, right? Not, not literally, cause I, I, I remember that how things happen. Right. So, and, and because I have a way of participating, right? Like I’m, I’m trying to achieve that, that allows me to make sense of everything that’s happening. Like when, when you’re in a book, right? Like you’re, you’re supposed to join the writer in some sense on, on what is happening. Right. And so you can read a book, especially when you’re learning something like I, I want to get this information out of it. Right. Or like I’m, I’m using the political lens, right? So, so like every, every political aspect, which actually happened, right? Like the communist, bad Plato and they, they took a bunch of things out of it. Right. So, so there, there, there is, there is a way in which you can read and, and then you can get things from it. Right. And then you can, you can mistake that for actually having read that. Right. And, and so yeah, there’s, there’s a way in which you can be informed or let yourself be informed by the text, but then you need to be open to, to all of that. And that, that requires you to participate in a certain way. And it probably can’t be done in one or two or three readings either. But yeah, like, so that’s, that’s something to think about. And that’s also connected to my attention. So yeah, Danny, do you have, does anyone have something to say? We had the same experience. I just want to, I, I, I mostly listened to the audio book in a sauna post workout. And I think in that state, I’m in a state of, I’m strong of feeling. And so like, you know, Manuel and I had the same experience when, when reading it, like this morning, I noticed I’m able to cut through the complication of, I don’t know the logic, the saying, the logic or the words, but you’re able to see the complication of, you know, the, if else nature of what they’re saying way more easily when I’m reading it. And so when I’m in a different physiological state and different state of mind, it has a pretty different effect. Like when I’m, when I’m in a sauna, like post workout, like I get hit like a hammer in some ways that I don’t get hit. Like when I’m waking up with my coffee in the morning, you know, so I, you know, but yeah, I had the same, same experiences as Manuel. Like I thought, oh, you know what chapter two kind of seemed like a low point. But I had to go over it a couple of times and then, you know, I mean, it’s still great. It’s still great. But I’m just like, I am in chapter three and four and I’m super excited about those chapters. And you know, anyway, so yeah, I had similar experiences as Manuel, just wanted to share that. Did you, did you make a summary as well? Oh yeah, it’s in a text document. You want me to kind of go kick that off? Yeah, kick it off at the summary. I like that format. So Glaucon puts forth three categories of goods. The first is those desirable for the sake of themselves. He provides an example of harmless pleasures or delights. Category number two is those desirable for their own sake and for the sake of their results. The example there is knowledge, sight and health. And the third category is those for the sake of their consequences but are undesirable in themselves. Example, gymnastics making money. So Glaucon asks Socrates which category does justice belong to? And justice says it’s in the highest category, which is number two. That is those desirable for their own sake and for the sake of their results. Glaucon agrees. Yeah, I want to stop here a little bit. So yeah, I have some notes before that because there was an introduction and I took notes and these introductions are really useful. But I think these three categories, right? So there’s a self validating one, which is effectively being mode. Then there’s a purpose-driven one, which is effectively having mode. And then there’s a combination of the two, which like, I don’t know how much I am in agreement here. Like, what do we think about this framework? I think it’s fine. Yeah, I don’t understand the mixed mode. Like, I don’t and I understand the having mode stuff and I understand the being mode stuff for sure. But yeah, that third category is slippery. Well, actually, the specific thing. Trying to find this, sorry. Is that the enhancement of the thing by interacting with the thing? In other words, you’re made better and it’s made better and that would be the definition of a virtue or something. It’s a dialogue. If it has the second order effects, I guess. Like the second order effects of being a good person. And they’re going to explore this and they’re going to show that the good or justice is the third category. It’s good. It’s good. It’s having mode and being mode. And but the reason that I think what they explore is that the reason that you’re drawn to the good or to be just is not for the second order effects, although it does have second order effects. So that would be contradictory, then. Yeah, I think it is for the second order effects. I think that’s kind of the point. What did we do, Manuel? It’s having being and transforming or something? Becoming. Becoming. Thank you. That’s better. Yeah, my brain is still whacked from yesterday. Yeah, becoming. And becoming is a second order effect because you don’t know the first order effect of your change. Yeah, so let me reframe it, right? So like, I like, I don’t know why Plato, like, even if that middle thing exists, like, why would that be the highest? Like, why wouldn’t the self justification stuff be the highest? Because, like, that self-serving, it’s having. Well, but like something that’s in good in and of itself without needing affirmation from the world. Like, why isn’t that higher than things that need affirmation from the world? Well, the thing is, is the third category justice doesn’t need affirmation from the world. Justice does have. It does have second order effects. It does. It does have. You can see it and very difficult. But that’s what the that’s what the that’s what the that’s what this book is about, right? It’s about the proof that justice is enhanced by enacting justice, and that by not enacting justice, there are certain modes of being that are unavailable to you. And therefore, it’s not a mode of being. And it’s not a having mode thing, because you can’t have justice. And therefore, that third thing is what it is, because it’s not a mode of being. Maybe, but like that, then I would argue that that is true for any mode of being. No, it’s only I know it’s only true for virtues. That and that that I think is the point. Virtues and transcendentals, if you want to be complete in our list. Although I’m sloppy enough that I probably don’t want to be complete. I want to say it’s definitely true for virtues might also be true for other things, but we’re talking about justice. So they actually play to actually separates these two things. And you’re talking we’re mostly going to get into the type of good that’s good, not for its appearance. It’s good for it. And he actually brings it back at the very end of the Republic. So this will actually it’ll actually come back together where justice will have its its appearance, and it’ll be good for its effects. And it’s good for itself. It’s not to look to, I think, like the very, very end. That’s fine. Yeah, that’s well, that I mean, that’s, that’s okay, then, but it doesn’t it doesn’t matter to this to this part. But I think, but they’re going to they’re going to look at justice as and divorce it from its its effects so that we can actually let me let me show you. Will you okay. Okay. Granted for the argument’s sake so that justice itself could be judged as compared within justice itself. They’re doing that science fiction thing again, it sounds like we’re removing something. Analyze it to explore it a little better. And that’s what they do. Well, I think it’ll be in the his summary, you know, when he goes with the guy who finds the ring in the ground, you know, and all consequences are removed from his actions from other people is it still in his interest to be a just person or not. So I, I think I might have this I think I might be trying to grasp at this idea of okay, you’ve got the three the transformation you saying, well, why does that require affirmation from the world? I think Socrates argument is about something about the nature of scale. And I think I think the first time he introduces the concept of scale, which is they make the argument that like, okay, it’s better. It’s there’s advantages to being in just and if you’re quick witted, they use the word my translation quick witted. If you’re the youth that are quick witted are going to be better able to, you know, position themselves for their own advantage. If you know, if they exhibit injustice, and then when Socrates is requiring is replying to them, it’s, it’s just a savage comment. He says, thing then that there are no great wits. So he’s saying, okay, well, since you guys are small brained, I’ll try to put it in simple terms for you guys. So what Socrates is saying, we better adopt a method. I’ll give you the following example. Suppose you have a short sighted person who’s trying to read some small letters from a distance. But then those same letters could be found in another place where the letters are larger. And so when he says like, why wouldn’t you start by reading the larger letters, since that’s, I guess, easier, whatever, and then proceed to the lesser. And so Socrates, I don’t really quite understand the mechanics of what he’s getting at there. But he does remember when he when he talks about the state and individual and saying like, well, the state’s bigger than you, right. So for some there’s something about having to start with that from that with that frame, I guess, some kind of starting point, right. And so I don’t know, I don’t think that’s an affirmation, necessarily to say like, okay, well, the transformation mode of justice is, it’s not if it’s not that it’s being affirmed by something external. But there’s something about the order in which you think it through or something like that. I don’t know exactly what’s there. But I just that might be an answer. Yeah, that’s the scaling, Danny. What he’s what he’s basically saying is, you can’t look at justice on a personal only scale, you can’t you can’t start from the individual, which is one unit, and know the details of justice, because justice, he makes this argument, justice is bigger than one person, just doesn’t make any sense. If you’re on a desert island by yourself. Right, it doesn’t exist in its fullness. It’s not it’s not that it’s not there. It’s just you can’t understand it from that perspective. And that’s what starts the scaling argument, which is in order to understand this, we’re going to have to move to the level of a city. Yeah, right, because we need that we need the perspective and the detail and all of the components, so that we can see how these things interact. And of course, the the objection to that is that when things interact at that level, things get messy. And there’s way more variables than you want to deal with, because you’re trying to slice it down to the there’s a tension between well, how far do you slice it down before you lose the essence, which is effectively what, you know, what ends up happening in these in the in these discussions. So that’s that’s the scaling issue right there. It’s like, it’s not that necessarily that you’re dimwitted. It’s that you by yourself, because you’re a muppet, you can’t understand this because it’s so much bigger than you are. And it doesn’t involve only you. And so it doesn’t make any sense that you with a limited single perspective at once, could actually gain a foothold on this. And that’s why we need the abstractions, which cause all kinds of detail to be lost. That’s what abstraction does technically, you know, in order to talk about about justice. And that’s what begins the scaling issue. I’m not sure how good of a comparison this is. But I can imagine that you’re putting together a watch or something or trying to look at a watch and you kind of blow it out onto a diagram and you have all the parts separated on a big a big board or something, you know, it could be anything any little device and you know, you have each piece and you have a line drawn to where it connects together or something like that. It helps you visualize it a little easier versus it’s all just compact and, you know, in a little spot. Well, I would argue it differently. Like when you when you have the concept of acceptation, right? There’s an element right away that things are in relationship to each other in one domain. And you can use that intelligibility in a different domain. Right. And training intelligibility in in certain domains is just a lot easier for for whatever reason, right? Because like, like you can you can see the dependencies, right? And then if you if you say, well, there’s a dependency here, then there must be an analog dependency somewhere else, right? And that doesn’t mean that you can exactly define that dependency, but you can affirm the existence of it. And I think that’s that’s that’s kind of like the thing that that he does often is like, well, so you agree that this is necessary or you agree that that there must be such a thing or you agree that this is a necessary part of the definition of this, right? And and what what that establishes is is a form, right, like a form of the concept that you can now move from from one blueprint up to a different blueprint and have it have similar properties. And and then it’s not identical, right? And and and then, well, like what what what is what is the aspect that is identical? And what is the aspect that’s not identical? Right. And now we get to the assets, right? Because like the essence is the thing that that remains independent of of of its instantiation. So I want to go to to the introduction a little bit because they’re talking about three frames here. One is the egoic frame, which is the thing that we’re still exploring, right? Like, like, just as this is there to serve me effectively. Right. And then the other thing is that the other thing is that the other thing is that the other thing is that the other thing is that the other thing is that the other thing is that is there to serve me effectively. Right. And then they slowly introduce in this chapter, the social convention aspect of justice where it’s it’s there to serve you but serve you as being a part of society. Right. I think that’s the justification for the analogy of the city. And then the last one, which is the ideal, which is hinted at at the self validating aspect, right? Like, if it’s self validating, there’s there’s some some ideal that that is being pursued or manifested that that is basically bringing down glory. If you participate in it. If you participate in it. So that is really interesting. And then the social convention is was named a social contract theory. Right. So there’s this idea that that and like that’s where most people are in the Republic. But also now, like that’s just apparently where people end up when when they like, step out of their egoism. But the other aspect is, is that the dialogue changes, right? So so the egoic egoic aspect is now taken over by someone who doesn’t adhere to that line of thought. But but he’s still manning it. And and the interesting part is that this argument is now being made without a personal interest. And that changes the nature of the argument. And like, because in in the introduction, it said that Socrates now becomes constructed. And it was basically because these other two people were smarter or whatever. And like, no, like it’s because the emotional valence has been removed. And if we remove the emotional valence, now we can have an argument outside of personal personal needs. Right. And I think there’s even a reference back to to Timikas or whatever. He comes in again and kind of gets made fun of. But we’ll wait. And I’ll shut up for a bit. Well, so an observation I made in the introduction was that they want to understand justice in its own right. Like it’s an isolated thing. Like so there wasn’t I’m trying to resolve some relationship with something. And there was a second piece, but I think it just slipped out of my memory. But it maybe has that kind of I guess it’s kind of a tale on what kind of it has kind of a Gnostic feel to it. You know. Well, that’s common. The Gnosticism is stated explicitly right here. There’s that. Oh, go ahead, Mark. Yeah, it’s just no. I mean, that was it. I’m just saying the Gnosticism, the statement of the existence of Gnosticism and the entire problem of resolving society through philosophy is actually right here. It’s spelled out as clearly as it can get, which again is why I’m puzzled as to why people don’t talk about this all the time, especially with book two in particular, because it’s laying out very important groundwork. The second observation was I think I remember them making the argument saying like, hey, isn’t this like the most important topic that we could possibly talk about? So they make this like claim like, hey, isn’t gaining this knowledge like the most important thing that we could possibly do? And I think they make some kind of argument. Like I think that’s in there too. So that was like another observation about how we’re starting and how we’re seeing this. So Adam Mantis, he’s the one doing the steelman argument for what I think, what did he say? What people commonly think justice is or whatever. And he ends, I have it written down here in a note. He says, that’s what most people think, or that’s a common understanding of what justice is. And he says, but nobody has ever written down what justice actually is. And what they’re doing is they’re removing. Okay, so he’s saying, so people will go, he’s showing like that people end up giving priests and stuff money, whatever to give, to essentially give them justice or give them blessings or give their like, I’ll give a priest money and he’ll make us, you know, conquer the other, the other tribe. He’ll give us blessings, whatever. And he’s actually drawing, showing us a point that justice is not something that you can have. It’s only something that you can be. You can’t possess it. You can’t, it’s not something that you can purchase with material or whatever. And then he ends and he says, this is what most people think, but what justice actually is has never been written down. It’s not, it’s never been written down. And I remember thinking that the reason it’s never been written down is because it’s, it has the true essence of justice actually doesn’t have an appearance and words are an appearance. They’re a representation of something. It’s and yeah, that’s, that’s why you can’t write it down. Like you can, you can write down the effects of justice, but those in and of themselves are not justice. Those are the appearances of justice. But there’s the Gnosticism that you can, that you can just purchase it with a, with a priestly figure or whatever. You can purchase morality from, from a, from a priest. And then it just falls back into, it falls back into the person with the most power is benefiting from this, from this morality or whatever you want to call it, lack of morality. But so that whole thing made room. I’m watching the Exodus thing right now and it reminded me of something that I should have looked this up, but it’s after the 10 commandments. The Lord says that don’t make any, don’t make gods of me silver or gods of you of gold. That’s exactly what this is. The, the, the fat, the idea that you can purchase blessings from priests. You’re actually, whoever has the most silver, whoever has the most gold gets the most blessings. And that’s how you’re actually bringing God down to a God of gold or God of silver. Cause whoever gets, whoever has most gold or silver has the most blessings, has the most virtue, has the most justice. Yeah. I think that ties into, to honor. Right. So I’ve, I’ve identified three reasons to be just. One of them is for self gain, right? Like the second one is for honor and the third one is fear, fear of the gods. And I was just reading that. I think we’ll, we’ll wait for that a little bit, but again, there’s three frames there, right? Like there’s, there’s a personal, social, and then the ideal frame. And if we’re talking about scaling, we, we’re talking about the if we’re talking about scaling, we, we wanna, we wanna have justice in accordance with all three frames, like, like there needs to be a harmony between them all. And what I’m reading is, is well, first, the negative case is being laid out, right? Like this is how things are right now. And that is, well, yeah, like, okay, like that cannot be the answer. So then like, how should they be? Right? Like I think that’s kind of the, the motif that that’s happening. So Danny, do you want to proceed on your awesome summary? Sure. Those are some interesting points. Get you on those more if we wanted. So, okay. So we have these three categories of goods that Glaucon puts forward. So, and we’re asking which categories does justice go into? Socrates proposes the number two, which I guess we’re calling the transformative frame. Glaucon agrees with Socrates and says the majority of people place justice in the lowest category, category number three. That was for the sake of their consequences. So that’s the, that maps on to what, what are we using for that one? Having. That’s the having frame that we’re using. Like gymnastics and making money. Okay. So now Glaucon gets into his arguments. So first he demonstrates the nature and origin of justice. And the laws which are agreed upon and ordained and deemed justful in law. Like, you know, it’s, it’s the, whoever the authority says, whoever has the most power, what they say, if we, you know, I don’t actually don’t understand my summary there. So I’m gonna move on to the second point. Right. Then he proves that men behave according to justice against their own will. So this is kind of like, we know there’s the earthquake scene and then you go down and we find like the ring of power from Lord of the Rings where you, you turn it a certain way and you go invisible. Right. And then this shepherd guy goes to the shepherd meeting and it’s funny how, how in one sentence he says, literally, you know, how he, he sets us up poetically. And then in one sentence he says, oh, then he kills the queen, kills the king, takes the queen and takes and seizes the kingdom. In one sentence, it’s just bang. So I just thought that was funny. So that was kind of the second, second topic that they kind of went on about the nature of power, you know, just the just man and the unjust man will behave the same if they’re, if they’re both, you know, if they’re, if they’re both gods among men. Then kind of the third topic that they think that they move on to is that he argues that the unjust life is better than the just life. And so they talk about how parents teach their kids just for the rewards of being considered just. So they get into this kind of keeping up appearances thing. And then they talk about that appearance is tyrannized truth. And a just man can be considered. This is kind of gets a little bit tricky. A just man can be considered unjust while an unjust man can be considered just and accordingly rewarded. So they kind of get into this. They get into that pretty deeply. But then through that discussion, Glockon concludes it’s better to be unjust and to appear just because a man gains both rewards of justice and injustice. But what’s being exemplified there? So in the first case, what’s being exemplified is the fact that you can take somebody and say, oh, he’s a shepherd and therefore he’s just because shepherds have no reason not to be just. But if you give them the power, the mystical ring, they will immediately become unjust. Right. And he just kind of states that sort of axiomatically, right, which isn’t true for all people or anything. So it’s kind of a strange argument in some sense because it’s not true. Yeah. If justice is only if justice is falls under the first category is only for its appearances, then anyone you give the ring to will immediately be in just because you remove all the appearance. It wouldn’t be immediate, but it would. Right. Well, and it is about appearance. Right. So the first point actually stems into the second point. Like if you could do things and nobody could notice them, that’s what the ring does. It makes you invisible. Nobody notices you. Nobody knows that you’re the one doing the thing. Right. But what is appearance? Appearance is interpretation of action. It’s not merely something, was it, foisted upon the world. Right. Like your interpretation is important. Right. And that’s the problem is or one of the problems that gets pointed out is that it’s not simply a matter of object with ability imbues justice or lack thereof. Right. It’s a rejection of materialism by showing the absurdity of materialism. Right. And then it’s this whole thing about appearance, which is what you’re seeing in the world. Right. And so, yeah, if you lived in a world where nobody could tell when you were doing an unjust thing, then in theory, that statement is correct. Right. And then later on, they invoke heaven and hell basically. Right. They invoke Tartarus to say, eh, it’s not, it’s only true here and now. It’s not true later. Right. That’s the formula they’re using. Which is an appeal to sure while you’re on this earth, maybe that’s a solution kind of, except you’re not only on this earth. Right. Because again, it’s appealing to that perspective that’s bigger than you in your life. Do you think that there’s something good? Go ahead. I was just asked, do you think there’s something I when I listening to the audiobook and reading through it, I just, I had this, I couldn’t tell, but the poetic nature, it has a sci-fi feel to when the guy, Jesus went and found the ring, like amazed at the site, you know, there’s this earthquake and amazed at the site. He descended into the opening where among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse having doors at which he’s he’s stooping and looking in, saw a dead body of stature as appeared to him more than human and having nothing on but a gold ring. It just has this like, they could have, he could have made the point in a more mechanical way, but instead he draws this interesting picture. I just, I wonder if there’s anything there. I don’t know. Like making a story so that you can relate to it. He’s making it a discovery and not of this earth, because again, I think, you know, modern science fiction is the same as ancient Greek philosophy. It’s the closest that we have because it does tend to exemplify things on purpose. And again, what this is appearance, when you hear appearance, they interpretation, right? It’s like, oh, what’s the interpretation of the action? So if somebody interprets that you’re killing somebody is good, then it will be seen as just. If they interpret that, you know, and different people are going to have different opinions. This is where it gets tricky. Once you add people, which you need because justice doesn’t make any sense. It’s just one person. Then all of the sudden, you have different interpretations or different appearances for the same act. And so determining justice in some sense becomes harder because the relatives of the person you kill may feel differently, no matter what they had done to you about whether or not it’s justice, just to kill them. And this happens all the time. People break into other people’s houses, they’re well-known drug addicts, they get shot by the owner and the family’s upset at the guy who shot them. It’s like, really? Because I think justice was served, you know? I mean, that’s an extreme example, but it’s an example that happens. You can observe that it’s happening, right? And sometimes it goes the other way. Like you have people who understand that justice is higher and that, you know, forgiveness is important. And even though somebody maliciously killed their daughter or something, they forgive them in court. These things, we observe these things. These happen. These are not trivial philosophical examples from some science realm of finding golden horses and magic rings. This is stuff you can witness, you know, all over the place. It happens. Yeah, so the way that I read it, it was windows. It was an oversized body, right? Yeah, it was a giant. So there is an element of the supernatural descending down upon the natural. And I don’t know if I’m out of sequence, but there was an element where they were trying to describe the perfect just and unjust person. Right? And so there’s two things, right? Like if your actions don’t have consequences, maybe you are the person that won’t do the things, but that’s not gonna like hold. Because like at a certain point, you’re just not gonna have the feedback, right? Like you’re just not gonna have consequences for your actions. So you determine this is just gonna fail like necessarily. Right? So like I think that there has to be a degeneration in a person’s character if their actions don’t have consequences. Although like with the ring, you could argue that it has to be intentional and therefore there’s a failsafe, blah, blah, blah. Right? But I think the analogy is made for the purpose of this idea, right? That you’re not gonna have feedback. And then it’s basically going also like listing all the means by which you can be unjust or whatever. Right? Like what are the transgressions that you can make? And I wrote down a list of the qualities of I think this is the unjust person. Right? So they’re doing this really strange contradiction. Right? Because there’s this perfection of being unjust, which means that you’re having to constrain yourself within like really severe limitations not to have consequences of your actions. Because if you reveal yourself to be unjust, then there’s gonna be consequences. So they set moderation. Right? So you gotta temper yourself within the things that you do so that you don’t exceed the capacity of whatever society to bear you. Right? Because then you destroy, then you’re a parasite that destroys its host. And then there’s a discretion element. Right? So you’re not supposed to show the things that you’ve done. Right? So in some sense, you cannot fully live out the gains that you’ve gained as a consequence of your injustice. And then this one is gonna be really important. Right? Like the reputation game. Like you gotta uphold a reputation. Like so in some sense, having a good reputation is pointing away from your shadow effectively. Right? And having the light be so bright that the shadow cannot be seen. And then the last two are in relation to when things escalate. And those are courage and strength, which effectively state that you’ve solidified your position in such a way that you can contend with people who disagree with you or call you out. And you can just impose your will at that point. Yeah. So that’s what I had on that. The being unjust because there are no consequences versus being just despite the consequences. And there’s an irony here because if you think of what happened to Socrates in his execution, he was completely submitted to the ideal of justice, of what is right despite the consequences or the appearances. Right. Well, right. And that’s what the virtue gives you. It gives you the ability to hang on to the second order effects rather than worrying about the first order effects. Yeah. If you take it a step further, the consequences actually come back and they serve the justice afterwards because we read about Socrates and we learn about him. And that’s the appearances coming back. So there’s like this movement and like, well, a dialogue, I don’t know what you want to call it, but a movement of stripping the consequences and then bringing them back. It’s a change in interpretation. And so appearances change. Interpretations change. Right. And so how do we deal with that? Well, we put it down in a book and then it corrects, which is not to say that it’s the same. I mean, this is the quote, reprehensible, but quote, postmodern critique, which isn’t a critique. Right. The way you interpret a text changes with the context. Yeah, no kidding. Like, what did you think meaning was? Content plus context. Of course, when the context changes and it does because we live lives. We grow up. Right. And again, this is in this book, this whole idea that things are changing over time. And therefore the context is changing and therefore the meaning is changing of the same unchanging thing, whether it be a rock or a text. No kidding. Everybody can just observe that. Everybody should be able to intuit that for themselves as a result of their experience, their phenomenological experience. And that’s the frustration is that this is all obvious stuff. Obvious is an observable by yourself for yourself on your own without outside help. But, you know, it’s good to have the outside contrast to say, oh, yeah, well, I read the book this way. The book appeared this way to me. Oh, the book appeared this way to me. The chapter appeared this way to me. That’s the great irony of chapter two, right? I mean, or book two is that all this stuff is in there. It’s right there. It’s expressed as clearly as it could possibly get expressed in some sense. So they just put their cards on the table. Like Manuel said, you know, well, if courage and strength, they say first, like the concealment of wickedness is often difficult. Nothing great is easy, which is really telling in terms of what they think is great and this power. And downstream from that, what you’re going to do is you’re going to establish secret brotherhoods and political clubs. So you’re going to have your little gangster network of business people or whatever it is. And then there’s a skill. They say, like, OK, well, there’s professors that teach the art of the rhetoric of persuading courts and assemblies. Right? So there’s this persuasion, charisma, storytelling thing. But I think a lot of this is very, like, power based. You know, it’s this will. A lot of this comes is like if you’re strong. You know, it’s very it’s very it’s got that feel to it. Well, it’s not if you’re strong. It’s each skill as a role. And if you’re good at that skill, you should be in that role. And oh, by the way, roles are neither good nor bad. They need to be pointed towards the good to be good. And so the clubs and secret societies and all that is all about distributed cognition and protecting your distributed cognition. Like who are the people I trust to help me think? Right. Versus, you know, just opening it up to the world. Like, can I listen to just any 12 year old that happens to talk about something that they probably can’t possibly know enough about? Right. Or, you know, do I listen to anybody on the street without understanding their life experience? Right. Or, you know, do do do I believe somebody who says that the future is electric cars? Like, you know, that’s what that’s about. Well, we need a secret club to help us. Right. We need a group of core people to help us think through this. Not just one, maybe. Maybe we’ve got many. But right. And that’s the problem is we tend to compress this stuff down and say, you know, oh, maybe it’s not one person. Maybe it’s one city. Or maybe it’s roles. It’s not roles. Right. It’s still these virtues and values and the transcendentals. You still still have to be your aim because if those aren’t your aim, you’re screwed. You don’t need the role or the power to do the good. But you need to do the good even if you have the role or the power. And that is the point is that deep asymmetry. That’s right here in Book 2. It’s he’s talking about it all over the place. This is kind of a little bit unrelated to what you just said. But I just noticed early on in the chapter, Socrates says when they put forth their concept of like the categories of justice and they say this one’s the best, you know, the guy who’s in just. Socrates says, Heavens, my dear, Gwelkhan. I said, how energetically you polished these arguments up for a decision. So he kind of is like, oh, my goodness, you’re so thorough. And then later when they say after they lay out all the advantages of injustice and they say, how can a man who has any superiority of mind or person of rank or wealth or whatever be willing to honor justice? Socrates, you know, in response to that, he says, I think it’s I have some of my notes. I don’t know if it’s accurate, though. But the cause of all this Socrates was indicated to us at the beginning of the argument. I’m sorry. They wanted to arrive at the truth first about the nature of justice and injustice and secondly about the relative advantages. So I think it’s it’s interesting how, you know, he’s kind of saying like, man, you guys really polished up your argument real tight. And then he kind of like before he even gets going, he’s like, yeah, this is just a relatively. This is the fundamental problem with everything that they’re saying. Now I’ll proceed, you know, with with with my explanation. I just think that I just I just thought it was they had this kind of he kind of had this like rhetorical callback to what was like maybe some foreshadowing or something. Well, but he does that on purpose. It’s not. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it’s foreshadowing because it’s a written text, we’ll say. Right. But it’s what it is is I mean, this is I do this all the time. Right. It’s like, oh, you want to play this game by those rules. OK. Fine. And then I win. And then they get upset because they thought they were their rules that they understood. Right. And like, it’s the same thing. It’s like, fine. You want to put forth a good polished argument on the basis of logic, reason and rationality. That’s excellent. And then I’m going to knock out the axiomatic assumptions that you’ve made that will make your logic, reason and rationality fail. That’s what he does. Like, that’s his whole trick in some sense. That’s all he ever does. At some point, right. He’s not he’s just saying, no, no, your logic, reason and rationality doesn’t solve this problem because you’ve made certain assumptions that are obviously false. And that’s what that’s what this chapter is full of is calling out false assumptions. And some of which are are near appearance or mere interpretation. And some of which are no, no, these are bad axioms. These are just bad ways to start. They’re just their statements that were never true, that you stated is true up front. So to justify your logic, reason and rationality. So in some sense, what he’s doing is he’s saying you you’ve made a good, well justified argument, which he has. Right. In other words, he’s legitimately praising his ability to put together a good story. Right. But then he’s taking that apart by showing how the fact of a good story or a good sounding story, a good a good interpretation of a story does not make the story for the good. Because those are different things. And that’s where people get confused. Right. That’s where people get fooled by Sam Harris. Oh, his argument was good. Yeah. But his argument wasn’t for the good. Right. It’s the same argument I have with the postmoderns. No, the postmoderns have a point. No, they don’t. No, nothing in postmodernism has a good. It’s not for the good. Right. And so, right. And that’s what you have to ask yourself with any of this stuff. Like, is it for the good? That’s what matters. So I think the wording that they were using, I can connect now to frames. So I think the egoic frame is good versus wrong. And then the social frame is best versus worst, which is a relative frame. And then the ideal frame with the gods is good versus evil. So they go to evil, but the evil is only in the realm of the gods and does not exist in these other realms. Oh. Oh. That sounds right. Where was this part again? What? What I’m talking about? No, this is me reading between the lines. So I have some notes here about the second part of book two that are really interesting, really interesting, especially on what you just said about the realm of the gods. You can see them pulling agency down from the gods onto the human actors. Because before, I was trying to find this part. They’re talking about censoring poets. And saying we can’t have our youth educated about stories or about gods that are doing not good things, which is actually really interesting. I think I have it marked out here. Can you hold that a minute? Because I want to introduce that actually. I had an insight on what’s happening with the gods part. There’s a whole part about the gods. They’re basically crapping on Homer and on the gods. So what they’re doing is they’re pointing towards the gods of old. They say, well, these gods of old, they’re imperfect. What is happening? With these imperfect gods. This also relates to this negative interpretation for justice. I need to be just in order for the gods not to punish me. The whole game, and this is what we touched on with the sacrifice aspect, if I just do enough magic tricks, then the gods won’t hurt me. That’s the whole game that everybody’s playing. That is effectively to run away from being persecuted. I’m just going to bribe the judge. That’s literally what they’re doing. I just realized this is one of these principles as above, so below. These gods are a representation of the attitude or the relationship to reality, to their reflection of the population. They’re literally seeing themselves projected in the sky. The point that Plato is trying to make is like, I’ll just read my note. There’s a discussion over the nature of the divine, a reflection of the perspective of the observer. How can you be a moral person if you cannot conceive of a purity in heaven? Unconstrained from the passions. Are you fundamentally incapable of having a moral perspective? An aspiration to transcend your current status? Because I think that’s literally true. If you cannot conceive of the purity of the ideal, you cannot transcend where you’re at. You’re locked in your being. You’re a slave to these pagan gods. You’re stuck in the material. This is what we were talking about last night on my live stream. You’re stuck in the material. Your social media causes you to look at social media. All of a sudden, this becomes your master, because you don’t have any way to transform outside yourself. It doesn’t exist. Yeah, that’s what happens. I think it’s before that he makes a very important point about the beginning of the argument against Gnosticism. He makes the forbidden knowledge argument. That’s how he fights Homer. Through the gods, by making the forbidden knowledge argument. He makes that using children. He says, look, this is great if the city is only full of adults, and everybody’s already mature, right? Everybody’s already where they need to be. This works great. When you add children into the equation, surely, right? You can’t just introduce them to these difficult concepts. Well, in this book anyway, it uses the term forbidden knowledge. There’s the Gnosticism. Yeah, we’re back to the appearances and stuff and taking it out of order. So if we, if we’re to a child, we say, oh, we really like this person, this person Socrates, right? Then the children are going to go out. We don’t want the children to go out and start drinking hemlock. You know, it’s like, whoa, hold on. Exactly, because they don’t have discernment. And so giving somebody knowledge they’re not ready for kills them. No, really. I mean that literally. It will kill you way sooner than need be. And that’s part of the problem, right? And you can say equally, look, the baby chick, the baby chicken doesn’t have a sense of cliff and will jump off the table and kill itself. Yep, that’s true, because it lacks the knowledge. Okay, yep, kind of. But would giving it that knowledge change its behavior? I don’t know. You don’t know. Do baby chicks understand death? Probably not. Babies do things that would kill them all the time and they can’t receive that knowledge. It’s not possible. That’s why they need to be parented and brought up. And that has to happen within a framework, right? And that framework cannot be arbitrary because most frameworks get you killed or would get your child killed or something. And so the frameworks aren’t arbitrary. This is the reverse of the postmodern argument. These frameworks are not arbitrary. The interpretations are not arbitrary. They’re actually key and important. And that changes everything. That just flips everything around. It’s like, oh, okay, these are discoveries of survival throughout time and they’re not perfect or anything, but they’re the best that we have, right? And so because giving too much knowledge doesn’t work because your brain is limited when you’re a child, we need to be careful with the knowledge. Now, they’re using an extremist set of argumentation points, which I’m rather a fan of, obviously, but also they’re using an extremist set. You don’t have to eliminate the poets from the city to prevent the children from hearing the poets and drinking the hamlock or acting out the worst aspects of the gods, but they do bring forbidden knowledge in at that point for that reason. Actually, it’s not that extremist. Because they said we have to prevent them from doing this specific thing. Maybe they just end up saying that the poets aren’t allowed to do anything. But what I read was… You do say that. Right. No, he says we cannot allow this teaching. He actually says that. Right. We can’t allow this in the city. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like a subset of teaching. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. It is a subset. No, no, it is a subset. But then that gets into the hard problem of, oh, well, what you’re saying is censorship is required. Yes, that’s what we’re saying. There is forbidden knowledge. Censorship is required. Secret societies need to exist, right? Because there is forbidden knowledge. Some people cannot handle the idea that there is a heat death of the universe because that makes them nihilistic. Yes, that is true. And that is why exposing people to the sum total of human knowledge and also a bunch of noise that isn’t human knowledge, oops, unintended consequences, is bad because you can’t handle it. Your brain is too small. It’s just that simple. Nobody can handle that much information. It’s not possible. People can’t handle the fact that the sun is the center of the universe or has the whole Galileo thing. That’s why they didn’t want him talking. It wasn’t because he was wrong. It was, I mean, it was for this reason. Right. Because they couldn’t control how people were going to use that information. Thank you. The crisis of intellectuals. Talking about forbidden knowledge. Like, yeah, I think when we’re talking about forbidden knowledge, like there’s this aspect of like, yeah, philosophy needs to be happening in the philosophy department. And I said this before, right? Like, like postmodernism and all of these things are just scientific lapliques. They’re like, they’re just like scientific thinking that should be on a shelf somewhere collecting dust. Well, but it’s worse than that, Manuel. It’s unfair to say that philosophy belongs in the academy, right? Because Plato specifically and Aristotle said no. They said there’s no, they, you know, and this is one of Vervicki’s great points. They spent more time in the gym than in the academy. And so I would argue that you cannot do philosophy without an embodied practice. And that embodied practice has to be with other people. It can’t be by yourself. It can’t be, you know, Tai Chi in the park alone. It can’t, you know, have that, but it can’t be that alone. You need to wrestle literally with someone or something in order to make this breakthrough. Of philosophy, philosophy outside of physical action in conjunction with others makes no sense. Because again, philosophy does you no good on a desert island by yourself. It’s a non-starter. It’s a non-factor. It’s not, and it’s not that it doesn’t exist. It’s that its utility is so severely limited that spending time on it. It is. Well, that’s why it sounds like that. No, no, no. What I’m saying is it can’t only be in the academy. There’s no such thing as philosophy in the academy. I mean, Plato and Aristotle would have screamed about this. They would have been like, no, philosophy, we spend most of our time in the gym. We don’t spend most of our time in the academy. The academy is merely where we set a baseline to teach the children. It’s not where we practice philosophy. We practice philosophy in the gym. That is where the philosophy learning happens. The philosophy learning doesn’t happen by reading the Republic. That’s why when I read the Republic, I go, you’ve got to be kidding me. Why did anybody write this down? Isn’t this obvious to everybody by virtue of having lived in the world? And then I’m going, oh, apparently not. Well, how shocking. How do these Muppets survive? And I didn’t have a choice because I was homeless and lived in the car and didn’t have anything to eat. So you learn philosophy real quick when you got to survive and survive around other people, right? Even though you get to live with smelly hippies, you know, just to make it because you’re only making $7.50 an hour. But I did. And not only that, I bought a house five years later. So I have very little, very little sympathy for people who cry about their conditions. I’m like, yeah, that’s nice. Cry me a river. My story is worse and I did just fine. So there’s something wrong with you. Sorry. You get up your game. And that’s the same problem. Is that philosophy is a practice. It’s a physical embodied practice. It’s not a reading. It’s not a set of readings. It’s not a set of ponderings. It’s not merely a set of gathering and discussions with people. And the irony is, as we speak, I’m getting texts from somebody who I’ve been talking to about this very thing. Like, oh, I have these goals for my practice of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. And I’m not able to reach them. So I wanted to come up with a statement of goals. And I said, what is the type of person you expect to be when you’ve accomplished the goals? And that was like, what? Wait, what? I don’t know. Aha. That’s why you’re not making any progress. And now didn’t answer the question. However, the report today is, did the best I’ve ever done. So I asked the question. It was pointed to problem solved. That’s the practical application of the philosophical system. Right? It’s nothing to do with books, Plato, you know, right? But everything in the world to do with the things that are talked about in the Republic, which is, what is the forbidden knowledge? What questions are you asking? What are you pointing at? Is the purpose of justice for the mere interpretation of the mere interpretation of others? No, justice serves something other than the mere appearance, quote, interpretation of others. Right? It serves something outside of all of that. And so you can’t base it on what you get out of it alone. Danny, where you’re at? Well, I mean, I mean, well, one thing I can just say is, for sure, 100% can confirm on the gym thing, but I’m also a gym rat, you know? But I mean, recently I’ve been having all kinds of fantastic and amazing revelations, I would use that word, in the gym. And I think, you know, I’ve been thinking about how I think in the gym. I mean, in the gym, I’m in the state of intense concentration and I’m very strong of feeling because there’s some relationship between being like strong of feeling, intense concentration and like music and pain. It’s this, you know, it’s this experience that’s very idiosyncratic to me, which is why I don’t tend to talk about it. It means a lot to me, you know? But I don’t know, I’ve just like, I’ve had all kinds of work about my life, about all kinds of stuff, like almost all my best thoughts come in the gym. And I don’t know what to make of that. But I don’t know, Williams, William, Will’s in great shape. He’s it’s when I train really hard, like when I train really hard, I don’t know, just these cool things happen. But it has to be done in a mindful way. Like you can just, you know, you can train mindlessly. You can do anything more or less mindfully. But I don’t know, this is kind of a separate topic, but it was interesting, you know, they did mention that like education should begin with music and then go on to gymnastics. I’ve always kind of been interested in that theme and wanted to explore it, but I’m not really prepared to right now. I don’t think. I think everybody has that. Danny, I don’t think it’s going to be asynchronic to you. I think everybody has that or could have that. Like some people do mindless gym stuff to get bigger muscles or whatever, and they’re not. I mean, well, a friend I’m helping, obviously, he’s been stuck, right? At some level at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that he can’t get around, it’s very low level and he’s very frustrated. And it’s like, well, yeah, but you’re not looking higher, right? So you have to look higher while you’re doing the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Like, what do you, you’re not getting a belt. Like, what kind of a person are you when you get a belt in a martial art, right? That’s what it is. That’s why I was able to move up my belts quickly in martial arts because I was like, well, what is it, you know, what, what is it that I am trying to become? Right. And then the trying to become gets you the goal. You don’t have to point at the goal. The goals are going to happen anyway. And that’s where we, that’s where we get confused. I think the other place we get confused is when I say your primary focus is on not the proximal goal of getting the belt, but on the transformation that would have to occur for you to become the person that gets the belt. I’m not saying the belt’s unimportant. That’s not the same thing. That’s what people hear. That’s the appearance to some people, but that’s because they’re being dogmatic and they’re being tyrannical in their own views. They want, they want their thing of philosophizing, roughly speaking, to be the thing. And they will not accept an answer that’s a compromise between mere philosophizing and philosophizing in the gym or philosophizing and the gym. And that allows for that becoming, right? They’re very having mode in a sense, right? They want to have knowledge and have knowledge a certain way from a book without all the constraints of all the time, energy and effort it takes to put into embodying the knowledge in the book and putting it into practice in the real world. Where it can do what it claims to be doing, which is an act of good, because if all you ever do is read every book and every philosophical text on goodness, but you never ever help an old lady across the street. I got news for you about goodness and that news about goodness is that you didn’t get there. For all your knowledge, you didn’t get there. Part of it is I’m in the state of rage, sort of. I’m able to kind of embody this like a switch, just like turn anger on and off. And there’s a skill that I mean, I’ve been doing this for 10 years. You think in these extreme ways, like what am I willing to die over? If I were to die right now, I’m in the place that I love. There’s this fine line that you have to walk that’s between danger, like progression and where there’s this kind of legitimate danger involved. You think the clock is ticking, I’m racing towards the grave. And so it has this way of grounding out and like, okay, what really matters? I don’t know how to explain it, but when you’re in this physiological and mental state, it just changes the way you look at everything. And I don’t know. I would say the only other category of people that from what I can tell seem to be maybe similar would be like the Alex Holland, like free climber guy who free climbs maybe without a rope, where he’s like, look, I’m willing to die over this. And he did actually. I think he’s dead now. Alex, I think is his name. But it’s just kind of like there’s like a desperation. There’s an element of desperation necessary to go to certain places. You know, so anyway, I just kind of we’re kind of getting outside of Plato, I guess here now. I’m just talking about myself. Not at all. Anyway, I think that’s the significant part, right? Is this embodied aspect. Again, all the knowledge in the world, all the learning in the world doesn’t mean anything if you don’t put it into practice. And if you bone up on too much book knowledge without also putting some of that book knowledge into practice as you’re going, I would argue corrupted. And that becomes the ivory tower effect, right? Is that you covet the knowledge above everything else and then you lose track of the implementation. And the next thing you know, you want everybody to eat bugs and own nothing and be happy, even though any reasonable person that thinks about it for four seconds realizes what the problem is with that, right? That’s where that leads. And I think that’s the only place it can lead. And that’s where people are confused. Like, no, really, when you get this ivory towerism, which, you know, which is inevitable in some sense from book only learning, that’s what happens. Like, you end up in that same place. That’s why that pattern keeps happening to us. And you look at the historical patterns right there. It’s over and over and over and over and over again. I point to half a dozen places in history where this same pattern has been playing out. And the question is how do you avoid it, right? Because that’s where the problem comes in. And I would say there’s a deep asymmetry between those people who assert, you know, Marxist theology, which is what it is, right? Or socialist theology or, you know, however you want to, you know, whatever philosophical tradition you want to blame for some of these reprehensible ideas and somebody who goes to the gym. And that is what you pointed to, Danny. What are you willing to put on the line for your ideas? Okay. You can hold out your degree to me and I will shred it in front of you and knock you out. And that’s what I’m willing to put up for my ideas. What are you willing to put up for your ideas? You don’t have the option because you haven’t spent any time in the gym to do anything physically in the world about your stupid ideas. So that’s what makes them stupid. Like ideas, best idea in the world that you’re not ready, willing and able to enact is worthless. It’s worthless. It’s utterly worthless. That’s the problem, right? And not to say that some value that it couldn’t contribute as a part of value in the world. Those are different statements, right? It’s to say that if that’s all you’ve got, you still have nothing. And you can’t have the minute you take your pure perfect idea and introduce it to another person. Now we’ve the appearances problem or the interpretation problem. And now you have to start compromising on your idea. And that’s what people don’t like. They’re, oh, I’m not going to compromise on that. I’m going to I’m not going to do it. You’re destroying my perfect idea. It’s like, well, yeah, but your perfect idea can only ever exist in your head. So if you want it to happen somewhere other than your head, you’re going to have to give something up. And that sucks. But that’s also the way of the world that we’re constrained by. And that’s very much what I mean, again, that’s the exemplification of the forbidden knowledge. It’s like, this forbidden knowledge, what do we do about that? Oh, we have to limit it. We have to censor it. We have to get rid of the poets. Which is, again, is an extremist view, we’ll say, but also important. And there is that fractal scaling thing. Right? We go from we can’t understand justice from the perspective of ourselves or a single person. We’re going to have to construct a city so that we can exemplify and contrast justice. Right? And they do that. Now there’s the forbidden knowledge problem because children exist. How inconvenient. And you notice the trend towards children not existing because utopia is a lot easier. I don’t think those are coincidences. Like, I think these people at least unconsciously know full well their utopic idea to be implemented. They’ve got to get rid of all the children. I find that evil. But, you know, if you’re not opposed to evil, it’s fine with you, I guess. I’m just still opposed to evil, and so it’s not actually fine with me. Being is still good, and therefore. So that’s, it’s all right here. The Gnosticism is right here in Book Two. As the result of scaling up the justice argument. And then what do you do about art? Because effectively what they’re doing is destroying the idea of art. Because art always contains an element of something that you’re not ready for. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be good art. So, regarding the, like, what’s going on with these gods, Manuel? What do you mean? I said the way that people perceive the gods is a reflection of who they are in the world. And I think that’s a reflection of the way that people perceive the gods. And I think that’s a reflection of the way that people perceive the gods. And I think that’s a reflection of who they are in the world. So, if justice is a social contract, then what is happening in the heavens is the renegotiation of the social contract. Like, that’s literally what the heavens are doing. And if you want to have a stable society, you need a heavens that is not renegotiating because that’s the thing that brings stability. It’s that simple. Renegotiating social contract. How is it renegotiating the social contract? By fighting for their interests. It’s like, because the way that they’re talking about Zeus is kind of like the monetistic god, or at least an aspect of the monetistic god, right? Because at a certain point, Zeus determines what’s good and evil. Like, that’s effectively his job description. Like, so he’s the judge, right? So, what is he judging? Well, he’s judging what his subjects are supposed to be doing. Like, his subjects are in an eternal struggle with each other. And I, oh yeah, like, I forgot this. I actually listened to a bunch of stuff about Atlantis, which is also coming up in the Republic. And Atlantis is, according to Tom Holland, I don’t know how much I’m going to go with him, but is a combination of Babylonian prowess and Athenian excellence, in some sense. And so, he’s combining these two aspects of ideal manifestation into a union. Why am I saying this? Well, like, well, that’s in some sense the struggle, right? It’s like, okay, like, there’s this aspect that affords a certain excellence, and then there’s this other aspect that affords a different excellence. And now, either we need to have them be in dialogue so that they can be lifted up and be transcended, or they have to fight. And then you can say, well, since we had a good harvest, harvest can be a little bit more important because now we have the means to party, and partying becomes more important. And then, like, when we have the bad harvest or when we have the flawed, maybe we should go back to Poseidon, because, like, and so there’s this constant negotiation of attention, right? But this negotiation of attention, it doesn’t end. And it’s also the cat chasing its own tail, right? Like, you’re always responsive to what already happened, right? And we’ve been talking about that we’re in a model-making society, right? Like, that’s what is your reaction? Well, you want to look into the future, so you’re just going to make a model and say, well, we’re going to freeze this aspect of what we know in time, and then we’re going to do an extrapolation. And now we’re going to treat that extrapolation as real, because now we can have a relationship with the future god. Like, because I don’t want to deal with the past god. I want to deal with the future god. Something really peculiar happening with divinity here. They’re removing, they’re discovering a monotheistic god that is good. And, well, they actually revoke, they revoke the ability of Zeus to determine good and bad. We won’t grant either that Zeus is for us the distributor of both good and bad. It’s very interesting, because they’re discovering a true, a god that is good and only good and is not causing anything bad. And there’s no reason for, if this god, if divinity is only good, there’s no reason for it to change. And it’s constantly, it’ll be a constant. And they use an analogy like with the most rigid bush is affected least amount by wind and sun and heat. So the more good it is, and if it is the absolute good, it will be unchanged and will always be the same thing. And it’s something that we can, what you’re saying, it’s something that we can align ourselves to and count on. It’s not going to be like, okay, well, we’re going to be sacrificing to this other god next season or whatever. I thought it was really interesting what they’re doing like, but you said there’s a projection up to these gods. And it’s like, well, I’m just doing my behavior is just, I’m serving this god. And maybe we look at that and we say, okay, well, that might not be good behavior, but it doesn’t matter to them. They’re just serving whatever god, and it’s weird because the morality is projected up onto the gods. And it’s not, it’s not, it’s not. What’s that? That’s not weird. That’s not weird. Of course, we project the morality up. What choice do we have for us to see that? And Plato is saying, no, the morality needs to come down. Nothing bad or in just can be in the realm of. I don’t know. I don’t think he’s saying anything has to come down. I think he’s bringing things down to show you that they don’t work. He’s saying, look, if you take justice down to the scale of a person and his reputation, it doesn’t function. That’s what they’re doing. When they when they’re when they’re appealing to appearance or as I’m calling it interpretation or reputation, they’re appealing to you and your ego. And what he’s saying is, I understand that if your world is horizontal and you’re just looking out at the world and the other people, then justice is resolvable through mere appearance. And therefore, if that’s true, it’s just you, right? That is all those are all valid statements. And therefore, there’s no way that any configuration other than appearing to do justice while not being just is correct. That is technically true. That is not the world we live in. And so, yes, if the world we live in were merely us on equal footing, equal footing, then that would be true. That would be a correct statement. And what Socrates is saying is no, in order to know justice because it is up there, you need to look up. He’s not trying to bring it down. He’s calling you out of yourself to look up and pay attention up. Why? Because we can’t cooperate as effectively if we’re just saying, I’m going to write some code. You write some code. Yeah, we’re going to write some code as we can. Oh, we want to write code that will enable other people to do X. Well, now all of a sudden we have a project that we can cooperate on. That’s not to say I can’t say, Danny, I want to write some code and we can’t just write some code, come up with some great code. We can. Right. And look, elevating it causes problems. So the minute it gets elevated, now it’s like, well, who are we writing the code for? If not, and it could just be ourselves, but if not only for ourselves, right. And then, oh, what does that mean? Oh, it means that when we write the code and we want other people to use it, we have to tell them it exists. So now all of a sudden there’s marketing involved, literally. Like that’s marketing. Like, wow. So marketing can’t be evil because you need it to share your work. Like the idea of sharing your work with people you don’t yet know is marketing. That’s what it is. Or even people you do know. So now it’s like, well, crap, we went from just wanting to write some code, which I would argue impossible, right, to having a T loss that’s going to require not only our technical skills in writing, but also some marketing. And maybe we don’t have those skills, so we need to get somebody else to do that, right. Everything is connected when you look up. And that’s what Socrates is exemplifying. I understand that he brings things down on purpose, but he does that to show that they’re absurd and don’t work. And that’s actually the whole problem. When you flatten the world, Socrates says, your model is correct, but it’s also not correct because it doesn’t account for all these things. Why doesn’t it account for all these things? Because when you flatten the world, you have fewer options and now you can’t account for everything. So now you need to re-enchant the world. How do we re-enchant the world? We have this idea of justice that it is not merely for you because then it’s a matter of appearance or interpretation. It is also for its own sake. Where is the sake of justice? Well, it’s not in you. And it’s not in your you plus your appearance. And it’s not in you plus your appearance plus the other person’s interpretation because I would argue that’s a thing. Right. And it’s not in the wants and needs of the city. It’s above all of that. Like you got to look not just up at the king, you’ve got to look up past the king to get the justice from the king. And the king has to look up too. So let me try and reconvey what I’m trying to say here. So he’s showing that you are a moral agent, that justice isn’t for you, but you have the agency to participate in justice or not. So, okay, so what do they say here? We I’ll try to be quick. When a story gives a bad image of what the gods and heroes are like the way a painter does whose picture is not at all like things he’s trying to paint, that’s what they’re trying to censor, which that’s really interesting to me. First of all, the first question I ask, maybe it’s irrelevant to the conversation is how do they know what the gods are doing are bad? Where is this higher concept of goodness coming from? How are they aware of that? Like that’s a big mystery. They’re not, they don’t address it yet. They’re taking it as an axiomatic statement. Well, actually, Socrates is defining justice in this chapter. Not goodness and bad, which is what he thinks. Well, yeah, but I think goodness and badness is justice on the divine level. Well, okay, so he’s saying, well, there’s there we can’t allow these these stories to go on that are portraying the gods as being in just so he’s he’s taking this ideal of justice. He’s also relating it to perfection. Right. I wanted to catch on to this, right? Because like, like, what is he saying? Like, why doesn’t Zeus work? Right. Because the ultimate God would have to be perfect. Right. And then if if the ultimate God is perfect, the perfection cannot have a dependence on things below it. Right. Like that’s that’s effectively the definition of right. Yeah. Which is forcing you to look up again. Yes. And and so so so what what he’s saying with all of these gods is is if if they’re not in a profession, right, or in other words, if they have a dependency on what is below, then they’re not actual like that. That would like like what does have a dependency on on what is below? That’s a demon. Like that’s literally what a demon is. Yeah, it’s crazy that this is happening. It’s like, what the hell? Like, how are they coming to like? It’s like almost like a revelation or something. How are they coming to understand this? Well, it’s even it’s even worse, right? Because like what what what is what is Plato describing in in this this this just man that does not get recognition? Well, like that kind of sounds like Jesus. Right. Like that that’s like Jesus doesn’t fulfill that role. I don’t I don’t know. Like what? What? I remember reading this and I was like, this is like this is kind of like a prophecy. It’s kind of weird reading this. Yeah, because those those patterns again, they recur through time. And he does mention the bad God. Like he actually all the all the statements of Gnosticism are right in Book 2, the knowledge, the bad God versus the good God and etc, etc. It’s all right there. And I know Danny wants to wind things down Manuel. Yeah, well, I just I just want to say like the New Testament was written in Greek, which was using all of these ideas, right? They were like floating in the air when the New Testament was written. So like these were all philosophical problems that needed to be dealt with by the writers of the New Testament. Like they just had to deal with. So I was like, yeah, it’s it’s it’s not a surprise that these things get recognized. And yeah, like if if this is, according to the book, the biggest question that needs to be answered and you write another book answering the biggest question that needs to be answered, like, yes, like. Yeah, a couple other things when he’s describing this perfect God, he says the God can’t be he can’t be unchanging. He can’t be a shape shifter because there’s no reason for him to change. If you’re if you are already the perfect God, what are you going to change into other than something that’s less than perfect? So it’s a constant God, constant divinity, whatever they’re however they’re talking about it. But anyway, so and the plane. Yeah, so. We want to maybe touch on the God’s thing next week and then zoom, pick up going to chapter three or. We haven’t touched on the city either yet. OK, yeah. I don’t think the city is going to be two parts, dude. Like, you’re not going to be able to do this. This one is just too much here. It’s just huge. OK, sounds good. So, yeah, I think that’s it. So, yeah, reflecting on what what is salient. I also would like to invite you to reflect on how you implemented your intention, because I need to call more attention to the intention during the activity because that that is important. Right. Yeah, so. So. We’ll see you afterwards. So. So. So. So. OK. So. So. So. So. So. Hmm. So I’m thinking about. Creating. Well, I was I was envisioning philosophy as like a mine. That you can just go into a mine shaft. Like when you go into the mine shaft, you pick up the book that is appropriate for the mine shaft. Right. Like every mine shaft is unique and it’s got its own layout and stuff. And that. The going into a mine shaft or whatever, would require something. Right. Because what was the car doing when he was he was trying to define the ground that he was standing on. All right. Like, oh, I think, therefore, I am. But. Like I think that that’s wrong. And maybe I should read the card. And he had a better methodology of defining where he was. He was standing on. Right. But I feel he was he was trying to make a justification of where he was standing. And I think I think creating creating a way to. Identify yourself and where you’re standing might be really valuable as like a practice and. On the means of communication. Yeah, that’s passed off. Right. But I think I think Descartes was a good Catholic boy. He knew where he was standing. Choosing that as the axiomatic starting point for his for his philosophical treaties, roughly speaking, or scientific treaties. Fair enough. Like it. Like it doesn’t matter where you where you start the science. It matters what it’s aimed at. And I think that’s the way it is. It matters what it’s aimed at. Because any starting point will get you mixing Ebola and anthrax. Right. Right. But the aim will prevent it. You know, like eugenics is going to recur forever in science because it’s not scientifically wrong. It’s scientifically completely correct and accurate and precise and reliable and consistent. It’s just ethically wrong. So I disagree on ethical grounds, not on scientific grounds. Any starting point for science can have that problem. But when you ignore the religious tradition, you’re always going to end up misunderstanding Descartes or whomever. Because they were all embedded in religion first.