https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=uYKXoaYl5lQ
Okay, let’s read the intentions of last week, which were like really mediocre. Mine was, why is this book written? Which is now a little bit more clear. But yeah, by reading more. Daddy wanted to guard his time and attention and Mark wanted to explore. That’s kind of what I had and that’s like all my notes. I didn’t even write an intention for a week, which is shame on me. Yeah, I don’t think I really implemented this idea where there’s this union between, well basically the ecosystem that you’re in and the person that’s upholding the ecosystem. And I think going through all the stages and seeing how they interrelate. But maybe even more important is the transitions between them, right? Like what’s what’s being appealed to or regressing or whatever, right? In this transition, right? Like what are these patterns and in these later phases, I’m like, oh yeah, that’s happening everywhere. That’s happening everywhere. I just recognize all these patterns as manifesting in the modern time. So yeah, I guess I want to find out what the, well how he established this framing, right? And what is the virtue of participating through this framing? Because I think there’s something valuable in there and maybe something that could be carried over because I was also envisioning all the Twitter posts that I could make with this stuff. It’s like, yeah, see Plato, see Plato, see Plato, right? And then the question is, well, why isn’t anybody doing this, right? Like like can’t they see the connections and stuff like that? So yeah, that’s kind of my intention, trying to find out a way of implementing this in the modern discourse, I guess. Mining tweets. Yeah, that’s the lesser version of that. My intention is to mine as many golden tweets out of this book as possible. So yeah, Aiden, since you’re making fun of me, you get to go next. No, it’s fun reading this and adopting the framing and then seeing it everywhere in the world. I guess that’s going to be my intention is to adopt the framing and see and adopt the framing. Well, I’m willing to, I have faith that it’s good framing, so I want to adopt the framing and see how it qualifies the world for me this week. It did last week a little bit when that discussion that Mark had with Adam regarding Cromwell, what happened with him, because they were so focused on flattening everything, flattening everything, flattening everything, that all of a sudden they needed somebody, they needed a tyrant to come in and execute decisions. And the thing is, a tyrant emerged, right? See, when it’s a king, it’s connected top and bottom. Everything is justified. And when it’s all flattened, that void is created and that void is immediately filled by whatever happens to be graspable and completely uncontrolled. I think that’s what a tyrant is. Mark? Yeah, I found a lot in the second half in particular. It was interesting about democracy and tyranny and the idea of focus. It’ll be interesting to see everybody else’s sort of perspective on this, because again, this is another one of those things that really nobody talks about, right? I mean, Plato’s thesis for why democracy fails is freedom. It’s not even, there isn’t anything else that he identifies, and I’ve never heard anybody say that. I’ve never heard anybody, not in the political frame. You’ll hear like John from Peugeot talks about it all the time, but Plato’s pretty explicit. It’s freedom, guys. That’s what causes the problem. With the oligarchs, right, the thing that causes their downfall is their focus on wealth. But with the democracy, the focus is on freedom, and that’s what causes the problem. And the way he lays it out is fascinating. So yeah, I mean, I look forward to seeing the different framing and and maybe applying this. I think it was about 560 or so where I was just like, I’m looking around going, wow, these words are, this seems like what’s happening. Pretty scary. I was just like, boy, Plato nailed this. If he had just put a date to it, and nobody’s talking about it. And that’s what’s amazing. Nobody’s talking about this. You claim you read the book, and this isn’t the first thing on your mind every day. Because instead, you’re talking about politics and global and China, and I think you should be paying attention to that section instead. Your attention? Well, is to pay attention to that frame. Is to do that. Danny? Well, maybe my intention this week is to not have an explicit intention, but I can tell you, I mean, I have been meditating on when the bodies that your participation is in becomes corrupted in various ways, whether it’s because the spirited elements out of balance or the appotative elements out of balance. I’ve just been meditating on how to govern oneself. When, when, when in these various circumstances. So that’s kind of where my mind is. I’ll leave it at that. Yeah, I like that. We’re going through Thessalonians. So that’s kind of the theme there. So. I’ve actually been thinking in that same trend a little bit. I’d love to hear insights around that. So, yeah, I think, I think the most important parts about last week were this idea of this, the degeneration of the cultivation of the music and the gymnastic as causes that then influence the whole hierarchy. So there’s a sense of which that goes to the top, right? And then the top then breaks down everything that’s below, right? So like there’s a corruption or disruption maybe that creates the corruption that then creates a new playing field that then has to equalize. And then when that equalizes that also goes through a cycle, right? It gets corrupted again. And there was also a thing that was talked about this idea of that it is a cycle, right? And that was with the crazy math stuff, right? Where you have you can describe a rotation and the word involution, which was relating to the squared and the evolution that was related to the cubed. So now I forgot that word involution again. But there’s different ways of looking at it. And I came across this idea, right? That the universe, right? Or the solar system and the day night cycle and the month cycle, right? Like that they have these effects that are more than just the immediate physical manifestation of them, right? Like they actually induce cycles. They’re the source of the cycle. And you can lean into that cycle, right? And you can try and harmonize with it or you can effectively ignore it. And then if you ignore it, right, there’s a dysregulation that gets introduced, right? Which can actually cause illness in a system. So if we go to the oligarchy, the, we have a system that values property. So it’s regulated by that what is owned, not so much through money, but more so the power and status and all that stuff. And then when that attention goes to the accruement of money, that will be the undoing of the democracy. So the competition that is done within honor effectively shifts to to money. The accruement of money is an attentional competition with virtue, or the cultivation and expression of virtue. And then because money is becoming that by which you can express power, virtue becomes dishonored. And then that what is honored becomes cultivated. So you are what you worship effectively introduced there. And then contention or competition or glory are replaced by trade and money. And then the interesting thing that I found in this is that that also changes the way that power gets expressed. So if the access of social control is now through money, then that the games and the influence and all of that gets a different dynamic than while it’s true honor. True honor is more rigid in a sense because it needs to be embodied. You can’t really fake honor that much while money is more fluid. There’s more corruption in there, but there’s also more easily traded. There’s a bunch of avenues of manifesting oneself that open up. And as a consequence, that attention shifts as well. So now when we’re attending to the way that I can influence people with money, then an expression through honor leaves the vision. And so you could see that some charismatic person that’s really honorable within such a system can basically tilt it or whatever because it’s not seen. It’s not related to at least not by the people who are stuck with their nose in money. They’re just blind to these things. So in some sense, you create separate worlds. And then within the oligarchy, they will enact laws to cement the power and then because the focus is on money, the competence and the cultivation of competence is at least secondary, if not neglected. And then therefore the oligarchy won’t have access to the competent people or at least the competent people in the right position because the positions are bought by money, effectively, not by competence. And they create a division between the ruled and the divided, rulers and the ruled, so they’re divided. So now we have a division within the state. They cannot go to war because they would have to arm those that will overthrow them. Tax avoidance is incentivized because money is that which grants you power, not just a tool. After your loss of partaking in the city, you may still dwell on it. So the fact that you can now lose your house, you can lose your position by basically being bought out because you lose it. You can still basically be a bum in the city. And now instead of you being a constructive force, you’re now a burden upon the city. So the oligarchical city has something that’s dragging it down. And also these people are competent people because they’re from the high class. Now they’re well. And then ruling the city will not be the main motivation of the ruler because motivation is grown with the money. There will be an introduction of crime because this… We’re covering a whole lot of ground really fast. One thing I was just thinking about was like I was talking to my dad the other day about how the word, how even like when language changes over time, like the word gentleman used to refer to somebody who owns property. And then at some point it became like a way of flattering somebody. Right. So I mean, I was in terms of the, in the beginning paragraphs on oligarchy, I mean, I didn’t draw any insight from this, but I was just wondering if anybody else had any insights or thoughts on… We start like when they change the law, right? It says, the 555D, the accumulation of gold in the treasury of private individuals is a rumen of democracy. They invented legal modes of expenditure. What do they care? What do they or their wives care about the law? So you kind of have this like law and gospel theme or something like that, like where the law is no longer a basis of appeal because like arguments of authority are fine if the authority is proper. Right. But now, because we’re moving, we’re moving forward as we’re going to proceed further into the forms of government, we’re going to be in this upside down clown world, right? Which we’re getting there. But like this, we’re at the step where law is one of the first things that were corrupted. I don’t know if anybody had any thoughts on that. I would just, that just jumped out at me for some reason. Well, it’s corrupted in relation to justice. It’s serving the purpose of the society, right? Is it one of those things where it’s cut off from its start again, where it becomes kind of only directed downward? Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think it’s worth, I think it’s worth the sort of jumping back and saying, well, what is the pattern within the book, right? And that’s, again, book has chapters, right, because it’s 10 books. The book is the whole text of the Republic. The pattern is, he’s starting out with a very simple case and then showing how that repeats at all the layers. And in this case, the layers are the progression through the cycle of government, whether you like that or, you know, don’t get, it doesn’t really matter what’s laid out. And so what you see is, we’re starting from a position of justice and how to build a just city as a, and that’s not to build a city, right? It’s to exemplify justice. And so justice, right? So you should assume it’s not there yet. And then so how does each of these cycles of government lead to justice? And so the pattern here is you start with, doesn’t matter where you start your cycle, it repeats. It’s circular. You start with the tape. That type focuses on something. This is for talking about holiarchy. Holiarchy focuses on wealth. When we focus on wealth, we’re not focused on law. How would you focus on law? Probably through justice, although I don’t think they don’t say that here, not that I read. But the point is, yeah, Janne, you’re right. Justice does not get instantiated. And justice doesn’t get instantiated. A lot of it doesn’t get instantiated. Because it’s well-versed. And I’ve been seeing that pattern all along, right? Like each type of government has an ethos to it, right? An idea behind it that it drives for to the exclusion of all others. And because of the nature of reality, I’ll just state it, because of the nature of reality, it doesn’t go too far and perpetuates itself. And then it’s going to change as a result of that perpetuation or overshoot, however you think of it, into the next form of government. And that, I think, is what you’re pointing to, whether you intend to or not. So I don’t know if the rubbiting is very heavy. I think I got most of it. Is he rubbiting for you guys too? No. Okay, weird. So what I’m seeing is well, what they did say is that the people, when they adopt a lot of money, it ends up working against itself and that they don’t want to pay taxes. And then in 552, now that they have the spirit in them, they’re going and they’re doing lots of different jobs, all poorly. Everybody’s going in different directions. And it says like the worst thing is that a man falls in the city and has no skin in the game. I don’t remember exactly how it said it. That’s what I just wrote down. Yeah, that’s what I was talking about with these people. But the people who don’t have skin in the game are aristocracy. So the aristocracy, they lose their possessions and by the loss of their possessions, they also lose the status. And now they’re high capacity people because they were competent. That’s why they’re in aristocracy. They’re now on the lower level. So now there’s something, there’s potential there within them that can rise against the state. They can gather people around them. They have the leadership skills effectively. Well, I don’t know, forgive me if you guys have already done this. Can we just quickly lay out just the five forms? They’re all one form, but they’re corrupted particularly. The number one, the good is the one that we’ve been talking about, which is the one with the philosopher king, which I think actually in book eight says, whether it’s one person or multiple persons, we’ll call that the destitute. I think that it’s a good, a good republic. Now that there’s four or four institutions of the republic. First one is the time of the second one is the oligarchy. The third one is the fourth one. The two, the five. Yeah, organizing principles as well, right? And organizing ethics. So aristocracy is the good one. The timeocracy is the next one, which is associated with courage and honor. And I don’t know if we associate this to the virtues. I don’t know if they said actual honor, I think. I don’t know if we could associate this with virtue with the virtues or not. The next one is appetites. And then democracy, unnecessary appetites. And then tyranny is just one person with the unnecessary appetites ruling everybody. Right. So I think it’s important. Sorry, just to get that clearly in our minds so we can have some things to reference or for our orientation, I guess. I don’t know. Right. So the aristocracy, right, is virtue, organized, and the timeocracy is virtue disorganized. Okay. I understand democracy to be the spirited element is out of balance. So because he kind of respects his father’s virtues, but he’s got these other social influence pulling in. And that’s sort of the beginning of the corruption. And then that leads to the imbalance by the appetitive. That’s how I understood this. And so what I’m seeing here is that when you’re not part of a body, your presence has a value. And if you don’t have a skin in a game, now you’re in trouble, right? And we’re going to see how this unfolds. And then as we move into democracy, it’s then amplified by freedom or liberality. So it’s the same thing in an oligarchy. You’re more bound. You’re still being ruled by the appetites, but you’re at least bound by some things, like partially, you know, there’s still some honor and stuff around. Anyway, and it’s going to magnify and fracture in different ways as we move forward. But that’s kind of how I looked at this. I mean, I’m also primarily concerned with the governance of oneself, which is why I’m using the metaphor of the soul. Like, what’s the shape of the soul? What are you oriented towards and what are you value? Yeah, that’s appropriate. It’s a microcosmic, right? It’s the same pattern on different levels. Right. That’s why I was a little bit confused, right? Because if you articulate this from the perspective of the soul, you wouldn’t do a descent, you would do an ascent. Right. And so, like, maybe that’s the only valid way to look at it, right? Like to articulate it negatively, right? Like if you don’t do these things, you will get dragged down. So in order to not get dragged down, you need to compensate for their imposition, right? And then I like this framing in the sense, right? So there’s organized principle, which is the good, right? That informs you, right? Then there’s the disorganized principle, which is the as such. And then the organized appetites, because the appetites are and the nature, right? The natural hierarchy and all these things fall away. And but democracy, tyranny are both oriented towards the unnecessary appetites. But the way that I look at it is all of these things are in the good republic, all those things are all there. It’s just you’re taking one layer off and the lowest common denominator is that next level down. They’re the ones governing. And you take that layer off the next ones, the next layer is governing until you get to the very bottom, the very bottom layer is governing, which is the next layer. And then you take that layer off the next one, the next layer is governing until you get to the very bottom, the very bottom layer is governing, which is democracy. Well, I think that’s a good point too, Ethan, that they’re all there, right? But also, when you look at the format of all of this, it’s couched in that epicurean fashion. And a lot of people talk about you’re either a stoic or an epicurean. I don’t see any evidence for that. The evidence that I see is that maybe the epicurean is different from the stoics in what their primary mode of operation was their philosophy. Fair enough, but not that the stoics didn’t understand the unnecessary. It’s the same way that the epicurean is. And it’s interesting sitting here in the republic. I don’t think the necessary is an unnecessary thing. And to your point, both unnecessary. Freedom is unnecessary in the same way while it’s unnecessary. I think that when they become unnecessary, when they’re placed at the top, they’re properly subordinate, they wouldn’t be categorized as unnecessary. I think they only become unnecessary once they’re placed at the top, or the lowest common denominator, whatever you call it. Yeah, maybe when they’re moved too high off the list of priorities or something, maybe it’s unnecessary. Because the concept of excess exists, and it’s the exact cause of the problem, not the failure of the problem. I see that in some things, there’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe I’m going to use that word. It’s essential for the republic. But when buying a tongue becomes your highest principle, becomes just like eating, right? When you become your number one principle, the tongue becomes good. Or these unnecessary things. Or utility, you could put that there. Where does utility fit in here? Because when utility becomes your highest principle, I wonder what section that will be. It will be one down. I think it will be low democracy. I think it will be oligarchy. Somewhere between oligarchy and… Yeah, maybe. I think it’s somewhere between oligarchy and democracy. I think you’re right. Because when you have freedom, right, what becomes most important is the means to exercise your freedom. Things become a tool to do that. That would be, I think, the equivalent of… Some people get confused, particularly conservative-minded people that are ungrounded in any religious tradition. They think that a free market… And it happens on the left too. Some people think that 100% free market is what we want. That’s what we want to be our identifying principle. And other people think 100% democracy, let’s get as many people to vote as possible, is a thing that we should shoot for. And either one of those is going to end in complete chaos because they’re not grounded in that higher principle, the goodness, the good virtue. Well, I think the problem with utility is framing, right? Utility only makes sense when you’re already talking about a T-Los. If you don’t already have that, then the idea of utility cannot exist. So utility is kind of in all of this. So one way to look at this is to say, what are you making the primary utility? Is it wealth? Because that corrupts the oligarchy, right? And into a democracy. Is it freedom? Because the utility of freedom corrupts the democracy into a tyranny, et cetera. And so utilities in all of this, it’s just… The question is what’s your utility? Yeah, good point. Utility is not an ends, it’s a means. And when utility is taken for granted to be an ends, it will secretly or inadvertently be assigned to something unknowably being assigned to an ends that you’re not necessarily aware of. So maybe it sounds… If you could tie this into your stream last night of knowing why or what you’re doing something, if you’re… Oh, I’m really only concentrated on being utilitous or efficient, right? It’s like, well, that’s only a means, that can’t be an end. So if you’re acting like that is your end, you’re actually unknowingly to yourself being efficient or being efficient towards something that you don’t know. It’s like, that’s a terrifying thing to realize. Yeah, so what I wrote down, liberalism is the focus on freedom. And I’ve been hearing a lot about liberalism from James Lindsay and stuff. It’s like, yeah. And I think Frenda Clay was also talking about it. But this idea like proper liberalism, which is classical liberalism, is a very idea like proper liberalism, right? Which is classical liberalism effectively, right? Is basically trying to free the individual from the imposition of unnecessary forces. I think that was the framing that it gave, right? And the purpose of that was to basically prevent tyranny. And it’s like, well, if you look at this framing that the Republic gave, it’s like, well, yeah, I guess that that makes sense if you’re looking from the level of democracy, right? Then that principle makes perfect sense, right? But if you’re looking from these other principles, then that’s a bad move, right? Because you’re basically trying to protect something that’s of a lesser quality than what you have, right? Like that which is inspired by virtue. And so if you take the frame of people basically doing social criticism, right? And it’s like, okay, like if you’re criticizing capitalism, for example, right? Like where are you standing? Well, are you standing in the democratic looking up at the tyrannical nature of the oligarchy? Like, is that your perspective? Because like, that kind of sounds like the perspective that people are taking, right? So maybe it’s also a somewhat fair way to locate people in a way that they’re understanding the world, right? Like, so you could call like, what are the anarchists doing? Like, what is the place that they’re standing and they’re taking criticism upon society, right? Are they standing in the tyranny looking up at the oppressive nature of democracy, right? Because that kind of also looks true. Yeah, God save the king. We need our king back. That’s where we need to stand. Yeah, actually, I don’t think that you can stand. I mean, there’s certain places you can’t stand. You can’t stand on the level of the sovereign king and criticize society. I don’t know if that’s something that is possible for any person to do. Well, not anymore. We don’t have the structure, right? Like, that’s the problem. All of this stuff, like, we can’t regenerate it because, like, it requires a social infrastructure that’s not there. Okay, granted, you’re probably right on that. But if you’re a common person, right, is the only place that you, like, are you only able to stand on that level or below it, which would be anarchist? Like, are you only able to stand on the level of the common person, the democracy level or the anarchist tyrannical level? Or are you, as a common person, able to take a step up on the oligarchic level and criticize society on that level? Because you’re not one of those people. Is that a stance that you can take? Is that a position you can take? Well, the problem with the oligarchic level is that it’s inherited from virtue. Right? These aren’t levels. Like, these are cycles. And that’s part of the problem. That’s a mis-framing to think of these as levels. They’re not levels. Like, everyone in theory, in theory, not in practice, but in theory, has equal capacity to inhabit any of these modes. Right? So that’s not the issue. The issue of levels is that’s the last book. Right? That’s where you’re born into slavery in the den, tied up, never to be able to move or free yourself, because that’s, you know, yeah, that’s what the cave is about. There are different levels of society. So it’s not about what you are and are not allowed to do, because that’s not a frame that Plato uses. Right? He’s just talking about what happens, what people do, not whether or not they’re allowed to do it. And presumably, again, anybody can do anything. Like, there’s no limitations so far in the Republic about who’s allowed to do things. Right? There’s no, he doesn’t talk about authority here. And you can probably criticize that if you want. The only authority in the book is Socrates and Glaucon building the city. Right? They’re the ones that are in charge of what cities look like. And they’re the ones that free people from the cave, at least to the extent that they do, or prevent people from the good, at least to the extent that they do. They’re the ones that do that. So there’s no authority claimed in here with respect to the, we’ll say the characters in that are being discussed in the cities. So that’s not that’s not in here. It shows up later, it shows up later. That’s not in here. Well, he does, he does make a claim with the regression to the democratic mind, where he’s basically stating that the democratic mind loses its discernment towards virtue. And if, if that happens with all of them, all of them lose lose that, right? I mean, because again, I mean, they’re really only talking about one virtue, justice. So they all they all don’t instantiate justice properly. But the issue is, and the issue is, you know, what Ethan was talking about was an individual individual authority. So you can’t say that democratic, right? Because now, one individual is never democratic. That’s not possible. Right? Democracy is the statement of a group or a group preference, right, determined by some particular system called voting. Everything else is not democracy. So you can’t complete the individual and individual authority with the authority of the group. That’s, that’s, that’s just ridiculous. That’s bad framing. Yeah, but but it’s not it’s not about the authorities about access. Right. So, so he goes into this whole thing about how the mind of the of the individual, like the person that is of the democratic mind is keeping out, right, like, he is not entertaining the positive signals, right, like the virtuous signals, because they get rejected as equal to the to the non virtuous. And so there is something right that that paralyzes on that level, like, like that, that just makes you unable to to ascend while in the higher levels. I don’t think that was the case in the same way. Danny, are you still with us? Yep. Did you want to include something? Hmm, nothing. No, I got nothing useful to say. Okay, let’s let’s keep going. So then we have the oligarchical man. So, they sketched a scenario where the property of the father, I guess, gets removed by illegitimate means, and then humbled by being convicted to property. He has to make money to make a living. And then, in order to make that happen, reason and spirit both get submitted to to the telos, to the purpose of making money. Reason is employed, and the spirit is constrained to worship money. And the ambitious nature, you know, can we can we pause there for a second, just I just want to make some comments. I just want to make some comments on this idea of reason, or rationality or logic, which are my three favorite sorts of bugaboos in the materialist frame. I think when you’re talking or when Plato is talking, you’re about reason. That is the same as utilitarianism, like we were talking about before. And I don’t know if that helps, you know, to resonate with you, Ethan. But that’s sort of the way I think about it. And I think that that’s the best way to think about it, because when you’re talking about reason, it’s the reason that creates the framing to be a utilitarian. Like to have utility, you first have to have the reason as telos, right? Yeah. Oh, I agree. Yeah. Reason is a means. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I had in my mind that reason creates the purpose. So when you have a reason to do that, there’s a purpose in your action. And so it’s the guiding mechanism. And logic is more the following mechanism or something. Um, so, so, yeah, it’s, it’s interesting, right, where it is this attunement of the spirit. So, then ambitious becomes a various, which is also a word that I looked up and don’t remember anymore. And then all the other desires get constrained on the basis, whether they are profitable. Right. So now that that’s a reestablishment of the hierarchy, right? Like it’s a reorganization of the hierarchy. And cultivation as such gets removed from things that have priority, because it’s pointing at virtue. It’s not like, so it’s pointing up. It’s not pointing down in some concept. And I think, I think, yeah, that’s, that’s the shift from democracy to oligarchy is the eyes that were up are now pointing down. They start. Manuel, so, oh, sorry. In the transition of the oligarchy, the time of critical meant to the oligarchical men. Is there any mention of the wife of the house like there was from the, the, the aristocracy to the time of accuracy? I don’t, I don’t think so. I think the, oh, yeah, that was also a pattern that I noticed. I think in this example, the father actually died or something. Right. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, or something. Right. So, so, so there’s more happening. Right. So, so, so the, the historical example, instead of being exemplary role, it gets removed from the picture. Right. So, so there’s no that, that which comes from above is removed. Right. It’s removed. The family lost its identity or. Right. Okay. Where lots of time. Yeah. Well, and I think that’s worth, that’s worth talking about a bit too. Right. Like there’s so much going on. I mean, it looks like a really simple, this, this book in particular looks like a really simple, straightforward set of theses. Right. But really, there’s a lot going on because to your point, Ethan, he doesn’t use the same example. Right. It’s not, the woman is not the driver for the corruption. Right. So he’s just, and so why is he doing that? Right. Well, I think the reason is because he’s saying it doesn’t matter if you eliminate the problem of the woman doing acts to cause a change, because there’s also cause a change. Right. And so, you know, he’s trying to get you out of the mode of, oh, here’s the problem. And if we fix this problem, it fixes that other problem. And now we’re good. And he’s trying to get you out of that. So, you know, there’s all these factors that have impact on this cycle. Right. So there’s, there’s the, there’s the, there’s the principle. I don’t know if we’re going to call it principle or maybe like anti-principle of fall, of falling. Right. And that may instantiate or express itself in a various amount of different ways. And that’s what you’re saying is, well, it expressed itself in this way and did not get you confused on the particulars of the expression. Cause people do that. They think, why did this happen? And they look at the way that it particularly ended up happening. And they eliminate those particulars. And then it just happens again. It’s like the, it’s the whole diet thing. Right. Like, it’s like, Oh, I’m eating too much of this food. So they stop eating that food. And that gap is just assumed by something else. Right. It’s a spiritual thing, right. Not a material thing. That’s what he’s doing here by using different examples as to point to a spiritual pattern or a theory or pattern and not a, well, a pattern is a non-material thing. So yeah, yeah. I appreciate that. He points that out in the democratic part, right? So in the democratic part, he says, by the off jams that the democratic soul is capable of purging itself from some evil stuff, the gap is still there and something else will take its place. Right. And it will bring his friends with it. Right. And so there’s, there’s this, yeah, this, this idea that the problem, fixing the problem isn’t, isn’t solving the problem because the problem is not the problem. Right. Like, like the problem is, is not participating in virtue so that you keep that place occupied. And instead of having that place occupied, you just have a vacant parking lot. Right. And you remove the gang and in a foreign country, the gang moves in. Right. Like that’s, that’s the way those things happen. Yeah. But I do, I do think he did choose the example, right. Where to fit the transition, right. Because I, I do think that like the, the starting over part, right. And, and starting from zero and, and now having all the only tool as money, right. There’s something powerful there. It’s like, yes, like the only, the only way back into the palace is to buy your, to buy your way in. There’s no, there’s no other means back into the palace. And then he introduces this idea of drones. So real quick, Manuel, so what’s going, are they saying, is he saying that things become, the value of things become, there’s a shift in value here. Like things become valued based on money or something like that. Is that what’s happening? Or are they become monetized? Is that the correct word to use? Well, like the way, the way I see it is, is, is. Or measurable. The value of things is now quantifiable by, by money or something or currency or whatever, something material. No, no, no. I, I like, I see, I see it like this, right. Like, like you’re, you’re hanging, right. You’re hanging on, on the good, right. And then you start slipping, right. And, and then you still have the position that you were hanging in, right. But you’re not holding on to what you were holding on to, right. Like that’s the first step, right. And then you slowly slide down, right. And then instead of having your weight on your hands, you start having your weight on your feet, right. And so instead of the emanation being the thing that gets you form, the, the emergence, right, through money is, is now that which sustains you, right. But, but you still have the shape, right. You still have the worship that’s pointed up, right. But, but, but what sustains you is, is that which, which comes from below, right. And then if what sustains you is, is coming from below, what’s going to happen? Well, you’re going to take your hat that’s up and you’re going to point it down, right. And like, that’s why suddenly, as well, suddenly people in power are now influenced by money so they can be bought out and, you know, okay, we’ll pay you this much money and we need you to do this in exchange. Whereas before it’s like, I don’t care how much money you give me. That’s not in concordance with my identity as being a sovereign ruler, something like that. So yeah, the money is coming from, from below. Right. That’s probably, you’re right in the middle there, right, at oligarchy. That’s not. Well, in the democracy, right, like it wasn’t that they didn’t want the money or whatever, right. It’s like, no, that’s inappropriate, right. So, so they didn’t do it based upon principle. They did it based upon standing. Yeah. Right. So you can, that’s the holding of the shape, right. So there’s an inherited shape that keeps you up, right, but it’s not being informed anymore, right. Oh, okay. To be clear, this is going to be good Republic philosopher, Kim or aristocracy. This is going to be democracy. And then by the time the weight has shifted onto your feet, we’re in democracy and tyranny. Okay. Okay. Well, there you go. Example. Oh, it helps because I can visualize these things, you know, and, you know, we can keep them solid in our head. No pun intended. Forgive my materialist language. But like that, that’s why I think the cyclical thing is also important, right. Because like, like the cyclical nature kind of erases, right, the structure of the previous cycle. Right. So, so it there’s, there’s something lower, right, which gets instantiated, right. And then there’s something higher that informs the lower, right. And then when this gather strength, this becomes a new thing. And then something lower gets manifested again, right. And then this is the thing that that instantiates or informs what’s below it, right. And that falls out again. Yeah. Yeah. The way that I look at it is if you have a triangle or something like that, or some sort of structure is the top is just eroding away and dissipating. And we’re left with just lower and lower structures. Right. So this is kind of crude. I don’t know exactly. There’s been some themes I’ve been wanting to put on the table, but I don’t know exactly if or where to put them in here. But we’re talking about attunement of the spirit and the formation and shape of things. Like, Peterson talks about how intuition is like a reflex, right. Or like, like, and your conscience is useful, but it isn’t infallible and it can be corrupted. But one thing I was thinking about the modern, the modern, like Freud, like, like they acknowledge the subconscious with appeals to muses and stuff, and spirits. But like, they, one criticism I heard of Freud is that Freud didn’t acknowledge the super the super conscience, right. It’s all it’s all kind of materialistic and downward. And so, like in the Stoics and stuff, there is heavy emphasis on your position, like there were lots of appeals to nature. There’s things that pre-exist outside of you that determine which lane of life you should be in, which is not to carry the weight of civilization. But it’s like by ruling yourself, there’s second order effects are outside of you. It’s like, our society might employ stoic principles. But like you said, it’s, it’s for the purpose of self actualizing yourself vis-a-vis self improvement. But the problem with that is what happens if your problems get bigger, right, because they will. And then your only option is to detach, which is to be less involved with life, right. So these are, I’m sort of seeing these themes, but I just something about the vertical, some vertical dimension of how they viewed life. I don’t know exactly what’s different, but I just also the concept of relationship with one’s conscience, that’s also kind of a difficult thing to put into words. But that’s the thing, Danny, like we don’t do vertical causality. Science, all science, all psychology, and I would argue all philosophy, at least in the ancient Greek sense, is not designed to, can never do anything remotely approximating vertical causality. It’s not an option. It’s not designed that way. And it’s not able to be made to do that at all ever. And it’s not it’s T loss, it’s purpose, and he can’t do it. And so when you talk about self actualization or self, it’s all bullshit. All of it is bullshit. Not possible. The point it does claim to do those things that become sorcery and to become something like Hegel or something. Right. Right. That’s why all modern philosophy is garbage. Like that’s literally why it’s all solipsism. It’s all exactly the critique that Socrates and Plato make as, you know, all bad philosophy is sophistry to them, right, and solipsism. They don’t like this stuff. For that reason, because it implies that you can do something by yourself. But if you can do it by yourself, there is no vertical causality. So you get to pick one. Are you alone in the world, and unable to cooperate with others, and in opposition with yourself, others and nature, right, which is the scientific frame, the scientific frame has no other option, right? Or do you live in an enchanted world with vertical causality, where you can look up, find something in common to cooperate with others over? And that’s, again, the structure of the tax talks about that. And it’s very hard for us. We already fell into this earlier, where we keep mixing, oh, the individual in relation to the democracy. You can talk about the democracy. That’s one set of rules. It’s one scale, because it’s more than one person. You can talk about the individual. That’s a different scale. That’s a scale of one. Right. It’s what it’s a different set of rules. And if you remember, that’s the way we thrust into this idea of building a city to understand justice is exactly because justice is on the vertical. It’s not stuck on the horizontal. And that means you can’t use your personal frame, and you can’t use your personal frame in relation to other people to understand a virtue like justice. It can’t be done, right? That’s the thesis of the book, and some, so one of them, of some, in some sense, right? It’s explicit. And so now we have to create a city. And we have to talk about not the goodness of the individual, and not the goodness of the class of people, like we talked about in book seven, right? The so-called philosophers, the pure philosophers, right? The non-Sovietists have to be dragged down by some higher force, which is Socrates and Golconda in this case, away from their pursuit of goodness for the good of the city, right? So you have to sacrifice the good, not of a person, of a class of people whose design is to go towards the good, whose capability is to go towards the good, whose most efficient mode of operation is to go towards the good. You have to stop that for the good of the city. It has to subordinate itself. That one group has to subordinate their pursuit of the thing that they’re best at, that they’re capable of doing for the good of the city. You might call that revivification. That might be a good way to think about it. And so that’s it. That’s a theme that recurs throughout the text, right? Is this idea that there is a vertical causality. They are hinting at it in different ways. But the whole idea of scaling up, and in every book they do this. They start with the imagine an individual, imagine a group, imagine the city. That’s the scaling up and down. That’s the exemplification of vertical causality. It’s very important. Interesting. And I think this book is actually exemplifying a different scaling, right? This is not only a scaling of the vertical causality, but there’s also scaling of your relationship to justice. These cycles or these ways of governance have a more detached relationship to justice. And so you can see, well, the trade of that’s being made. Because in some sense, when we get to democracy, right, democracy is that which gives the most freedom. So there’s a capacity that’s gained, at least on the individual level, as a consequence of not adhering to justice as much. And I think that’s maybe the purpose of this book, at least one of the purposes. But then also the point is, yeah, you’re going to get a dictator if you’re pursuing this. So don’t do that. That’s a different cycle. Right. But that’s a good point, Manuel. Part of the purpose of the book is to show you that if you subvert justice by making it about the individual, the city collapses. If you subvert justice by making it about the class of people, say the philosophers over the other class, the city collapses. In other words, justice is all about the vertical. It’s on the vertical. How do you get to justice? It’s vertical causality. It’s above us. It’s a virtue. That’s what defines the virtue. It’s on the line of vertical causality. And so when you bring that down, you corrupt it. And yeah, I think that’s very much in this particular book. This is a huge theme in DC Schindler’s book, the relative versus the non-relative nature of the good. And there’s two. And at first you think you want to completely remove the relative good and just have the transcendent good, the non-relative good. But actually you need both. And the moral of the story is that you need both, but the non-relative good is primary to the second, to the relative good. Because if it weren’t, then we wouldn’t have classes of people. We wouldn’t have philosophers. But that class, that relative good is ultimately subordinate to the non-relative good. Right. And you could make an analogy with your will on the will of God. Right? And so as long as you express your will within the will of God, your will is good. Yeah. And this is the problem that all these determinists and universalists are running into is because they cannot make that distinction between your will and the will of God and how those two things can justly exist together. Well, you need to sacrifice a lot. You need to sacrifice a lot to get there. Right? So if you’re a democratic person, one of those described here, are you going to make that sacrifice? Because that doesn’t sound like the person that would make that sacrifice, ever. Okay. So did anybody want to comment on this drone? I’m not sure. What was the point of that? The way I understood drone was that it was basically the ruling class that’s not pursuing anything but that which is given from above to them. Yeah. I remember this. The drone, like the B drone, right? That’s the analogy he uses. Yeah. Right. But that’s the people who go along to get along or the people who know they don’t know any better. And so they’re not trying to, you know, this goes back to your authority question from earlier, you said, right? They’re not trying to be their own authority. They’re not trying to assert that they know something. They’re not trying to enact a mode of change. They’re just doing what they should be doing to, we’ll say, the best of what they do know, right? Or what they can handle. And so they’re outsourcing the governance of the city to other people. And that’s appropriate in most cases, right? Because they don’t have the authority as individuals to say, no, no, no, the king’s doing it wrong, or the oligarch is bad, or democracy is going to corrupt. They don’t have that authority. They’re not taking it. And when all of that structure above them is removed, you’re left with a society of drones or zombies, right? That’s another thing that comes up a lot. Well, the danger is that I think they’re always there. And then what happens is, oh, yeah, absolutely. They’re all along and utilize them. Right. But then the danger is something’s going to utilize them. And that something is going to be worse than knowing what it was. Right. The random whatever is always worse. That’s the transition from democracy to tyranny. I think that’s literally what he says. So, yeah, so we’re talking about the coming into being of the oligarchical man, right? And then it says, the drone-like desires are kept down by habit. Right. And the habit is informed by making money. Right. So, in some sense, he’s not in service of the system. He’s in service of money. Right. And that’s in some sense, his protection to being ruled. I was actually listening to this talk, and they were talking about these people who run businesses, right, these business owners, right, and how they got affected by corona. And basically, what he said is, they have this pride, right? Like, I just manage my business, right? Like, I’ll make it work. Like, I’ll do what it takes to make it work. Right. And so, they didn’t realize that they incurred losses as a consequence of what the government did to them, because they were not attending to that. Right. They were attending to came at them, and how to make it work, like how to resolve it. And they weren’t looking at what caused what came at them, right, and how they were affected by it. Right. Like, that analysis just didn’t happen in most of these people, because, well, they have this habituation in how to deal with life, that in some sense, they were immune to the government, at least understanding the government or participating in the government in a certain way. So, the image that came to mind with the drone thing is like, I kind of viewed it as an industrial input that harvests material on behalf of some higher mind. And I kind of viewed that as like, when you reinforce things through habit and repetition, it has an amplifying effect on whatever’s driving that cause. So, because like later in democracy, when we get to democracy, we’re going to see how freedom and liberality is kind of being used in a different way. So, freedom and liberality is going to amplify what’s going on in certain ways. So, that’s the picture that I saw here is like introducing the idea of a force multiplier or something like that. Well, but the problem is drones are inevitable. They’re not an optional thing. It’s not like, oh, this can be done. It’s like, no, no, this is the way of the world, and this manifests. The difference I saw is that you have a rich and the poor class, right? And so, the problem is now that we’re detached from the bodies of what’s going on, right? Because I think when you have a poor, a lower class that… Go ahead. These aren’t optional, Danny. That was the previous book. No, I realize it’s not optional. I’m just saying this is the image that I see. Right. Well, that’s what I’m saying is that classes aren’t detached from the body. It’s the different parts that make up the body. It’s not even that it’s not optional. It’s that without all that, you don’t have a thing. You literally don’t have anything. You don’t have a city. You don’t have a government. You don’t have justice. There’s no reason to even write a book. It’s pointless. But I do think that the drone is also referencing in some sense a disconnection from justice. And I think in the higher levels of government or cycles, the things that you would call drones, they fit into the system. So, they inherited justice from the system. And I think at this point, you get a second layer of people that are in service, but the service is no longer pointed at justice. So, yeah, basically it’s manifested in man or something. I don’t know. And then they go into you get tested by the opportunity to act dishonestly. So, that’s how you test the character of a person. And then they go into a motivation by fear, which is interesting. This is where if you look down, you start engaging in the identification against. You’re no longer identifying for the virtuous thing, but instead you’re motivated by the loss of your money, for example. Now you’re attached to the material. And then I think the fear was related to the social impression. You get this idea of the test is, are you spending the things that don’t belong to you? And that’s when you manage things that are not your own, are you acting virtuous with those? That’s basically the ultimate test. And then the miser won’t spend for glory. And this was also really interesting. He’s only using a small part of his resources to fight. So, he’s no longer capable of having skin in the game. So, there’s two types of personalities, the miser and the money make. And that was it for the oligarchy. And then we proceed to democracy. So, within the democracy, power is established through wealth. The constraints are not placed upon the youth with the spending habits, because basically that is what fuels the system. So, that’s the next level of moral degradation. Like a constraint that is removed. So, the power flows from spending, or overspending even. And now that gets manifested in taking over the belongings of others. Good families become destitute, but they don’t use their skills, obviously. And these good families now are feeding ground for revolution, right? Because they’re basically victimized by the system. Other people are now viewed as tools to make money. And then they’re going into this idea that making top-down constraints to prevent the loss of property won’t happen, right? Because basically what they’re saying is, you need to maintain your participation within the city, because if you don’t maintain your participation within the city, your relationship to the city changes. Then instead of a member, you become a burden or even a threat, right? So, they’re talking about two methods. One of them is a restriction on what you are able to do with property. The second one is to bring awareness to the shady dealings that make people lose their property, right? So, that’s two means of combating that dynamic. And then the luxury is that which leads to the islanders of mind and body, right? So, now I think mind is somewhat referencing to the musical aspect, but also to the virtuous aspect, right? And now the body is mentioned for the first time, and the body is that which relates to the Atlantic. So, we’re getting two layers of disconnection now. In connection to the body, we also lose the resistance to pleasure or pain, right? So, instead of being an agent, we’re becoming a subject. Weak body leads to manifestations of illness. Then the way that the democracy comes into being is a removal of the top and replacing it with an equal system or a system that is serving equality. And this is done either by picking up arms or just by scaring away the ruling class. And that, yeah, like the fact that fear was mentioned as a means to do this, right? Like that went into cancel culture immediately, right? It’s basically, we are scaring you into equality doctrine. Doctrine. It holds the greatest, the system holds the greatest plurality and appears, which is interesting because he used the word appear multiple times, the fairest. And then within this plurality, this is like a side comment for the project. You can find what you, you have the most chance to find the person, the philosopher basically, that you need to find your perfect state. And I think they mentioned this before too. And then characteristics are the forgiving nature of democracy, this record for principle and equality. So that’s the democratic system. You want to comment on this? I think, I mean, there’s just a lot of, we could dive into any one of these things like fear and cancel culture and all this stuff. But like the thing that most jumped out to me on the democracy thing was like that the unifying principle becomes more fractured as opposed to the oligarchy, right? So now you’re going to have different camps and tribes that are now going to war against each other, which is why they said it’s a powder keg for civil war. So that to me kind of seemed to be the primary theme in the democratic model. Ethan, you got any thoughts on the? The democracy? See what my notes are here. I had a couple of things that we’re associating freedom with a democracy, right? Not yet, actually. Freedom is probably more associated with the democratic man than with the system. I’ve actually got to take off here in a couple of minutes. I’ll just share a couple of things that came to me during the discussion. So we were talking about this pattern of falling and one way was he mentioned the wife and then the next one he mentioned the head being severed. It made me think of Henry VIII, you know, like we associate it with him cutting his sovereignty off, right? Essentially the head, his own head or what’s above his head, but makes you wonder what was happening within the body of the crown underneath him. You know, what were all the things happening at the same time? Oh yeah, okay. So if you think of a ship, imagine that you have a ship in the Royal Navy, right? And the captain dies and somebody else has to assume the position. It’s likely that it’ll either become a merchant ship or even worse a pirate ship when the captain is whatever killed or whatever loses his life and someone else is forced into that position. Or it could be a mercenary ship, who knows, but it won’t be a ship serving the highest purpose of the ship. Sorry, I’m babysitting at them. Well, another insight I had regarding freedom, I was watching some wrestling last night and it just started out and the fans were going crazy and the announcer was like, look at all these American fans expressing their freedom, displaying their expression of freedom, disinvoking that cliche. And this was about 20 years ago. I said, that’s kind of a, comes right back to this. It’s like, well, freedom of expression for the sake of freedom of expression isn’t a good thing and you’re going to end up with something like a democracy. And the thing that made it okay though, this was taken for granted and it was implicit was the container that they were in. And the container was the arena attending a wrestling match. So in that context, it actually was justified. But without that implicit container that they’re in, the freedom of expression turns into complete anarchy and chaos. I thought that was worth mentioning that container, which is the feminine. And when the feminine becomes corrupted for whatever reason and they lose that container, it just all spills out and becomes chaos. I was talking to a friend about the virtues of the church and then he told me, well, having a job also does all of these things. And I’m like, yes, but, right? It’s like, the container of job is inherited from, right? Like it’s an image of the church, right? And trying, like, it’s like, oh, yeah, we made things in the image of the real thing. And so, like, why do we need the real thing? And it’s like, that’s a really tough conversation to have, right? Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, what makes you think that, yeah, it’s hubris. Yeah. What makes you think that you can make an image by yourself? Well, but it works, right? Or it works at least to their standard. Well, is it going to work for their children? You know, I mean, is it going to work for their… Yeah, I agree. You can hardly make that case. Like, that’s the problem. You cannot make that case. You can’t really make that argument. That it’s going to work? Well, that it’s not going to work because, like, when you want to make an argument like that, basically need to write a report. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, like, here in America, a lot of people are pitching and complaining about, like, oh, all my dad had to do was just go get a, you know, he didn’t even need an education. He just started in a trade or whatever. Actually, that still works. But, like, it used to be like, go to four years of college and you’ll be set, you know, you own a home, blah, blah, blah. And you can’t do that anymore. You know, it’s like they were taking this structure for granted. Another example of this comes to mind. What we were talking about a couple days ago regarding sermons given outside of the container of church or liturgy and how that actually can backfire and have caused chaos. Right. Yeah. And that’s, well, that’s actually mapping into this, right? Because, like, basically, well, I’m going to use level or stage or whatever, right? If you appeal to a understanding of a certain stage, then effectively what you’re doing is you’re making a bunch of presumptions about the grounding that these people have. Right. And if you appeal to someone who doesn’t have the grounding, then… Sorry, Ethan. So one thing that came to mind when Ethan was speaking about the ship is I was thinking about, I met somebody in person who has, I found a YouTube channel and he had like 350 videos on it or something. And he made it private. And then he put a comment that said, in the age of cancel culture, I thought it was in my family’s best interest to not make these public anymore, because he’s like a high level software manager or something like that. And so I was thinking about in the Republic here, so we’ve got a body with cancer cells in it. Right. And they talk about the importance of having skin in the game. And so I was thinking about, in the oligarchy, they say when you have a loss of virtue, the pilot of the ship is now elected based on his ability to have property and not competence. And so on one level, you have a form of natural excellence. And so I’m looking for the themes of, given that I’m a part of many bodies, I’m on many ships, some of them are turning away from dry land and headed towards icebergs, where I believe icebergs are. Some of them are idle and being blown where the wind takes them. Some of them have holes in them. Right. And so I’d like to be more involved, maximally involved in life. And so this theme of discernment of identifying, what are the things that they say that one should look for? Because our world is complicated. I don’t know. So anyway, I’ll just leave it at that high level theme of to what extent, how do you moderate your engagement in the various bodies that are presenting themselves towards you? It was just kind of a big topic. And I’m putting it on the table in a very high level, nonspecific way. That was just kind of one of the themes that came up, or came to mind. In what way do you feel they talk about that? Well, they’re not explicitly, but when they talk about the different models, they give factors for what corrupts the different models. Like the love of money, for example, and then that’s going to cause a loss of competence. And so on one level, there’s something good about competence. It’s obviously not an ultimate, because it can be subverted towards a bad tell-off, which we see in all of these. Right? But it will be. Right? It’s not a can be. That’s the problem with technology. Like if you just leave, if you just subject yourself to the luck of the draw, it’s guaranteed it’s going to be not. The good thing, a good tell-off will only manifest itself through orientation. You’ll never get it by luck. And so the way I’ve been thinking, but I don’t know how much this connects to the book, is like you need to bind yourself. Yeah, that’s very clear. And like I was talking about this with Catherine, and maybe you should watch the talk, because I thought there was a bunch of nice examples in there. But we’re talking about when you bind yourself, well, Ethan has his bound in his lap, right? Like then you get a new level of discernment, right? Like the body that you participate in becomes second nature to you. And you start, right? Like now you have to know, can I take the baby to this place? Right? So instead of just going to a place, now you have to do a bunch of checks, right? And you’re not even considering places anymore if you cannot meet these requirements. Right? So there’s all of these ways in which you’re affected, right? Like Fafeki said, right? Like, oh, I started doing t’chi and I didn’t even realize that I changed, but other people started telling me that I changed. Right? It’s like the necessity of the confirmation of the binding is moving you in in direct ways, but also within indirect ways, right? And so if you have that awareness, then what is the thing you should bind yourself to? Well, like first of all, I think you should really, really limit the things that you bind yourself to. Because you bind yourself to too many things. First of all, you get organization problems, right? And secondly, you get pulled apart. Right? Like you end up in division, right? So you have to have everything that you are bound to participate in harmony. Because if they’re not in harmony, you shouldn’t have those bonds. So, yeah. And so then, right, you have to bind yourself to the highest, right? And then everything flows from there, right? So the good city is only good because it is participating in the good, and the good is informing what is virtuous. And so the virtue is actually virtuous and not empty. Right? And it doesn’t mean that empty virtue cannot point towards the good, right? Like, because it can. And hopefully it will in the most simple occasions, right? The way I conceive of this is like, if you have a baby, right, of two months old, what’s good for the baby is obvious, right? Like it’s directly present, right? And like even if he’s one year old, maybe two years old, right? It’s still fairly obvious. If your kid is 15 years old, that which is right, right, that which what you should do with the kid becomes super complicated, right? Because there’s, well, the entity that you’re interacting with is complex. Like, it’s no longer straightforward. And so the way to love that entity is requires a lot of understanding. And so, entity is requires a better understanding of your capacity and the capacity of who you’re participating with. And the only way that you can have that is by having had that bond for like multiple years and having the intimacy available within that. Yeah, take off. Thanks. All right. See you. Good luck with the rest of this. Yeah, we’re close. Best wishes. All right, see you. Take care. Yeah, one thing that’s been a little bit, or at least I haven’t seen a lot of theme of redemption in the Republic. I mean, I don’t think he’s trying to do that. But I’ve been trying to, because he always, he punches out a reason and appeals to muses, right? And doesn’t really care to explain his starting point at all. But I haven’t really seen, I haven’t seen a lot of solutions to, he keeps painting a picture of problems over and over again, right? And never offers any solution, like, because boy, do we need a proper king to bear the image of what it seems like. Yeah, but no, but there is a solution. Right? The solution is the perfect city. Right. Like, he basically says everything else says vanity. Right? Yeah. And he’s right. Like, everything else is vanity, because it’s going to cycle and grow. And so, what he’s, from my perspective, displaying in this chapter, right, is the degeneration from virtue. Right? So, like, first of all, it’s like presupposing virtue. Right? It’s like, well, yeah, we just had this perfect city. And it started doing all of this crazy stuff. Right? So, like, where did that come from? Right? Well, the city is effectively, right, we went over this before, right, the city is virtuous, because it was founded. Right? And the founders did the things that were necessary for the city to exist. Right? So, now we’re back to a utilitarian group, effectively. Right? Because, like, the only way that the city can exist is for the rulers to have been just, because else what was manifested wasn’t the city. Right? Like, people wouldn’t have participated in the thing that they didn’t think was just. Right? There’s this inherent virtue. Right? In some sense, it’s setting the tone. Right? For the whole, well, they have spirits of cities. Right? Like, the spirit of city is, in some sense, still in the tone by which the city was founded. Yeah, I see what you’re saying. Yeah. All right. We want to land the plane here. Yeah, we do. The reason I turn my camera off is because I robot any time I turn it on. Just by the way. So, anyway. Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. So, yeah. You didn’t have an explicit intention. Only you were trying to relate it to how you govern yourself. So, that’s. It’s more of discernment about how engaged to be in the variety of larger bodies. Right? I mean. Yeah. If you want my answer on that one is get the skills and then decide. Like, bind yourself to that which allows you to get the skill. Anyway. That’s a reflection.