J. B. Thompson

Authorial Rabbit musings.

The New York Times‘ Peter Wehner mentions Plato’s Cave in his June 13 column in relation to those mystifying persons who choose to make distrust of all expertise a personal creed, who would rather die than wear masks, opt to seek out the riskiest venues, and so on, whose freedom is endangered by any form of government regulation; yet trust completely leaders who disparage expertise. Since there can be no society without government and even leaders who purport to disparage expertise and government create governments and rules and claim to be experts, this is all a puzzlement.

It’s as if a homeowner were to contemplate a renovation, and knowing he does not have the expertise, chooses as a starting point to eliminate all contractors with a good reputation for quality work, getting the job done on time, supportive of his or her team, good communications and fair pricing, and instead consciously to seek out notorious contractors who are known to cheat their customers and workers and their families, who don’t complete on time or never, who charge outrageously and who lie through every phase of the job, who are litigious, who lie about giving to charity, who are bigoted and misogynistic. Usually in communities there is a list of such bad contractors to protect the public, but of course disparagers of expertise would not trust that list.

The Allegory of the Cave episode in occurs Plato’s Republic, with Socrates leading the dialectic to discover what would be the best form of government. The allegory is an example of the technique to educate the Republic’s rulers who need to step away from their reliance of the senses and appearance.

Dwellers in the cave believe they are seeing reality but what they see are only shadows, reflections on the cave wall. An alternate reality. When they emerge into sunlight and the real world, they are at first baffled. The question is whether they are able to believe what they see in the sunlight for there was comfort in their shadows.

Ancient Greece comes up often these days, because the city state of ancient Athens, where democracy was founded, was hit at the peak of its power by a terrible plague. Most of the population was infected, twenty-five percent of them died, even its ruler Pericles, the builder of the Parthenon, and it marked the beginning of the end of Athens’ greatness.

What made Athens great? The Athenian general and politician Themistocles is an interesting figure in that regard. The democracy that Plato derides contributed to Athens’ rise. It needs to be remembered, of course, that only twenty-five percent of the population participated as free people in Athens. Women and slaves could not.

Nevertheless the democratic process gave those who could participate a powerful sense of community, the power to shape their lives. After the first Persian invasion had been repelled, it was Themistocles who used that community power to protect Athens from the second great invasion. A rich seam of silver had been found near Athens and some politicians argued the money should not be used by government but handed out to each citizen. Knowing the Persians would attack again and only a navy could protect Athens, Themistocles argued, not without cunning, that the money should instead be used to build a navy. He — and a community spirit — prevailed, and Athens was ready and able to defeat the Persians.

The Republic travels through strange terrain. Socrates takes the time to sort out the concept of justice, what is a just man, a just life. He imagines a state — a benign dictatorship — ruled by a philosopher king, someone trained in wisdom, courage and temperance. He gives great value to education. He imagines a trained guardian class, who share wives and children. Children do not know their biological parents.

Socrates was an intellectual vagrant. He wondered around poor, disheveled and pugnacious, and ready to argue with anybody. His vision of a benign dictatorship seems at odds with his lifestyle. But then it was Plato writing the Republic, not Socrates.

Plato describes other forms of government: timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. Democracy — which arises in reaction to the wealth disparity of oligarchy — does not come off well, as in his view it leads to mob rule and eventually tyranny. Wikipedia describes his view of tyranny:

The populism of the democratic government leads to mob rule, fueled by fear of oligarchy, which a clever demagogue can exploit to take power and establish tyranny. In a tyrannical government, the city is enslaved to the tyrant, who uses his guards to remove the best social elements and individuals from the city to retain power (since they pose a threat), while leaving the worst. He will also provoke warfare to consolidate his position as leader. In this way, tyranny is the most unjust regime of all.

Has a familiar ring.

Plato notwithstanding, trusting a dictatorship, benign or otherwise, is unwise. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as Lord Acton said. Which is why Churchill said of democracy that it was the worst form of government except for all the others. If the democratic institutions remain strong, you can throw the bums out. Even Themistocles was tossed. Athens devised a special process. Citizens could in effect vote on whom they would like to see ostracized from Athens for ten years. Long after the Persian defeat had faded from memory, they ostracized Themistocles. Eventually he went to work — wait for it — for the Persians.

Listening to Bob Dylan’s new album, My Rough and Rowdy Life, a remarkable exploration of and incantation on mortality and the mystery of the lived life, the AR remembers John F. Kennedy’s call to community spirit: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. He did not mean that your country should do nothing for you. He spoke of a vigorous partnership between citizens and their government.

If there is no longer a will to ask what you can do for your country, no longer a faith in your country’s best people and only the nihilism of choosing the worst contractor for the job, only a deluded hiding behind religion or other ideologies for personal gain, then the plague will have to run its course.