https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=NFCNrKyZA2E
Should we maybe start by kind of summarizing last week? That would be great. I mean, so, I mean, just thematically, we talked on poetry, music, art, and the gym, and we talked on the image of the gods. So if I remember correctly, the end of chapter two is kind of talking about the image of the gods, reading into book three, there’s, there was a lot there, we didn’t really get into that too much, we kind of, I’m sure there’s a lot there. But we spent, I think, a lot of the time just talking about the nature of poetry and on music. And so, towards where we kind of left off, they’re getting into the topic of imitation. A couple things that’s jumped out to me was that the fear of death with this guardian class, there’s a lot of irony in how they’re like programming them. When they say things like, we need to value truth, and so we need to lie and control all the information, you know, control all the input, like control the narratives that are going into these. I think that theme of irony is, at least for me, it jumped out strongly. I think it’s maybe supposed to, like, here’s the quote. Again, truth should be highly valued. If, as we were saying, a lie is useless to gods and useful only as a medicine to men, then the use of such medicine should be restricted to physicians. Private individuals have no business with them. And in their model, they’re saying it’s for the good of the state. Like, that’s why we’re going to have to, like, employ these lies, which is ironic. Because the guardians are living for the maintenance of freedom, which I found to be ironic. And that’s kind of on that. So that’s sort of the first kind of thing that I think they mention with when they kind of bring in the concept of imitation. Is that imitations lead to habits. So I don’t know if maybe we want to start there, or if that’s a reasonable starting point. Well, yeah, I think we want the reflection of everybody first. Oh, yeah, sorry. No, it’s fine. Because, yeah, you had a rough time. We extended the week. So, like, did you have any use from your learned acquired perspectives in the last week? Yeah, sorry. I’m just sort of thinking. I mean, yeah, I’ve been I’ve obviously been doing a lot of thinking. So for anyone who doesn’t, my basically my best friend died at the age of 37 unexpectedly on the 10th. So we went down to I went to his funeral. That was actually pretty difficult. You know, I’ve been I’ve had a lot of people die and it’s never really hit me. But this one hit me really hard. You know, this is the first first experience that I’ve had of being impacted. You know, so like in terms of quantity of numbers of hours, it’s one of those things I was thinking like, I don’t know how much time there’s left in life to even develop relationships that deep. Right. You know, I pretty much saw him every day. And so I quit my job recently, too, and spending time with him was a was a factor of that, you know, part of that, you know, decision making process. So but as far as like you said, I don’t remember exactly what you said. I mean, I think if you’re reading, if you’re engaging with anything like you should be putting it into action, you should be forming new friends. You should be training discernment. You should be quitting jobs. You should be maybe getting jobs. You should maybe be correcting habits. Right. I mean, with anything that you do. So, I mean, there’s there’s definitely a lot of change going on. And this is a part of that in a lot of different ways. I don’t really want to zoom in on. But a lot of it is, I think, just in terms of a lot of it is just orientate orienting. You know, one of the things that happens in times like that is you realize what’s important, like what’s it all for. You know, and you realize you become aware of you, you know, you become you become aware of maybe how you’re attending, misattending to things. So, I mean, I mean, all kinds of stuff. I could just go on and on and on for the whole two hours, probably. I’ll take it over. I have been seeing things in Plato in society and history. I like like people, they play out aspects when they they lift up this aspect of like, oh, this is the way that they should work or whatever. And then they were simply narrow of it. Now, you can give Plato the credit for that, or you can just say that Plato has a system that is able to appeal or connect to all of these these expressions that even nowadays we have. I ran out of out of paper on on the PDF I had because it wasn’t the full book. So I had to look for a new book. And there was one of these books that had like a really long introduction and I skimmed it a little bit. And it was a comment about how Plato’s was in this book. And like, it’s one of the best metaphysics of every other metaphysics. And I’m like, OK, like, I’m going to have to spend some more time on this. But like, why? Why is this the framing that you use to approach this book? I get really skeptical when, yeah, like, what are you what are you trying to do when you’re translating? Like, what is your focus? So, yeah, like I last last time I had this idea, right, that there’s these three categories which are related to the three transcendentals. And that they’re sort of a background framework in the thing. So I’m I’m just going to assume that he’s has like a couple of these that he’s using to structure the whole thing. And it would be really cool if I over time can pick them out while I’m going through this book. Mark. Sure. So I was traveling a couple of weeks and. Seeing the patterns that are being talked about in the book. In the world. Has been helpful because you get a sense for how. That play out really aren’t all that different. Right there. They may be implemented differently because the technology has changed. Right. But the nature of people as discussed in the text is fundamentally the same. And so. The manifestations. Are different. But actually, when you look at the at the pattern. It’s playing out the same. And so. You know, you see some of these themes like I know, Danny, you kind of mentioned the irony. It’s it’s not ironic to talk about. Guarding freedom. Right. Because freedom is is within a constraint. You need you need the contrast. So you can’t. There’s no such thing as free freedom. Like that doesn’t make any sense. You have to have freedom within within some kind of container. And you know, this gets wrapped up in discussions around freedom from versus freedom to. But you can see all of those discussions. That are more or less covered in the book so far. In light of Plato’s. Grappling with them. Or in this case. And how, again, nothing’s new under the sun and all these people are discussing stuff that more or less has a lot of information about it already work. Only you engaged. So, yeah, that’s been that’s been helpful to. Swayage some of the fears. You know, the anxieties that sort of pop up because, you know, I think it’s a very interesting. Things are definitely in a bad state and getting worse. I’m not you know, I’m a pragmatist. These are definitely these are definitely concerns. So it’s nice to to get something to say, no, no, no, these aren’t new concerns, though. And, yeah, the world is just about to end as it has been in the past. And so, you know, there’s some solace there, even if there’s a lot of damage along the way. About Ethan. I think you’re on mute. He’s got no Mike. No, no, he’s got a local mute. He took himself off. Vanished. But now it’s. How is it possible that on every device. Is making it impossible to understand them. True. Adam. Sure. Yeah. Well, I wasn’t here the past book club or two. I haven’t really caught up to where we are. But I have actually still been dwelling on the on on Plato and particularly the Republic views of Plato. What are you saying? What he has to say and the views of other people kind of discussing the Republic in different topics. I was actually watching a video the other day and they were discussing how Republic the Republic has loads to do with politics. But I remember the beginning of this entire of the entire book and it all starts as a discourse in justice. And so I’m interested to see how that pans out and what other people see in it. And I want to be here to provide any historical context. Depending on what’s brought up, I’ll be scanning through the document. Just to see what might step out of me. And then if anyone else brings up anything and kind of wants more info on that, I’d be happy to help. Casey. So, let’s see, reflection and inaction. I kind of like sped read through this, but I mean, I read it fully and read it several times at least up to book four. There’s many ways in which Plato seems to be like. There’s many ways in which Plato seems to be like. Deeply into. The things that affect people that aren’t just. With that. What did I put down in my notes here? He’s setting something up in the first several books, right? They open with the gods. Like a religious ceremony, and then they start talking about justice and modern people start reading this and they’re like, justice, you know, whatever. Oh, he’s setting up a political system. Wow. Cool. No, the whole book is. An explication of Plato’s worldview, basically, and him just building up to it and. How I’ve seen it is that it looks like. It’s sort of been. Ingrained into our culture also. Like Plato’s views on justice and society. And. Roles, let’s say. But I see a lot of. I see a lot of Plato and let’s say Christianity and everybody else that came up after them. It’s funny how much of this still applies now. I don’t really have anything specific. Maybe we can start getting into more specifics. I’ll have something to say. You see a lot of it in. The Hebrew tradition to with. You know, Moses mountains. The one coming down. And that was all before Plato. So it’s can you guys hear me? Yes. Well, it’s like a revelation. It’s like a revelation. It’s like a revelation. It’s like a revelation. Can you guys hear me? Yes. Well, it’s like a revelation that’s happening. Was played out. Okay, so can you pose the question again? I’ll go. I think we’re doing intention setting. No, linking to what we’re doing reflection, right? Like, what’s hit us? What are we seeing? What are we noticing? So, like, how has the reading affected me in my life over the last week or two? Right? Essentially. I mean, it’s probably already been said, just justice and adherence to a higher ethic that’s outside of, that exists outside of myself. Actually makes it easier to do things like, oh, well, I’m not doing, I’m doing this because it’s my obligation to, you know, my purpose or my role. And then the, then the intention going forward. We’re also doing that. No, not really. Intention for the talk. For the food club, maybe. Yeah. Oh, well, yeah, just to understand the book better, book four, see what insights you guys have had and see how I can, you know, if I can, you know, have insights myself and learn something. So I, I have two things to say about what Danny was saying. So one is we’ve been dancing about Frager and his remarks lately, how he’s like, well, if you don’t act it out, it’s okay. I think Plato is taking the opposite position. It’s like, if you, if you act things out, then you, you will start becoming that. And then the problem, and this is connected to the problem that we have as a society is if we start imitating things that are real, right? Like, then we can shift into that a little bit. If we start imitating things that aren’t real or cannot be real, then we get into problems, right? And then I think what Plato is talking about with, well, the gods don’t lie, right? Like, what is not in accordance with reality, right? So if, if the axioms, right? The thing that, the thing that we base our action on are not grounded in reality, I think that’s what this fear is about. And then the other thing about the guardians protecting freedom, right? Like, he’s going to introduce the philosopher king. And I think the more, the higher you are in the hierarchy, the more you are bound by it. Like, like I think there’s, there’s, there’s a bigger sacrifice from the people who are higher because they have more reach effectively and they need to give up more of their potential in order to, to serve, I guess. Yeah, they’re pouring more of themselves into the, into the state. Whereas like someone lower on the hierarchy, you know, they’re making a, you know, horseshoes or whatever they’re a farrier. It’s like, that’s what they do. They don’t rule over people. They just make horseshoes. I don’t know. I’m confused with the chapters, but they go into this actually in what, what it means to be contributing, right? And I’m like, how, how you cannot judge the contribution and that you can classify those contributions in types. So Danny, are you fulfilled with those things? Am I fulfilled with what things? Well, the things you brought up. What do you mean by fulfilled? That you’re good and you want to proceed. Yeah, we can. Yeah. I guess from an intention setting perspective, you know, like, well, I think, you know, right now my intention is, because I didn’t really talk on that, is to stabilize and then my future is a little bit uncertain, right? So in an uncertain time, there’s more affordance. And so there’s, it’s kind of a fertile time to make change, you know, so I have, it’s, you know, one of the things you learn when being close to death is, I mean, is, you know, is, you know, time is short. So let’s get to it, you know, type of a thing. So I’m kind of at a, at a crossroads right now. I’m able to choose what I want to pour myself into next. So that’s, that’s a part of what’s on my mind. But yes, man, well, we can, we can proceed. Well, I think you have the summaries. Okay, well, I’m just winging it. So I did, I did mention, because I’m pretty unprepared, but so I mentioned imitation. It is the case that we did, we did kind of bring this up with respect to music, because that’s, that’s actually kind of comes before the music section. But we didn’t talk about the, they do seem to contrast imitation against narrative. And I wasn’t really quite clear if, if that was supposed to be a dichotomy or if they were, if there was some difference between that. In the same way that they kind of contrast the gym, the gym, the gym, gymnastics against music. Did anybody else kind of pick up on the concepts of imitation versus narrative, or is that even a distinction that they’re making? Yeah, I think, I think that, I think that’s there. And I think, sure. I mean, one way to think about, actually, it’s a good way to think about it. Now that, now that you bring it up, Jenny. One way to think about narrative versus imitation. So most of what you do in your existence is imitation. There’s tons of science in this. It’s like, there’s so many things we do that are just imitating what we see. Or we were, we were fully formed, right? And the difference between that, which is most of what we do and how we operate in the world, and narrative is rationality. Right? If you’re consciously rationalizing about something, the thing you’re rationalizing about is narrative. So, yeah, that’s a helpful way to think about it, actually. Strike one up for Plato. Learn, learn a new way to think about rationality. That should ruffle some feathers. I get people get all upset about that. But I mean, this is what Peterson’s talking about when he’s saying, no, it’s, it’s, it’s narrative first. And all these other things second, because narrative is wrapped up in consciousness and rational. Like, if you’re not conscious, you can’t engage with narrative. Right. And if you’re just doing something through mimicry, you’re not engaged in narrative. And you don’t need to be right. It’s a very low energy state. So it’s preferred, you know, evolutionarily speaking and also laziness speaking. So, so, yeah, I mean, I think that’s a fair, a fair comparison and a really helpful insight. So the other way that that’s that’s discussed is it’s in making a description versus making the first whatever from not you. Right. And the doing it from the not you is making it a lie because now you’re talking about a thing that you don’t know. Right. So now you’re you’re imposing a truth on on what is not true. And so he’s really wanting to make that distinction. Right. Like you’re you shouldn’t bring things in the world where you’re not certain of where you’re not the author, where you’re imitating someone else’s experience. Is it bringing things in the world, Manuel, or is it you shouldn’t be authoritative about it? Because, I mean, you’re you mimic. That’s going to happen. Well, he said it’s OK that if you say this person said right, but then you’re back to descriptive. So you can have a descriptive thing. But if you say if you take over his voice and start speaking in the voice of the other, that’s the transgression. And that, awkwardly enough, is exactly the topic of my last stream last night. His action versus versus imagination. Right. Which which allows you to figure out who’s pretending like who’s who’s making making statements that aren’t in evidence, you’ll say. It seems like in some of it, Plato’s kind of giving a description of what like he himself is. When he’s writing this, like when he comes upon a the words or actions of a good man in this narrative, he’ll be willing to for that man himself. He’ll imitate the good man. And it seems who cares if like Socrates was real or whatever. Right. He’s he’s setting up the good man Socrates and sort of giving out his words. And it is a narrative, but it’s also imitation of Socrates. And Socrates is like an ideal. Yes. Well, he’s using the narrative to imitate Socrates. And Vervik, you were saying recently that Plato claims to have made Socrates more beautiful. Right. Then he actually is. And, you know, is that a deception? Is that right? Is that appropriate? And, you know, of course, yes, I would say. It’s a noble lie. It’s yeah, it could be construed as a noble lie, I suppose. Here’s a section that’s related to action and imitation and the good man. So there’s it says a good and just man in the course of a narration comes on some saying or action of another good man. I should imagine that he will like to personate him and he will not be ashamed of this sort of imitation. And then they go on to say basically you can’t do that if you’re lovestruck or drunk and stuff like that. It’s kind of like you need to be in a sober state. But when he comes to a character which is unworthy of him, he will not make a study of that. He will disdain such a person. This is how I my approach towards trolls, by the way, I just ignore them rather than try to attack them. He should disdain such a person and will assume his likeness, if at all, for a moment only when he’s performing some good action. So there’s a like, you know, there’s there’s an aspect of personation that I don’t know. It’s it seems like an inevitability. Yeah, good. It was 396 B, I believe is what he said. Thank you. Oh, wait, which book are we reading? Was that in the wrong section? Not pages, sections, the little numbers next to the words. I know, which book are we reading? No, it’s universal. It’s universal. Manuscript numbers are on the side there, at least on my copy. That’s OK. Sorry. I thought we did book four, though, right? No, we haven’t. This is part two of book three. Oh. Yeah, we’re still we’re still puzzling. Oh, the whole week. I get your head. Oh, well, that’s fine. You still remember book three, right? I don’t know. Another. So the narration may be either simple narration, imitation or the union of the two. So they’re going into the pattern again, where there’s this diffuse middle ground. Well, not I’m not really responding to that, but one thing that I kind of noticed just on the subject of imitation is that it seems like when where they go with it seems to be very heavily dependent upon like the kind of emotional valence that’s in the backdrop. So like they open it up by saying. And he can be fear talking on the guardians, and he can be this is a person who can be fearless of death or will choose death in battle rather than defeat and slavery, who believes the oh, no, they’re saying we can’t if we can’t have the guardians be believing the world to below to be real and terrible, because that’s not going to produce the kind of person that we want to fulfill that role, which is why we have to suppress, you know, lamentations of the gods, etc. Strike out those passages. It says not because they’re unpoetical or unattractive to the popular era, but because the greater the political charm of them, the less they are meat for the ears of the boys and men who are meant to be free, which is, I think, ironic. I think you’re supposed to see that. And who should fear slavery more than death? Right. So like there’s and then the response to that is another and nobler strain must be composed and sung by us, which I thought was, you know, full of hubris. But that’s how they kind of open the chapter. Right. And I wonder to what extent that you’re supposed to see that like, hey, this is clear hubris. It’s clearly ridiculous. Right. And so you’re not supposed to interpret all the reasoning that they want to say. Certainly, certainly, certainly. It’s all ridiculous. Almost everything they’re saying is absurd. You know, how it I would say it’s not. It’s not absurd. And again, this is this is this is where I relate modern science fiction with ancient Greek philosophy. The purpose of ancient Greek philosophy is to postulate some sort of mostly ideal thing with only one open question or non-ideal thing like justice. Right. And so we’re just going to pretend all the other variables about the universe don’t exist. Right. You see this in something like Star Trek, where you say, we’re not going to worry about power. Power is just dilithium crystals and therefore. And because we have roughly unlimited or at least excess power, we’re not going to worry about food because we’re just going to invent a food replicator and therefore. And now we’re never fighting over a lot of Star Trek is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs doesn’t exist. What do humans do? And then in Star Trek, of course, they do the same things they do when Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is accounted for, even though it’s not a hierarchy. But where Maslow spins in his grave every time I say that, my apologies. The ancient Greeks did the same thing. They kind of started this trend. Like we’re we’re going to talk about ideals. And if you’re going to talk about ideals and you’re going to narrow it down to one. All right. Well, that’s, you know, however many ideal situations or or concepts you want to talk about virtues. Right. It’s going to narrow it down to one. All the others have to be perfect. And yeah, we might call that absurd today, but that is the practice of ancient Greek philosophy would be my. Actually crystal clear. I’d be surprised if anybody ever pushed back on that, although I’m sure there’s someone out there and maybe even some of the PhD. Come on. Like at a certain point. Yeah. It is clear that they are ignoring a bunch of things for the purpose of exemplifying justice. And that goes back to the, you know, the statements that everyone else has been echoing is this isn’t about politics. Politics is the art of accounting for a bunch of variables and making a bunch of tradeoffs. And, you know, I would argue politics doesn’t exist outside of modern government and modern government has nothing to do with ancient kingship. Right. You don’t have a government unless you have a king and some other component ruling like a parliament. Before that, it’s not government, right? A democracy, that’s a form of government because you don’t have a single ruler just going and therefore like you did in the ancient times. Or maybe government, government can’t exist in anything where the, you know, where the religion is too wrapped up in the in the, in the what would you call it? Human instantiation of the role of governing. And so that’s what the book is trying to do is to show you one specific thing and ignoring everything else. It’s not talking about what about the imperfection of humans when they communicate, which is always a factor. You know, how do you deal with, you know, because in this they’re not even talking about rulers. Right. They’re talking about other components of the society and not rulers, which is strange. Right. But there’s a reason behind that. Right. They’re trying to establish something very important at, we’ll call it the bottom layers, kind of building up from the bottom in this particular case in order to resolve this, you know, this justice thing. And it’s very much right. It started with this. What is just from your perspective to what is just, you know, in the perspective of groups of people. And then it’s like, no, we need to throw all that out and go to cities. Okay. And so now we’re at the bottom layer of the city. We’re the minimum things the city has to have to city. How is city citying? Right. And that’s basically, you know, where we’re at now. So, yeah, on the one hand, it’s absurd. On the other hand, that is the practice of philosophy. It’s supposed to make a bunch of things absurd and ideal, right. Idealizing them, thus making them absurd in order to exemplify whatever exploration they’re on in the moment. Also, when he goes into this later on, like he wants to have, a justifiable path there. Right. Like not that it will happen, but that it could happen. Right. In order to do that, like he has to be the Genesis. Like, who else is going to be the Genesis? Yeah, it’s weird. It’s almost like we’re taking an almost inappropriate third person point of view. By talking about these things, it kind of feels weird in some instance. But then again, you can feel comfortable knowing that it’s Plato and that we’re not writing. You know, this book’s been around for 2400 years and has been a big part of culture. So, I can feel a little safe going with him into this third person point of view. But yeah, absolutely. We’re really kind of manipulating things around. So, we’re kind of pulling things out so we can get a better look at it. Imagine you’re pulling the organs out of something so you can zoom in and look a little bit better. That’s not how… The organism isn’t going to exist with its organs all pulled out of place. But you might be able to see a little bit better how the heart works or something. I don’t know. That’s kind of a stupid analogy. I think kind of where they go with afterimitation and music is on education. They talk about the education of the physician, the education of the judge, the education of the lawyer. I don’t remember exactly the details of what they mentioned, but they said should the judge actually know evil? What should the judge’s relationship be to evil versus the physician versus the lawyer? And this is after they talk about spirits and music and gods. So, they talk about natures and harmonies and stuff like that and poetry. They’re talking about temperance, they’re talking about wantonness. They mention virtues and vices. So, they bring up all this. That’s kind of before this. I think they’re kind of maybe leading towards a conversation on the nature of education in some way. I do remember them saying that you take a mechanic, compare him to a judge. A judge is going to need more experience regarding… He’s going to need a much greater capacity of discernment than the mechanic would. So, the education is going to be a little bit different for those two different classes of people. Because a mechanic doesn’t need to discern evil when he’s doing a very technical task. Whereas a judge, that’s his job, is to discern and judge. A lot of what they’re doing is creating forbidden knowledge. One little thing that jumped out at me is that the newest songs which singers have, they will be afraid that he may be praising not new songs but a new kind of song. And this ought not to be praised or conceived to be the meaning of the poet. For any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole state and ought to be prohibited. So, Damon tells me, and I can quite believe him, he says that when the modes of music change of the state, always change with them. So, they bring up this idea of the Damon, which is not something that we really talk about in our society very often. But it seems to be kind of, he shifted the argument a bit, and this is what it’s predicated on, which I think is interesting. The Damon tells me this, and so therefore I can proceed with my argument. I’m all about this, but we don’t tend to talk or think in these terms these days very often. This is going to be very, Mark’s going to like this. I think this is a refutation on emergence is good, because if you’re just progressing for the sake of progressing, you have no idea what spirit or Damien is possessing you. You have no idea what you’re summoning into existence. It’s completely uncontrolled. Right, and I think it’s interesting there’s a YouTube channel called Esoterica, and he actually goes into Menea. And so, the modern folks, when they’re looking at, and by modern I mean today, right, some people today, and most of the past, especially in quote philosophy, when they’re looking at the divorcing, they’re just ignoring all section of Plato’s work, and they’re just ignoring it completely, they don’t talk about it at all. And part of that’s Menea, and they’re just ignoring all that. And pretending that, yeah, there’s no writings about that, or we’re not going to discuss it, because it’s not part of philosophy or something, when in fact it is to the ancient Greeks, right? And the reason why I think they’re ignoring it is because the claim is that Menea, which is roughly madness, although I think that’s probably a very poor translation, is superior to rationality and logic in giving you insights. And likewise, the daemon, and I do like what Ethan said, of course, but the daemon is a refutation of consciousness and rationality as primary or singular moving forces. It’s like, oh, maybe you’re rational, and maybe you have a consciousness, and maybe you have an ego, but there’s a daemon too, and he’s talking to you, or it’s talking to you, or whatever. And it’s like, whoa, wait, what? And this is the way the ancient Greeks thought. And more to the point, yeah, it certainly seems to be that way, not for everybody, maybe, but maybe for everybody. Like, I don’t know, I’m not everybody, I’m only me. I don’t want to be everybody, so it’s cool. Not an error, a feature, not a bug. So, but that has just massive implications for the more recent project, and by recent I mean post-Aristotle, unfortunately, that people refer to as philosophy. And in that sense, it does not bear a resemblance to what the ancient Greeks would have considered philosophy in the day. We just missed that, right? We get a bunch of people doing a live biomission, cutting out a bunch of work and saying, no, no, no, this is it. It’s just this stuff. There’s nothing to do with all this other stuff that was intertwined. And I think what you’re seeing there, Danny, is the baseline assumptions that they’re making, like, oh, there’s a thing called a daemon, and this is how it works, have been skipped over, but they leak into the text because their baseline assumptions are axiomatic, and we, as post-Aristotelians, have cut that out and just brushed it aside and said, oh, that’s like religious or something. When in fact for them it was part of the fundamental core of the work of what they considered to be their work of philosophy. And they proceed with, after introducing the idea of the daemon, they talk about the spirit of licentiousness, right? And this is kind of related to yesterday in action, we were talking about lack of constraint, right? They literally say, I think I have it here, yeah, here it is. Then, as I was saying, our youth should be trained from the first and the stricter system, for if amusements become lawless, and the youths themselves become lawless, they can never grow up into well-constructed and virtuous citizens. And so you could look at action first or you could look maybe and see the spirit of licentiousness in things. I mean, that’s kind of where my eyes typically go. Lack of boundaries leads to infantilization, is what I heard. And yes, and look around, and you’re supposed to constrain people with consequence from action. Go ahead, Ethan. No, I’m agreeing, yeah. They go on to say, sorry. I wanted to ask Adam if he had any more context on Menea or daemon, and what they thought, what they… Yeah, Menea, it’s actually, that’s the biblical Greek, but there’s another, it means remembrance as well, which is another aspect of it. Daemon, I mean, that’s even still used in some mathematics today, if you ever heard of Maxwell’s Daemon. I can’t really say much on how they interacted with the word daemon other than these were things that existed and probably were some sort of nature spirit. Looking at the origin of the word, it’s a sort of god or goddess. Another one of the actual possible meanings is departed soul as well, so there’s a connection there with not just the gods but also those men who have passed on and gone through death. And then of course, we have the word, the descendant word even today with the word daemon, but that’s kind of by the by. And Menea, meaning remembering, harkens back to the Platonic idea that some… I’m going to screw it up and maybe everybody screws it up because it’s a difficult concept. Before you were born somehow or as you were born, you had contact with the forms, which is how you’re able to discern them. That’s the end of Plato. That’s where Plato’s like, I don’t know, all the things we can’t know anything about because they happened before us, as individuals and we will say, are just like, we must have just gone through the realm of forms first and that must be somewhere. And things like that. And go ahead, there’s definitely some… it used to be referred to as racial memory or cultural memory or whatever. And then that’s actually a blending of these two things. One seems to be a very well-tested and frightening biological sort of, oh, if you leave this thing alone, it’ll automatically on average in a group tend to, not as individuals, but I’m saying, if you look at a lot of individuals, those individuals will tend towards a certain thing. And then also there is a cultural memory. And those things follow what we would modernly call race. And that of course gets into all kinds of nasty implications if you misuse it. That remembering is part of that whole thing. It’s sort of like, this is where the two-world mythology is heavy. You’re only looking at the one world, at the philosophia, where we’re just examining, we’ve cleaved it in half and we’re just examining this stuff, which usually strays with Aristotle into the connection to the physical, to the material. Which, I’m a big fan of, yes, this is only a material, but that doesn’t mean it’s not informed by what we would call post-1530 religious concepts or experience. I mean, even if you’re just arguing evolution, evolution selected us into, we don’t know what evolution is selecting for, but somehow it selected us into these forms. Where there are, that’s how we, we’re in the forms, forms pre-exist even evolution. It is, you know, it is mysterious. So, I was going to say, the diamond is not a well understood entity. I heard that it’s mentioned 50 times in Plato’s work and the functionality changes. So, a lot of time it’s represented as a guardian angel, something that will prevent Socrates from going too far in a direction. But here it’s definitely represented as an authority and even something that draws into a subset of potential. I assume that that is connected to the good. Although I don’t know their definition of the good or at least the way that they deal with it so far. The way that he was using it here was that if I’m correct, Danny, he was saying we want to avoid being too progressive because the diamond will just pull us in any which direction. Is that how he was using it? He was inferring that it could pull us into a bad direction if we’re too careless and not discerning enough. Continually, I think he was talking about music, right? Continually inventing new melodies and new songs and harmonies and stuff. I don’t know if he mentioned the diamond. I think he did. Can you stop it up, Danny? Yeah, a couple of places, but I don’t know the answer. I’ll just read the section, but I don’t really know. Then I said we must take Damon into our councils and he will tell us what rhythms are expressed as a meanness. I just Googled Damon, by the way, while you were talking on Wikipedia. Damon in ancient Greece, his expertise was supposedly musicology. He will tell us what rhythms are expressive of meanness or insolence or fury or other unworthiness and what are to be reserved for the expression of opposite feelings. And they go on. I don’t know if this is just a bad analogy, but I was thinking about a Damon spelt differently in computing operating systems, like this background process, and it’s responsible for algorithms to allocate in segment memory. Back in the day when people would pirate ISOs or images of compact disks, let’s say, one of the tools to mount that, you had to mount an image using a program called Damon Tools Lite. That was a popular one, for example. I don’t really know where to go with that analogy, but in computing, it’s this thing in the background that’s kind of, I don’t know if that’s an appropriate metaphor. It sits in the background and it takes an action without your interference. So it is in some sense an autonomous agent, right? And that’s what it does. And it is, that’s exactly where it comes from in computing for real. So yeah, it is this, you know, the same thing with the Maxwell’s, right? Like if there were such a creature of the nature that could, then one could imagine, right, very ancient Greek philosophy style, right? If this crazy thing that can’t exist existed, you know, and that exemplifies a problem, right? So this is a problem. See how this would be a problem? I can gin up a theoretical situation with these Damons or Diamonds or Harbor. I know the spelling changes, but actually it is the same, it’s exactly the same concept just applied in a different realm. So yeah, I mean, you get into that a lot in computers. It’s these very specific processes that are usually designed to do only, although sometimes people put multiple functions in them for that reason. So I’m reading here, according to Hesiod Smith, great and powerful figures were to be honored after death as Diamond. A Diamond is not so much a type of quasi-divine being, according to Burkett, because that’s the definition that they’re giving here, but rather a non-personified peculiar mode of their activity, right? So it would be an abstraction of the essence or something, or the way that a person is known, right? So you could say that the Holy Spirit is the abstraction of Jesus’ Spirit or something, right? But I also think it’s used, like I think Eros, the way that it’s used in the symposium, also qualifies as a Diamond, where it’s like a messenger from the God, where it’s the intermediary, and so we went into the Platonic Neoplatonist structures, where there’s things that are outside of time and space, and then there’s things that are outside of space but in time, and the things that are outside of space in time are the way that we commune with the things that are completely outside. And that would be the realm of angels, and she needs all that stuff as well. Intermediary beings. Diamond can somewhat, maybe it’s wrong, but it’s like an enhancement of agency, but not in the sense that technology does, enhancing your agency to lead you towards the ideal, something like that. Yeah, this is a very interesting question. Where is it in the Old Testament where there’s the vision, right, of the, there’s the vision of the angel with the four-headed, four-headed angel? Ezekiel? They actually portray the angels as actually serving men, which is very interesting because we typically think of angels and higher beings as being like intermediary between us and the one. When you think of it this way, they actually are serving men because they’re affording men more agency to come closer or to afford the will of God. Yes, but like this, you can make the opposite, right, because you can be possessed by one as well. Right? So I think if you have right relationship, yeah, well, yeah, but like it depends on whether you have the right discernment in some sense, right? Like whether you have the capacity to engage correctly. Mm-hmm. And that’s what also Plato is setting up here. He’s talking about discernment with regards to music and how music sets that up. Right? Anyone who’s been properly educated in music and poetry will sense it acutely once they’ve been able to. From a thing and when it hasn’t been finely crafted or finally made by nature. So right. So education and music is discernment because music, he says music touches the soul directly more than anything else. Right. And so that’s, well, yeah, that’s free supporting a whole, right, which you can’t see, but you can intuit the whole and then you can intuit how it’s not conforming to the whole. I was pretty pissed when someone said, well, that means that you know the whole before you know the parts or whatever. Like, no, like you’re getting to know the whole by being able to say this is part of it and this isn’t part of it. And then you can get the circumambulation and then, yeah, you can say, well, like there’s a piece missing. So are we in agreement that music does that or is that like specific type of music in a specific relationship to it? I mean, that’s their, that’s their impression at their time. But again, this is all like, as Danny pointed out in the beginning, right, they’re speaking in some sense of what we might call absurdity deliberately, fine justice. So does that actually happen? And do they believe that actually happens? You know, again, it’s certainly a reduction, oversimplification and purification of a concept. Well, it is at least the right metaphor. Right. Like I think that’s maybe, I don’t think it’s wrong at all. It’s not complete. You know, it’s not the only way music can, you know, without music that wouldn’t know. But yeah, it doesn’t sound wrong. Well, this is I think there’s there’s a lot here that I get a little uneasy reading about this because to us moderns, like music doesn’t seem like it has any metaphysical power over us at all. It’s just like, oh, we listen to anything. Nothing has any effect on us. It’s just, you know, some people have a particular taste. They’re clearly saying that there’s types of music that are appropriate, types of music that are inappropriate. And I’ve noticed in the Greek church that I go to, they actually have they actually have different modes. They actually have the modes that are mentioned in this book that they sing in, and they use different modes for different different prayers and stuff. So I wonder if there’s if there’s not something there that we’re worth worth looking into, if there really is some sort of reasoning for having distinguishing different modes of music. Like, you know, I went to the symphony the other couple of weeks ago. It’s like, I have no idea what I’m participating in. A little bit frightening sometimes because we don’t think that it has any consequence. And for the Greeks, right? Like, for most for most people before the invention of, let’s say, like composers and that sort of thing, music was deeply participatory. Always like someone had to be there playing an instrument or singing or something like that. But nowadays you get hints of that. Like, I thought of this while reading, like, I’m a big metal music fan and I go to concerts all the time. Right. And it’s. When you go there, you enter into the spirit of the music. That’s what we’re doing. We’re like moshing and beating up on each other. Right. And the spirit of the music is that it’s sort of what Plato talks about with the music for warriors. It enters you. You’re sort of overcome by that spirit and it leads you to action. That’s a good point there. We probably don’t want our children listening to punk rock or heavy metal all the time when they’re in their development phase. I don’t know. And I usually I don’t listen to it all the time. It’s for it has a certain I don’t know if I want to call it a purpose, but there’s a certain spirit there and you don’t want it all the times you want it when it’s needed. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe. Or there’s an affordance there and it makes it more clear by outlining it using a pattern or something. Yeah. There’s lots. There’s lots of valid ways to think about it. using a pattern or something. There’s lots of valid ways to think about it. How would you loop that back to justice though? Comparing it, like the music and in education and all of that. I’m just curious, is that something that- Well, again, I think we’re building up from the bottom. We’re building up an idyllic set of layers from the bottom so that we can talk about this thing so much bigger than, I mean, spoilers. This isn’t the first city that we’re gonna talk about. So this isn’t the first city layout that we’re gonna talk about in our quest for justice. And so that implies either some imperfection or insufficiency in the building up of this city. And so I don’t think he’s intending even, and I could be wrong, to make the connection to justice. He’s just starting the argument. He’s just trying to first set the baseline using, as Danny very eloquently pointed out, an absurd, what we would call an absurdist framework. That it’s super idealistic. It’s fantastically idealistic for the purpose of saying, all right, again, let’s just remove all the other variables. Very scientific, let’s remove all the other variables. The only variable we’re gonna deal with is justice. So let’s make everything else perfect, our definitions of justice, and see how it interacts in the outline. And then what happens? It doesn’t go well. Which is not to say you don’t get anything out of it because the journey is the destination in some sense, or the journey is more important than the destination. And I think, and from what I know from the podcast that Dr. Lanter-Jack did on YouTube there, on the Ancient Greek Declassified podcast about Plato’s Republic, because I did listen to that a year ago or so. The bottom line is, all of these exemplifications and circumambulations of justice are going to end incompletely. John Vervecky talks about this, right? When you’re doing this dialectic into dialogos practice, where you hope dialogos emerges, part of the point is you talk about a virtue because it can’t be a debate. My idea of a virtue is not correct while yours is wrong. It would just not say you can’t be off or incorrect, but I can’t be right, and therefore it doesn’t turn into a contest. I think it’s the same thing here. It’s like Plato has no illusions that he’s going to resolve justice once and for all, for all time, forever. And he’s not making that claim. His claim through the character of Socrates is, you, but you don’t, right? So he’s effectively injecting humility into the whole operation. And that is Socrates’ role, maybe even in ancient Greek society, which was part of the reason why he had to go. And by go, if you just leave and stop shining a light on our hubris, we’ll be happy enough. But if you’re going to stay, you’re going to go. You’re drinking the Amlok, not to bring up something that might be apocryphal, but it’s such a good line, I feel I must. In the immortal words of Socrates, I drank what? Yeah. I wanted to respond to Manuel’s question of are we in agreement that music does indeed affect the soul? I think it’s a good question. I think it depends because when prescribing the music that the guardians are to listen to, it’s clear that they are not to be in a state of intoxication. And I think music can be consumed in a hypnotic way to maybe numb pain or something like that. So I think it does depend. And I think maybe it starts with where are you? Where are you located? Where are you going? Because why are you listening to the music? Because I think it has maybe a tool-like function. I listen to music to calm my mind for programming sometimes. I use music to marshal resources in the gym. So I think it depends on your orientation towards it. You know, music can be listened to in times of grief, to bring to tears. It can be consumed in a more exploratory way when you’re searching. You can find things in music. You know? But I think you have to be… I think you need to have the affordance to receive it, to receive what will come from it. Yeah, and I think that is the point of what Plato’s, you know, trying to exemplify here through Socrates. Through Socrates is to say, music is an important mover, and the movement matters relative to the frame you’re in. And if you’re drinking or intoxicated or whatever, then it’s dangerous because either you’re removing the framing, the constraints, or you’re putting yourself in a bad framing where that same music could move you someplace they don’t want you to go. And the thing that really struck me about the Guardians is there’s a way to read it and say, oh, wait a minute, all he’s actually talking about here at the end of the day is how to make a robot. Because they’re very well controlled, right? And that is part of that. Like, no, no, no, you can listen to music, and it’s this music, and you listen to it under these conditions, right? And so you’re using that material as, we’re gonna set the conditions, and then, right? And he does that with the metal too, right? Like, oh, you’re gonna understand that the gold metal people have to be at the top, whatever that means, right? And otherwise it’s doom. If silver or bronze gets at the top, we’re all screwed. Right? But everyone’s gonna respect that because any, like, how are you gonna do that, Socrates? And he’s like, I don’t know, but let’s continue. Yeah. I think they might dive into that a little bit in the next book. Yeah, we probably wouldn’t want our guardians listening to heavy metal music or punk rock all the time. Yeah, so- Punk rock, no. Punk rock, no. Heavy metal? Oh, come on. Well, if you think of traditional military marches, they’re very well ordered, you know, if you think about them. Well, they march to them, you know. There’s definitely a spirit that it’s invoking of discipline and orderliness. Yeah, and that’s important, but also the fury and the frenzy, especially like with the Viking attacks, right? Like that’s, you know, and the, if you know, and I don’t know a lot about it, but if you know some of the South American stuff, that’s huge in South American warfare. When the tribes go at each other, whether it’s the Mayans or the Aztec or whatever, they’re whipping their soldiers up into a frenzy through music ahead of time. A lot of the African tribes do that too, right? They do the drumming and stuff before they go to war, right? So there’s the orderliness and they up the tempo, right? There’s usually some sort of chemical assistance in South America. It’s coca leaves, right? I forget what it is in Africa, maybe I never knew. You know, and so there’s all that going on. And then when the fighting starts, there’s this whole idea. I mean, they have whole weapons that actually disrupt the enemy through sound. So they’re using music or at least sound in their warfare actively and whipping somebody up into a frenzy. You know, there’s that famous, you know, meme about people telling everybody that whatever song they’re asking about is to root sandstorm. And it’s based on that kid who was playing, what’s that stupid game? I can’t remember the name of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he’s going, right? And on camera and everyone’s like, oh, he’s listening to the root sandstorm. And that cracked me up because I remember listening to the root sandstorm when I need to get work done. And it just, like it works. And it’s very disruptive in some sense, but also it gives you a meter and a rhyme, you know, to sit and focus on whatever you’re focusing on. So, you know, I’m not saying that, you know, that you want the march when you’re training and you want the heavy metal when you’re fighting. That’s what, and also a lot of heavy metal is actually talking about virtues and values, the good stuff anyway, right? Like, you know, you take a band, an excellent band that almost nobody knows about, like Metal Church, right? And you listen to, you know, they have a song that’s basically Edgar Allan Poe’s Telltale Heart, told in metal, and it’s awesome. It’s really awesome. You know, it’s a great song, right? And so that sort of marriage of music and lyrics and that is really key. So I, you know, I’m a big fan of heavy metal music, man. Come on. Put a pin in that for later. Metal pin. I don’t want my soldiers mosh pitting and fighting in line. Lino says, you know, leave me the mode that would suitably imitate the tone and rhythm of a courageous person who is active in battle or doing other violent deeds. And then the other mode he talks about is someone engaged in peaceful, unforced, voluntary action. Yeah. It’s the modes that he wants. That’s the march. The second one is the march and the first one is the frenzy. And he brings up the lyre, which is Apollo’s instrument. And he contrasts that with, what’s his name? Marcius, who’s a satyr, I think. And he doesn’t want Marcius’s instrument. He wants Apollo’s instrument. What was Marcius’s instrument? I think Marcius like challenged Apollo or something to a lyre contest. And then obviously Apollo won and he threw him into Hades or something. Sounds like a- I hate it when that happens. I know, he flayed him alive. That’s right. But something important about satyrs, which I think Adam might know more about, is that they’re basically just an expression of pure desire or something like that. Like spiritual desire or something like that. Well, yeah, that’s definitely part of it. I mean, the Greeks were very, very into their public displays of phallus. Satyrs are always depicted with erect penises. And then of course they’re kind of part man, part beast, that sort of thing. So yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then they have their instruments as well. They play the instruments. They play, I don’t know if it’s the aulas or something like that, but it’s some flute, right? Some wind instrument. Actually, I think it’s probably important that it is a wind instrument. Yeah, it is a flute. That’s right. He brings it up. I found this footnote here. Well, basically you guys got it. After Athena had invented the flute, she discarded it because it distorted her features to play it, which is interesting. It was picked up by the satyr Marcius, who was foolish enough to challenge Apollo, inventor of the lyre, in musical contest. He was defeated and Apollo flayed him alive. Satyrs were bestial in their behavior and desires, especially their sexual desires. I think the distinction is that in a blowing instrument, you bring in your spirit, like literally, like you’re taking something out of you and you’re putting it into music. And when it’s a string instrument, like the instrument has it already, right? So you’re taking it out of the instrument. Yeah. Oh, wow. I think that’s exactly on point, Manuel. Yeah. About the war music. I think what it is is like there was this problem with morale and fear spreading through the ranks, right? So what you wanna have, the way that you win, is if you whip up a spirit and you have a collective spirit, the chance of it being broken is way lower. And if that’s the main way that you lose wars, if you’re a ranks break, right? Like that’s really important. Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. And on the topic of military music, the Greeks did use flutes and all when marching, and so did the Romans, actually. So these are cognate kind of civilizations that would have had a lot of overlap. And the way you see the Greeks fight on the battlefield is very ordered with the phalanx. And you need to be able to keep time. And so it’s important that you have a beat, you either have a drum or a flute, but that can give orders through that. And that’s how orders would be given out in the battlefield with the Romans as well. They would have their, and the Celts, they would have a horn, a massive brass horn, and they would use that to recall men or sound the charge or something like that. Otherwise, there’s also something to be said for when people are using shields. And I remember, because I made my own shield, and if you have a sword and a shield, you can hit the sword, just the base, the pommel of the sword off the shield, and you can get the timing, right? So you can go, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then, of course, then you can have a horn or something over that. And then, of course, the shouting of men as well, a war chant, because there’s that aspect to it as well. In World War I, they used the rhythm of the artillery to communicate, because you didn’t exactly have radio. That was, worked well, which also kind of interesting. Yeah, yeah. And in the case of World War I and marching music, why we have marching music perhaps at the front of our militaries, but on account of the fact, when you compare modern militaries, which are pulling people from all sorts of places, disparate parts of a country, you need to have that sort of kind of peaceful order kind of going around, whereas let’s say perhaps, if you had a group of men which are more familiar, you could afford to whip them up into such a degree, which they’ll sort out the direction themselves. Whereas with marching music, you need to be able to give orders, have them received and carried out in a particular fashion. It’s interesting, because they don’t bring up Aries at all, right? And they’re talking about the warlike music. They just bring up, they mainly bring up Apollo. And it’s like, well, he’s setting up the two sorts of musics, but yet again, it’s the, he’s setting up the ideal. It’s not like it’s, he wants it to be perfect. The kinds of music that he has. So he’s not, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t have any words. I think you’re correct. Like I think Aries is not sophisticated. He just doesn’t have access to all of these technologies. Yeah. I like your point, Adam, about, look, you’re taking all these people from different places, different cultural and educational levels, right? And levels of understanding. And like there’s so many differences between people. And it’s giving them a resonance that allows them to cooperate through mimicry in a way they could not cooperate. Yes. Right. The mimicry signals work over long distances, right? You witness what someone’s doing from far off and do the same thing, right? Yeah. And in that way, that’s a communication technology lever, right, technology is a lever. The ability to see people at a distance and do what they do, at least two things, it might be three or four or five, right, is important, right, because it enables a scale of warfare that otherwise is not possible because everyone’s just kind of going off doing their own thing. That’s where people get enchanted by the idea of neoplatonism, the one and the many. And you can go from the one to the many and the many begs that it’s like, whatever. Yes, you can do that, that’s obvious. Now, move on to something interesting and important, please. This is something that two-year-olds learn in their crimps, like really, at some point, you know? Yeah, yeah. And Apollo is significant because he also has a relation to the sun, his relationship as well to archery. So it’s kind of, there is an order that is shown in Apollo, whereas if you look at Ares, he’s kind of, it’s war and courage. It’s kind of, if you want, Ares happens after the clash happens, you know, after the music needs to be brought involved. Ares is, if you want to put it that way, dealing with, you know, when you see 12 men approach you while all the rest of your friends have run away, you know, do you stand and fight or what do you do? What’s the proper sort of response in that case? Mentioned. So I’ve been dealing with these categories. So there’s like five now I’m distinguishing. So there’s the gods, there’s poetry, there’s music. And then there’s these professions and then there’s sport. Right? I think it’s really interesting that this music part is relating to ammunition. And I think you can map them to a whole bunch of things, but the ammunition bit is a prerequisite. Like if you want to rule, like you have to, like how do you transcend? Well, you need to transcend into something. So you need to develop the capacity or the discernment for the ammunition. And then they’re saying that you can do that through music. And this connected to me to language of creation where the musical instruments are also set as bringers of change or chaos or whatever. Right? Like, and what is that? It’s the letting go of the structure in order for that it can reshape itself into something higher effective. And I think, but like if we go back to the blowing instruments or the snare instruments, like I think they actually use the blowing instrument where there’s a human war. War, right? Like the horn is used in war. So it’s like, now we have to gather around this specific human thing while it’s used in relationship to changing King David’s mind or not Solomon or whatever. Anyway, like King David played the lyre and that was in trying to appeal to the soul of the person instead. So yeah, that’s really interesting. Well, that’s a great insight about emanation being, talked about explicitly here in relation to music. Those are really good exemplification. So yeah, that point about the wind instruments versus the string instruments is also, Ethan noticed it, right? That’s a walker too, Manuel. Those are really good finds. I didn’t even pay attention to that aspect myself. This is why distributed cognition is important, right? We’re all able to see so much more and that’s what I’m grateful for really. And thank you, Manuel, for running it and Danny for setting it all up and making it all go because yeah, I mean, none of us are gonna get where we’re gonna get in the book club if we’re on our own. So it’s lovely. Yeah, if we can do like a matter trick, right? How did I discern that, right? Like how can I get to that insight? Because there’s a sense that there’s something there and then there’s something missing and then in a certain way, and there’s only maybe one way that fits or a limited set of ways that fit. And yeah, that is a really interesting process. And like maybe we can actually find some structure in that process, but. Okay. Are we all good with our thoughts about music? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Something interesting about the health, brings up a carpenter, how a carpenter will go to the doctor for a mild ailment. But if it’s something major, he’s not gonna compromise his role as a carpenter. And if it kills, this was crazy. Most people would be like, what? When they hear this, it’s like, well, the carpenter would assume die, carpentering rather than go to the doctor and treat a severe illness. Because he’s completely submitted to his role and his role is bigger than him and him submitting to something else would be a compromise of his own justice. Well, but to be fair, like that’s couched in this whole discussion about the difference between somebody who’s not working and with their hands or not doing physical labor and someone who is. And how they approach going, not that he won’t go to the doctor, it’s like he’s gonna go to the doctor and if it doesn’t work, he’s not going to into this bedridden state like the wealthy person would. And that’s what he’s talking about, right? And then that might, for a person, born in recent times will say, right? That might be like, oh my goodness, what are you talking about? That’s so unjust that they wouldn’t be treated the same. But it’s like, they’re not the same. Why would you treat them? It’s actually the opposite is true. They’re not the same. Why would you treat them the same? They don’t wanna be treated the same. One wants to, how would you say it? And we’ll say today’s speak, one wants to maintain the identity of the worker above the identity of some individual or independent agent that’s able to just waste away, right? Because that’s not their role. That’s not what they do, right? They’re a carpenter. And when they stop being a carpenter, if they can’t assume another role, then what are they? Whereas the man of leisure will say, or the wealthy person or the person who’s not working with their hands, they have the complete opposite attitude about it. And again, they’re different individuals, right? They’re different persons embedded in society differently. And yeah, is that even a question of justice? I mean, it wasn’t clear to me that that, again, to the earlier point, in connection directly with justice, because we’re still kind of building up the framework. And simplification of a difference and any difference is subject to justice. That’s why it scales, right? It’s like, oh no, no, no, this exists for a valid reason. There’s a rationale behind why the carpenter would sooner die than say, go into a full-time situation with the doctor where they’re trying a number of things, right? And also, to be fair to the text, in that he recovers. It just goes away. He keeps working and that’s what fixes him. And modern medicine is just rediscovering this now. Oh, good job. Can I interest you in a book that already told you that? Hello? It’s almost like the carpenter is terrified. So he’s identified in his carpentry, right? And he’s terrified of identifying in the illness. And that’s a compromise of his role. Well, and you can think of, and this is great, Ethan. So you can think of identity rather in sort of the recent understanding as embodying the spirit of. Exactly, yes. That resolves a bunch of things. Like now we can just do away with the more recent concepts around identity and understanding within the context of Jorl’s mythology, which I think is inescapable. And then come up with ways of relating to, well, what are people on about when they’re talking about identity crisis or not feeling correct or wanting to be named in such a way, right? As a resolution to identity. Now we can talk about those things in an easier to understand, more simplified manner that matches, we’ll say human behavior and has for thousands of years. And yeah, I think that’s super, really super important. So yeah, thank you for that insight. Another wonderful insight. Yeah, there’s a, he definitely invokes the notion of hypochondria here, which is interesting. Cause you know, in a materialistic world, we don’t believe in spirits and identifying in spirits, even though that’s the world. And, you know, as a consequence, you know, hypochondria is a real spirit that keeps fueling development of, for better and for worse. Fueling the development of that technology. Do you see that a lot more in the West as opposed to the East? Like the East is, you know, a lot less technologically developed than the West is, but the West is possessed by different, the East is possessed by a different spirit than the West is. And well, I mean, I don’t want to get into that, but the West, the Western spirits are pulling these things into being. It’s like, you may, well, we have better medicine, but we spend a lot more of our time focused on ailments and things that we spend our time on or identifying in. So a couple of things, right? So what was he talking about? He was talking about these cities, right? And then there’s a city that has luxury, right? And then the luxury city has to have people manage the management effectively or something, right? And those people, they’re in some sense disconnect, right? And those are the people who have a different relationship to identity because I think they’re, you could say that they have a second order relationship to reality, right? They relate to, through the other people, to the reality. If I’m, I don’t know, like a merchant or whatever, right? And like, I need to deal with all of these, provide all these people with their goods, right? Like I’m a second order, like I’m getting second order signals from nature through them because I’m not keeping track of these things myself. And I think that changes the type of identity that you have. And I think when you get sick, what do you fall into? And I think that’s literally the problem that religion solves, right? Like religion is the thing that second order position but still be grounded in something else that is bigger and that you don’t get this confusion about identity. And I think if we’re looking about like, what are these things that are happening, right? Well, people are discerning through comfort, right? Like what is the spirit that I can participate in? And so they’re using a comfort metric. And then when they found it in whatever way, because I’m never sure how people make that decision. Like, this is the place that I’m supposed to land. It just seemed arbitrary to me, but whatever. When they land somewhere, now they need everybody to play along, right? Because that’s the spirit that they’re comfortable in. Like when you take them out of it, then you’re transgressing in their comfort. Hmm. Comfort is definitely a spirit that’s commonly possessed to our own detriment, which it comes from the individualism because what else, like how else can you, it’s the only thing that you can measure the world by is your own comfort, your own perception. So that’s a huge telos in the, if you want to use that word or anti-telos in the West as comfort. Yeah, I would actually use the word nature there, right? So there’s, we do things, right? For whatever reason. And then we build something against entropy, right? And then when you let go, right? Like there’s a self ordering that happens, right? Like from the tension, right? And there’s a natural way in which that happens, right? And I think that’s the thing that people keep clinging onto, right? Like I wanna be in that natural expression because else I’m gonna be the one pulling things up, right? So then I need to have judgment around that. And it’s not comfort, right? Like that’s actually a system in some sense, right? Like you just have to keep attending to things and then roll that ball up the hill. And then it’s effectively in vain because you’re not gonna get the result that you’re aiming for, you’re gonna get something else. Yeah. I like what you said about what like the idea of what is your judgment around any idea of the anti-telos. I’ve never thought about that, but I guess there’s two things that came to mind. One is that there’s like a telos of opposition. And then, but then there’s also maybe anti-telos could be like a diffusion or a scattering, right? I mean, they mentioned you can only do one thing. I mean, probably the scattering and the idleness or the chaos is maybe a little bit less clear. Like opposition maybe can be like anti-fragility, right? Maybe it can benefit you. But I don’t know, I just thought, I think it’s an interesting thing to think about. It’s an interesting tool to use for orientation is what’s the relationship to and what is your judgment I don’t know, like it’s not exactly axiomatic. Like it’s not exactly like, oh, I’m starting with this axiom and so I can proceed there. It’s something different than that, right? It’s more procedural or something like that. No, it’s emergence. Emergence, yeah. It’s literally emergence, right? Because like if you have feelings, you don’t have a specific feeling all the time, right? And then if you have a feeling and you’re in a situation, the way that the feeling is gonna express is differently. So the things that you want, the things that feel natural to you, they’re gonna change. And if you just keep following that, like you’ll get somewhere. And then sometimes you can be a hypocrite, right? I’ll say, well, now I need to get myself together. Like I’m gonna do a bootcamp for a week, right? And then you can just erect some order in your life and you can like sail on that order for a while. And I think that’s literally what people are doing. You can what on that order for a while? Sail on the water? Oh yeah. Sail on it, right? It’s like, oh, I’m- Oh sail, okay. Yeah, I’m too broken right now. I can’t manifest right patterns. Like I’m gonna like do some patching somewhere, which is also in accordance with modern healthcare, if we just make patches. And then when it’s patched, it’s like, okay, I can go for two more months. And then after two more months, you run into a problem again. And I think that if you connect that to affluence, right? Like I think you can sail a lot longer without getting into trouble. If you look at some people in jobs and they’re like, this person shouldn’t be allowed to be here, right? But they’re there for four years already. They’re not fired. So they just take home that paycheck. It may be that they were useful in the past, right? Or maybe that they’re useful in a way that you don’t understand. And this is part of the problem with casting things out of the world. Again, we weren’t there. So it’s hard to know what came before. I mean, that’s the case for unions. Like, oh no, no, no, they did something fantastic for you. So you have to take care of them forever. Yeah, affluence and luxury, like we’re talking definitely, it definitely changes things. And yeah, opens much more potential for vice. Slip in complacency, idleness and licentiousness, all of these things. Yeah, I mean, that’s what I think is syphilis. I think the old man says in the beginning, like, oh, you know what? Well, better that I’m rich so that I don’t have to commit these sins, right? You know, he kind of opened up with that idea, right? Wait, what did he say? He said better that I’m rich so that I don’t? Yeah, like, oh, a good thing I’m not like a poor peasant because then I may have to cross my mind to go rob the gas station, right? Or, you know, whatever. Like, so he was talking about the advantages of wealth. One of the advantages of wealth is I can use it to avoid temptation. I can orient my life in such a way that I can stay away from some of this stuff. Right. Yeah, but it’s ironic because you’re just gonna open the door to idleness, you know, with your affluence. Well, yeah, but again, yeah, that whole point was I can buy my way out of sin. Does that sound like a familiar pattern? Yeah, yeah. We’re, see, we’re starting the Republic. We’re trying to get rid of the, he’s fixed on the appearances of vice, right? He’s like, oh, well, I can, with my having mode things, I can get rid of the appearance of these sins. And that’s what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to remove the appearance so that we can get to the core of it, you know, the spirit, the vice or the virtue so we can get a clear view of it, which I mean, it’s not that simple, but. Right, but no, right. Now that is the Socratic method is to strip things down to their bare essences, right? And that’s, and then what is a Plato answers that in forms? That’s what the forms are for, to fill in. What is Socrates’ title? What Socrates doing, right? In the same way I argued that John Brevecky fills in the what is Jordan Peterson doing and how is he doing it, right? It’s the same sort of thing. It’s the same sort of role, like, oh, there’s a bunch of tools and framework for understanding and, you know, let’s write the Republic. That’ll be a framework for understanding Socrates’ beautiful method of stripping away that which is mere appearance, right? To get to what he would cast as the form or the essence or the eidos of the thing. In this case, the thing is justice. Yeah, but to be clear, we bring back the appearance at the end. Socrates, as an example, we’re kind of inquiring into the spirit of Socrates, what made him virtuous, you know? But what made us look at him in the first place was the appearance, you know, like, oh, this man was exiled but then came back and decided to, you know, willfully drink the hemlock, you know? That’s what, you know, the appearance is what drew us in in the first place, but we know that the appearance isn’t the essence of the thing. So we try to strip it away, but we can’t completely, we can’t throw it out, you know, because then we end up with Batman or Superman. It has to come back. Exactly. Is that something like beauty leading you to truth and goodness? It’s a thought that popped in my head. I don’t think beauty leads you to truth and goodness. Beauty can lead you all kinds of places. And that’s the issue. Like this beauty first thing is not, definitely doesn’t work. I don’t know why people entertain it. Beauty subordinated to truth and goodness. No, I think it’s three or nothing. I don’t think you can, there’s no hierarchy there. Like I think that is, forms is the realm of no hierarchy, effectively, right? Because it’s the top of all possible hierarchies by definition or something. And so you run into the problem of, because beauty is not, not only is beauty not mere appearance, but beauty happens without appearance. And yet we don’t operate without appearance. Like this is the statement of Plato’s forms, right? This is why forms are mania, are remembering, right? Because we have to go back to our past, our perception, discernment, judgment of the perfect, of the ideal in order to move the world. And so that’s really just a statement of what Aristotle comes along and claims is final cause. Being introduced to the forms before your manifest of the world or however you want to frame it, born or whatever, is the statement that final cause or first, and then you were set back in materiality and now you’re moving towards the forms. And just something that was said yesterday, which I found helpful, I think Father Eric remark, final cause is first on the order of intention and last on the order of execution. Hearing that really helps. That’s Father Eric. Okay, I like that idea a lot. Yeah, oh no, he’s, yeah, when Father Eric is on, he’s on. It’s on, yeah. But I think again, the problem, and well, maybe it’s not a problem, the issue that we have is appearance. And this is all throughout philosophy, right? Well, we don’t have access to the real world, right? And they’re not referring to the real world. They’re not referring to the material world. They’re actually referring to forms in all cases. They may not realize that, but that’s actually what they’re referring to. It’s like, yeah, we don’t have access to that. Or we don’t have direct access to it. That is definitely the case. Now what? And there’s a lot of philosophical treaties on that. And it’s odd because it comes up again and again and again and again and again, and nobody sees them talking about exactly the same issue or the same pattern. And I find that amusing because to me it’s like, well, this is the same thing. I don’t know why you’re using different words and frameworks, but literally talking about exactly the same thing. Yeah. Well, they’re just trying to de-incarnate the human being. Like we’re incarnated beings. We live in this. They’re trying to. They’re not so much trying to incarnate as they’re trying to remove the constraint of materiality as such from materiality. How is that different? Obviously makes no sense, right? And when you remove the ground you’re standing on, you’re in free fall chaos. And look, I mean, you can say, oh, Mark, that’s ridiculous. Look around. Actually, we’re doing it now. Seems like the same thing to me. The world we’re living in is like this. I think a way to understand it better is people are trying to make something out of a descriptive framework, right? And then they make a model, right? So they’re observing something in the world. They make a model. And then what do they end up with? Well, they end up with something that is an amination that is causal in the framework. So then they need to step outside of it in order to engage with, well, what is bringing in the structure? That’s always gonna happen. Whatever you’re gonna try and sort, whether it’s language, whether it’s psychological stuff, whether it’s culture, you’re always gonna end up at this point and you say, oh, I don’t know, right? And then you have these crazy postmodernists, they go the other way. They’re like, well, we can just pick it, right? Like we just can choose. Yeah. I do have to say I’m with Casey on beauty. Sorry, Mark. It’s- When it’s brought up, because I’m pretty sure he’s gonna bring it up in the Republic more deeply, right? Okay. I mean, the thing is, beauty separated from Telos. I would argue that it’s not beauty anymore. It’s a deception. It’s a deception. It’s a facade of beauty. It’s no longer truly beauty. Yeah, but I had this argument with Mark yesterday, right? And you can do two things. My disagreement with Mark is that Mark is trying to build a second order objective material reality or whatever. And I’m trying to build, okay, what does it mean to me? Like, I don’t give a shit about what’s out there. Like, I’m just like, what do I have to do? And how does it influence me? Because like, I’m gonna have to take an action and I need to know where to ground my action. So I think we’re in the same debate, like materialism versus spirituality, only we’re one layer up. So now I don’t know what that means and whether that’s a fractal thing, but that’s my observation. But I wanna point out, Ethan, what you said was, goodness removed from truth. I mean, beauty removed from truth is not beauty. Right, that means you can’t use beauty to get to truth or goodness because there’s no beauty. Fair enough, but it’s not true. No, but also proves my point. Yeah, you need three or nothing. In some sense, it’s unfair to talk about beauty by itself. In the same way, it’s unfair to talk about goodness by itself. Or I wouldn’t say truth, I think that’s an error, the truth, right, because it’s an action and it’s not an object. And so using truth gets to be an issue language-wise. Yeah, well, I mean, I mean, another good example is Genesis 3, right? I mean, you have, there’s a separation there, right? And there’s a seduction, right? It’s separating beauty from its higher purpose and that pulls Adam into sinning. And then it’s reversed, of course, however, much later. And then, of course, we have this whole thing, which is playing on the same, riffing on the same thing. You know, you have beauty pulling Dante through the whole thing that’s connected to something higher, you know. But that’s very important. It has to be, it can’t be separated from these other things, whether you’re saying it’s, you know, co-equal with truth and goodness. I’m just saying something higher. I don’t know how to qualify that, but. I don’t, yeah, again, beauty can drag you lots of places, right? And that’s the problem. But do we want to land the plane and pick up with, I think we’re complete on three anyway, so. What’s our, are we going to dive into four next week to see how far we get or? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, but you seem to be talking about the first half, you know. Although I liked kind of how we went over the whole chapter sort of twice. I thought that was, we kind of, you know, but yeah, we should probably like kind of plan to maybe neck away to the first half. But we always, we always, we always end up doing that. And actually I rather prefer reading the whole thing doing as far as we get, because we usually bounce around anyway, because you can’t not in some sense. And then, you know, we just kind of end up ended up on this, on this emergent pattern. I’m not against emergence, but, you know, it’s got, it’s got to be in a container. We had a nice container of patterns emerged. I think that’s going to be the, you know, the continuing pattern of how we’re engaging. And I’m thrilled with it. I couldn’t be happier. And I wouldn’t have expected this to go the way it’s gone and as well as it’s gone at the same time. Yeah, that’s also interesting that you engage with the same thing, but you’re not engaging with the same thing at all. It’s completely different than last time. Wow. And I think, right, like, I’m going to use the word matter again, right? Like, looking at that, right? Like, oh, we’re doing this thing and I have this relationship and the one time this pops out and the other time this other thing pops out. And it’s like, why did I pop out this thing this time and why did I pop out this other thing the other time? And I think that’s how you get into the sermons of the spirits that move you. Like, okay, there’s something that wants to be articulated. And now I have a framework in which that articulation can actually happen in a controlled way. Did anybody want to, like, say some closing things? I’ll just reiterate the point about the robots. I think it’s funny that, you know, effectively Plato’s talking about robots. Way back here, right, this is not a new thing. It’s a new thing. It’s a new thing. It’s a new thing. And, you know, effectively Plato’s talking about robots. Way back here, right, this is not a new theme for humankind. Like, how can we control people and make them do exactly what we want, only what we want, and, you know, manipulate the material such that they only interface in this certain way because they’ve only been exposed to these certain things. And ironically, at the same time, talking about daemons and what we would now call spirits that move people and things like that, you know, and again, it is an idealistic sort of casting, but it’s important to know that these themes, is AI going to take over and go rogue? Plato’s talking about them too. Like, this is the whole theme. Pride at the end of the world. Not that I agree that we should continue AI research in particular or anything. I’m just saying, like, probably going to be okay because it’s happened before and, you know. With the AI thing, people are terrified because they’re like, oh, there’s this alien entity that we can’t control that’s going to control us. It’s like, that’s been like, we’ve been fighting with this for, you know, a foreign spirit is going to come in and possess everybody. It’s like, okay, yeah. Right. Join the club. You know, I’m glad that you’re here. Lizard people. Last night it was lizard people. The night before it was AI. It will be tomorrow. Yeah. Beauty. So, yeah, in the check out, I want you to reflect on things that were salient to you, having emotional reactions, right? Then try to connect that to your next week. Maybe try to formulate an intention in which you want to frame your engagement for next week.