Episode 44: Plato's Republic Book VIII-3: Democracy

Could your cherished democratic freedoms be the very seeds that grow a tyrannical overlord? We pull back the curtain on Socrates' view of political evolution, dissecting the paradoxical journey from democracy to tyranny. Amidst the hustle of personal freedoms, we often neglect the virtues that safeguard our society, inadvertently paving the way for despots. In this episode, Eddie and Aneesh describe the bustling 'supermarket of constitutions' that is democracy, and the vulnerabilities it harbors. Listen to the Socratic description of democracy's ironic downfall, where an excess of choice and the relentless pursuit of wealth foster conditions ripe for a tyrant's rise.

Our compelling narrative doesn't just stop at the societal level; it dives into the human psyche. We explore the transformation of the oligarch's son, torn between the rational discipline of his upbringing and the appetites stoked by democratic society. It's a tale of internal struggle mirroring the external chaos, where the balance between individual pleasure and communal responsibility teeters precariously. Our conversation doesn't shy away from asking tough questions, challenging listeners to reflect on their own values and the potential consequences for the collective.

Lastly, we pose a philosophical quandary that has puzzled great minds for ages: is it better to live a simple life of contented ignorance or to wrestle with the complexities of self-awareness? As we ponder the individual's place in a democracy, the specter of tyranny emerges, warning of the dangers when personal gain overshadows common good. Join us on this winding path of philosophy, where examination of your own convictions might be the compass needed to navigate the stormy seas of democracy's future.

Addendum: This is an AI generated summary of an all too human conversation!

Transcript

Aneesh: 0:20

Optimism in a cup.

Eddie: 0:22

Yes, ambition in a cup, pure black ambition In liquid form. Alright, we're recording and we're going to continue our discussion of the constitutions of the deformed or suboptimal states that Socrates is elaborating. So up until this point we've discussed the aristocracy, the conditions and the constitution that lead to democracy, and then the conditions and constitutions that pertain to oligarchy, and now we're moving into democracy. So democracy and here I'm sort of summarizing, I'm not actually following the trail of the Socratic rationale, which we'll get into, I think, later but Socrates characterizes democracy as a state of mental and effectively, at some point, actual slavery. So he describes the democratic constitution as one that is not really focused, is subject to the whims of different expectations to include residual, oligarchic, spendthrift type considerations. So a democratic individual may at certain points be quite conservative, quite penny pinching, but then can be taken and swept up into drone type desires Again. So the idea of the drone being somebody who's not really contributing anything to society, and they live a life where they essentially satisfy their desires and their non-necessary aspects of their life. And so the democratic constitution is one where you have people essentially following their own whim without actually committing to any of them, and what this leads to is what Socrates talks about on examination of the democratic state or constitution a supermarket of constitutions, basically a multifarious collection of constitutions, all of which are somewhat living in harmony.

Eddie: 3:04

But the seeds of tyranny are planted therein. And the reason the term slave is invoked in this description is because the members, the constitution of the democratic republic is one where the only thing that they're aligned to consistently is what their idea is of freedom. And so freedom becomes the social currency of the democracy, just like wealth was the social currency of the oligarchy honor for democracy and virtue for the aristocracy. And so when you pursue freedom for its own sake, you now end up in sort of like this relativistic, unfocused soup of societal fads, drives, desires, and there it leads to sort of an unfocused life and not to jump too far ahead. But we'll backtrack. Therein lie the seeds of the eventual tyranny that evolves from the democracy, because whenever freedom becomes pursued for its own sake, without regard to virtue, without regard to temperance, then you can end up in a dynamic which is described here in his explanation of how democracies devolve into tyrannies. You end up in a situation where people now will look to somebody else to protect their freedom. So there's this constant outsourcing, not only of their focus and drive and their aim in life. But you eventually get to the point where the individual or the democratic constitution outsources the defense of the freedom that they want to enjoy. And so some hero, some champion the eventual tyrant is somebody who promises to do that and then leads them down the path toward tyranny.

Eddie: 5:02

Now, that's a very quick summary snippet of what was discussed here, but I think we should go back now and talk about how is it precisely that democracy evolves out of the oligarchy. Yeah, and so how would you describe that? Because they do point out the fact that the oligarchy and the democracy actually have similar conditions for their own. They both carry the recipe for their own demise built into the system. And what happens is, with the oligarchy, there is a desire to break the system, because what ends up happening is you end up with sort of a caste system. You've got like a haves and have not group and that leads to resentment. And what ends up happening is that the have nots eventually realize that. I mean Socrates, I think, actually uses similar phraseology. That says, on occasions where you do what the have nots do, interact with the haves they look at the haves and say look at this out of shape dude. I could take this guy out right now. Why?

Aneesh: 6:12

don't we just do that? That happens in the, in the yeah, so the. Before you get there, though, the, this path of oligarchy devolving into a democracy, which then devolves into a tyranny, is the underlying theme of all of these constitutions.

Aneesh: 6:34

Right, we discussed this Right, where the perfect Republic, with the philosopher king and the guardians who are the oxel, who are the intermediary between the, the philosopher king, and the, the masses, that is, the workers and the auxiliary, that that philosophic sorry, that perfect Republic cannot last forever there is. There is this faction that gets created from within, and this talk of the, of the platonic number, which is the perfect number for you know, for a human, and how there is a remainder left in there, that remainder and eventually creates a faction inside of this, this perfect Republic, which then devolves into a democracy which is an honor loving Republic, which is that, like you said, right. What is the good? The good in the, in the perfect Republic, the aristocratic Republic, is virtue, justice is good Justice. Everything is being done for the sake of justice. In democracy, the good is honor and then in in, once you are honor seeking, then it creates in you this desire to separate yourself from those that you believe are not honorable. And it turns out the objective metrics of that honor is what takes precedence over time.

Aneesh: 8:02

And there is this accumulation of wealth. Initially this in secret, and then, once it, the democracy, devolves into an oligarchy where the good now is wealth. This is no longer a secret. All the possessions are out in the open of everybody to see and then that creates the haves and the have nots, and not only the have nots, the created not just because they don't have anything. They actually they may have had and they lost it to, to, to someone else. And they are still allowed now, when they have no possessions and no ability to recoup their possessions, still participate inside of the or participate, be or live inside of the republic.

Aneesh: 8:44

And it creates a class of people who are, in a way, seething because they have lost everything and so off. The people who don't participate in an oligarchy, the group that is that is dangerous are the ones who are, who had possessions, were part of the ruling class and now they've lost everything. And now they are, they are, they are waiting for revenge. So when he says drones, the drone is kind of like the opposite of a philosopher king, in a way, the in the higher order constitutions like a democracy. The Drone concept really doesn't exist inside of a democracy. But when you come into oligarchy, suddenly how he talks about these drones, a drone is somebody who's actually useless.

Eddie: 9:39

Useless, but they're. They're kind of like they're the hedonistic element of correct.

Aneesh: 9:44

So they are the appetitive right, useless part. Right, you can imagine the aptitude part inside of a perfect Republic is the world he correlates to the three components of the soul, and that's a great right, right.

Eddie: 9:54

So there is an aptitude part, it's not.

Aneesh: 9:55

It's not wrong to have an appetite, it's actually natural to have one, but to be able to work toward that, to feed the entire system while you choose Satiated appetite. That is a very different way of looking at it, as opposed to being completely useless and be at being appetitive. So the, the oligarchic drone, are come in two forms a stingless one and the one with sting. The stingless ones are the, the ones who have no education, no means of Of being able to participate in the republic. They've never had and they will never continue and they will never have in the future. These, the ones with stings, are either those who are committing crimes. So they are. They come from have-nots, but they have the the Power to be able to steal from the right so they are people who have fallen from the rich to this right and this this stingless ones are the ones that may have the motivation to retaliate, but not the means.

Eddie: 10:55

But the ones with the sting have the motivation and the means, and often they're the ones that have actually lost their position and so that is in the oligarchy.

Aneesh: 11:03

And then, as you go into a democracy, turns out that these drones become even more powerful and that concept of the drones gaining more power. You can think about it as the opposite of the, the power of a philosopher king inside of a constitution. Now, if you think about these, we talk about constitution, where we talk about, talk about a human, a human who is driven by a who's who's Republic, ordered republic inside of that of their mind is run by a philosopher king. That philosopher king is we have discussed this is the smallest in number Of all the multitudinous cells that exist inside of that human. The drone element actually is the largest. But inside of an ordered republic, those drones are not drones. There are no drones exist. In there, aptative parts are the working class and so the, the work is being generated by everybody who works in unison.

Aneesh: 11:59

But as that devolves, as a human devolves or doesn't ascend to a perfect aristocracy inside of his or her mind, they have lot more of these drones, these appetitive. Neither are they participating in anything positive. Not only that, they continue to have, or consume or have negative tendencies. Some of these tendencies can be dangerous where they are. Not only are they not willing to participate in something good, they're actually destructive towards their Uh, toward both themselves and others, and so, if you look at it from that perspective, democracy is where we find most of of ourselves to be.

Aneesh: 12:39

Democracy is when it starts with the same way you said. You're right, starts the same way. The good In the early forms of democracy is still money. Money, or who has money has power. Money is the good, and so what happens in the situation is in an oligarchy, money was good, but lavish shows of wealth or spending money on things that are frivolous was looked down upon. An oligarchic person or an oligarchic constitution Holds on to wealth and are In my heart, miserly they are hard pressed to even spend them on things that are useful.

Aneesh: 13:21

But if they had to spend it, they spend it on useful things. They won't spend it on useless things. So it's not about you know the, the brand name clothes. It's about making sure you have. You buy enough clothes. You buy good quality clothes, but you don't buy brand name clothes. You buy you have nutritious food. We don't have to have caviar right.

Aneesh: 13:39

So once that that devolves into a democracy, where that distinction goes away, and what leads to that, what leads you from going from an oligarchy to a democracy, is for an oligarchic Constitution, for an oligarch to be able to make money he has. There's only that much money to burn out. The only way they can do it. The one of the best ways to make money is through interest. If you would just take money and put and Dig up a hole in your backyard and put it in there, it's not going to make any money. The. That's the, the way the world works right now. The only reason why people get richer is because of interest and the. The only way interest can be levied is. There's someone out there who's in need for that money.

Aneesh: 14:22

And if you, if you had a simple society. When, when we started talking about the republic, one of the first questions that was asked to Socrates was you know what does justice look like? And he described the society, a society where People tell the, the soil what they got out of it. They, they, they ate they, they slept on you know these mattresses and drank this simple wine and it it fixed for desert and danced around the fireplace. And Glaucon I think it's glaucon who says you know, these guys live like pigs.

Aneesh: 14:54

He's like nobody's, like no, my friend, this is uh, uh, this is a simple life. And he says well, glaucon is like well, what about, you know, desserts? And what about, uh, the plays and what about things like that? So he says oh, so you're talking about a complex society right.

Eddie: 15:08

I say that's right. Socrates immediate. Yet at the suggestion of some unnecessary Relish, some relish some extra thing. Immediately. Socrates jumped that oh, you want something complex.

Aneesh: 15:20

You want something complex and right.

Eddie: 15:23

This is all becoming very apparent.

Aneesh: 15:25

So it's so obvious. Now, if you think about it like the, the more such Tendencies exist where you want to satisfy not just the basic, but now you want to delve into the luxuries of it. That is when you need more money. The way you get more money is by by getting other people, not yourself. If one has all of these appetites, one is doomed. If one can control their appetites.

Eddie: 15:48

And but tell others hey, it's okay to buy that bmw.

Aneesh: 15:51

Hey, it's okay to get that 4 000 square foot house. You don't have the money right now, don't worry, I will lend you the money. You deserve it. You know you work so hard. You deserve it. You know why don't you just pay me back with, you know, some interest and and the other person's like oh, such a magnanimous gent, you know who's giving me all this money. And you're right, he's right, I deserve this car, I deserve this house. And next thing, you know, you are in debt. And if say, you pay the debt off Right, at the end of the day all you got was a car and a house for it. But who's? You never made any money. You have no net worth.

Aneesh: 16:22

The guy who has the money is this, this, this, the person who is thrifty, the oligarch, the thrifty oligarch now three oligarch says you know, wow, I could fool this guy. Let me go ahead and fool as many of these people as I can. Let's make it such that it's very easy for people to take out loans so easy for you know. And then let's advertise the, the beautiful german engineered car and these beautiful big houses with these layouts. You know, let's advertise that so that young people are always looking to do these things. You know, buy this. That status is associated with what you drive, not how much money is in your bank, don't worry about that. And they create that milieu. And Then you go from an oligarchy where everybody was thrifty and holding on to their money To a place where some are holding on to money and now you're creating this class of people who just want to have, have appetites, and you're trying to keep that going. Now, eventually, what happens is people come to realize that they are, they have lost out of everything. They have no money. This house, the bank took away because they couldn't pay them, pay the interest on it, they couldn't pay the mortgage on it, the skull was taken away, you know whatever. And now they find themselves in the drone class. They have the appetites, but instead of being stingless drones these are drones with sting they want to get back at the man, and we heard this a lot right now. Right, all of this, this you know one percent of what was a movement, right about the richest one percent versus the bottom 99 percent, and you know there was a big revolt about. You know who these people are and things like that and how there should be quality. Right, you see that in our modern day life, you see a lot of this. I find myself complaining about the man. Right, that's one of the big the. If you want to blame anything, you can blame it on the man. And the man here is the thrifty oligarch and we are the drones. Now the the In.

Aneesh: 18:18

In case of a democracy, like you were saying, the democracy is a multi fair, is a multi-toudness democracy, right. Where there is no single, there is no single line of thought or order of business, I have a problem, you have a problem. Our problems are not the same. So we don't fight together. There's no common, we don't come together to fight. You see what I mean. And so we just coexist. There's harmony, you said you use what harmony?

Aneesh: 18:47

which I think is a which I don't believe it's harmony. It is a general lack of, I should say even, lack of responsibility. It is what would be the word for it. It is this disregard. The only time in a democracy I am incensed is when I am wronged. You know there's this line in apology that Socrates says. He says that you know you as a citizen. You are beholden to the laws Because the laws created you. Only, it turns out only when you suddenly find yourself at an odd with the law that you start screaming and showing up to court and, you know, pleading with people about this law. This law is unjust, right? If you thought that the law was unjust, you should have started protesting against it from the get go. The fact that you participated in it for the majority of your life and never opposed it, that means you accept the law. You see, and then it's yeah and it's very telling that he Socrates is.

Eddie: 20:12

Socrates' trial and verdict is an exercise in the democratic failure.

Aneesh: 20:21

That's exactly right.

Eddie: 20:22

Because Miletus essentially plays a role in this microcosm of the tyrant. He convinces the crowd without actually providing any useful evidence to convict Socrates, purely based off of inflammatory, what you could call evidence and not of anything objective.

Aneesh: 20:44

Yeah, whether he was a tyrant in that situation. I don't know, but I don't know if he had that kind of power. But that is a failure of democracy.

Eddie: 20:50

I don't mean he was a literal tyrant.

Aneesh: 20:52

Yeah, yeah, I'm saying he was basically he could.

Eddie: 20:55

He was essentially playing sort of the microscopic role of the tyrant in that one. But even then, if you In terms of swaying the crowd against their enemy. I see what you mean, and this and that happens later on here. So I mean I think this all ties together.

Aneesh: 21:06

It does tie in, but I'm saying that, even if you didn't have to go to a tyranny, you could see how, if Socrates is the perfect republic, how a democracy can be unjust toward a perfect republic, like even that process of a trial by peers, which is a democratic process. You can see how this injustice built into that process.

Eddie: 21:31

Socrates. The two main thrusts of his critique to democracy are the fact that there's this lack of focus, this sort of aimlessness to democracy, but there's always. It's quite vulnerable to tyranny. But, to use his language here, I like how he essentially builds the logical chain from the seeds of the uprising that leads to democracy in the Allergerchi to the actual Allergerchi, and he points out simply that you cannot honor wealth in a city and maintain temperance in the citizens at the same time. And that essentially leads to the idea of the drones, with and without sting, who are essentially primed for revolt at that point.

Eddie: 22:13

Because in the meantime, the money makers, he says, with their heads down, pretending not to see them, ie to have nots, have increased the size of the drone and beggar class. And not only that, you end up with a population that has become fond of luxury. And then it's later on, at that point where Socrates says you know, when they have more and more meetings where they have nots, have this thought to themselves, quote these men are ours for the taking, they're good for nothing. And then there, now, you have the revolt as essentially primed to be triggered and he says then democracy comes about, I suppose, and the poor are victorious. They are not able or expel the others and give the rest and equal share in the constitution and the ruling offices and the majority of offices in it are assigned by a lot. So it's this tension between the imbalance of what happens to be the social currency at that time that leads to the revolt and the creation of democracy.

Aneesh: 23:15

He says you know, if you want to put an end to this, if you want to put an end to the creation of this drone class that is full of appetites because the constitution was such that it allowed for people to just partake in their appetites and have you know this disregard, for you know living a simple life, so the simplest, the best thing that you can do, the best way to make to compel citizens to care about virtue is if you prescribe that the that voluntary contracts are entered into at the lender's own risk.

Eddie: 24:00

Right. I remember reading that he said that is the main law that would do it. That's simple, because the the second you have a system where somebody can lose their shirt and there's no consequence to the people who the shirt loser is beholden to it's very complex, it is very complex. Socrates said it more simply than I did, but essentially you have a system where the lender is at no risk.

Aneesh: 24:23

That's right. That means if you buy a house and the bank gave you the loan to do it, you were liable for that Right, as opposed to if the bank was liable for it.

Eddie: 24:33

How, how likely were they to give you that loan Right there won't be Right.

Aneesh: 24:39

So and now again, if you think about it from our perspective, right, we are not wealthy oligarchs. So we, in a way, if you look around you, democracy looks like it works really well. All around us, in this, in this neighborhood right now, where you and me are sitting, almost every house I don't think anybody outright owns their house they have taken a loan out for doing it Right. If Socrates ran this country, we wouldn't be living in houses like this, we won't be driving the cars that we drive, we won't be partaking in the kind of food that we partake in. So most people read this and they're like I'm glad Socrates doesn't run this country. Right, this is there's a reason why, if one reads the Republic, they don't.

Aneesh: 25:26

It's very difficult to take away what you're actually supposed to be doing and living, because that's hard to do, for because we are these people we are fond of luxury, incapable of effort, either mental or physical, and too soft to endure the pains and are lazy. That's who we are, and you know this might seem. This is, this is what Socrates says the subjects in democracy are. Now, this might seem too harsh, this characterization of who we are. You say no, we work really hard and you know we can endure pains, but as a general populace and this is a 556C Right it is for these reasons the rulers in the city treat their subjects in a way we describe and ask for themselves and those belonging to them. Don't they bring up the young to be fond of luxury, incapable of effort, either mental or physical, too soft to endure pleasures of pains, and lazy? I mean, that's these basically describing us, and this is a hard, hard caricature.

Eddie: 26:28

It's hard to read this chapter and not apply to the current environment and the political environment considerations, but it's also hard. I mean it's also very relevant to I mean most people's lived experience. I mean that's always the concern, yeah. But I like how he characterizes, I mean once the democracy has been established after he invokes this idea of the supermarket of constitution where people can just kind of pick out whatever they please. No-transcript. This description of the democratic constitution I thought was very powerful. He says there is no compulsion to rule in this city, even if you are qualified to rule or to be ruled if you do not want to be, or to be at war when others are at war or to keep the peace when the others are keeping it. If you do not want peace, or even if there happens to be a law preventing you from ruling or from serving on a jury, to be any the less free to rule or serve on a jury. Isn't that a heavenly and pleasant way to pass the time while it lasts?

Aneesh: 27:32

It's a beautiful statement.

Eddie: 27:33

Yeah, and thick with Socratic irony, but at the same time yeah.

Aneesh: 27:38

No, this is perfect. This is what we want, yeah.

Eddie: 27:41

This is freedom for its own sake.

Aneesh: 27:44

You can? You can you describe this to anybody and they'll be like yeah, that's exactly what I want. Man, I don't want to go and serve if I didn't have to be served, so this is.

Eddie: 27:53

I highlight the same thing.

Aneesh: 27:56

You cannot. You cannot look away from pastors like this. What this is talking about is the. This is a direct contrast, or as close of a direct contrast as you can get to the guardian class, right. So if you look at your order to public, the aristocratic republic, right, there are people who have the, the, the, the, the made of gold, right, we said they have the tendencies and they receive the physical and the, the, the mental training and then they are um, then they are exposed to the truth.

Aneesh: 28:33

That is the cave allegory. Their bonds are broken and because they have the ability, they turn toward the light. They don't have to, but they do. And when they do, then they are by dialectic discussion that led to the mouth. The cave has shown the light and then stay, see what the truth is and the good is, as opposed to the false uh images that were being shown in the cave. Then they come to understand the nature of the one and all of that. But after that they are compelled to go back down into the cave, put those bonds back on, face the wall of images and participate in that world. That is a sense of duty, and the only reason that they would do it is because they someone broke their bonds. The, the facilitator broke their bonds, so they owe it to the facilitator, the facilitator here being the constitution which they were born and which they were raised right In this case.

Aneesh: 29:33

This is somebody who says why do I need to go back? I don't need to do any of this. None, I am totally free. Everyone says if I want, I'll stay at the wall. If I want, I'll stay at the mouth of the cave. If I want, I'll go back. You have nobody to tell me anything.

Eddie: 29:52

Normally that one day, if it fancies them, they're like you know what?

Aneesh: 29:54

I'm just going to go back down in the cave and hang out and the other day like I don't want to do this, I want to do something else, and that when you, when you have unending choice, turns out you actually don't have any choice. They don't have. That is what you were talking about when you said slavery is what's happening inside of a democracy. It's a paradox. The paradox here is you believe you have all this freedom to do whatever you want, but if you look around, I'm not as free as as I would think that I would be. You know, we are all beholden to a certain way of living. We live in a house like this because it's the only kind of houses that are available. You see what I mean.

Aneesh: 30:41

These choices that we think we're making out of free will, we are actually subjected to. We are being coerced in many ways that we don't even realize that we are. There are fears inside of us. There are ways that we act which a free human being wouldn't act. You know, if you go back 100,000 years ago and if you were to compare, if you were to go back to an ancestor of ours 100,000 years ago and tell us this is what we do for a free they would. They would think that we are like in you know, cattle. We heard it everywhere. We told what to do, living within these bounds, in these rules. So this line, this there is. This is the the perfect archetype of a democratic citizen. This is somebody who has the qualifications rule but does have no compulsion to do, doesn't feel the compulsion. There's no duty to do anything.

Eddie: 31:33

Right and it there is at the root of this a sort of an internal conflict. But what happens is there's eventually sort of a numbness to the conflict. There's no, like you said, there's no sense of commitment to any whim that arrives. And so the Socrates has some very nice hammer blows here when he's describing the tension that leads to the democratic constitution, where he says and at one hand, won't they call reverence foolishness and drive it out as a disandered fugitive and calling temperance cowardliness? Won't they shower it with abuse and banish it? As for moderate and orderly expenditure, won't they persuade him that it is boorish and illiberal and join with a multitude of useless appetites to drive it over the border.

Eddie: 32:25

And here is when he's talking about the analogy of the.

Eddie: 32:29

Again, there's a lot of this father's son, father's son evolution through these deformed states.

Eddie: 32:37

And so this, where he's talking about the individual, has sort of this citadel that was built by an oligarchic father, but what happens is there's a, there's a weakness there, meaning the citadel is essentially being attacked and besieged by the drone type drives. And so there's a conflict wherein the oligarchic tendencies get criticized within the mind and then get abandoned. But then there's like a reproachment phase where they rush back to them, and it's not so much that the conflict leads to any eventual adoption of one or the other, but the constitution of the democratic individual seems to me just sort of gets used to letting go of commitment and just sort of following their whim, because after that, when they start to begin to rationalize their intemperance, he says they praise them and give them fine names, calling arrogance good breeding, anarchy as freedom, extravagance as magnificence and shamelessness as courage, and so there's sort of this corrupting and co-opting of things would normally be associated with virtue, and they've been supplanted with things that are completely from the realm of the lower class. The ambitious, the drives.

Aneesh: 34:01

Yeah. So what you're saying essentially is that what we're talking about prior to this was a democratic constitution, where the how does it? How does a democracy function and how it changes from an oligarchy to a democracy in the standpoint of a constitution, where, instead of the wealthy having a place in the office, now the wealthy exist inside of a democracy, but they don't participate in office. They don't have to, they don't have to win any of this, because they're just busy, they're just happy making money. They can do, everybody can do whatever they want. So then the drone class, the ones with the stings, these are the ones who now want power, and but they also want money. So they want to align with the wealthy, but they also want to rule, and one of the ways to make money is by ruling, and so. But these aren't people who are worthy of ruling, as opposed to in our aristocracy, where you only rule if you're worthy of rule. Only a democracy does not care about a person's foundations.

Aneesh: 35:09

Who the person is. It gives no thought as to what sort of practices someone went in or before he entered into politics Honours him only if he tells them he wishes the majority well.

Eddie: 35:23

Right, and therein is the key to tyranny, because that is, that is, the very potent mechanism of pandering that you see, even our, our, system.

Aneesh: 35:35

But even if we, before we go to tyranny, even democracy. That's exactly what's going on. You know it's socrates says this that you do not speak to the masses. If you are trying to convince the masses, it's not going to work. As a matter of fact, whenever you see somebody talking to a big crowd and the crowd is cheering him on, that person is only telling them what they want to hear. And that is the democracy. The popular man is not that. The crowd is convinced by the man.

Eddie: 36:01

The man agrees with the crowd and that's why he's the popular man, and this goes back to the book 6, criticism of, you know, members of the crew of a ship deciding who should be captain, correct, and what ends up happening is that you don't choose the best seafarer or the person who's you know the stargazer. You start picking the person who's good at getting picked at being the captain.

Aneesh: 36:23

That's perfectly said so that is the democratic constitution. But how does a democratic man form out of a democratic constitution? What's going on? There is what you were talking about.

Eddie: 36:33

And that's what I was getting at Right, and that is like.

Aneesh: 36:36

It's true, just like how before we had this man and son concept. I think this man and son concept is actually how one changes into the other inside of oneself. Right, one has these oligarchic tendencies. Then how one rebels against these oligarchic tendencies to now turn into this democratic person. It starts off as you said. The oligarchic tendencies are one has resources and one spends those resources very sparingly on only the most necessary things Good, healthy food as opposed to tasty food. You see what I mean Clothes that are good as opposed to clothes that are luxurious or branded or whatever. So food, clothing and shelter is a basic need and an oligarch will spend on that, but he wouldn't spend any more than what is necessary Right Now. Out of that comes the son is born into this oligarchic family. The oligarchic father doesn't have the education that he can now bestow on to his son.

Eddie: 37:52

So the son ends up with an incomplete education and has built in susceptibilities to external to the appetites. Right the appetites. The citadel that the son has internally is has defects in the walls. It's susceptible to being besieged by the appetites.

Aneesh: 38:10

Correct and the because they are uneducated in the, in the education that Socrates had prescribed for the guardians.

Eddie: 38:20

Right the father is uneducated.

Aneesh: 38:21

There's no child Son is going to be educated. The son is taught in the oligarchic ways of spending only on what is necessary and not on these appetites, but is raised amongst these appetites. And now the son is constantly colliding against these appetites and these appetites and these people. Now, in the center of a democracy, wealth is still considered to be the good Right. It's it, initially, it's wealth, and then it becomes freedom. But everybody wants to make money. And so if you are a wealthy, oligarchic son, you're going to always have people who are going to be distinctly the drones with stings. They're going to be hanging around you. Because you are this person.

Aneesh: 38:56

It can be easily cajoled and and and you'll be hearing this, this conversation constantly about how one should spend their money what's the point of having this money if nobody can see it? You know, why don't you wear these great clothes? Why don't you drive this great car? Why don't you, you know, do these things? And this, this son goes back and forth between, as you said, his father's stress on spending only on what is necessary, but his friends and followers who say hey, man, you need, you need to. Why are you being so stingy? Right, show off your wealth. That is what you were talking about. And they say you know he'll keep having, he'll keep going back and forth. At some point these appetites are always going to be stronger than rational thinking In, or even for an oligarch to be able to be thrifty and spend only on what's necessary. That is being rational. That's actually not being emotional.

Aneesh: 39:53

Yeah, discipline in a way, this is right.

Eddie: 39:56

Because discipline doesn't care if it's rational or rational, but I but. But discipline, yeah, they're very disciplined. But you see, in order to buy it.

Aneesh: 40:05

In order to be disciplined, you have to believe in something that you you're spending energy, which is, which is positive energy, but something that is actually not giving you that much back from a, from a operative standpoint, you see, because why I would divorce discipline.

Eddie: 40:22

To me discipline is completely divorced from virtue or whether something.

Aneesh: 40:25

Yeah, I'm saying that it is virtue, I'm just saying that you believe that this thing to be good even though it doesn't feel good in the value of pursuing it. That's where discipline comes in, right? I mean, no one says that he was disciplined and ate a donut every day, you know, as opposed to, what I mean to say is that it's easy to do not have discipline to eat a donut it is 10 donuts, maybe it's different, but again, my point is that, if it's a donut.

Eddie: 40:46

It's a context maybe. What I mean to say is that it was easier to do.

Aneesh: 40:51

There's no discipline that's needed. It's gets harder for discipline. And in order to do that, that hard thing that requires discipline, you have to have some rational thinking. You're not just giving him to your appetites at that point, right. So this person has to give up the business. There's a contest between appetite and rational thought. Appetite ends up winning. If you don't have the right education, we don't have the right upbringing. That's what happens to the democratic son, right. Eventually, he, he starts to believe the these things that the appetites are telling him.

Aneesh: 41:22

The appetites is saying that who cares about reverence? Right. Who cares what people are saying of how talented and gifted you are? And that's, that's foolishness. You have nothing to show for it, right.

Aneesh: 41:37

And then temperance. You know why. If you have the money, spend it, man, you know, are you worried that you're going to lose the money? You're a coward. If you're not ready to show you the money, you know you're a coward. So temperance becomes cowardliness. And then, yeah, so moderate and orderly expenditures, Like, if you have all this money, why you, you know, spending small parts of it and holding on to big part of it?

Aneesh: 42:03

Why are you doing that? That means you are illiberal or boorish. You just, you just don't have the style, you don't have the class Right, and you hear this over and over again and then eventually you're like, yeah man, why should I, why should I listen to my oligarchy father and hold on to all this money? It makes no sense, have it, let's spend it. You don't think about the future, you think about the now and you think about pleasing these, these drones, not realizing that they are drones, they're useless and that's what? Then it eventually leads you to change who you are and like. You think about arrogance. It's true, like, if you look around you right now, in the world that we live in, arrogance is considered to be good, breathing Like who, people who are arrogant, that it's actually not necessarily, not always a bad trait, you know. It's like folks who are, again, kind of only ones who can, who can, be arrogant are arrogant, right, I mean right.

Eddie: 43:00

That means you need to have power to be arrogant Right, when the arrogance basically gets sort of twisted, there's this rationalization of things that are vices and signs of things that are not good, and that's what I meant by rationalization of intemperance.

Eddie: 43:17

When you see right, when you see intemperance, it gets rationalized through the system. So, yeah, so that. So the process is so the the person moves from the oligarchic up breathing because of the flaws that are intrinsic to the oligarchic up breathing. They're susceptible and vulnerable to drives and ambitious ambitions hedonistic drives and ambitions and there's an exerbal and systematic process of giving into them. And part of that process is this rationalization of the hedonistic drives. Meaning, oh, just like you said, arrogance must be something good, extravagance must be something good, like magnificence.

Aneesh: 43:57

Shamelessness is actually courage. No, that's actually courageous.

Eddie: 44:00

But it has nothing to do with virtue. We've talked about courage at length, and so so there's so the. What I was trying to say is that that transition is important, but it's also important is the fact that there is a. There's a going back and forth process too, where the son he taught soccer he talks about. At some points there's a sense of shame that arrives in the, in the sun, and they may scurry back to oligarchic principles and then start trying to live in accordance with those, but then eventually those hedonistic drives eventually come back and take over, and the net result of that is that the person gets used to creating an equivalence between the oligarchic that's a beautiful point.

Eddie: 44:45

And that's the thing, and that's the key point here, because then, once they're used to switching, losing their aim. Socrates says he lives always surrendering rule over himself to whichever desire comes along.

Aneesh: 44:56

That's right.

Eddie: 44:57

And that is the key.

Aneesh: 44:58

But see that that part is where we find ourselves, even the ones among us Right now, right, oh yeah. You suddenly find yourself saying you know what? No man, I don't. This life of consumption is not for me. You know, I'm going to. You know, I need to take a break from this.

Eddie: 45:16

This is fads. This is everything. This is trends. This is like oh, I'm gonna write.

Aneesh: 45:22

Do it, any pursuit right, even if you look at the medical pursuit right. You spend your younger days wanting to achieve this pinnacle of whatever this pursuit is right. And when you get there and you keep participating in it, suddenly you're like you know what man this is. This doesn't lead anywhere. Like this is not, this is not. I'm not happy anymore. You know what, I'm going to step away from it, I'm going to quit, I'm going to do whatever else, and so that is kind of going back to your oligarchity. So I'm going to get my time back, I'm going to spend time with my family or whatever, right.

Aneesh: 45:57

But how long do we stay in that state? You find ourselves in that state for a short period of time and then we move on to something else. We're trying to acquire something else. It's a pursuit of you know, you suddenly have this time and now you're in the pursuit of something else and that becomes your obsession. And so we are never ordered in one direction all the time. Like if you were a philosopher king, there wouldn't be the swaying of going from appetite, power, hungry for money, power, status, and then swaying all the way to social justice and social justice and reform, and then swaying all the way back to your BMWs and your car. You know that's not how it's going to happen. You're going to be constantly in focused in the pursuit of the common good.

Eddie: 46:43

Right and the in the aristocrat, the aristocratic ideal. There's roles. Everybody fulfills their roles Correct and there's no interference between and there. In that lack of interference is where justice emerges. That's exactly right.

Aneesh: 46:58

Justice is the ordering of these, this hierarchy of philosopher, king to guardian, to the auxiliary worker class. But in case of a democracy, there's this constant swinging back and forth. As a matter of fact, this particular line, which I thought was really cool, which this is what we want. If you, if you close your eyes and imagine this human being, you want to be this human being. Right, he says this there is neither order, no necessity in his life. Yet he calls it pleasant, free and blessedly happy and follows it throughout his entire life. There's this question that gets asked.

Aneesh: 47:39

Adam Smith has this in his, in his works on you know this utilitarianism. Right, he says who would you rather be a happy pig or a sad Socrates? Right, and this is what this is where this comes from, this line where there is neither order, no, no necessity in his life. He calls it pleasant, free and blessedly happy. You just wallowing in your own ignorance like a pig. You know you're wallowing in this. You know you don't whatever you fancy, you do. You know, if today you want to work out, you work out tomorrow. You know you want to listen to one partake in philosophy, partake in philosophy. You know, next day you want to go ahead. And you know, drive fast, do that. It's like you just follow the signal. Is thinking this, this, this is what is happiness, this constant flitting about of you know, of your desires, as opposed to leading an examined life Right. What is the examination there? The examination is, then understanding why order is needed in your life.

Eddie: 48:47

And that that phrase struck me to it Like this is sort of like this fat, intellectually lazy indolence. Right, it's all art, we are pigs and it feels great If you read this is.

Aneesh: 49:00

That's why that question is not an easy question to answer. Would you rather be a happy pig or a sad Socrates? The pig is oblivious to the fact of its existence and it's happy because of that. And Socrates is examining his life and understands the nature of the common good and is miserable because of it. Who would you rather be? Someone who examines himself as this happy pig? And that's why you cannot convince democratic people who have democratic republics inside of them to care about anything else than their freedoms. Because if you ask anybody man, why don't you participate in the common good? Why should I? What is in it for me? Does it feel? Doesn't make me happy? Does it give me power? Does it give me money? Does it feel good? If I'm doing it, like someone will be massaging my foot, but I do it? No, it's gonna be hard, it's gonna suck. And so what am I gonna get for it? Well, nothing, except for the fact, the satisfaction that you participate in the common good. Well, that seems like a hard job. I don't want to do it anymore.

Eddie: 50:02

Well, and not only that, but like the good, freedom becomes the good for it's own sake.

Aneesh: 50:07

It is the good in case of democracy.

Eddie: 50:10

I'll do it if I feel like it. Man, yeah, you know what?

Aneesh: 50:12

Yeah, I'll participate in that. I'll see you. When I feel like it, I'll show up.

Eddie: 50:18

Yeah, so there is the democratic constitution.

Aneesh: 50:23

The democratic man is happy, because the democratic man is ignorant.

Eddie: 50:31

So, then, this essentially lays the groundwork for tyranny. Do you want to move into that now, or do you want to leave that Because?

Aneesh: 50:40

I think you should leave it for now.

Eddie: 50:42

The the tyrannical. The evolution of tyranny is interesting and it bleeds over into the next book. So we'll probably end up talking about tyranny, but we may end up kind of creeping into the next book when we do so. But I think this would be a good place to stop, because now what we'll do is talk about how the seeds now within the democratic constitution have been laid for tyranny to arise. All right, we'll leave it there, all right.