Plato's The Republic, Book 9 Discussion, part 3⧸3 (8GxtDVxkdQc)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=8GxtDVxkdQc

Okay, and hello everybody. We, I’ll make a run of the intentions of last week. My intention was to make connections from the book to the world. Danny wanted to meditate on intimacy. And Mark was contemplating why people leave parts out from Plato’s Republic. And then I had my personal intention for the week is that I needed to extract techniques applied within the book for implementation in life. Which is obviously a thing that I didn’t actually implement, but ironically did implement for whatever reason, because I ended up talking about about principalities and I had to think a lot about how effectively the emanation is manifest in relationship to people, because that’s, that’s what principalities are right there. Rules of mental territories, effectively, or mental ways of being. And that was, that was really fruitful for me. I think, I think there’s a lot there for me to be explored and to be reflected back upon reality and maybe also, also this book. Okay, kind of looked over it and we were kind of dealing with this idea of the opposites. So you have one extreme. This is actually a thing that I thought of separately before the book club as well, like literally thought about this, because it’s not, it’s not so much opposites, it’s extremes. Because, like, if you, if you call them opposites, then they, they belong together in a way, while extremes just define a spectrum or something between them. And yeah, so there was, there was a talk about how the spectrum is only visible by moving through it in some sense, right? So this is where the contrast fits in. And I feel like there’s a, there’s a lot of fruitful ground there. So maybe we need to touch on that a little more. So my intention for this week is to talk about the opposite. Is to, well, there’s a lot of changes happening in my life, like the church is doing a thing. Like, yeah, a lot of stuff happening. Also personally reorganizing my daily routines and stuff. So I guess I’m trying to relate it to that and see how it can get pragmatic. Mark? Sure. So especially in light of convivium, which was a wonderful event. I think I’m looking for, and this is the section that Plato’s talking about this, I’m looking more for Plato’s attitude on poetry and the idea behind not being, we’ll say, accurate, precise, right? And how that is related to in the, in the text, because it’s all in there. So that’s, that’s where I’m at. So for anybody who doesn’t know, we’re using this convivium was a poetry retreat that it was held by some of the people in the Peterson sphere. Mark and I were there, it was in Arkansas, where we spent the weekend reading poetry and talking over campfires and such. It was an amazing event, awesome event. And I think it’s a great way to get to know the people who are in the community. I think the concept or topic of intimacy, I think is really sort of at the crux in terms of application and also importance in whether we’re talking about the meaning crisis, the faith crisis, the intimate crisis, the It’s a big topic. And so I’m going to keep on the same thing, but I think parts of it are, you know, responsibility and like gratitude, which is a feeling. So that touches on ways of knowing, which is related to attention, which is related to harmony or moderation of things. And the newest piece to the picture, which Manuel brought up last week was the idea of breath. Goodness is like being like breath and that there’s movement in it. And the idea that there’s ways of knowing and getting at things in the world such that things reveal themselves through movement, like Manuel mentioned this opposite, which Plato is doing this juxtaposition of things all the time and creating movement. And I think that there’s really something in being able to engage in that way. So, yeah, I’m going to kind of keep it on the topic of intimacy, which is, I think as we move into book 10 towards the forums is going to maybe I think going to touch on a lot of the themes that are present in the Republic. Yes, that’s Sally. Do you want to do one or are you okay? Just participating in the development of your guys’ stories. So, that’s what I’m doing. Well, that’s also an intention. That’s excellent. So, what I heard in Danny is the thing I mentioned is virtues, right? Like virtues are that which relate to the movement, like movement through time specifically, right? But also how you stay connected, right? Or the means by which you stay connected or the means by which you’re informed. And I think there’s something there where in order to, well, like the book is talking about justice, right? And justice is basically, I guess, the connection to the collective wisdom. Oh, I like that. Virtues are universal, but also movement provides contrast, you need contrast to see. So, it’s a lot of the Republic is extremes, bouncing, not necessarily opposites, but extremes, just to allow sight to happen, not insight, just regular sight. Right. And then in the book is being talked about gradations of sharing in existence, right? I guess lesser, lesser. Well, the ways that things are revealed have a level of truth to them. Yeah. I’m like, maybe Danny can read from his intimacy there. Well, something in terms of beauty or group versus individual selection on determining what’s beautiful depends upon shared value space. You know, because otherwise you can just sit in a cave and come up with beautiful things in your head. Right. So, I mean, part of part of. So what’s really interesting, I’m jumping way ahead, which is and also this is from memory from two weeks ago, Plato starts bashing on Homer and saying, like, if so forgive me for jumping ahead. When he says, like, if Homer actually influenced the world, all he did was write about waging war. He didn’t actually achieve success in waging a real war. He’s saying he didn’t have skin in the game. And so the elements of having skin in the game, you know, and actually acting in the world is related to the poetic way of knowing oneself. That’s one of the, you know, part of the theme that’s sort of emerging that I’m starting to see, at least. I don’t know if that’s sort of related to what you’re trying to get. But but shared value space is important. Good. What I was reading, I was like, yeah, but like Homer does have an intimacy. Right. Like, like, Homer does have a participation. But the participation is different. Right. Like, it’s it’s abstracted. Right. Well, that’s the skin in the game concept that Nassim Taleb talks about. Like, that’s the whole concept. And then I don’t play. No, doesn’t deny that Plato just says it’s fundamentally different. And and that’s really well. And and yeah, the problem is we have to jump ahead to even talk about it. But the postmodern and ethos is right there in the beginning of the first few pages. And nobody mentions that. I don’t know why. I think it’s really relevant right exactly now. Nobody talks about it. So so the way that I feel about it, at least, is that that activity or that modality creates like a second layer of reality or creates a simulacra doesn’t create a layer of anything, creates a simulacra. And this is bad. Yes, but it does manifest like it does manifest something real that can be participates in affects the world. Right. So there’s a Plato basically rejects it based upon the fact that it’s a second or he says Stuart stopped removed because yeah. So yeah, like it’s interesting framing. And I think I think it’s a problem that I’ve described actually in my writings. I’ve been writing and I think I think I articulated this problem a little bit differently. I I talked about it in the liberation. Right. Like we want to liberate ourselves. And then true deliberation, we apply a technology to free ourselves from that which we perceive oppression from. And then we created a new normal. We, we create a second nature in some profound way. Right. Which, which then establishes a new equilibrium. Right. And if you keep keep doing that, you distance yourself so far from your participation. Right. Or from reality that you you end up disconnect from others. Well, from others. Well, but also from your from your own right, because it’s all contingent upon everything work. And if something fails, then the whole system. Well, and it’s contingent upon the image in your head and not what’s actually happening. Well, no, but the technology, right, like the technology is requiring all the technology. Right. And you build a channel. Not actually happening. Right. Right. And that’s what’s happening. Or, or, or it’s happening maybe somewhere, but not to you, which is worse. That’s and that’s intimacy crisis. And, and this is in, you know, in, in five, five eighty five e here. Where we’re actually at. Right. He’s talking about the separation of the body is compared to the soul. Right. Like, where’s that line? Right. Where’s the fullness of things? Right. Are things lesser? Right. Therefore, it is pleasant to become full of what is by nature suitable. Right. And so that’s the connected. Right. And, and this is right in in Book Nine. Right. And so the idea of intimacy and connectedness is right here. It’s really what he’s dealing with the end of Book Nine here. The last third or so of the book. So that’s fulfillment. Well, one thing that came up in something Eric said in Mark’s livestream last night was that words convey more than they signify. So, I mean, anytime, anytime you have two people talking about a thing and there’s a third thing that’s present, a spirit, let’s say, there’s more there’s more than the sum of the parts. And one of the things that was mentioned at convivium is like, why would not all the best poetry just be about the most grandiose thing you can conceive of like God or goodness or whatever? Like, why would you ever bother writing a poem about like fishing? Right. It’s because there’s nothing great or small. Right. That’s that’s part of that’s part of, you know, the that’s part of the way that things reciprocally open. Contribute in a way to form. Oh, so in terms of the body, there was a line in here. It was a five eighty eight. The guy about again, I’m sorry for jumping ahead a little bit, but I’m trying to get this back to the body. Like why? Basically, the question I had when I read what Mark brought up is why would anybody ever do anything other than just maintain the body in the most minimal way? If the body is the lower thing and the soul and the mind is is a higher thing. But the guy who keeps up appearances, who lies, but keeps up appearances, it says his soul gets molded into the image of speech. Right. So I think that’s that’s part of the you know, so that that kind of idea is part of the reason why there’s nothing great or small. It’s like an implication of Peterson when he says everything you do matters. You know, right. Right. Well, and that is the theme here in five eighty six. Right. Is what about the body? What about just eating? Right. The pleasures they live with be mixed with pains. Right. The mere phantoms and shadows paintings. You know, paintings of true pleasure. And so he’s already alluding to what he’s going to get into in the beginning of book 10. Right. Which is what’s the difference? What are the different layers of engagement that make up something like what we refer to as reality? Although I don’t think he’s couching it that way at all here. He’s just sort of trying to sort out at the end of book nine here, you know, the last portions. Right. He’s he’s trying to sort out where these lines are. Right. You know, philosophy and argument are things he’s talking about. At least in my translation. Right. And so what what is that relationship? What is following the truth? Right. That’s what he’s talking about here. So the thing that came to mind at five eighty six when in the image of the cattle looking down at the food trough was, you know, people staring down at their smartphones, you know, wondering how many likes that their latest selfie got. It’s a shadow of the real pleasure when they’re talking, you know, they’re talking about real, which pleasures are better in terms of what’s real. One thing we brought up last week was was that Plato says that the real things are the things that last, which is not your body. You’re going to die. Right. So there’s, you know, there are. And so anyway, that’s just the image that the image that came to mind at five eighty six was attention. Like basically, what are the things that rob and capture attention? I think that’s more in the realm of what’s more what’s more real, like the things that call and emanate and attract and sustain attention. I mean, that’s the idea of man does not live by bread alone. Right. And the and the part you’re, you know, you’re leaving out here, Danny, is five eighty six B. Right. The cattle that are gorging themselves in pleasure are insatiable and basically conduct war. Right. And like, where does war come from? Well, that’s where it comes from right there. Might not be the only place it comes from, but Plato is pretty clear about this and doesn’t seem like he’s wrong. Right. Killing each other because they are insatiable, for they are not filling the part of themselves that is or can contain anything with the things that are. In other words, when you make yourself empty, right, you live too comfortable a life or something. Right. You become insatiable as the result of that affluence breeds war. That’s effectively what he’s saying. We do well to note that nowadays just seems prescient somehow. I like this, this affluence thing, because because that connects back to a bunch of things. Right. Like, first of all, it’s what what what is what is this progression that he’s talking about from the. Philosopher King back to the tyrant. Right. It’s states that are enabled by the previous state. Right. And so how does something get enabled? Well, that’s an affluence, right. Like that’s taking something for granted, something that didn’t exist before that. Right. That allows the next thing to come into existence. Right. When when when we’re talking about building the Tower of Babel or whatever, right. Like that’s also taking the previous state of being for granted so that you can build the next level. Right. And at a certain point, these levels don’t function anymore. Yeah, you can you can do that in yourself as well. Right. You you don’t do upkeep. Right. You’re not grateful for the things that allow you to be. And if they fall away, you don’t you don’t have a relationship to them. And you’d just be in complete chaos. In fact. Well, you’re not in chaos for long. Eventually you fall into war. Well, yeah, that’s actually what the tyrant is about. Right. Like dictated and you’re compelled to to feed your addiction. Right. Yes. By by taking it instead of earning it. Yeah, it can be kind of frightening how easy it is to fall into complacent and complaining state where you’re you are warring in terms of like squabbling about complaining about things that don’t matter or putting your attention on things that you don’t have attention over. I don’t know. I mean, I’ve had some recent experiences where somebody just pointed out some things to me or I was like, oh, I didn’t I didn’t realize my mind was there. So negative for so long. And when when that when that is brought to your attention, it’s like a small death. You know, but it’s it is kind of amazing how subversive that kind of thing can be, which is another reason why contrast is so important to see. Yeah, yeah, I think I think if we go back to virtues, I think virtues are means of approaching that state. Right. Like the fact that you’re you’re captured in something or you’re you’re going to be captured in something. Right. And then the way that you receive that is is is true. And then you might be able to change that for the better. This is by the way, this is why I really love the idea of the middle out thinking, which is Marcus has coined. I just think it’s such a great way of it’s such a great idiom for reciprocally opening because you can do it with I mean, it’s a way to redeem things. It can be used. I mean, it’s a way to open up your perspective and you can sometimes redeem bad things or see the goodness and things that are, you know, maybe you because you were just looking at the middle of the story, but it’s not the entire story. Right. Well, it’s certainly a way to include the bad things so that they’re maybe not so bad or or whatever. And the interesting thing to note here is for me is that, you know, I think it’s five eighty six or five eighty seven be rather. Plato starts talking about the difference between the tyrant and the king. Now, one of the things people don’t notice, whatever reason, is that there’s no functional difference structurally or from the outside between a tyrant and the king. Kings can become tyrannical. That should tell you a bunch of stuff that people don’t seem to know that stuff. Right. So if the philosopher king is the correct form of government, and it is according to some people, although I think Plato actually disagrees, we’ll get there. All right. You wouldn’t know the difference between that and a tyrant by looking at the structure of the government. There’s no difference in rulership, no difference in how things are conducted. There’s a difference in what things are conducted, but not necessarily how. And he’s drawing this, you know, philosophy and argument, right? What’s most distant from law and order? Right. Right. What is a way to talk about the difference between king and tyrant because they are the same. And also, he folds in the aristocracy into kingship. I also find it interesting because a lot of people think those are different, too. And of course, according to Plato, they’re not. Whether you agree with them or not, it’s a different discussion. But I find that the way he’s setting that up, that, you know, basically false dichotomy, the way he’s setting that up to be very interesting because he is using the extremes and bouncing things off. Okay, let me go to my notes. Passions move you at random, effectively. And what is furthest from reason is furthest from law and order. The tyrant is tries removed from truth. So, so just real quick, sorry to just pause on the thing that I can’t, my computer slow and I think it was a bloom. But there was a line where he said something about like, about passions about like, it’s important that they not affect you without calculation and intelligence. I think that was a language. I think it was in bloom. But it’s what came to mind for me was this is why intention matters, you know, which is I think is very important. So last week when we left off talk, we just brought up the topic of essence. And one thing that Manuel says is that man is effectively will to power, which I think we get to in the metaphor of the monster later. But like that is, I mean, your time, energy and attention is your power, at least some of it, maybe maybe a big part portion of it. Your intentions actually do matter, which is it sounds simple, but it’s an important. Yeah. When you start considering it, it’s one again, you end up at everything you do matters and. That can be burdensome. When looked at through one lens, at least. Like intentions are means of correcting the spirit that you’re in. And so, yeah, it’s hard, right? Because, like, yeah, you should be in the right spirit. And if you’re not in the right spirit, like, how much does your intention matter? There’s a couple of things there. I was I was trying to relate intention to principalities, right? Because, like, like, effectively, what you’re doing is with your intention, you’re trying to align yourself under a principality. So, like, I’m I’m now starting to think that maybe we need to rethink how to conceive of intentions, because, like, if that’s actually what you’re doing with your intention, right? Like, you should maybe not have them in the specific, but in a more nebulous way. It should be in virtues and values. That’s the problem. But he likes that answer because then you don’t have a specific answer, but also that is the problem. Where is the level of proper level of abstraction for these things? Yeah. Well, but yeah, but like, what’s the proper level of relating to them? You need you need to find your participation in something. Right. I was like, when you have you have too specific an intention, right? You can’t hold it right. Like, it’s not a valid way of participating in the activity. And if you try and do it, like, it doesn’t make sense. It starts out okay, but it spirals out of control if you get more and more specific. There is this rich term that was introduced at convivium called an in-scape, which is essentially the infinitude of potentials that anything has. So the example would be if you look at a tree through the lens of a firefighter, he might see a fire hazard. If you look at it through the lens of a carpenter, he might see raw material that he can use to make a table or a tyrant might see a trebuchet that he can use to, you know, read death and destruction on the heads of his enemies or whatever. But the so the in-scape like forgive the complicated language, but I like the word of the meditating on the in-scape of death or the in-scape of anything in your life is because like your path. Once one thing that Father Eric said at convivium that’s really stuck with me is he said curiosity is a sin. I have no business reading an anatomy test textbook. Now, I like I like to go to the gym, bodybuilding and yoga and stuff like it might be a part of my life. I haven’t read anatomy textbook, but I mean, I have some I haven’t gotten around to reading them. But like it might be part of my purpose to hold that role. It might not be his purpose to have the level of knowledge. Right. So the forgive the fancy language because I don’t like big words, but your purpose or your teleology is and how you know that and your because we’re talking about ways of knowing your epistemology ways, you know, things is dependent upon your ontological perspective of who you are, which is so it’s it’s it’s a question of who you are. And how you see yourself in the story of the world and the ways at which you you know, move through life and know your purpose. They’re going to differ. And that variance is fine. You know, it’s not every it’s the propositional tyranny is going to put everybody in a straight jacket of giving the same answer. Right. Because like, you know, do you know your ontology? Right. Like, do you know your self perception? True, true problems. This is why when people talk about ontology, they’re BS artists. And this is what the other problem is when people talk about epistemology, their BS artists. Those things exist in the abstract, but they’re unknowable. Like your epistemology is unknowable. And somebody else can claim to know it for you. But now you have a master slave relationship. And so you didn’t get out of anything. Right. Because you’re not going to master your own ontology or your own epistemology. Right. You’re not going to invent your own either. Right. And if you did, you’d be alone. And there’s the intimacy crisis all over again. That’s why when people talk about that in a certain way, not ever use those words ever. But when they talk about it in a certain way, as if they’re solving a problem or resolving something or revealing something to you, they’re lying. It’s that simple. They’re BS artists. They’re probably lying to themselves and therefore to you. But still, lies are bad. So it’s still not a fan. You have to be really careful not saying everybody, no matter how they use the terms. But you know, you got to be real careful when people start talking about it. Part of I think those heavy, big, complicated, philosophical words are a little bit too atomic, which is one of the reasons I like the word of the concept of an in-scape, because an in-scape kind of encapsulates multiple of them. It’s like my station is to do this. And it’s it has certain limitations. And that can bleed into other, you know, it’s like, yeah, like we can both be fathers. To different degrees. And I can be a programmer and you can be whatever. Right. And we there’s some shared space that is shared in certain dimensions, but not others. And because in-scape is not scientific, it’s a poetic term by a poet, if I remember correctly. And therefore it is reciprocally opening. It tries to connect things together without constraining them. Epistemology is the opposite. Right. I think philosophical terms are actually all valid. Actual philosophical terms are definitionally the opposite because philosophy is actually just the bucket into which all ontologies go. But according to the ancient Greeks, by the way, just the way they way they categorize it, all ontologies are types of philosophy. Right. But they are limiting and they are meant to exclude. The in-scape is deliberately something that is meant to include. Right. It’s meant to connect, to relate things to one another. And that’s the fundamental difference. One of the reasons why I thought Vivian retreat was so awesome. I talked about it last night on my live stream. And yeah, I can’t wait to the talks come out because they’re going to blow people away, I think. And it is interesting that that actually those points come up here in in play. In the section we happen to be reading at the moment, which is fascinating. Maybe a little harder to see, but that’s really what he’s talking about in this particular section. So all the delays in us getting this done seem to be providential in some sense. So, yeah, to go back to my notes, the tyrant is tries removed from truth. So I didn’t I didn’t know what that actually meant. But basically, it means you have the truth. You have something who relates to the truth, which could be you if you’re the philosopher king effectively. And then you have something that relates by seeing something else relate to the truth. And that’s kind of what what the tyrant is classified as. Right. So the tyrant has a handicap in relationship to the truth. Now, the oligarch is tries removed from the king. So I’m not like the trying to have I guess the king is done the embodiment of virtue. Because I’m a little bit confused about the use of king here. But since the degradation was on two levels, right, like one one is capacity to be in relationship to truth or truth. And the other one was to be in relationship to virtue. I assume that basically what it says is you get virtue before truth. Right. And in order to degrade truth, you need to degrade virtue first. Like, I think that’s well, in my text, he’s talking about pleasures. Right. It’s three pleasures, one genuine and two bastard. So I read I read Bloom this morning and the picture that they painted in Bloom was that law and argument are closer to true pleasure. So when they’re talking about like, what’s the thing that’s most real? You know, so I think I think that the variables are the law and argument or, you know, the rational, the higher part. And then I think that manifests in terms of order in the city through righteous law, through virtuous law. Right. So law and order. Yeah. OK. So the order is the manifestation and the laws by which it manifests. OK. And so the king is then ordered. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. But one, since we’re on the king tyrant thing and the thing that came to mind to me with the whole the king is life is seven hundred ninety two times more pleasant than the tyrant was the, you know, the deep thought supercomputer from pitch Ecker’s guide to the galaxy and the cult of A.I. It’s you know, it’s what is funny is that, you know, we have that I asked Chad GPT what the meaning of, you know, the life universe is. But, you know, but the cult of A.I. is I mean, this is this is a modern theme and it’s just it wouldn’t surprise me that this would be interpreted literally this math equation here. Well, but that’s why he puts it in. And you’re going to remember that this whole entire text is absurd. Deliberately, it’s meant to be. I also still, the more I ponder it, the more I’m like, now, this is a fucking bullshit. I mean, I’m going to put it in the text. I’m going to put it in the text. I’m going to put it in the text. I’m going to put it in the text. I’m going to put it in the text. I’m going to put it in the text. And I think that the reason why there isn’t more set and setting is because it followed a standard set and setting that they used in all the books that they were writing. And I think that’s why I put it in the text. I’m going to put it in the text. I’m going to put it in the text. I’m going to put it in the text. I’m going to put it in the text. Right. I think that’s explicitly what’s going on here. And I think that the reason why there isn’t more set and setting is because it followed a standard set and setting that they used in all philosophical style plays or plays of the type that the Republic would have been acted out in. But the more I read it, the more it is just a play. That’s really what’s going on. And the absurdity, that is a known feature from my understanding of Greek tragedy and comedy was this level of absurdity. Like when you went to the amphitheater, you expected absurdity to provide contrast to highlight something tragic or comedic in the Greek sense, not in the recent sense that we have. And so when you view it that way, one of the things that comes out is all of this extremist contrasting, bouncing from one to another and taking thing A and thing B and saying it’s got to be one of these. It can’t be both. And therefore this one because some other absurd argument. He’s doing that as part of this play to exemplify the point of things like what a proper pleasure is because what it’s talking about, according to the Bloom translation, is pleasure. So it’s proper pleasure versus improper pleasure. Right. And the tyrant is the one that is removed from true pleasure by a number that is three times three. Right. And basically, you know what happens is the tyrant tries to get other people to engage in alien pleasures. Right. And it doesn’t necessarily tell the motivation, it states it as an inevitability. And that’s the other theme throughout the text is that a lot of things are not stated as motivations. Right. They’re stated as inevitabilities. And that’s part of the absurdity. It’s not this or it must be this. Really, there’s only two options. You know, and that’s very much important here. But one of the things he stated earlier on, Danny, if you remember, is, oh yeah, we can do this with geometry and math, but also that’s dumb, because it doesn’t work effectively. And then he does it again. You know, this is a point of absurdity. Like if you took this seriously, you’d end up in what we would call the cult of AI. And so this is not a new concept. And one of the things we’re doing is we’re saying, you know what, it’s different this time because now we have AI. And the fact that you’ve implemented it with a more sophisticated technology, which I might have lots of technical reasons to deny, by the way, means nothing because the pattern that Plato outlined right here, in fact, in 587E is the same pattern that we’re playing out now with AI. It’s exactly the same pattern. It’s just a different technology. The guy who’s agreeing with Socrates on his math equation, it’s like it came to mind as people who hold such strong opinions on things like AI when they have no expertise in it. It’s like, you know, it’s like AI has all these capabilities it doesn’t have. It’s almost like they’re looking for something to justify something that they want to believe. It’s like the gospel of agile software development. Like they literally have positions called agile evangelists. That’s literally the job title, you know, people going around preaching a methodology. Like, yeah, look, process and seek it process and things has a role. It’s important. But like people go it’s amazing that an entire industry has been created. You know, it’s like where people it’s like the content you can give me a sheet of paper. It’s just like, boom, done. Like you just I can learn it all in an hour. And instead, people somehow are able to give five day, eight hour lectures on on some silly process that they’re enchanted by something like it’s like it’s like we want to believe that this thing’s going to save us in some way or something. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. Something weird is there, though. Well, and that’s tyrannical. I mean, that is people getting people to engage in alien pleasures. There is an alien pleasure about developing software with a single tyrannical methodology. And you know, you talk about the details of agile being anti tyrannical all day long. But the bottom line is it manifests ran a cool thing. Every organization I’ve ever heard of or seen or been in. That’s quite a few. I was one of my specialties. And I hated every minute of it. I thought it was dumb. And most of it is not say it’s not useful. But any methodology like that, and that’s part of the numbers to your point, Danny. Right. Any methodology like that becomes tyrannical almost immediately. That is the nature of tyranny. And that’s what he’s saying. That’s why, again, there’s no difference between the tyrant and the king. They look the same from the outside, except this nature, this relationship that they have with the pleasures, whether or not they’re engaging with a bodyguard and a slave to get the kind of pleasure they want, which is what Plato talks about. They just find amusing. Right. Or they’re using the math to tyrannize you. Right. It has to be this way because the math adds up. It’s three times three or whatever. Seven twenty nine times or whatever it is. Right. These are all modes of the same problem, which is the problem of tyranny. So I’m going to go put on my nerd hat a little bit. I’m going to respond to the play part because I have this this dialogical part of the book in front of me. Right. And like, yes, clearly. Right. And I’m like, if you interpret it as a play, right, then these responses, I assume, would be vocalized by the audience. Right. And so you’d have someone who represent the person and then you have the audience echoing what the person says. Right. And then you could also have a person objecting. Right. And then if if if the audience would object, then you could resolve it. Right. Like if and I think that’s actually probably the psycho technology that they used to to create this book. Right. Like it was just like a course in the form of a play. And then some person was like, but what about this? Right. And then they figured it out in whatever method that they used to figure that out. And then they reintegrated it into the thing. Right. And then they build the narrative over time. So I actually think that we might want to make a practice about this, Mark, where we just build plays. Because if you want to have fellowship, right, like I think that’s the way to like you build the text by the spirit. Because I don’t think later wrote this like like I just know it. It’s just a collective sense making product at this point for me. Yeah, it could be. Well, and they mentioned Homer and almost nobody thinks Homer was a single real person. So that’s later on. And who knows if it started being one person and gives all kinds of questions. But yeah, it’s a good point. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. We need to practice out with your notes. We need to practice. For sure. Dovetails nicely with the practice. And it’s interesting that for Vicky didn’t notice this because like if he’s like, I’m trying to dig Plato for practices. It’s like his most important book is a practice. That’s a good point. Well, there’s so much that nobody seems to notice about this particular text for reasons that are just utterly baffling to me. I mean, how you’re not how you’re not pointing these things out. Like it really actually hurts my soul. I actually think it is like like what I’m talking about is a collective way to relate to philosophy or to revelation as such. Right. And we’re not doing that. I like we’re not practicing this in university. They’re so busy rebelling and trying to be the philosopher that has the answer having those. Right. That you’re right. They’re not even able to engage with something at that level. And then you end up with people not understanding that a city does talk to you, like a city does communicate with you. Right. And the spirit of Socrates literally is still alive. Right. Like like it got reborn through Plato like Plato actually resurrected Socrates with this book and the other books as well. So anyway, so now we can relate it to that. No, he did get reborn. Like Socrates got resurrected by Plato. Well, related to the idea of weaving the audience reaction into the creation of what we can call a revelation or just we’ll just say the creation of a text got me thinking about the idea of spoken word being like a mouthpiece of the dead. And that when it’s not just the content when you read like a piece of poetry with people, it’s not just the content. It’s also the spirit of the dead in the past. That’s also when you have like a rich piece of text that’s being read in like, you know, it’s like taking something from the past in some way and resurrecting it and putting it into the present in some weird way. I don’t know. It gets into this also weird relationship of time too. But it connected also helps to connect you to the past. And the thing about good literature is that it should be or it not should be often it is very densely packed with references to the pack to the past. So it’s like what you know we’re taking the images and idioms that we use are always advancing forward and into the future. And, you know, life is for the living. We’re part of that. Like it’s not, you know, good. Well, I think what you’re saying is an important perspective to take into book 10 actually. Because, like, this this idea of holding on to the spirit, right, because I think that’s what Homer is doing. Right. Like Homer is trying to capture a bunch of spirits. Like, I think that’s what his profession is. And I think if you if you want to make an argument for Homer, right. And what he did is he’s not trying to be true. He’s trying to give truth a vessel to the next generation. Which which is really dangerous but also necessary. Did you want to do something more like you were still talking. Well, I mean, I could riff on this all day long but I just don’t know how related it is to Plato. So I’ll leave it at that. I’ll let you go ahead and proceed and we’ll see. Okay, so at a certain point, injustice gets defined as a gain for the injustice seeming to be just. That’s what injustice is. So something that is a gain for the injustice without seeming to be just is not injustice. That’s probably just a transgression at that point. So one thing that came up about the image here that comes to mind is the wanderlust symbol on the back of a Jeep. Not all who wander are lost and not all that glitters is gold. The problem with that is that Adam’s sin was to seek value neutral knowledge and Dante wants to know all things neutral value. But the problem is that nothing is value neutral. So like this is something that Father Eric said is that a pilgrim actually has a destination. A pilgrim is not somebody who’s wandering around for no reason. Wanderlust or curiosity is a sin because you’re not close enough to a teleology. So that’s that’s that’s that was the image that came to mind here in terms of keeping up appearances. Right. And I think if we go back to this injustice definition, right, like the transgressions that are seen as transgressions still participate in the whole. Well, the transgressions that are not seen as transgressions. Right. And this goes into our team with tolerance. Right. Like when you tolerate something, the thing that is a transgression does not get recognized as a transgression. And then they participate in the whole. But they corrupt. Right. Like not another is a corruption in the whole. So this is a little bit of a stretch, maybe. But it’s been something that’s been bothering me for a while. Not bothering me. I mean, again, the Father Eric is just so much stuff that’s in my head right now. But one of the things that he said at Convivium was that we remember our heroes for their peak, not for the mistakes that they made. And so, you know, I’m thinking it’s not licensed to air, but like, you know, you can’t. But what it is, I think what the important thing there is to keep focus on the whole. I think that’s really the important and strive. And I think what that does, it creates an image for heroism. And part of that, if you have an idea that the world is bad, that’s not really very motivating. It’s if you don’t have a strong something that fires you up about actually engaging in the world with great effort. Now, it’s not it’s not that it’s not that you’re going to save the world through your effort, but it’s more of an overflowing thing. But I just I just really like that quote. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. So that’s that’s just stuck with me. And that’s people are trying to drag the heroes down. Right. And people are objecting to it. And what are we looking at? Are like, are we looking at that which is possible? Right. Like, like, is the past an inspiration to do better? Or is the past a judgment upon things that are justifiably are so something? Right. Like, I think that’s the distinction that you have to make. Like, what’s your fundamental attitude to life? Yeah, I just the line that’s being drawn here with justice and injustice and the difference between the unjust man and the man who makes a mistake. Again, there’s three things, three, three things, not two. So it’s not justice and injustice. It’s injustice as a form of knowingly subverting the just as opposed to an injustice has been done due to a mistake. Those are two different things. Everybody makes mistakes. And so tearing somebody down, in fact, they’re not perfect. Seems a little silly. And yet we are engaging in that increasingly lately in recent times because we’re casting perfection everywhere. Right. Because using scientific tools, everything is perfect. That is technically true. It’s also not the world we live in. Right. Science does not reflect reality at all. Actually, different argument. Happy to make it someday. Probably will on my channel. But effectively, there is a huge difference between the one who’s acting unjustly and is appearing just and the person who’s trying to, you know, be just but is making mistakes. And that really is a whopping, whopping the important thing to keep in mind. So then I got to the ideal image of the soul. Where multiple natures grow into one. So we get the unification aspect again. And then I got I think this is the description of the multiple souls that we have. Right. So you have basically the pluralistic soul. Right. The monster, the Hydra, the lion and the man. And when these three join as one, only the man is visible on the outside. Because the man rules effectively. That’s the manifestation. To be unjust is to remove the man-like qualities. I need to prune the friend and harmonize that I think, I guess. Three aspects of relationship to the lower parts of the soul, I guess. They maybe have a correlation with the virtues as well. The unjust is unintentional in error. And then he’s giving a definition of noble. That which subjects the beast to God in man. So now I think we’ve separated the manly nature into two aspects. Right. The godly part and the manly part. Man has to rule, but the rule of man isn’t necessarily good. But it’s a necessity because if the man is not a ruler, then there’s no one in charge effectively. When you say injustice, what did you say? Unjustice does not err unknowingly or something like that. When I read the line that said basically an unjust person would never sell their children into slavery for any amount of money. There’s limits to relativism. There are lines that you don’t cross that are virtuous. There are virtue lines that you just don’t cross. Is that what you were getting at when you said that? I have to get back to the reference in the text. The way that I read what I wrote is unjust, right? To correlate it to the definition of unjust. Injustice is a game for the unjust seeming to be just. Right. So when you are so corrupted that you seem to be pursuing justice and doing the unjust thing, that’s injustice. Because now you’re lost, right? You’re literally irredeemable. I think that’s what it’s trying to talk about. I think that’s the nature of people who are motivated to do evil things. You have to be self-deceived in order to do horrible things. I don’t know. Everybody goes there, by the way. I don’t know. I think Plato is deliberately saying that’s not true. Yeah, I would say hard. On deception? There’s a difference between doing it unjustly and doing an injustice, for example. He’s using two different terms here. There’s three things. Again, there’s three things. The difference between the two terms is whether or not there’s a deception involved. So the act doesn’t have the quality. There are no acts that are inherently acts of pure injustice. There are lots of acts that are, quote, unjust. I think evil is just of a completely different category. Evil is in the space of being isn’t good. The tyrant isn’t in the space of being isn’t good. It’s still within the axiom of being is good. The tyrant is still trying to be a good person. And evil, or the modern evil, might be giving somebody everything they want. That’s kind of evil. That’s not unjust necessarily. It is an injustice to them ultimately. And so it’s just not clear. And certainly buying somebody an ice cream once in a while is… That’s not bad. Buying them ice cream all the time when they want it is. Same action. I don’t know what to say. It’s a tricky thing. And that’s where people get wrapped around the pole. They don’t like these. They don’t want the line there. That’s where the line is. That’s what’s being exemplified throughout this text, in my opinion. Where the line is. It’s in the least wanted place. It’s the most difficult place to resolve. Actually, I think this is the next line, actually. Selling your children into slavery for a gain is the worst. I guess it’s again… We need to remember that the context that we’re talking about is what’s bad. Is it good to be bad? And is it bad to be good? Even though the badness of being good is still better than the goodness of being bad. That’s the discussion of chapter one. Selling your children into slavery for a gain is you privileging that which is immediate gratification over that which prolongs the potential of you going into the next generation. Effectively, right? You’re killing your potential. You’re just completely inverted in your orientation from the eternal. Well, and explicitly, this is 589e, right? If he took gold for enslaving his son or daughter and to savage and bad men, it wouldn’t have profited him no matter how much he took for it. Now, if he enslaves the most divine part of himself, what weird wording, huh? He’s talking about children and saying that’s the most divine part of yourself. To the most godless and polluted part and has no pity. Won’t he then be wretched and accept golden gifts for a destruction more terrible by far than you freely accepting of the necklace for her husband’s soul? I don’t know that reference, but apparently it’s a pretty bad thing. And this is way worse. And so that’s… Yeah, it is the sacrifice of the now for the future. And that goes back to what I was saying. Like, give somebody what they want all the time. Try to please them constantly. You are doing an injustice to them. It’s not merely unjust. And that’s the problem is that that that is a big deal. And it is a big deal because you’re destroying the future to get away from the consequences in the present. And the effect for one, he said he emphasizes why education or exemplification to children is so important is because it molds them. But the effect that injustice has, like if you give somebody what they want, if you give a kid what he wants, the effect that injustice has is that it destroys the city and therefore corrupts the soul. You know, so this is again the Peter Sonian thing. You can’t get away with anything ever. One question. Go ahead. I’m going to help you out. It destroys sense making first. Like the injustice is the thing that removes contrast. And therefore this allows you to be in relationship to the good. Yeah, you can’t you can’t see good and evil anymore. Like, does that sound familiar? Because that’s what’s happening now. Right. And that’s why it happened. It’s exactly why it happened. Where were you going before, Danny? Well, a couple of things. Why was just that what you just said triggered a thought. I’ll try to not forget it. One was I don’t want to get too pedantic. But when I was in Reno talking to Ethan, we were talking about the nature of evil. And like a Christian would probably say evil, something like like rebellion against God or something opposed to the nature of God. When I hear the word evil, I hear a nature argument. Like you have a you have an image or a model. And then if you say like, this is evil, it’s like, OK, well, it’s it’s an opposition to that. It’s not the opposite of goodness. Like, well, one of the things that we read is, is there a useful is evil a useful concept? And can you make a distinction between evil and injustice? Like in terms of modern contemporary world? Like, no, no, evil is opposing. Like. So our definition of injustice is like something that’s out of place in hierarchy and it has corrupting effects. Injustice is is the absence of justice or the absence for justice to manifest. Right. Well, no, no, no, no, no, I mean, not here. Right. Just perfectly the man who is perfectly unjust, right, according to Plato, but has the reputation of being just. This is what he’s talking about. That that’s where the injustice is profitable. In other words, injustice doesn’t really exist outside of the man who is perfectly unjust, but has the reputation of being just. So there’s a deception in there. This is reputation doesn’t match his action because his action is perfectly unjust. Reputation is perfectly just. So deception is part of it. And we kind of downplay deception. And that’s why we were just saying about you play people all the time. They don’t know when their behavior is wrong anymore. They can’t and they can’t know when other people’s behavior is wrong. They can’t see evil actually because they’ve been comforted, placated over and over again. They’ve been given ice cream every time they ask for it. Right. And now they don’t have any contrast. So they can’t see good from evil at all. And that which is opposed to goodness is is evil. But there is no opposite. And I think we all have a hard time with that. That’s because there’s way more evil than there is good. It’s not symmetrical. And so you can’t derive one from the other directly. You can only derive evil from the absence or the opposition to good. You can’t derive goodness from evil. It’s not possible because it’s not it’s not a binary relationship. This is the mistake Sam Harris and the new atheist make. And also like this idea about people always pursuing the good. It’s like no, because there’s fallen principalities. Like that there’s a reason why there’s fallen things because they’re not good. Yeah. I mean, that’s that middle ground. Right. Again, you’re trying. There’s a difference between just and unjust. You’re trying, but you’re failing. OK. That’s the thing, too. We try lots of things and we fail. That happens. So the definition of evil as the absence of good is, I think, different than what most people would probably conceive of evil as the presence of something bad or right. And that’s it’s a very different it’s a very different concept. One thing that was mentioned at convivium is on suffering is that suffering is not something that we should just seek to reduce because we can do that by committing suicide and using drugs like I can I can. It’s suffering is something that should be transmuted or transformed. That should be that should be the role of suffering in your life is when it happens. It should orient you towards a purpose. Right. It should be a signal that says, hey, you’re not on track or something like that. The contrast that helps you see. Yeah, which I think gets at this different definition of evil or not different but. No, this is this is the problem with the materialist. Right. I recently got reminded of a post that I did a month ago with a clip of Peterson and Peterson said, well, imagine heaven as getting as far away from hell as possible. And I was like, no, that’s not that that’s not heaven. And also that’s not good. By getting as far away from hell as possible is not good because goodness is something you go towards. You don’t get to witness by going away from anything. And that’s where everybody gets stuck. Right. It’s like, well, if we just have less poverty or if we just have less this, if we just have less greenhouse gases, then things are good. It’s like, no, it didn’t look they might be necessary in order for the good to manifest. But no, like, like, that’s not what good is. And if you’re going to if you’re going to implement the thing, right, even though it’s a path, right, like if you have the wrong intention in the implementation, you’re going to corrupt whatever you’re doing. Right. And it’s seen as justice. Right. So now we’re at the unjust. Like we literally created the unjust. Yeah, and that’s and that is the issue. Like there’s lots of things that aren’t the worst possible thing that are also pretty freaking bad. Right. And so that’s an identification against that’s rebellion. Anytime you don’t identify with something, you’re identifying against something unless you’re not identifying, which is possible condition. Right. But if you’re if you’re trying to say something like, well, I’m not going to tell you what the good is. I’m just going to tell you what the good isn’t. Then you’re identifying against. And the problem with that is that I can identify against a port of call. I can say, I’m never going to dock my ship in Boston. I don’t tell you anything about where I’m going to go. Tells you nothing about where I’m going to go. Nothing. It only tells you where I won’t go. And it only one place. And that’s the problem is that to move away from evil, if evil is not one thing, is a meaningless statement. Evil is not one thing. It is a meaningless statement. That is the problem. And people don’t realize that because they’re busy identifying against right instead of identifying for the good because it’s hard. It’s really, really hard to work that out. I was on Bridges of Meaning. I was having a discussion with Kyler and whatever. And we were talking about evil. And they’re like, no, evil is an active entity that’s like a panther trying to capture you. And it’s like, yes, because it’s everywhere. Right. But when you move, things come at you. Right. But they come at you because you move. Right. It’s not because they come at you. And it is correct. Right. Like it is phenomenologically correct to describe it as an animal that’s preying upon you. Right. Like evil is an animal that preys upon you in your experience. Because you’re just walking around and it just jumps at you. Like it’s just like, oh, no, you have to deal with it. Yeah. But Plato goes into this in 590 C. Right. Because he’s talking about the form of the beast is by nature so weak in man that he isn’t capable of ruling the beasts in himself, but only observing them. Right. And is capable of learning only the things that flatter them. Right. This is exactly what he’s talking about. Like you have to move. Therefore, things are coming at you. Right. And you can’t necessarily rule over them. These are all the, you know, all the issues. Right. And so what you want is somebody who can, you know, has it within himself. Right. To be a good ruler, basically. But also as concordance with things outside themselves, because that’s the he’s making the inside outside distinction, which is the when you start talking about evil being this panther that’s stalking you or whatever. Right. You’re making it very much outside. And while that is true, it’s the inside you got to worry about too. So you’re not paying attention to that. Well, to be fair, if you’re talking spiritually, right. Like I do think it’s healthy to make the distinction of not you inside of you too. Right. This is like there’s a part like there’s a part of me or like that is not me. Right. Like I know it is healthy. No, no. That’s what I was saying. I was saying and that’s what Plato does. Right. He says, basically, there’s beasts inside of you. What I’m saying is, when you talk about it as a panther stalking you coming at you, your brain tends to say, oh, right. And there’s two mistakes there. One is it’s outside of you already. Right. Because it’s stalking you. And the other one is that it’s stalking you and you’re not moving. Which is certainly not the case to your earlier point. And that’s a mistake because all of that is also happening inside of you. It’s a much bigger problem than you think. Well, and that’s the problem where you can actually do something. You’re going to just have to. Well, that’s what Plato said. You want the person that can master it within themselves to be a divine ruler. That’s what you want. Yeah. OK. Why? Not because of implementation is going to be perfect outside themselves, but because if you can’t even master it inside yourself, you’re completely done. You’re finished. It’s over. So I have here the lion, which is associated with pride. And then the serpents, which is associated with bad temper. And I think they’re both referencing the animalistic part. Right. So there’s a corrupted internal sense where your heart is actually dragging you down. It’s bringing you towards the beast, I guess. And that will grow out of control. And that will grow out of control. Right. These processes are reciprocal in nature, either direction. The individual is unable to take control of the creatures within and has to study how to flatten them to be ruled by the divine wisdom dwelling within or, if impossible, by external authority in order that we all may live under the same government as friends and equals. So I think that’s the ideal that he’s proposing. So I’ll read it again. Well, and in my text, it says piloted by the same thing. And that’s actually the important part of all of this is that you’re piloted by the same thing. In other words, run the same mission together. And that is where I would say this is why Homer is important, because there are no great men heroes in Homer. If that’s what you read, you read it wrong. Just to lower your comprehension, every hero is accompanied by other other forces. Right. And you can point to Hercules and I would say, yeah, but he was driven entirely by forces outside of himself by the gods. Right. And so that puts it in a different light. He’s not a hero unto himself. He’s told what to do in doing becomes heroic. Not a great man. And he’s also not a human, by the way, but different different argument. So so Homer actually talks about this in a very real way. I think this paragraph is probably the crown jewel of the book. And it is kind of surprising why it’s not discussed more often. The Christians would say you’re either a slave to sin or you’re a slave to Christ. And he’s straight out of here. I’m going to read this passage because I think it’s significant. This is Bloom. In order that such a man also be ruled by something similar to what rules the best man. Don’t we say that he must be the slave of the best man who has the divine rule in himself? It’s not that we suppose the slave must be ruled to his own detriment, as their simica suppose about the ruled, but that it’s better for all to be ruled by what is divine and prudent. And then he goes on about, you know, you need to master it inside yourself. I mean, that’s that’s the video on the Q&A on the Republic that you posted, Manuel. I don’t remember what it was called. They talked about the evolution of I don’t remember what language they use, but there was like a version one point. Oh, of like I’m going to rule through strength. Yeah. Then you’re a linear B. What is that? What is it? Oh, no. Well, he talked about in terms of like the Homeric ethic is there was at first it was like, like the third, the simica’s position, which is might makes right. And then the hero, the conception of the hero. Yeah. The two point now with the trickster. It’s like I’m going to I’m going to I’m going to trick you. I’m either going to kill you or I’ll trick you like this is like Odysseus. Right. And then but like here that the upgrade that he’s saying a Socrates brought was the version three point. I was actually you’re going to trick yourself and then you’re going to end up killing yourself. That’s that was sort of the the narrative of the evolution of the ethic or the ethos that sort of evolved over time. I don’t remember it that way. I what I saw is the violence right like the violence of trickery is a removal, at least partial removal from the physical. Right. And then you have Socrates. Right. We who just makes it completely spiritual. Right. Like he just has spiritual warfare as opposed to physical warfare. Right. There is a transcendence into the heaven. Right. Where where the battle is no longer fought in in physicality. But but again right like this like he says it requires submitted right like in order for you to have have a spiritual dominance over someone. They have to submit to you or they get enchanted by you. Right. Like that’s the two two options. Right. But if you’re enchanting them you’re I don’t know if you’re a tyrant but you’re it’s it’s it’s unjust. Like because because it’s hidden right like enchantment is hidden like that’s where the problem. Yeah it could be it could be it could be that version 3.0 is more like version 2.1 where the spiritual warfare is just more developed and then you end up with a meeting crisis. But I so I mean I don’t one thing that I did learn recently about the Homerian or ethic or you know the ethos and the Iliad is that they had this idea of submission and that they had what they called the phalanx ethic which is like you had to fall in line. Like the soldier they were very explicit about their family lineage like the soldiers would trash talk before battle and if you stepped out of line to go fight like out of your formation even if you want you’d be chastised maybe even killed. Right. And so like they were submitted to a body but the body was generally like their family bloodline and then their ethic was on expansion of whatever it is whatever the body is that they were a part of. Well it’s even worse right the Romans had decimation right so you wouldn’t get punished like the others would get punished like randomly. And like that’s how you get to identify with right like if you get a collective punishment right but this is also the night like I have to read up on this or talk to someone who knows about it but this collective punishment is actually also a thing that needed to be transcendent right because this was like oh yeah you get punished for the crimes of your father for example which was a big deal. So the just man will do everything for the harm of the soul. Deeming other things unnecessary. See his soul as a city delegating resources. Statement ship is reserved for the worthy city. And then there is a pattern of this city in heaven, which is like, okay. This is like, I read this somewhere else. But if they are being in 592 be explicit that this entire exercise is a microcosm for the soul, which is also mentioned in 588, which is the image of the monster they’re saying, we’re going to paint an image of the monster. And the whole reason, like at the end of the chapter they’re saying that we’re not writing a book on government here. We’re commenting on law and argument as being closer to true pleasure. That’s the entire point of this exercise. Yep. Yeah, it always was. Yep. Everybody thinks this is a book about politics or government, and I’m like, explicitly says it’s not. So maybe believe the author who’s smarter than you by far. Just saying. He says it’s not. And multiple times. By the dog of Egypt, he will in the city, which is his own. He certainly will. I think Egypt had a really bad. Yeah, well, and, and if that if it’s that he cares about he won’t be willing to mind the political thing. Right. It’s like, okay, so there’s a relationship to politics. Dated here, but it’s subordinate to justice. So in other words, politics and justice or not. Right. And they talked about this with the grooming part right it’s like, it’s like being raised within the city among people is going to have a corrupting effect on the force. Right. And there’s always this thing that pulls you down and that’s why you need, need your inner nature to resist that. You need to have the nature that that is not susceptible. Does he give any, does he give any defense mechanisms to see inner nature, like, if you’re in a city is it just inevitable that you’re going to be corrupt. It’s not a corruption thing. It’s a forces are pulling on you. Right. Rupchin is a function of you giving in. Right. Are you acquiescing corruption is not a function of the things around corruption is function of you. Nobody likes that answer. Right. It’s like, oh, if somebody became corrupted to their own fault to some extent. Yeah, it is. And they need to take responsibility for that. Yeah, they do. Right. And also, if you’ve become corrupt, that’s partly your fault. Corruption is all around us. And this is why the original sin concept keeps getting reinvented. Right. Because there are things outside of you that influence you. There are things inside of you that influence you. So where’s your perfection actually, please. Right. Because those things that influence you are not all good. Again, nobody likes that answer. Wait, there’s things inside me and outside me pulling me away from the truth, the good and the beautiful of the perfect or whatever. Yes. That. Yes. And and the only thing to do is struggle. Right. Yes. Also true. And if I’m suffering, I need to fix that. Right. You. No one else. You. And no one else can ultimately. Right. You can you can you can have the best job in the world flying around the world to multiple destinations. My last dream last night. Right. And as Anthony Bourdain, having all the money in the world, bullying network executives at large corporations and winning repeatedly, carrying your friends along with you and having a grand old time. And at the end of the day, you commit suicide because you’re lonely and you’re in a meaning crisis and you don’t feel any intimate connection to anybody. Yep. That’s that’s in the in the book In the Weeds. Right. Which is all about his last producer talking about the suicide and trying to make sense of it. So the only one that could have fixed Anthony Bourdain suffering was him. Right. I think Manuel’s muted. And I want to read this line. In heaven, I replied, there is laid up a pattern of it. The city meetings, which he who desires may behold and beholding may set his own house in order. It’s Peterson there. But whether such a one exists or ever will exist, in fact, is no matter, for he will live after the many manner of that city, having no nothing to do with any other. Right. So it’s basically saying, like, I don’t care whether it’s can manifest or not. Like, I’m going to have to do it anyway. And that sounds like like underpinnings of the New Testament. That is on. Yeah, that’s crazy. Yeah. Well, and and and the interesting thing, the thing I didn’t know until this morning when I delved into book 10 in case we got there. This is another one of these this this whole text is full of these transition points. That statement is effectively a statement of platonic forms. It’s not made that clearly yet, but it will be just a couple of pages later. And that’s what’s so amazing about, you know, nobody talks about this connectedness and how he’s setting up, you know, from the end of book nine into book 10. Right. They’re not talking about the flow of the chapters, you know, within the patterns within the chapters. They’re looking at some of the larger patterns for sure. The onion like nature of the inner chapters versus the outer things like that. But they’re not really talking about the pattern within the chapters and now and the setups and all the concepts that you know from Plato seem to be sitting here in the Republic. Somehow, mysteriously, nobody mentioned, no forms is right there. It’s it’s right there in book 10 and the very end of book nine. Well, it was there in book six as well. When when we were talking about the sun and how the sun rays. Like all of that, right? Like they give like visibility to the other things. He’s setting it up, right? But again, it’s all about these setups. He uses these physical setups and then he modifies them. This is my objection with with the so-called Platonic cave. He modifies them immediately to make them less material or physical. Yeah, I think using the idea of a play like structure is actually useful because because basically it’s like if you think of it as being played out. Like you get this pattern, right? Like I don’t I don’t know how they display it. Right. So you get this pattern, right? And then you get a repeat of this pattern with a modification. And so if you get you get this visible feedback and then because because this is the thing that I always do when I try to understand things. I try to go walk through that. Right. I take the paths that is being presented to me. Which is ironic because if he actually making a play, then Bhutan is going to be ironic. Yeah, I think that’s really important. Even even I have something written down. I mean, my notes are from driving home from Arkansas two weeks ago. But Jonathan Pichot even said and this is I think an error. I love Jonathan Pichot. But he said Plato said to get rid of the artist because they can make us think something beautiful with the play. But he’s being very explicit that he’s talking about imitative poets, like because like you said, he himself is a poet. And the forms I think are known like dialectic is is a form of is a form of poetry. And the forms I think themselves are known through participation, which is why you’re able to get at the forms through a dialectical process. And I think that gets that gets left out. And we even have popular popular figures saying things like, oh, Plato says throw all the poets away. It’s like, I don’t think I don’t think he’s saying that. I don’t think he’s saying that at all either, Jenny. I noticed that I was like, wait a minute. Where is this throughout all the poets? Where where are people getting this from? Because it’s not here. Not yet. Might be somewhere. I think I think I think he explicitly said that all the poets should be employed by the people who are in the play. Right. That would be all the poet. Right. Which is the opposite of what people are saying that he said, get rid of them. No, he said, well, all the apples of the state. Right. Get rid of the rebels. That’s what he’s saying. Okay. He goes into the imitation thing. Right. He he puts all the people in the play. And he’s like, oh, what are you doing? I think he’s doing it. He goes into the imitation thing, right? He does this whole thing. No, no, no. But like I told you, it was in chapter five or something. He talked about, no, we can’t have artists because they’re going to distract people. Like that was basically his argument. Right. But he just said that- I think they’re going to grab back onto that argument. But the whole point was like, we can’t have them because they’re going to corrupt the minds and hearts of the people. And it’s like, yes. That’s not poets. I think that’s the problem is that now we’re back into language issues with Greece. Maybe. Well, it depends. You’re a soothsayer and enchanter if you’re employed by tyranny. But if you’re employed by an aristocrat, then you’re employed by the good. So it depends who you’re employed by. Right. But also, he makes lots of distinctions. Again, you can remember the primary distinction he makes in philosophy, between true philosophers and sophists. And sophists are just basically the scum of the earth, apparently, according to this text, which I agree with. But there’s no functional difference from the outside. The difference is in how the arguments play out. That’s how you know a sophist from someone who’s not a sophist. And I think the same is going to be true for, quote, different types of what we, in recent times, would call art. I doubt they were using anywhere near the same language. Again, it doesn’t make any sense to say, well, why are all the poets to the state? But all the artists and include poets in artists, there’s an inconsistency there that cannot hold. So I don’t think that’s actually what’s going on. I think he’s saying something very, very specific. And I think he’s going to get at that in the beginning of book 10 here. He starts talking about the difference between, effectively, simulacra, objects and their form, as in platonic form, or eidos. And that’s the beginning of book 10. He’s making that distinction. Notice there’s three things there, not two. And the statement of, we’ll say the least of them, is the statement of postmodern thought, as such. And to not see it that way, I think, is you’re having a problem making a very obvious conclusion from a very clear statement, which is you have multiple paintings of the couch, effectively, of the same couch. And yet, they’re completely different paintings, because they’re, effectively, from different perspectives or angles, however you want to think of it. Angles and perspectives are actually the same thing. One’s the math version. And so what does that mean? That’s a good freaking question. What does that mean? And he relates it to the carpenter who builds the couch, and to the ideal the carpenter is instantiating when he builds the couch, that’s the form of the eidos. And yeah, the fact that the end leads into that, oh, okay, so there’s a city that you can imagine that doesn’t matter if it’s ever existed, right? And that’s what you’re going to do as a good king. Fair enough. Fair enough. A good king is going to do that. And a tyrant is not going to do that. The structure of the government doesn’t have to be different. It can be identical. Right. Just as a good person. You don’t even have to be a king. You just have to be a good person. If you’re a good person, you’re going to want to manifest that, especially within your soul. If you manifest it within your soul, you’re automatically going to broadcast it through your virtue into the world. Your action. Yeah. Well, but the virtue in your action, or not even in your action, just in your being. You only instantiate things in the world through action. That’s going to communicate the virtue. Yeah. Well, whatever. I don’t want to get into an argument. But there’s a distinction in what you manifest and what you act out, because you’re within things as well. Let me see. Oh yeah. But the other thing that I wanted to say about Dan is interesting, because he’s making a case for God. It’s actually like, guys, you’re just going to have to accept a creator of the universe now, because we’re going to have to. It’s like, okay, good. Well, if he doesn’t go that far, he is at least saying that there’s this concept of conveyance in terms of what Eric said, is that words convey more than they signify. The poverty of math is that it doesn’t convey any more than it signifies. So if you view the world as a composition of functions, and that’s a sad and impoverished view, if you overemphasize the mechanical. Like Dante, like what we talked about at convivium was according to Dante. I don’t know, I haven’t read it, but he says that love moves things. If you have this idea that movement and participation and poetry and poetic ways of information require participation, skin in the game, involvement, then differences in perspective, you don’t have to go to war over things that don’t matter. You can get towards the essence of the thing. Plato proceeds in book 10 to make fun of the one who’s able to analyze the nature of knowledge itself and have superior knowledge of every art, Mr. Smartypants. But what he’s conveying is that the content of the poetry is not where the meaning is. What’s important is the essence that I think is attempted to be conveyed. I don’t know if I have the best language to wrap that around, but it’s definitely not, to just, he’s definitely saying that describing things in propositional terms is in a different category than what the poets are doing. It’s not eligible also in terms of last point on virtue, it’s not eligible to say that one person grasps something in a superior manner than another because they’re different tea losses. Your tea loss is not the same. And so the manifestations are going to have variants. Right. And the problem with math is not that it doesn’t signify more, or it doesn’t do more than signify. It can’t. Like, because this is where the redemption comes in. Like, no, no, no, I’m going to make math by adding equations together, do more than signify. It’s like, no, you cannot do that. It’s not an option. It’s not available. You can’t do that. Don’t waste your time on it because it can’t happen by definition. And that’s where people get wrapped around the axle because they go, oh, but the math is so beautiful. It’s like, well, maybe, but it doesn’t solve the problem of it not being more than a signifier. It can never be more than a signifier. That’s where people get wrapped up. And maybe you can use it to display something that’s more than a signifier, but it’s not the math that’s doing the work, right? That is something like the love. And also, I do like you pointed this out. Yeah, this isn’t really about the king, right? It’s the man that sees the image of the city. And to go back, the piloting towards the common good, towards the common thing, common image of the city is what’s important. In other words, that’s a very sneaky way of saying the king matters and what the king does matter, but what you do matters too, and that you’re partially wrapped up in the city. And you’re the slave. It’ll manifest good. And you’re the slave. That’s also there. Well, and you’re the slave to the vision that you have as well. No, you’re the person that actually avoids the vision that you have. Right, but there’s an internal sense of slavery and an external sense. And that’s why freedom does exist. And that’s why freedom doctrine is garbage. It leads to equality doctrine. Everybody should be free. Everybody to universality and its equality. Free, and then we get into what do you mean by free? Yeah, but recent people mean free from consequence and constraint. That’s ridiculous. You don’t have that option, right? And the ancient Greeks would have thought you were nuts for even trying to articulate such an absurd thing. Yeah, and I think if we go to Sam Harris’ determinism, right? Like what he’s actually saying is you’re submitted to a principality. Well, that’s the funny part, right? He’s talking about the freedom to do what you want and determinism at the same time. And I’m like, does nobody see this really? Like, obviously, he’s trolling himself at some point. Probably every day he wakes up. And he’s like, I’m going to do what I want. I’m going to do what I want. But he’s not doing what he’s supposed to do. He’s just sitting there at some point, probably every day he wakes up. You know, the thing about it’s also it’s a form of objectification to view knowledge as a thing that should be possessed and hoarded because who cares if you have a whole bunch of facts, you know, you want the image that came to mind in the beginning of when Plato is like making fun of this. I just feel Plato is just sitting there like you keep using that word. I don’t think knowledge has the value that you think it has. I do not think that word means what you think it means. Well, that’s what they’re trying to do with the digital twin. I was listening to a Dutch commentary on it and they had this introduction video, right? And so they had two versions, right? Like one digital twin of an object, right? And the other one is a digital twin of a person. And it’s interesting how. Yeah, there’s this step that gets made and it’s well, like, first of all, they were talking about that it’s engineers designing the criteria by which these digital twins are formed, even if they’re just applying a set of categories, right? Like they’re picking the categories, right? And that’s pointing in the direction, right? And then you get the reciprocal process with people interacting with the thing. But but also, like, if you have a digital twin of an object, that’s just a model. Like, it’s literally a model. It’s just more complex. Which is really just a map, but we have a new word so it’s fancy. Well, no, it’s an interactive map. Like it’s like. It’s actually. Yeah, but it’s a little bit, but it is capable of simulation. I don’t know. So capable of simulation. Yeah. Well, this is the reason that. I don’t know if you draw on them. They are. Yeah, I mean, this is the reason why a painting can be more real than a photograph of high resolution is because a painting can convey something different than a photograph can convey. And that’s the nature of beauty. This is from Roger Scruton. I read a listen to a book on a hero on beauty on the way to Arkansas two weeks ago. And he in front of the book, he said beauty is not something that’s like portrayed sequentially or linearly. And when you paint an image, the way that it transmits information is cannot be encapsulated in a description of, let’s say, painting or something like that, or saying the story happened to ABC and D and here is the outcome. It’s not in the same category of relating. Yes, but I actually think that last sentence was correct. It’s not in the same category as relating. Therefore, the way in which it transmits information is incorrect, right? Because the way that you’re relating to it is not by it transmitting information to you, but you placing things into it. That’s the reciprocal opening. Right. It’s a relationship where you’re the one modifying the world. That’s right. Everybody wants reality to be a thing you’re conforming to. And while that there is an aspect to that, I would call that existence, things you’re conforming to our existence and the things you’re contributing to and creating or manifesting a reality that resolves the reality existence paradox quite nicely. It also means that everything you do matters, by the way, which sucks that Peterson seems to be right about that. But also doesn’t matter. Well, it’s happening anyway. So good luck to you if you think you can get around it. Oh, yeah, like I want to invite all this. Sat through all this horror show today to leave some comments, because apparently people are watching this, which is amazing. But also we’d like participation. So, yeah, tell us what you thought of when listening to. What you found valuable, right? Because different people hear different things and we don’t always know what what points we’re getting across. So I think I think we want to land the plane. And we have any closing remarks and can relate to our intention. Danny, how did intimacy manifest? So conveyance, like how things are conveyed, essences of things, I need to kind of spend more time on that. But that’s kind of where my mind is sort of at is. What are the guidance? Like, you know, the what’s the word like a GP? I don’t know. How do we how is it that we are able to understand or grasp at at the essence of what’s important now? We can get it all, you know, we can dissect that a million different ways, but that’s that’s at a high level of the theme moving. I mean, we’re moving into the concept of forms and poetic forms of information is definitely such a part of that. So. Yeah, well, that’s that’s talking about the problem about going back into the cave. Like. You you can’t when you’re in the forms, I’d like to implement it into the world. Yeah, that’s. That’s hard, right? It’s it’s two worlds, right? Like there’s a gap between the lines, right? Sorry. Right. And then also just the concept of reality, like the things that are most real are the things that last longest, a true pleasure, a true opinion, a real thing. Like, you know, these are all different, different languages to get at. At what what is the kernel of that? You know what? What exactly again, we talked about it earlier on. Where do you draw the lines between between these things? I mean, as far as I can tell, it just seems like as long as we have a shared value space and are able to work on the same teleology together or work together on a project, that’s as far as I can tell, it seems to be good enough. But maybe I’m wrong about that. I don’t know. But then, like, ultimately, right, like the answer, like, God is faithful, right? Like, so that which remains true, the longest. Right. And so that which is eternal, they also call it eternal. Right. So if you want to have this shared project, right, like it’s going to be the city that Plato mentioned, right, like it’s like at least to be a citizen in that and find people who are also trying to achieve that citizenship. So last thing on this, too, I think one of the important things with Mark’s livestream last night, Father Eric, we were talking about a guy from Germany who pulled off a miracle, maybe potentially the. Biggest miracle in the 21st century saving the German, at least economy. And Eric said, hey, you know, in World War II, guess which demographic was the least swayed by the fancy looking uniforms and having a strong mission? You know, the Catholics, they had, you know, the Catholic demographic in Germany already had from like symbolic, symbolic, like symbolic things, rituals, etc. That kept them plugged in. So part part of it is the way that we participate with one another and relate to the past in time is we have to be we have to be plugged into the things that we’re inheriting and that came before us. Otherwise, there’s consequences. Yeah, and this actually goes into James Lindsay. I was watching a little bit of his stream with Benjamin Boyce and he was talking about, well, there’s all of these things that give symbolic structures and we get to pick our symbolic structure. Right. And like, like, what did Hitler do? Right. Like he actively tried to recreate or invent a symbolic framework for the nation to participate in with myths and all, like the whole deal. Right. And it’s like, you can do that. Right. But like, like, if everybody gets to pick their, their structure, right, like, what is what is preventing the monster from taking over? Right. Like, because not every structure is capable of keeping the monster at bay. Like that’s. And then we go to the unjust, right? Like, like, how, how do you know that what well, like this liberalism or classical liberalism that you’re talking about isn’t unjust? Because, like, it seems unjust to me if you’re basically ending up effectively disguising good from people. Because that’s. I think part of the recession of the church, it actually extends past the church and we have a recession of Western culture and this weird, I’m a better person because I’m more ashamed of my past than you. And that is actually a great crime because if you’re not holding on to all of your past, not keeping track of it, not using it as a thing to ferment yourself to what you should be, that’s what makes you vulnerable to these false histories and false ideologies. Right, well said. Yeah, that’s the historical grounding that I talk about. Sometimes that’s where it’s at. I talked about that in my live stream last night or tried to, I’m navigating patterns. Yeah, the historical ground is really important because you don’t have that, that there’s a void and if you don’t fill it with something good, it’ll get filled with something not good. Almost certainly, I mean, it might get filled with something good, but the odds are not in your favor, we’ll say. And so best not to take the chance, but instead to actively engage in making sure these components are there to squeeze out the bad instances of them. And yeah, I mean, it’s interesting that these concepts are here and nobody’s really mentioning them, even though they seem really relevant right about now, especially with the sort of rejection of the lineage from which we derived our culture, which is very much Plato’s Republic, not only Plato’s Republic, but certainly very much Plato’s Republic. Yeah, I think part of the shame of the past, he just kills motivation and heroism. I mean, we talk a lot about the problems of individualism, which can maybe do that, but I think it is important to cultivate strength and then put it to use. Like there are missions that need to be executed. That will happen. Like you can, that will happen, right? You can complain about Andrew Tate all day long, but also nobody else was filling that void. And so that’s kind of the problem. You can’t sit there and say, well, he rose up and did this thing as a man when you didn’t, because that’s actually your fault at that point. Sorry to break it to you. Right, and Andrew Tate is relatively, that’s the other part. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. His crimes seem to be greatly exaggerated to some extent, even if his language is different. Even if they’re not, right? Like it’s only his population that he’s hurting. So if he’s taking over a nation, then we’re talking different. Well, and if he’s hurting them, but on average, it seems like what he’s doing is actually helping people. But the thing is, he’s filling a void and it’s not clear to me that he’s doing a bad job of that. And you can argue that it’s imperfect and you certainly got some flaws and that may be true. I’m not going to look into it because I don’t know the time. Complaining about it. Just go fix it. OK, right. That’s the issue. Go fix it. Don’t complain about him. Displace him. Because someone will and that someone could be worse. And then that, to Danny’s earlier point, is the history, the recent past, we’ll say, back in the 1930s and 40s. That’s what happened. There’s a void gets filled. Better make sure it gets filled by the good. Better have an idea of the good. Can’t be not evil. That’s not an idea of the good by definition. That’s an identification against. It won’t work on average. It won’t work. And yeah, people are going to do things. So you better be prepared that those things that they do are good. Otherwise, they’re not going to do good things. It’s not that hard. Right. I don’t know if I made this comment, right? But like Plato often talks about like this principle manifesting upon the city. Right. And then he states this will happen. Right. And so that’s not a statement about this will happen to the individual exposed to this situation. But if a population is exposed to this pressure, people will cave. Right. Like that’s no longer optional. And so it’s important to realize that if we’re talking about the inevitability of something, right, like the inevitability will express itself within the flow of time and not within necessarily even this generation. Like it will happen at a point. Yeah. So let’s do our reflection. Then he wanted to reflect on intimacy. Mark wanted to think about attitude of Plato on poetry, and I wanted to get a dramatic. And Sally wanted to relate to the personal stories of the people here. Right.