Plato's The Republic, Book 8 Discussion, part 1⧸3 (NQBs_NwV9TA)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=NQBs_NwV9TA

Basically, book seven was describing the prerequisites and the trajectory to get to this perfect state and moving to book eight, that state will be held into comparison with all the inferior states. Maybe it’s nice to hold this in context of that we’re doing this to figure out whether a righteous individual is the one pursuing his own goals or whether the righteous individual is the one that’s basically self-sacrificial so that it can hold up a higher structure and thereby be ridiculed. That is the implication. So it’s a sacrifice of time, energy and attention but also of honor, money, all that stuff. Did I see the pattern of what they were talking about last week? Not really. I have been expanding my vision because, well, like we’re going to see in book eight, there’s a sequential nature to cycles. I think I’ve been getting more aware of the sequential nature in cycles and in some sense how they affect you and I guess you’ve got to know it first to see how you participate in them. But that’s definitely something fruitful that I’m exploring myself. So the one that I was thinking about was going through hope, faith into love and what the different factors are that influence that process and how you need to attend to them so that you can, well, evolve. It’s orienting you towards something and how you have the proper orientation and how do you conform to that orientation. So that’s kind of where my mind is. Yeah, so last time I was looking for other ways to explain the dialectic. This time I want to find out what is going on. Why did he choose to write this down? Fair enough, but there’s some point being made that I’m not seeing yet. So I would like that to appear. I’ll pass it over to Danny whose previous intentions were to practice dialectic, practice looking at how other people understand dialectic and practice listening. So I guess a theme, I mean when I was reading the text, that I was just meditating on why am I pursuing what I’m pursuing because themes in this, number one is that perfection is fleeting or life is fleeting and there’s cyclical nature to, there’s times and seasons for pursuing different things and that’s kind of what I was meditating on as I was reading this text. So I mean I’ve been thinking about that a lot right now. Motivation is change over time. Right now I have a ton of demands and a lot of obligations on my time and many of which I would rather not have to be doing. So just being able to reconcile and do the things that I have to do the best that I can just at a high level is just trying to see, number one I don’t quite get what Plato is trying to say again like why did he write this down, but that’s what I’m searching for is I’m searching for insight. I’m seeing lots of relationships to where I am in time and space and know and how with respect to external circumstances. So just trying to guard my time energy attention and make sure that it’s being allocated as best as I can. Mark? Yeah so I didn’t quite finish the chapter which is unfortunate or the book. I thought I was going to but I got up late but I like that we’re back to a much simpler conception right. There’s no obvious statement of an analogy or metaphor in here. We’re back to very plain speak and the absurdity, the pattern of absurdity in the text is clear. It’s so glaringly clear. And that dichotomy that’s set up in the beginning between the mathematical way or we would probably call it a scientific way of dealing with it, with a problem in this case that you know the problem of creating is a just city or getting at the problem of justice. And a you know we would call it a religious way right with the muses is is set up quite nicely right. It’s crystal clear there’s no interpretation necessary. There’s nothing in this book to interpret all very plain. You can disagree with a bunch of it right. And again a lot of it’s absurd but I thought that was very interesting. So I’m interested to see what other people found in here because man you could breeze right past some sort of whopping statements and you could also get caught up on some whimsy because there’s quite a bit of whimsy in this at least in the first half of book eight here. Over to Ethan I guess. Yes. Or not if he doesn’t want to talk to us anymore. Sorry guys. We’ve got some company over today so my participation will be not as much as it usually is. You have company all the time dude. I have a little guy. I have that too yes. Okay well let’s get this going. Mark what was your intention? I mean for this chapter for this particular book I mean I just wanted to see what everybody was seeing in it. Explore. Okay so did you want to go over some stuff in book seven still Mark because I think we kind of finished it. Well we sort of read through the last portion of it. Yeah I mean I think it’s worth just sort of recapping where seven leaves off right because you know it does set up at the end. I mean I know again we read it but we really didn’t you know we just read it. Like we didn’t really talk about it. Which is fair enough we’re sort of running low on time for that one. But it does talk about and this is gonna I didn’t know this obviously but this is gonna become relevant in this one. It does talk primarily about childrearing. Those last few pages that we read are all about you know the child and what they’re gonna be disposed to do. Whether or not things are fair right. And it’s all about you know an outlaw from having been a law-abiding man right. So it’s interesting that that they sort of set that up right. And then say look you know city regime prayers right. You know older than 10 right. Like I mean this is all about childrearing and the relationship to childrearing in that city. Which is interesting because the first part of seven is not about that. But then he picks that up in eight not right away. So I thought that was worth pointing out. Because there is a continuation of that theme. And then he says that’s the first part of seven. But it’s not immediate. It’s later on in the you know in the in the book. Well actually it’s not only childrearing right. It’s the whole cycle of the individual right. And after you’re 50 then you’re supposed to rule right. And like he also goes in into the cycles of the individuals right. Like oh so you had this childhood trauma. And therefore you attend or worship. That’s the word that they’re using in my book. You worship these things. And because you’re worshiping these things you become this person. And he goes to the trajectory right. But what’s the distinction between the perfect city. Because he doesn’t go into the perfect city right. So in some sense you can say at least the end of book seven is is the beginning of book eight. And what’s the distinction in the perfect city you have the two architects that guide the process right. And in all the other cities you just have the process happen within its natural condition right. And then corruption seeps in as a consequence of of not having everything perfect. Right. Well and it’s worth it’s worth pointing out right here in the beginning right. If you were presenting your arguments this is 543 c. You’re presenting your arguments pretty much as you are doing now as though you had completed your description of what concerns the city saying you would class a city such as you then described and the man like it as good. And you did this as it seems in spite of the fact that you had a still finer city and man to tell of. And so I just want to point that out because they’re not describing one city right. They are on a quest to describe an ever more just city as a way of getting it just. This is the description of the city is a means to get it justice because the thesis in the beginning of the text is you cannot cannot arrive at justice by talking about individuals either single individuals or individuals in relationship to one another. That is insufficient. It somehow lacks it somehow lacks a depth. You want to go there that a city has where as we established in book seven like it or not there are different classes of people who have different limitations on what they can see and do. I think that’s what book seven is about the fact that there are classes of people and that they are limited and that the higher classes need to be forced to help the lower classes. They’re not better by result of going towards the good. They’re better by the result of being forced down away from the good and then allowed to go back up. That’s what makes them better. It’s that cycle. And so that that and that established thing of that cycle too is going to be super relevant here in book eight. But it’s explicit here that we’ve been building cities up having a better conception in mind all along or at least that’s the claim here. Right. And then going with the better conception. And so this isn’t a story of how to build one perfect city. That is not what is going on here. Yeah. I think there’s a couple things that popped up for me. One is like the justice of what is just is unfolding. Right. Like it’s a manifest as a consequence of the manifestation of the city. And the second thing. Oh man. Like I is I think what is just might actually also be contingent upon the city that you’re in because of what is available to you. Right. Like what are you capable of reaching for. Right. Because he’s literally saying right. Like if you’re not in this situation then you’re effectively constrained from participating in the being of the good. Right. So like what is just if you cannot participate in the being of the good. Well it’s got to be something else than participating in the being of the good or it’s just totally inaccessible to you. Right. And again that’s established in book seven. That’s contrary to what everyone’s told you. That’s what the quote parable of the cave is. It is the statement that you are a limited creature and you’re limited by your birth by what you were born into. And they don’t just mean the part of the city or the parents that you have. They mean your your limitations as a being. Right. That’s what the cave is about. Physical material limitations not just the material limitations but primarily your material limitations as a being. And you’re right. That theme is extended here. Right. And in some sense right they are taking everything else right which is not necessarily a constraint upon you. Right. And that’s what they’re perfect. Right. So this is I guess the nature versus nurture. Right. And the thing like OK like this aspect of nature and then there’s an aspect of nurture and you need to combine them in such a way that well just as emerges I guess. So yeah so to get to this just state and we’re talking about the humor and things and well we can say maybe the first part is also a joke. It’s like OK we have the complete removal individuality. Right. We create a complete dependence upon the state. We inspect the defects or in perfect forms. Right. So in some sense it’s like OK we’re going to we’re going to remove all variability and then we’re going to sieve everything so that we can place it at the right place. Like that’s the way that their road to perfection starts which is the most tyrannical thing you can do ever. Which is kind of reminding me of how communism started. Like you’re just going to do the things like implement the system and then we’re going to work out the kinks. Then they. Well we want to talk about the four regimes that turn into. Well the five or are there four. Well no he says I want to hear what four regimes you meant. Four other regimes right. Well I didn’t say yeah but yeah five ultimately. Yeah well they said I think if I remember correctly they’ll say that the ideal city doesn’t it may exist at one. It’s possible for it to exist at a certain point in time in the universe but it’s not likely for us to see it. The aristocracy is the resurrection of what they talked about in book four and five. So they say remember what we talked about in book four and five. We’re going to start there. We already talked about that and then they move on say let’s talk about the four others. Oh it’s not the perfect city the aristocracy. No it is. I mean I think that’s how I read it. Well you have the one with the philosopher king and then these four cities in book eight. One’s a timeocracy. The second one is an oligarchy. The third one is a democracy and the fourth one is a tyranny. And he compares the timeocracy to Sparta and says that it’s probably the best instantiation of a of a polis that we’ve seen. And Crete. He also compares it to. Oh does he? Okay. Well it’s Crete and Laconian regimes. So I looked it up right so crassi is I think force or something or power and the tym means honor. So basically what it is is an honor culture. Honor culture yeah right yeah democracy and culture. Yeah it’s interesting because the their ideals or the things that they’re orientated to fall with each degree of city honor is something instead of the good it’s honor and then after honor it’s it ultimately ends in individualism which is where democracy individualism peaks at democracy and then ends with tyranny because it’s just the will to power at that point. So yeah it it is interesting because well let’s just go there I guess I don’t know if to precede the book. Let’s say corruption is universal. Governments vary with the disposition of man. They mirror each other. Humans are the agent and then there’s five constant um humans are the agents and then there’s five constitutions that are mirroring the five states which as far as I got into the book I don’t I don’t know if I really got names for these constitutions yet like they’re not too clear to me. So we have described aristocracy, crussey, we’ll do a comparison and so they start with the description of the state and then they do the description of the individual right so in some sense they’re they’re going back to the layers of the onion right like first we started with the individual down the state and now they’re going from the state to the individual right it’s descending back into the argument and and maybe maybe that’s why this is here right like maybe that’s just the justification for the whole book that like they they need to dress the individual in the city and and that’s the way that you’re going to make the argument for justice. Yeah you have to tie it back pragmatically you just can’t start there and leave it there which is the argument in the beginning and also it’s worth noting that pattern which is in the book in multiple areas right it’s a fractal it’s a self-similar fractal pattern in the book that pattern of ascension and descension right which is oh neoplatonism now it’s just play dough it’s not you know play it’s a play dough that that pattern is probably part of the confusion around play-doh’s cave that doesn’t happen in play-doh’s cave but it does happen in the books in the text right in other and i would argue that is that is dialectic like that’s literally the dialectic you’re saying the dialectic is moving up and down the issue yes i’m okay with that i think the whole book is the dialectic about justice yeah and i would call it a circumambulation rather than use the term yeah no but the circumambulation doesn’t have to go up right like that’s the problem um right because diagreem is true right like the diagreem is true you don’t have a good way to to think about it and i mean what’s right because when you read what dialectic means it’s one thing but then when you look at say a diagram of dialectic it’s always like a couple of things it’s always a state change between a and b or multiple state changes between a and b uh which is wrong there’s a few exceptions and i think that’s the problem with the modern conception is people put dialectic in opposition and call it opponent processing or some other stupid thing that doesn’t exist and then they proceed from there and that is an error that’s not what’s in this text at all like that’s just you’re mistaken so we’re simplifying something the art of conversing or relating to the art of reasoning about probabilities like that’s the oldest one that i can find yeah the art of investigating or discussing the truth of opinion which which is kind of what socrates is doing right because at a certain point he says well yeah like i don’t i don’t know if i’m relating to the form anymore like all you got is my opinion at this point right the definition number two is inquiry into the metaphysical no such thing contradictions no such thing and their solution see so everybody strays into this binary mode for dialectic not a binary not supposed to be a binary clearly not a binary stop with the freaking binary that isn’t what’s going on right and yeah right what what they’re doing is they’re doing undressing while playdo is dressing yes well they’re they’re oversimplifying something so that yeah i i don’t yeah i don’t understand why we have this you know and it’s very sharp either people have a reasonable full opening definition of dialectic or they’re stuck in this hegelian binary that’s obviously incorrect and refuted by literally every single thing playdo wrote i don’t i don’t know what to say about that other than duh let’s stop doing that is it is it just like i’m trying to do it then duh let’s stop doing that is it is it just um materialistic framing is that the problem because they can’t see the higher the vertical causality i’m i don’t know ethan i mean this was what we went over in the live stream last night to some extent right what causes the flattening and i and i think i don’t i don’t think it matters to some extent it could be that it could be it it could also just be people want to understand dialectic and they’re dumb and they can’t and so they cast it as a binary i mean that’s what hegel did clearly clearly that’s what hegel did doesn’t playdo say that you have to wait till you’re like 35 yes so right like this is just dialectic presented to kids like okay like that’s right that’s all it is it’s like oh you’re doing something that you’re not ready for good luck i don’t i i think it leads to materialism right because if you think you you are capable of dialectic while you’re obviously not doing it then you you end up in a flat world yeah well like i said the causality is really hard to determine is it you’re squishing the world because you’re trying to understand the whole thing like a moron because you can’t or is it something you know is it the the explanation that you’re being given right or is it your attempt to understand playdo and then you misapprehend everything he’s saying and you know and this idea of age being a requirement for enough wisdom to rule is set right down in the united states government right you have to be so old to be president well it’s even worse right it’s not only a constraint of age right it’s constraint of age under a set education for specific majors like this is way more constraints than than the exactly exactly right and there’s a richness there that we lose when we cast things when we flatten the world or cast them into binaries and and this is very much exemplifying that like this is very very what’s either this or this right oh yeah absolutely that’s like come on it’s so silly it’s awesome i it’s completely hysterical but they are exemplifying that fact here so i just i find it ironic that the very thing they’re poking fun of with the structure of the book throughout every part of the text is also the mistake everybody’s falling into and not realizing right and i actually is delicious i actually think that if you take book eight and you look at all the phases right and and because i think he’s also mentioning the constraints of relating to virtue right or cultivating virtue right so every stage gets further away from virtue because it’s basically not worshiped anymore and if you don’t have the cultivation of virtue and you still participate in in the dialectic right like then you get sophistry right and and i mean if if we’re talking about play dough making fun of people right or socrates or both the part of part of the book is basically saying well these people are trying to do dialectic without having a wholesome vision of of what what they’re doing dialect again and then they they end up progressing right like they can’t they can’t ascend right they can’t go up in into what was the realm of intelligibility or whatever they have to go down to the realm of shadows right like that’s basically what they have to do and i also think that there’s some references there so so maybe maybe that’s a good way of understanding right and and and in that sense it’s a warning and maybe a way to classify the person that you’re dealing with because like uh what kind of appeals can you make to a person right like if if they’re stuck in in this value system they’re they’re gonna have um certain affordances for uh attending to aspects of the world and and other things are closed off just as a virtue of their worship right so if you if you want to upgrade them right you have to give them one step right like this was the thing with glaucom right like black one was always the the guy was lowest right and they have to lift them up like one step and then at a certain point it’s like dude you can’t go here anymore like this is is it beyond you like this is forbidden knowledge poor glaucom yeah no he’s he’s not a poor guy he can beat them all with a with a sword fight like anyway um it’s it reminds me of like um reminds me of like a bunch of little girls playing house you know when they’re kids only a bunch of little boys playing philosophy like sandbox philosophy or something yeah well it’s it’s it’s basically building a house right just building a really complicated house yeah and i think and and there are some good people talking about philosophy and to that end i’ll just mention uh lantern jack uh my buddy lantern jack had another chat with john vervecki they just released it on youtube like an hour ago oh really wow yeah why stoicism and platonism ah all right are capturing the hearts of millennials and well they’re gonna run into a lot of trouble there uh they get how do you get away with not putting the neo there before the plate channel and and he’s no oh jack and i get along for a reason and we have a lot of agreement about misinterpretation of philosophy and they will say he totally grooves me about the value of so-called modern philosophy it’s all garbage they’re all sophists and he’s not yeah with any of them and he doesn’t want to be associated with them even though he has a phd in philosophy yeah i remember that in one of his podcasts he like did a survey and he asked everybody at all these universities like have we have we learned anything new since the republic and everyone’s like no no it’s like what are you doing what who’s paying you well he also asked them you know what do you get the heads some quite famous people uh you know are are you what do you what do you think about truth and they’re like now we don’t believe in there’s a there’s a truth out there and he’s like yeah because it’s in their occupational interest for there not to be a truth wow that sounds dangerous right well but but also he said you do understand that everybody who’s not in a philosophy department of the university thinks that’s what you’re doing right and they’re like oh yeah yeah and it’s like wait what it’s like we’re paying them to search for truth and they’re not doing it yeah it seems seems kind of smells like a little bit of evil to me honestly well it is like it is like but yeah maybe we can classify them while we’re going through these new stages but like well that pattern is here like they’re probably fit in the democracy or in the in the tyranny like somewhere in there yeah well they fit in the democracy that leads to the tyranny yeah i would i would argue that it has to be that class that is causing these problems and when we have we’ll say more of a republic in the united states anyway things were much better now we’ve moved more towards a democracy things are much worse yeah i mean not to drift at all but it seems it seems like with with the constituents being able to like with the we’re able to like see a lot more of what our elective representatives are doing and so we’re allowed to make more judgments on them which are inappropriate like judgments that shouldn’t be made no no well yeah i don’t i don’t think that’s a good thing yeah i don’t i don’t think we can like yeah but no no but we are right and that’s a problem but then the problem that they bring up here about democracy is basically that all democracy leads to hedonism it’s basically what it says necessarily that’s why being a democratic republic is really important and being a democracy is really bad and we know this like this is the fun it’s been tried it failed we know why it failed it’s been tried many times it’s failed many times failed for the same reasons every time maybe that’s because it can’t ever work like i don’t know like at what point do you say hey maybe i’m wrong and democracy can’t work and republics are good democratically the best mix we’ve found so far and there’s a lot of evidence but mark that’s the problem because now we have populism and populism is destroying the democracy yeah it’s like what you don’t want populism but you want democracy what i don’t understand like like the populism is the democracy turning towards itself effective right it’s like okay democracy you’re not doing you’re not serving me uh i’m going to use you to subvert your trajectory like that’s basically what it is populism is merely the statement that it’s democracy that is not proceeding as you wish right in other words oh not this democracy i don’t want people voting this way i thought they would vote a different way that’s all it seems like it’s it’s shifting from democracy to tyrant and you just happen to not be the tyrant somebody else’s yeah you’re shifting it to tyranny because you don’t like the result of the democracy that’s actually what’s happening that’s literally what’s happening that’s why in the united states it’s only on one side and they don’t like that they don’t like hearing that they don’t like seeing it in themselves but it’s actually only on one but but that’s that’s why it’s related to progressivism right because like if if you’re progressing right and your progression gets subverted right and your progression gets subverted then now that’s an existential threat like like i don’t i don’t know what else to say like yes right it is an existential threat and and this this was the problem with uh with napoleon as well right like when he started to and introduced the nation state right like now if you’re at war you get an existential threat like it’s the same with with with pudin like everything everybody is scared to do something against pudin because if it’s an existential threat then like who knows what he’s gonna do right and before that it it wasn’t like that because people were civilized yeah well and they could be civilized again if they negotiate it’s this lack of and so in a democracy if the democracy is not going your way you negotiate you don’t call it populism and then fight against the thing that you said you liked which is democracy but that’s what’s happening right when you call it populism you’re identifying against the democracy right you’ve created an alternate democracy which isn’t a democracy obviously and now you’re using that alternative thing to other the people in the democracy that are just voting the way you didn’t expect basically yeah and it’s like literally it’s literally how he explains how it switches from democracy to tyranny right yeah absolutely right and and and it’s through this idea of populism whether you call it populism or not it’s through the idea of populism the people invoking populism are the tyrants or will become them but it’s like that problem already exists in the oligarchy right like he talks about um you cannot arm the people because there’s a dichotomy between the people and and those that rule them and because they’re effectively that’s not a problem and that’s not the same problem in order to instantiate a tyranny you need to disarm the population the only reason to disarm the population is to instantiate the tyranny there are no other reasons that they don’t other reasons don’t exist yeah it’s interesting if you i like the comparison of the the polis and then down to the the per the soul and because the soul is the the person um which is a combination of what you know body soul mind whatever is a microcosm of of the world right and as things are as you orientate yourself not towards virtue and goodness you you orientate yourself towards lower and lower and lower things until you know alcohol alcoholism takes over your entire life or you know whatever um what’s it called when you’re addicted to sex i forget what it’s called but yeah drugs whatever you know that complete that’s that’s the equivalent of a of a tyranny is when you become orientated towards the the things at the bottom and then they end up ruling over your entire life and end up killing you because that’s that’s another point that he makes is like tyranny lasts like a day i mean not literally a day but it doesn’t last very long at all before everything just implodes or collapses yeah let’s let’s go through the thing um so we start with the government of honor and this is this is the point that maybe someone has more insight upon but this it arises from aristocracy right the government of the best um so why why why is he doing that right like why is he going back from aristocracy uh and scaling down the ladder like is this just for symmetry because like obviously that cannot be because like there’s these governments in existence right he’s referencing them and like there wasn’t any perfect aristocracy that they could come from uh well that’s not true i mean they did come from in there it wasn’t perfect he’s not talking about perfection so did they come from aristocracies yeah aristocracies are self-generated aristocracies are self-generating once you’re in the aristocracy you’re in like you don’t it’s self-perpetuating because it’s based on her so when i was reading through this i had two questions on my mind throughout the entire time and one i was like in 544 they kind of introduced their evaluative criteria which is are they happy or in other words what’s the state of their soul and then the second question i was thinking about was what are the people preoccupied with what are their motivations what’s the conception of the good what’s the fundamental value so throughout the whole system i was thinking about those two things in an aristocracy everything’s harmonious everything’s cool right and then as they move into the democracy where they have the honor culture that’s that’s the highest good that’s the conception of the good that’s the highest value and they neglect the muses so then what is the effect on the state of the soul when you when you’re in that state that’s how and then you can proceed throughout the the rest of and so the way i was thinking about this was through the model of their greek model of the soul the the head the heart and the belly or the rational the spirit of the appetite of which roughly map onto the ruling class the soldier class and the working class and so yeah i’ll leave it at that for now okay but but danny i don’t think they talk about the soul at that point because they don’t introduce the muses until until 547b right in other words they set all this stuff up in the first what is this two or three pages here right and then they they use what i would call the scientific or more correctly mathematical pythagorean frame and they go on that big long ridiculous totally hysterical rant that’s just like one blob of text it’s just absolute genius and then they say basically yeah that ain’t gonna work what can i have to go with the muses which just you know again i am sorry it’s just too funny because nobody mentions it we’re gonna have to go with the muses guys and then they go with but but i think they referenced the muses before that as well actually i don’t uh maybe i i think it’s in book four and five i mean they they they it’s i mean they’re just resurrecting no no in in book eight i mean we’re we’re talking about book eight like this is again this is where people get confused right if you start jumping books all over the place then the next thing you know the whole thing is about Plato’s cave and it most certainly is not like here in this is where people get confused at the end of 45 d it says in in what way then will our city be moved and in what manner will the two classes of auxiliaries and rulers disagree among themselves or with one another shall we after the manner of homer pray the muses to tell us how discord first arose so that’s the setup like they’re trying to explain discourse shall we imagine them well in solemn mockery so that’s interesting so he’s already and yeah play and jest with us as if we were children and address us in a lofty tragic vein in earnest which is a serious play by the way there you go i think before that it’s even it’s even more explicit before that in 545 c when he says we will compare with this the like the like character in the individual and after that consider oligarchy and the oligarchical man and then again we will turn our attention to democracy and the democratical man and lastly we’ll go and view the city of tyranny and once more take a look at the tie of the tire into the tyrant’s soul that’s what my translation says and try to achieve a desirous decision but they talk about the character of man they use other words like the character of man and they use a bunch of different words to get at the same thing yeah you’re right danny but so he’s talking about the tyrant’s soul because he’s wanting to compare it with the righteous soul well and right but he’s saying we’re going to do this they don’t do it yet that’s that was my point my point is again they’re following this format of staying in the strictly material in the beginning so yes they’re referencing the muses in the soul i totally agree but they’re not talking about that yet they have to go through the material and destroy it the way they did in book seven and all the previous books here’s the limitations constraints and the reason why the material frame doesn’t work for the material frame in this instant right after all the stuff you’re talking about right right in in in 546 they use the pythagorean outline this very geometric mathematical outline and it’s one big blob of text and then they say that doesn’t work let’s go to the muses and now and now john to the muses right like it’s it’s we’re going to hand it off to the studio and the muses it’s you know it’s it’s completely hysterical in my mind it’s just funny so but it’s not that they don’t mention is that they are actually not talking about it they’re referencing it fair but they’re not talking about it which is different so since since adam joined us we were making a reference to the honor cultures effectively right or the democracies in creed and in sparta so we have some context for us there i have i have laconia by the way not sparta just yeah laconia laconia is is is largely or the lacademonians all of these are basically referred to by referring always to to the spartans and i think also partially related anyways that’s the spartan empire yes right so that would be halit are laconians yeah yeah the archives the archives yeah the um right oh yeah um oh i forget their name skiriti which are a special branch of the spartan army yeah there’s like four there’s four different countries or cultures or whatever yeah in laconia but they’re all ruled by sparta by the democracy yeah yeah so the cretins as well to give context for the cretins as far as i recall there’s there is the spartans are very much involved in creed a lot of the time actually they tend to they tend to try and invade creed which is a bit weird creed interestingly out of all the greek islands is the one that seemed to retain most kind of most ancient influence of like the mycenaeans that’s why and i had the oldest kind of civilization closest to the greek mainland apart from anatolia on the other side and the spartans well the spartans are largely the spartans the honor culture of the two of the two um i would say that i would say that they they would they would be the most likely to have anything approaching what we might call an honor culture in comparison with the most the other ancient greek city states it’s not that you couldn’t insult somebody and somebody wouldn’t try and defend their honor in athens or something like that but i think that it and the honor culture also goes hand in hand with how martial those they are as a people because the spartans the hamoioi which is the warrior class of sparta what we call spartans proper i mean they’d fight you right similarly with the cretins the athena an athena citizen probably wouldn’t be so you know it wouldn’t be it wouldn’t be a clear-cut case whether he’d fight you or not in terms of if you insulted his honor or something like that so that’s that’s really that’s as much as i can think of say on it at the moment i mean what was the context of the democracy thing anyways what were they well it’s supposed to emerge out of uh aristocracy so that’s my next question is there any examples of an aristocratic aristocratic government in greece um yes yeah yeah well the the spartans would be considered an aristocratic government but then there would also be something like thieves karen karen was in the in the league within the same league with sparta and yeah most of the feed certainly um is a good example of a of a of a very aristocratic um and city unlike the athenians they didn’t really have much in the way of like public participation and how things were being worn in the city at least not in the way that the athenians had with their pottery shards so yes so and and how that relates to democracy yeah i i i but i don’t know i guess that’s given in text but there are there are many examples in fact i think in general among the doric peoples like syracuse syracuse is also a good example of an aristocratic one i think all the all the colonies that tended to be founded by sparta or karen tended to be aristocratic in nature whereas the ones founded by the aeonians that is the athenians this is this is in reference to the dialect of ancient greek they spoke uh they tended to be more let’s say democratic in the sense that the greeks know democracy which is not not how most people refer to it nowadays you know there was property requirements etc so so what what what’s the reason that you think that those colonies went aristocratic like is it because they they didn’t have the responsibility of the military aspect or like the aspect or like the the aristocracy generally would have been military art might be a public craft like a property like that yeah the aristocracy not not so much would have been the military but would have led the military well and that’s how colonies were founded i think the people that found them ruled them it’s it’s not it’s not a super secret magical it’s like oh we we we made this city you know you people who live here are now beholden to the family okay yeah yeah that’s how that’s how a lot of the colonization happened especially for the especially for the really easy colonial endeavors i.e. like you know cicely or um you know uh turkey or the northern part or the southern part of the black sea that’s basically you could think of them as mostly business ventures probably started off by a couple of badminton’s and a couple of wealthy families in the city that decided we don’t want to really live here anymore there’s space elsewhere right well and you can look at that and mistake it for an emergence is good or bottom-up process but that’s wrong like the the not anybody could and did wander into that area and start a city that didn’t happen it wasn’t random people wandering into an area starting a city that that’s never happened probably in history right what has happened is people had a vision from above and then they enacted that vision and that is what makes them the aristocracy the people who have the vision to build the city and actually do the work to make it happen are the aristocracy because they put in the work so it’s not a secret magic formula where you’re born into the family and therefore it actually starts with a vision that comes down upon you of something in the future that could be manifest it’s not like oh people wandered into this area and there was a river so they settled down and built a city no lots of people did that and none of them built the city until the people we now call the aristocracy did it and that’s why they’re not the random other emergent people that wandered into the area because those people didn’t build the city yeah oh it’s useful to note as well that your position as a spartan just go back to spartan and how they’re they’re actually a really good example of an aristocratic government because of the fact that to be a spartan to be a what’s called a part of the home otherwise known as the similars and it was it was a hereditary position essentially and there were property requirements as well but but it had to be hereditary that was the main that was that was the main thing that made sure you would be a spartan that’s why there were plenty of other people in the spartan society who had just as much money as the spartans but never were allowed to call themselves spartans and serve in their particular military structure they were they were called parioico they were always treated as foreigners as non-citizens even though they were the craftsmen and all of that right so that’s as far as actually no sparta would have been the the the example of a aristocracy that everyone in that dialogue would have been thinking of actually right yeah because it’s it’s just that this is this is happening around the time of the peloponnesian war and there is this there’s this coming to loggerheads between athlens and sparta when they refer to aristocracy there you can basically in their minds they’re they’re they’re thinking more broadly as well but more importantly they’re like their concrete example is those spartans over there those are the aristocracy that’s aristocracy so in the end the people fighting us how much commonwealth was there in those societies because in in play though in 547b which is a little bit ahead when they talk about how discord is introduced remember in in the republic you have like everybody’s sharing all the property and i think even the wives and stuff but everybody’s sharing a bunch of stuff and then discord comes in when you have two races which are drawn different ways the iron and brass starts acquiring money land houses gold and silver and then you have another class of people who don’t want money but have true riches in their own nature inclined towards virtue and the ancient order of things so they he introduces this idea of the division of what’s motivating these people how much how much common you know common you know how much commonality in in material things was there in those societies or and because he mentions property so the first thing he mentioned was that the property gets split up into individual owners and then he talks about implications about what that that that has like were there private property rights for their traders yeah it’s all private yeah it’s going to be it’s all private property rights are going to be the difference would be with among the spartans again i’m pretty sure all the land is i think i think all the land is owned by the spartan state technically and then leased out to the um spartans themselves i don’t i’m not i’m not quite sure about that but what i what i what i am sure of and in relation to something like that in sparta is that when the spartans were being trained the barracks is that they inhabited it was all common property so so there and they all had to pay for the upkeep of the barracks every single one and that’s right well and now everything related to that the the irony here and what nobody i’ve ever heard talk about this particular text ever mentions is that almost all of the description of this wonderful city with the guardians is describing sparta almost to a t yeah public property training right and the difference in app and it’s clearly meant to be funny and not serious is that men and women are equal in alton and they wouldn’t be in sparta oh yeah i forgot to mention did we mention this before about the whole like the way the greeks view or the way the rest of the greeks viewed the spartans and the fact that they viewed the spartans as giving their women too much reign because property was not was not transmitted through the father to his son it was transmitted from the mother to her children in spartan society only not in any of the other ancient greek society oh that’s actually isn’t that kind of related to the jews right because but but yeah and the jews do something similar yeah i think so because the jews they got their land assigned by god right and then it was supposed to stay in the family right so there’s this this higher power that bestows the land and and then like you can sell it but then you get it back again right there’s this there’s this being bound to the land so well and you’re jewish by by by by your mother not by your father yeah i don’t know where that came from actually like well it doesn’t doesn’t matter the point the point is yeah there’s this difference in sparta because the women own property i think that’s why whenever you go women were never allowed to own property in the ages i can give you thousands of examples where you’re wrong you’re just flat out wrong in every in every single culture at at least one period of time that lasted a very long time women had property transfer rights it’s just digging this fantasy that that yeah that that wasn’t the case and that the patriarch is a real concept is a fantasy and you shouldn’t believe a word of it and and in regards to the females owning property like there’s a whole there’s a whole genre in fact Plutarch this is a man writing 150 150 ad right he has he has part of his parallel lives he has on the sayings of the spartans and then on the sayings of the spartan women so obviously there was a there was an impression even made into hundreds of years later 600 years almost a thousand years after this diet or after the palestinian war after kind of this time period where people were viewing the spartans as this weird kind of not as fully egalitarian but like really kind of weird in terms of how they view men or how they’re treating men and women in their in their societal structure i mean it’s the classic line from 300 which is taken i think from that that list of sayings where it’s basically like oh something like why do you would be some greek would have said to a spartan some greek woman would have said to a spartan woman oh you know what’s what’s wrong with you spartans and why are you women allowed to speak amongst amongst your men and then and the spartan woman replies something to the degree of because only spartan women give birth to spartan men and it’s like that’s that’s the attitude that’s kind of being put across you know and so this is that’s significant as well so let me reframe this uh and staying a little bit right so you have the aristocracy which is basically the founder right so that’s maybe also why they’re founding a city right so so so the the foundation is within laws right and the laws are made by constraints about the environment versus the constraints about the people in the moment right and then they serve a purpose of erecting the city and then when you have when you have the city erected right now they start becoming disconnected right and different games start to get played right and you get the generation that’s disconnected right like that’s why they have this generational that generational decline right and and they they become disconnected from the reason of the rule right that’s that’s one of the first things that that they say about the democracy right like they they they don’t know why things are the way they are and and so um i think that’s maybe the way the way to look at that and then that’s connected to to property as well right like what what’s the property when you’re founding a city well you’re communing in making the city a success right so so the the property is communal in in a fundamental way right and when the city is a success now there can be a division of of property right like it can sustain multiple heads multiple directions and and then that’s the process of degradation can can seep in um yeah so what do we want to do with this crazy mad stuff i have a couple notes on this um so the interesting thing is that the connection between six holding one two and three right and i i wrote in my notes and a little that’s that’s why you got the week right that’s that’s how you have genesis it’s kind of the same pattern there and and that’s relating it back to the cycle right i guess i guess i need to go to the cycle right like the circle is representative of a cycle and then there’s this statement that the governments have them right and then you need you need to have a vision of the whole cycle in order to have a judgment upon the cycle and then there’s six stages within the cycle and you can describe a rotation and i think that’s kind of what’s happening in the book right we’re describing the rotation of the cycle of government but also we’re describing the rotation of the cycle of the human soul within that government um and then they had two words there and i think they were referencing back to the last book right so he was using the numbers one two and three which is reference to uh matt right and then he’s saying involution and i i don’t really know what that word means does anybody have a have a sense of what that word means what’s word again in the pollution where is i just looked it up the shrinkage of an organ in old age when inactive function transformation or operator that is equal to the to its inverse that’s probably what it is which gives the identity when applied to itself so i don’t know i see dissolution but not involution where are we at well it’s it’s the same i think involution is then the organic dissolution the organic word for dissolution that that’s i guess what it is it’s uh 246 uh b in the end of b but the period of human birth is comprehended in a number in which the first increment increments by involution and evolution right and and then they were making the relationship with involution and squared right which would be uh the field of uh what was the second field or something and then cubed is evolution right so evolution would be the the description of of objects within 3d right so so he’s he’s referencing back to the well actually to all the four things that that they’re supposed to educate people right because the cycle is is the thing that follows from uh astronomy right because astronomy is is the description of the cycles of the universe so i guess that just like puts everything back into the same way that we did with the last example of the cycle of the universe so that’s the thing that follows from like puts everything back into an intelligible frame at least for me then they’re talking about three intervals and four terms of the like waxing and waning numbers make the terms commensurate and agreeable to one or not right so um um yeah i think i think he’s talking about the harmony between these four disciplines which was the thing that was supposed to show the good as well so and then he goes into stuff that i i have no idea about but apparently he’s he’s supposing that there’s a mathematical equation can be solved that that resolves this issue and if anybody has some insight on this i love to hear yeah i just kind of glazed over this part same which is unfortunate okay so then where i picked it up again is is on degeneration and the degeneration is in relation to the music and the gymnastics and this is this is the way that the aristocracy and the democracy start becoming discordant and so the degeneration is happening within the level of cultivation right so so apparently we’re not upkeeping uh our relationship to to our foundation right and this is right and this is connecting it earlier to the ten plagues right where creation is being undone right because these are like the the foundations upon which the whole city is built the music and the gymnastics right and and those two aspects are the ones that are being attacked and then reverberate through the whole system and and basically corrupting it so so you have the degeneration of the cultivation of music and gymnastics and then a generation later you lose the discernment of the nature of individuals right so because you no longer participate in the pattern you cannot recognize other people’s participation in the pattern properly and and now you you you well since since the aristocracy is putting people at the place where they’re best serving right you you corrupt the assignment of office to people and that starts degenerating the nature of of the city right there were three words that were used the introduction of dissimilarity right so instead of your peers being your peers you get confusion in there and then as a consequence of the confusion you also get inequality and then you get a irregularity irregular expression of these things and then discord occurred right like so there was a harmonious city but now we’ve been putting sand on the wheels and then we start getting the separation between iron and brass right which are the lower tiers they pursue money and gold and silver they are looking for virtue and and the establishment addition and and so they’re they’re in attention and well another way to say say that is like you you don’t you don’t have a shared vision anymore they’re no longer partaking in the city right like a group is partaking in the city and another group is partaking in the individual interest but the guardians right turn into the enslavers so they take the people they were protecting and enslave them as the result of this tension yeah yeah i’ll i’ll get i’ll get that i think at least so it looks like what i’m getting from this is there’s a there’s a failure in attention they’re failing to attend to i guess we could say a pat a certain pattern whatever he’s going through with all these this math and basically people become negligent or in other words they become sinful because they’re failing to attune attune themselves and then discord ensues and it just kind of starts there there they do not attend to the foundation right there’s a foundation upon which everything is built and and they neglect the upkeep of the foundation yeah and because because there’s no upkeep you you cannot attend like the attention is physically impossible like that’s the problem like like at that point it’s just consequences right like if you haven’t learned how to be correctly like how are you going to be corrected yeah and it said yeah they stopped going to church yeah effectively yes so we ended an intermediate between oligarchy and aristocracy the suspicion is introduced towards the philosopher class right so now the ruling class is no longer believable because like you don’t you don’t know if they’re corrupted or not right like like it might be some someone of the lower tiers that got onto that position and then war gets introduced well it reminds me of kind of what’s happening now with our collapse of institutions you can’t you’re just everyone’s suspicious of the institutions because they can’t trust them anymore and then war is the inevitable result of that which is terrifying well i i i’m the phrase is longer so so the war like this is my understanding right this is not in text so war is is that by which virtue can be expressed right because like a good commander gets results right and so there’s a recognition that is true within the war and and so if you cannot see the virtue of the leader you pick the person that you can see the virtue of well and i think it’s bigger than that right the idea of fighting for what you believe in points to your virtue it’s not to say that the thing you’re fighting for is virtue was right it’s to say that you only fight over the things you think are virtues like you’re only fighting for virtue ever why else would you why else would you stake your life on anything but yourself because if you’re going to go stake your life on anything it has to be something beyond yourself well it’s well it’s that’s in in this condition yes but i would argue that later on in the oligarchy they’d fight for their money or their possessions right yeah yeah but those are their values i mean that’s that’s explicit it’s like well and if the explicit in this whole thing right like oh each of these two races the iron and the bronze well one worships iron and the other worships bronze and that causes a split because they’re different values and and that that’s important later on in the democracy because again why does the democracy break down because it’s basically hedonism pure democracy is pure hedonism and therefore you can’t have a city because you can’t have things in common and therefore it’s really not it’s not that hard like even the math works it’s not it’s not difficult to understand why this isn’t going to work so seeing the virtue in war or in strife right will invite that nature into the city right so now the nature of the city starts to change but the morality that that is present will constrain people from owning wealth right so there’s there’s a constraint that that is inherited because the system well has its own nature right like it’s and so the only way to possess wealth is to possess it through others right like basically to offering all that stuff and the consequence on on the basics is is that there’s a privileging of gymnastics over music right which would be a loss of the poetic kind of yes correct um and then this is characterized by that contention and ambition are the most prevalent things within that society and then he’s like well if you go further like that’s getting way too much into the details like so let’s let’s hop over to man and so the man in this society is pursuing honor and power and he’s presenting or boasting about his armed feats as a right to rule or maybe feats in conflict um and then exercise and chase and like i don’t know what work do you have there mark like because where are we with 549 particular five which 49 49 which section the big a yes i don’t i mean i see what you’re saying what’s the what’s the phrase that you’re serious about he is all that’s at the end of the paragraph he’s also a lover of gymnastic exercises and the chase the hunt yeah that’s what i thought the pursuit so so so the one thing to attain some that’s that’s the way that i interpret it yeah yeah that’s what the chase is yeah yeah chase hunt pursuit wound up in which is which is still virtue right because it’s it’s it’s requiring something of you like it’s not you sit at your ivory tower right it’s time energy attention and action so i read something along the lines of the platonic model of the soul where you have the head the heart and the belly they there’s something about necessary and unnecessary i don’t remember if it was virtues or desires or something like that and so the necessary ones were baked into human nature and the unnecessary ones could be done away with through education and stuff like that and they mentioned the word necessary a lot but i don’t know exactly what they’re saying here that’s epicureanism that’s covered really well in the wisdom of hypatia part of the book that’s good the rest of the book is garbage epicureanism and stoicism parts of that book are excellent the first third of the book is good the rest of this complete fantasy the ones we’re considered unnecessary or what source of things would be you want to list what is that well i mean i i sorry i don’t mean to distract from the discussion so i mean i was kind of curious things things that are necessary would be foods um and water right but unnecessary would be ice cream right and then there’s there’s there’s all chart in here manuel remember yeah i know like i tried to reformulate it because like i didn’t like the categories completely that they were using yeah i remember that’s why i thought you would know up top your head but actually i but i think that’s what that’s what they’re getting at in terms of that that’s what the that’s what nick’s asking is like what what are the higher abstract necessaries and the necessaries that they’re they’re talking right i think that’s literally it right because because like ice cream is like an expression of something that’s necessary right but you don’t have to have that specific version of of the necessity right so it’s still fulfilling a role that needs to be fulfilled but you don’t have to fulfill it with that while like drinking or whatever is and and you can you can you can drink water instead of whiskey all day right right and leisure is also in there right like so you you you can watch netflix or you can play sports right yeah they’re both forms of leisure right and and then there is you can shoot drugs and like that’s just completely right and i would say i would say that the difference between necessary and unnecessary is actually just the issue of abstraction so when you’re pointing at an abstraction that’s unnecessary well i i also i also think that it’s related to your intent right so so if i’m participating in this am i participating in this because i need to or because i want right yeah i think that that seems to me to be more of what they’re at they mentioned in the republic like men and women are drawn towards each other by a kind of necessity but i mean the reality is obviously you could be a monk or eunuch or something it’s not literal it’s more like to be a man you have you know certain responsibilities and roles and and things i think that’s kind of what they’re more after yeah well yeah well that would be the expansion and that’s where my criticism came in right because now you’re you’re inheriting of worldview right it’s like okay like yes in order to be a type of man right things are necessary right but now i’m going to do the post postmodern move right like what what is it like to be a man like now you need to give me an argument for for why i need to adhere to your version of man adhere to your version of man right like what’s what’s what’s the manly nature that i need to uphold so that i need to make the sacrifice to participate in that right because that’s what it is right if it’s your nature it’s not a sacrifice right and and so for what it’s worth i was just going to say i think it’s kind of weird that you would separate different expressions of the same desire like in the you know in the in the formal categories that way as if they’re different desires right like so the desire no they’re not different desires that’s the thing right that’s why it’s natural versus necessary so the example in here which is i think quite good right the stomach is not insatiable as most people say instead the opinion the stomach needs unlimited filling is false and so he’s not saying eating isn’t necessary right eating is natural but eating until you’re filled is not necessary which is correct okay it’s it’s and it’s that nuance it’s not saying the desire doesn’t exist we’re classifying the desire it’s saying that when you’re aiming at something that isn’t sufficient isn’t merely sufficient right it’s more than sufficient then you’re you’re into the unnecessary right so that what is natural is basically sufficient yeah i think it’s uh for for for what it’s worth like uh i tend to think of in terms of like uh desires and appetites are part of like being human right but but what do you do with those right how do you express them right how do you feed them right like that’s the that’s the that’s where you necessarily start to get into that worldview type thing in terms of what is what’s what’s good and right and appropriate versus what’s unnecessary well i mean i mean people desire wealth power and fame are those necessary desires or unnecessary well i might say the the need to feel significant right yeah but that’s not what that’s not what this says nick yeah i know you can just change the words and fix the problems but that’s the point the point is there are things like wealth power and fame and they are desires and they are not necessary desires and and that’s the so it’s the it’s the classification of desires as such it’s not all desires are equal and i think that’s that’s true and there’s only four classes so it’s not like a big sorting it’s a small sort so that’s actually that’s the the part of wisdom of high patient quite good is epicureanism and that’s where they cover that that outline cool and and i i think right like you can use words like second nature but but i like i found that i had this whole thing about natural and what’s natural right and and then the thing that’s on unnatural is the thing that’s imposed by humans effective right but but that’s not true right like if if i cultivate myself in a way things become natural to me like well i think if i remember what he was talking about there manuel it was he wasn’t necessarily endorsing that view but he was he was saying that that is kind of an implicit view and in the culture that but essentially like anything that man does to the the face of the earth right is is is by the the popular definition of the term like we’ll categorize that as unnatural as if humans are natural creatures it’s kind of a weird yeah but but that but that’s not no but that’s not true right because no i agree no no no no hold on hold on it’s natural for a farmer to work his fields right yeah i would agree all right so so there’s maybe the nature is inherited from farmerness or whatever right but but it’s natural for the farm like and it it would be unnatural for him to not do that like so and so i completely agree and i and i thought and again maybe i’m thinking of a different thing but i thought uh i thought vander play’s point was is that this is how we talk we talk as if anything that man does is somehow excluded from the natural category yeah but but that’s false because we don’t talk like yeah i agree i agree okay so he was wrong like like oh no no i thought he was critiquing something that he didn’t agree with i thought no no no that’s not what he was doing he was exploring something that he didn’t know how to talk about like like like he’s like we do it all the time like we have this word right so i’ve been talking about glory lately because like i don’t i like i know it’s important but like i don’t know what glory is like i have no clue like like stuff like that is really hard and it’s like people say something and and then the ball gets rolling in your hat oh like they’re making this association and you start seeing the form of glory which is like in some sense the most ineffable thing ever because like two or three abstractions out it’s like um and but but but to go back to to the natural right so so it’s it’s in the cultivation and that’s why i think it’s cultivation right like you cultivate nature like like you don’t cultivate the unnatural so so the unnatural is what is imposed right and and i think that’s where where van de klei made the mistake right he’s he’s in the materialistic frame and he’s from the materialistic frame is like everything a human does is imposed because cultivation doesn’t exist like that that would require responsibility and and and the irony here is that again that outline which is you know outlined in 546 uh is refuted by playdough it’s like the materialistic frame doesn’t work things are not just going to unfold magically the way you want because Pythagoras invokes math which is effectively what he’s doing and geometry and stuff right and that’s why they get into this discussion that we’re in now about uh the the i like the the justice man and the unjustice one right and the right the regimes and the cycle and all that it and so in other words if you try to understand the cycles with math it fails fails miserably and immediately and that’s why they invoke the muses right which which have an interesting characteristic that they can only be true which is like what what got to them right right well and that’s the theme throughout the book whenever they run into a problem with the materialist frame or with the mathematical or scientific frame they they oh we don’t know how to resolve this let’s invoke a god every single time it’s it’s it’s pretty clear it’s amusing too so i guess real quick declare that the muses say what the muses say is right yep maybe i’ll adopt that saying which which is basically reality is is that which dictates truth and not the system like i think that’s basically what it is daddy did you well i haven’t finished thinking it through but you you asked okay when we’re talking about what’s necessary what’s unnecessary what if i make the post-modern relative move one thing i i was thinking about and this is partially from dc schindler but i haven’t finished is when throsymechus was introduced the idea of that might makes right it’s actually a relative claim and so one of the tricks that socrates does is he finds a way to absolutize the relative claim so he says something along the line i don’t remember what the argument was but he made it like seven arguments but one of them was like doesn’t your power come from your subordinates and then i think it was cleafus sees where socrates is going and tries to offer uh what’s his name i keep forgetting there’s throsymechus a lifeline and saying oh actually it’s only the perception of power but what that what that move with throsymechus does not take that lifeline because it would make his position vacuous and what motivates him is he’s a he’s a sophist he what motivates him is power so it actually his motivations in the form of the argument that he’s making actually constrain and corrupt his rational capacities so so by by absolutizing if you can march back the axioms eventually you have to run into a wall and absolutely something like what standards are you using what metrics are you using so that’s one of the tricks you can use you know when you say like you know otherwise you just end up like you can grant like if you want you have to choose if you could choose consistency then you’re in a powerless position and then you just become the dude like okay whatever bro that’s just your form man like have fun being a useless you know you like you can just you’re just useless now but you can be consistent no no no but hold there’s a there’s a problem here right and and the problem that i’m pointing at is you you you you can make the negative kids right but when you say nature you make a positive kid right like now you’re you’re proclaiming a truth well you’re you’re appealing to something outside of yourself that is unconditional to you nature does is not conditioned upon you your perception of nature is conditioned upon but nature is not that’s where the closest thing to objective material reality comes from the problem is it changes all the time so it’s not you know it’s not of the nature that people wish right and then danny you know the other point about where say might make right makes right comes from is there is a deep deep difference and the postmoderns obviously are too stupid to make this difference or at least make it clear because they’re sophists and sophists are evil by the way just so we’re all clear on how this works there’s a difference between the potential and the actual right and so when and this is important right this is what we were saying earlier about value and it’s one thing to say i believe in something it’s another thing to put your life on the line for it’s one thing to say i could have these guys go to your house and beat you up it’s another thing entirely to try and make that happen because it might not happen that way like there are a lot of dead hitmen out there believe it or not like oh you came to my house and tried to kill me but i found you and i killed you first like it’s not a guarantee just because you’re the strongest does not mean you’re going to win the fight and just because you win the fight doesn’t mean that you’re going to be around much longer to enjoy that victory that’s the pyrrhic victory right and so there’s a great deal of uncertainty in these things so it’s this is why the models don’t work where people so the government tells people what to do and they just do it observably that’s not happening it didn’t happen anywhere and it it almost never happens and when it does it’s it’s a ridiculous exception for an unimportantly short period of time right and and because we don’t make that particular differentiation we press things down to oh the leader says something and everybody just does it because the leader’s the strongest and if they don’t he’ll beat them up that that never happened like people challenge leaders all the time and this is peterson’s point about the tyrannical ape chimp gets you know torn apart by two lesser chimps like duh you know you can’t be at the top alone by yourself without support from others it’s never going to work because two people or three people are always going to be stronger than the one person and it’s that negotiation and that subtlety that the top-down power from above people are missing and and and again right like like even even in play though he’s he’s sometimes bringing things in right it’s like well this is natural or like this is so so and i’m like um i don’t know about this right like like maybe but also like i wouldn’t i wouldn’t bet my life on that at all and and so when when you say right like you i don’t know what what it was right but like effectively like you well yeah you you have necessary things that you need to do because of of your your nature right as as a man or whatever right then you you are staking your life on right like because now you’re conforming like like you that’s that’s gonna be you um and like i i’m yeah right like if you have the christian answer right like oh the image of god like now you have it open-ended again right right like that’s fine but like if you start closing that stuff up you better be damn careful about what you’re doing um okay so it is 11 o’clock i wanted to point that out no it’s six no it’s noon um we have arrived at the hour yeah y’all are all wrong it’s nine um yeah we want to land the plane or do we want yeah that i have a couple more lines finish well we started late i think we should give it another 20 minutes okay so um these uh these democracy people they they will despise riches right dishonorable they will grow into them as as a cause of yeah profitability because money is in some sense what makes the world move right and and also if if you’re trying to attain something right like like if you’re not trying to attain wealth with what you’re trying to attain then yeah you either become irrelevant or someone else is going to surpass you probably right which probably is kind of the same thing um and then the cause of this was given is the lacking of philosophy with music to temper right so interesting that there’s a connection with temperance to music i don’t know if we we made that earlier so so the philosophy is is is related to to the top of the hierarchy right uh what was what was the word was it philosophy yeah that was the virtue right or was it wisdom wisdom was a virtue right so now there’s a a corruption of the top and of the bottom right where where previously it was only a corruption of the bottom um and now this this gets into the the story of of the father and where you inherit your principles from basically uh so so it was an interesting description of of the father i don’t know what made it be that way but what i took out of it is that the father lacks participation but he’s still acting entitled which is uh like maybe a problem that we see nowadays people who don’t participate but act entitled um and then it’s going to the feminine right to the mother and she’s complaining about the lack of status she becomes in disrepute due to the lack of uh the participation and then she complains right this is kind of like the corruption coming from the feminine again and discrediting the exemplary nature of the father and the servants participate in that and so it’s interesting that these these two motivations they’re yearning back towards the old ideal they’re trying to re-manifest what they think would be the right way for the household to operate but then uh well i’ll just go through this thing so the son now gets called upon to uphold the law that the father cannot uphold um but the father still holds the ideal in the education right so the perception is that the father isn’t holding on to the ideal but but he is and and that which gets presented as holding on to the ideal is actually that which corrupts um and so the whole world is telling a different story than the thing that the father is imparting and this introduces a regression towards a divided nature and that invites arrogance and ambition within the child so that’s that’s the first step right arrogance and ambition right comes before the fall and yeah i i maybe we should go through the example a little bit more uh slowly so he is often the young son of a brave father who dwells in an ill-governed city of which he declines the honors and office and will not go to law or exert himself in any way but is ready to waive his rights in order that he may escape trouble so there’s a dissociation there happening and how does the son come into being the character of the son begins to develop when he hears his mother complaining so what what do you guys think about this description of the father like because basically the implication is that if your virtue is you don’t want to participate in the corruption you live hidden yeah that’s that i mean that’s correct like i don’t what do you mean uh like where’s the confusion i think that’s necessarily correct right he’s not involving himself but i think also it points to the non-involvement he’s also not doing the right thing and therefore he’s not courageous that is true and also the the person that points out the truth to the son is the mother all of that is kind of significant so when she observes that him in himself whilst he treats her with very considerable indifference that there’s i guess i guess that’s the loss of yeah like there’s a dissociation there yeah but at some point you can’t read too deeply into the ridiculous because this is he’s setting very harsh ridiculous deliberately ridiculous constraints right on purpose and that’s fine that’s what he’s doing setting very harsh ridiculous constraints on purpose to exemplify something so you don’t want to read too deeply into it because it’s plain at that point just saying when this happens the view of what happened is this yeah that’s true it’s it’s not a magic trick it’s not like oh you read into the psychological significance no it’s no need so to help danny well his father is watering and nourishing national principle in his soul the others are encouraging the passionate and the appetitive and he being not originally of bad nature but having got bad company is at last brought by the joint influence to a middle point so this is referencing back to the people who couldn’t make it to be philosopher kings because they didn’t have the right environment well i don’t i don’t think it’s referencing back to anything i mean i think that’s where people make the mistake the book isn’t referencing back it’s creating different cities and it’s just showing you that that pattern exists in all those cities you don’t need philosopher king the pattern’s still there you don’t need classes the way are that’s outlined in the cave that pattern’s still there like the pattern doesn’t go away they’re not connected you don’t have to be connected don’t have to be connected they’re just expressions of the pattern and there are different expressions this is why people are getting wrapped up in the book because they’re not understanding the pattern the point of this is to express the pattern and it it’s not to link the books together that’s why they’re separate books they’re not linked together and they keep rebuilding the city from scratch and showing that those patterns are still there no matter how you build the city these patterns occur and the fact that you can draw parallel to other cities is irrelevant it just exemplifies the pattern and that’s where people get confused on the interpretation so yeah in my note we go to oligarchy so i think we should get our final comments in and start from there so nothing about what no comments no i mean the only thing that i can say is just what the text says which is that we’re moving away from the rational principle of the soul and part of it’s because the influence of company and this motherly figure is obviously a not an ideal one now whether it’s because of like the reason for that is is not it doesn’t matter it’s just that when you hang out with when you hang out with company that is fallen it’s you know it can rub off on you i mean that’s that’s what that’s what’s happening in the story here whether it’s her parent or whether the husband’s not you know being strong it doesn’t matter like i just don’t know the thing but i think yeah this is something that we we talk about all the time the things are implemented firstly through the feminine that’s how they come into being whether good or bad all right the feminine gestates it’s why that the it starts first with the mother complaining that her husband was insulted and she’s embarrassed and she’s bringing things down to the level of honor as opposed to virtue and and goodness right and she’s recognizing the loss of I guess justice the loss of i guess justice what oh that’s what he’s reacting to right well i think she’s the someone might say someone might say something that’s offensive to the to the father and thus the family right and she feels dishonored and she’s more concerned and the reason that the father might not rebuke that other person is because he’s not primarily concerned with honor he’s primarily concerned with virtue and goodness right but the why the mother is more concerned with with honor so she’s she enlists the son to go out and kind of restructure himself to where i don’t think it’s on her i don’t i don’t think that’s right like i think this is the problem that the book talks about right when you bring it down to the level of the family it doesn’t work can’t talk about honor for a family you can’t talk about justice for a family can’t do it it doesn’t work creates all these problems right when you don’t have a sense for the justice at the layer of the city or honor at the layer of the city everything breaks it it’s still pointing higher everything points higher so it’s not honor as such it’s honor for the oligarchs right it’s or the people who who are you know yeah but the family’s a microcosm of the city and of the world and by looking at the family but but i don’t think the cares about honor like like that’s not a feminine quality like sorry like she cares about there’s a bigger issue you can’t do that scaling ever yes it’s fractal you can’t scale it you can’t draw that comparison this is the point of the whole text you cannot draw that comparison that comparison is not available for you to draw because it doesn’t work in other words what honor means in the context of an individual in a family and in this city are completely different things and they conflict that’s what this chapter is about is that there’s because things at the top conflict with the family level and because the family level conflicts at the individual level and because of time in other words we didn’t start with a democracy right um the things at the lower level or the things that are newer see the world differently from the things that have experience right or the or the things at the top in other words what is just for the city is not necessarily just for the individual or the family and that’s where the problem is is that there is always this friction and this change and this flip as the result of that the point that i’m making is that they’re looking at the family unit and seeing how the highest the highest value in the family unit is going from from goodness to honor and that’s it that is the image of how that’s changing it starts out with something like the wife being embarrassed or something no no i i i don’t think that actually happened like i i i but that’s why i was going into the inquiry of what what’s how father right because i don’t think he’s turned away from goodness at least not the way that he’s described there like so he might be impotent like that might be no i don’t think that he did either but for whatever reason you know it’s still kind of a mystery why why it happens but what he’s just analyzing the change and how the change happens well but but but it is right because if the father is acting virtuously then what the mother is doing is unjust right perhaps but i mean the thing is you can’t you can’t it’s hard you can’t reduce the injustice to one part of the family but this is nonetheless how it’s being you can like why not well you don’t i mean maybe the i don’t i mean like if if i’m doing god’s will and someone is justizing me for doing god’s will then that person is wrong i’m sorry like i guess yeah i mean it doesn’t really matter but it’s like the point is that they’re unequally yoked which is the mother complains that the the husband has no place in government i know plenty of women power couples hippie couples who don’t complain about status but it also says the father treats her with considerable indifference meaning hey i’m doing i’m busy doing god’s work i’m going to continue on my path like there’s there’s a there’s a there’s a middle ground where you have to balance your endeavors outside of you with yourself so it doesn’t matter whether there’s blood on one side or both side point is that she gets annoyed and says and then she starts talking to her son and says your father’s half a man very disrespectful too easy going like this is just now it’s just a complete mess and then adding to all the other complaints about her ill treatment oh i’m a victim very common which women are so fond of rehearsing but yeah i mean the point i think the point is that they’re not equally yoked like you can be a power couple and that can work but you’ve just got to be oriented towards the same thing i think there’s also something else um like so i mean this is a distinction between men and women some level but the cs louis has this he says at one point he says if you run over your neighbor’s dog right who would you rather talk to the mom or the the lady of the house right and and there’s something about you know so part of my role is being a dad and a father in the house right is to to try and keep the peace and and that doesn’t necessarily mean going and going and fighting every time you know maybe be every time my my wife thinks i should be offended you know and and and there are times when she’s been offended that i’m i’m too easy going in her eyes but but there’s there’s other you know i’ve got i’ve got purpose for doing but yeah i don’t know this just seems like a a men versus women well the point that i wanted to talk about is like this only occurred because the system wasn’t functioning properly right so danny says they’re not equally yoked like maybe that wouldn’t have gotten expression if the city was still functioning correct right right okay yeah it’s what he’s saying here is that this is they’re not it’s not saying the city is causing the family or the family is causing the city all these are happening he’s not linking it to one no no no he no he no this is this is literally the statement that the the city corrupts first right he is linking it he’s saying he says starting from corrupt city and then he’s going to what might be impotent man right and then he’s going to spiteful wife right which causes corrupt child in other words top affects the bottom and and that causes the bottom to affect the top later and it’s the later that everybody gets confused about and to be fair right the bottom affected the top first by not practicing root right or whatever like the the harmonica and music can we say something like um in in the corrupt city that he’s talking about like you get ahead by petty status seeking right and for somebody to not participate in that it’s you know it’s discordant in that system right yes that’s probably why why the father is associated because he’s not participating in what’s happened yeah you know it says here is a good father yeah and the he’s a he’s a son of a good father who lives in a city that isn’t well governed who avoids honors office lawsuits and all such meddling in other people’s affairs so so the city is falling right and the wife the mother is resentful towards the father and not participating in this in this fallen city and and and basically right like if you’re in a principality right and the principalities corrupts like what’s right action right like if you’re a good person like what you like you don’t go with the corruption but like what other option and apparently there’s there’s no place to sacrifice yourself which might be true like i don’t know i think this is just a picture of what he was saying with the democracies when you have your highest values honor and you neglect the muses you end up in a situation we’re moving towards the love of money oligarchy and this is he’s he’s painting a picture of here’s an example of a of a of a of a husband and wife that have problems and here’s an example of because they have different values maybe the husband is is only cares about honor but he’s not he’s not harmonious with you’re not balanced in other areas of his life i don’t know it doesn’t really matter the point is that the muses have been neglected and now there’s problems did what right on that the muses the good yeah no yeah i don’t like yeah i don’t i i think i think he’s actually making a logically necessary argument which is what well if the city is corrupt and the person in the city isn’t corrupt then it’s it’s gonna introduce discord within the household like in the layer down yeah no no no but i think it’s a bigger it’s a bigger issue again no you can you can live in a corrupt world without having a family that’s not but that’s not the issue a corrupt city corrupts the corrupt family right or the misoriented because he’s misoriented he’s not he’s not fighting the badness right and so yeah the corruption spreads is the point here that’s the only point he’s reading too far into this he’s making very silly false dichotomies on purpose right and saying though the mother will act this way it’s not apparent at all and it’s not common so no that’s not true right and then he’s saying and then the son will respond this way again that’s not true it’s not common it’s not apparent right no no no i’m just every party is wrong if if you if you take like 50 of these families then this will happen in one of the 50 like i think that’s but again but again it’s not talking about what will happen because it’s absurd talking about the principle of the pattern that the corruption of the city will corrupt the family unit corruption of the family unit will corrupt the individual that’s what that’s what this says that is correct that is a pattern throughout the book right again or throughout the entire text throughout all the books that is part of the problem is that we you know we’re colloquing the pattern in the wrong place the pattern is everywhere in every one of the books of the text that pattern is here again the top affects the bottom the bottom affects the top get over it yeah right it doesn’t matter how it’s just saying that that is true and it doesn’t matter that there’s corruption at every layer it’s just saying that whether there’s corruption every layer or not that impact is apparent yeah that’s what i was trying to say the nature of the impact like he’s saying that there’s a specific specific expression of the of the impact not not because it’s it’s going in a cycle like and that’s the point he’s not he’s not talking about a specific expression to say that it exists he’s talking about a specific expression to exemplify the pattern and again that’s the text he’s not saying plato’s cave exists plato’s den exists he’s saying this pattern exists here’s an here’s one way to look at it it is the same yeah and that’s and that’s fun like there’s nothing you don’t have to read even psychological truths into this they’re not there he’s he’s he’s identifying a pattern or principle and using stories to express that principle absurd stories on purpose to say yeah don’t read this i’m just showing you the way in which this happens and oh by the way isn’t this funny because everybody’s actually laughing about all this the whole way through it’s the same thing we do with soups and spoons and stuff in our little absurd hypothetical experiments soups and spoons and cabins and woods and i think we did ice creams and spoons one time uh i gotta take off guys are we gonna do two parts for book eight apparently we didn’t get very far i thought we were gonna breathe through this so i’m glad i i’m glad i didn’t try to finish it because i just didn’t okay i figured eight would go by eight eight nine and ten would go by a little bit faster than seven seven was about a month and a half or two months a month and a half or two months seven’s a bear for lots of reasons yeah hey i thought we’d breathe through this but we did not that’s it it’s going to be good a second half hopefully next week okay thanks guys take care so uh yeah that’s the plane done remember attention remember the salient bits try and integrate them in your life set an intention for the week and i’ll see you guys after the reflection