Episode 45: Plato's Republic Book VIII-4/ IX-1: Tyranny

Could the very freedoms we cherish in democracy unwittingly lead us into the hands of tyranny? In this episode Eddie and Aneesh traverse the philosophical landscape of Socratic thought, unraveling the complex threads between unbridled freedom and the rise of tyrannical power.  We dissect the democratic allure of liberty and how it can, ironically, enslave us to our basest desires. This is a thought-provoking examination of the transformation from democracy to tyranny, spotlighting the vital role of civic education and the perils of demagoguery in this precarious shift.

As we navigate the intricate relationship between personal desires and societal structures, the ensuing discussion scrutinizes the dichotomy of democratic participation and the health of the individual psyche. We scrutinize the consequences of a democracy that fails to educate its populace, allowing influencers and pundits to shape public opinion unchecked, potentially paving the way for a tyrannical usurper. This examination leads us to question the practicality of education in molding well-rounded citizens and the wisdom behind the checks and balances system, drawing parallels between the individual's quest for internal harmony and the structural integrity of a just society.

Finally, we confront the psychological depths of the tyrannical mind, pondering the innate human nature that seeks honor, wealth, freedom, or power. The episode wraps up with an introspective look at the progression of intellectual maturity and the imperative of dialectic conversations in the pursuit of truth. We leave you with an uplifting reminder: democracy, with all its complexities, offers the means to correct our missteps and progress toward a more enlightened governance. This deep dive into the philosophies of Socrates and Plato is not just an exploration of political systems but a reflection on our collective journey towards intellectual and moral maturity.

Transcript

Eddie: 0:20

All right, we're recording and in this episode I'm gonna let the good Anish do our lead off while I silence my phone very quickly. Since I'm on call, and I've got some post-op patients in house, so at any rate, I'll let you take over, okay wow, I don't know what to do.

Aneesh: 0:40

I've never, started in such a long time. The last time we ended on democracy we discussed how an oligarchic man, oligarchic father, can raise a democratic son, and all of these are just ways to look at how thought processes change inside of our minds and we can change into a democratic mind. In democratic mind, the good in a democracy is freedom, not being attached to any one thing. We can spend time doing whatever we want, participate as much as we want or not participate at all Somehow, find ourselves eventually in the middle of things, and that could be regarded by some people as moderation or temperance. But it is not the same temperance that you find in a philosophical soul.

Aneesh: 1:33

This is a temperance, the sort of kind of avoiding doing anything, being committed to anything or being involved in as little or as much as you want, as opposed to temperance where there's a reining in of the appetites. This is actually an appetite that just runs kind of a muck. But because there is this oligarchic upbringing where there's some sensibility of what is called necessary appetites and unnecessary appetites, one understands the difference between the two. One can drain the unnecessary appetites and be in this kind of middle zone. So that is the democratic mind. A democratic mind finds itself not being in a position where it can, where it wants to lead or be in a position where it wants to follow.

Eddie: 2:32

It treats its elders as redundant and it treats as equals for children, they put themselves on.

Aneesh: 2:42

And sometimes they treat their young as revered. And so there are all of these paradoxes that exist inside of a democracy where wisdom and experience are considered to be meaningless and without any merit, in a world where anyone can choose to do anything just about any point of time. So that is the democratic person. We would like to believe that democracy the way we just described it, as being unwilling to participate in anything, not standing up for anything, just spending your time in indulging oneself to be the worst state that one can be in. But guess what? That is not the worst state that one can be in. There is a state beyond this which is even worse, and that is the state of tyranny.

Aneesh: 3:43

And so the next part of this conversation this is the ending of book eight, going into book nine is talking about the tyrannical constitution, the tyrannical man and tyrannical mind, and the reason why we are here is this is all a way for Socrates to convince his interlocutors about why justice, the practice of justice, despite being thought of as by everybody else to be unjust, the just man, despite being thought of by everybody else to be unjust, is happier than a tyrannical man who's thought by everybody to be just. That was the challenge that was made to Socrates, and he's finally coming around to answering the question. I don't think we'll get to that part of the conversation today, but we will start with. We are going to talk about tyranny and maybe get to the end of book eight and maybe the start of book nine. So that was the lead in Ready, you're ready.

Eddie: 4:50

So yeah, and I think it's important to point out also that Socrates frames the transition from democracy to tyranny as one based on this idea of slavery. There is the intrinsic irony to the democratic constitution and the democratic idea where in freedom becomes a good for its own sake, and it just points out the fact that freedom for its own sake is dangerous, potentially, when it's not framed in a larger sense of clear purpose. So freedom for what? Would be the question. But in a democracy that for what is not necessarily answered, or people are anchored, people's roles are not anchored to unnecessary for what? Freedom for its own sake is essentially the social currency of a democracy. And then, just like you said, that leads to sort of paradoxical thinking, non-committal thinking, situations where the paradox is essentially rationalized away, because what people do is then sort of react to their whims. Sometimes the whims can be self-regarded as a noble decision to pursue a certain line of work or art or something like that, and then it can be overtaken pretty rapidly by things that are more selfish and more hedonistic in terms of the pursuit of pleasures versus the pursuit of some illusion of purpose, and that therein lies, in the slavery of democracy, which is where you have now become a slave to the lower elements of the soul the base desires, and so they're no longer channeled and they're basically coddled, they're basically followed without any clear goal.

Eddie: 6:53

And so this level of slavery, socrates contends essentially, and quite quietly, trains the Constitution, the minds of the citizens of this republic, to seek or to be vulnerable to somebody who announces that they're going to protect this freedom.

Eddie: 7:16

What happens is the people, he says, will always set up one man as their special leader, nurturing him and making him great, and this is in response to residual resentment toward the oligarchs in the society. So again, keeping this framework that Socrates is laying out, although he's not trying to be rigid with it, it is helpful. It is useful to remember that the dynamics that cause degradation from one defective constitution to the next, so from democracy to oligarchy to democracy, that current, never quite changes. And so what ends up happening is that you just get these progressive stages of degradation and once you reach the point where you've moved from honor to wealth, to just pure freedom as a social currency, you've now primed the population to select somebody who's going to defend this freedom, and quite easily do so, because all they have to do at this point is point out that there are either oligarchs or there are leaders or supposed leaders in this group or people of power that are threatening their freedom.

Aneesh: 8:26

Yeah. So the thing that I would add though, to that is freedom is the good, but along with freedom, money is the good, because this is not about being free and impoverished, because if that was the case, if all you wanted to do was be free and not be tied down with the trappings of a complex life, you wouldn't need to talk about justice. This is going back to the start of the Republic, but he talks about the simple society. So the reason why the masses choose the leader is because of the fact that inside of a democracy, even though a democracy comes from an oligarchy, it starts with people wanting to focus on wealth.

Eddie: 9:23

Right, and that's why I was saying it's still the oligarchic tension that bleeds through this whole degradation process.

Aneesh: 9:31

Correct. And even in a tyranny, money is still the object. The person who has money has power. And so inside of an oligarchy, though, the people who have money are very temperate with how they spend as a matter of fact, they're miserly they don't spend it on anything, they don't even want to really show it off as much. Right, the democracy comes out of that oligarchic state where that temperance goes away a little bit. You want to show your money off, you want to be free, you want to be, you don't want to be held back by the oligarchic tendencies. And in that society where people are showing off their money, there are three types of people who live inside of a democracy.

Aneesh: 10:11

If you look at our democracy, it's, you see these three people. The largest group is of the regular folks, the folks who don't have much. They are the largest in an assembly because they are the most powerful in an assembly, but they don't have any wealth, right? The next group are the wealthy few. Now, these are the true oligarchs. These are people who they're not extremely lavish, necessarily with their wealth. You don't even see them, you don't even know who they are. Like you, you will be able to identify the Koch brothers if you saw him Right. But they are the ones who have the money, they are the ones who are the wealthy and they don't want anything to do with politics. They don't want to be involved in politics unless someone is challenging the money that they are making. That means they are challenging the ability to make money, right, and who challenges their ability to make money?

Aneesh: 11:12

It is the third class, which is the, the, the drones, you know. Remember. This drone concept keeps coming up, right? These are people who don't have the money or they have lost their money, and now they come in two flavors the stingless ones and the ones with the sting. The stingless ones are the ones who don't have the money and they have nothing that they can do about it. Then then, the ones that had some money and they lost it. So they have, they are, they are, they are, they have this, they have fighting spirit in their bold. They want to get that power back. They form the ruling class inside of a democracy. So these would be your politicians, right? So in the current democracy, even right now in the US, you have the politicians, you have the wealthy few and then you have the, the poor multitudes of money.

Eddie: 12:03

Yeah, the third class would be the largest and most powerful politically, but they're the least active, that's that's most people, right, right.

Aneesh: 12:10

And so now, if you think about it, the, the, the, the political elite want money. They're not going to get it from the bottom 99%, they're going to get it from the top 1% and that top 1% of the wealthy people. They don't want to give up any of their money. As a matter of fact, they want to make as much as they can. So what happens is it's all about influencing politics. That's how super PACs come about.

Eddie: 12:38

Right, yeah, I mean yeah. When you read this description of democracy, it gives you a sobering opportunity to really reexamine the underlying principles behind any democracy. And I don't think it's, you know it's. You know, bertrand Russell has this famous quote where he's like no idea deserves to be accepted. It doesn't deserve you. Every idea, even the ones that you take for granted, like the one most of us grow up with, which is like democracy is good. Well, good for what? Yeah, right, that's the question.

Eddie: 13:15

And you know, this discussion of democracy led me to some very serious points of contemplation as it pertains to democracy and they do have, I think, translations to when it comes to when you have an operating system of the mind, that's like a democracy. It's pretty obvious, which is that you know, if you have an unfocused life and you follow your, your wins, without regard to a larger purpose, it's not going to lead to what you would call a, in the deepest sense, a good life, a fulfilling life. Oh, no, right, so, but, yeah, so. But going back to how the whole process starts, you know Socrates says that that this leader that essentially gets builds this sort of populist momentum in this democratic society is essentially one who stirs up faction against the rich. That's sort of yeah right.

Eddie: 14:25

So there's, so there's. I guess the issue here is that it gets a little mixed, but they're sort of an implicit or unspoken goal behind the leaders, you know, the politicians and the person who will eventually become the tyrannical leader. It's, yes, it is about money, but money and power and influence. Because what the politicians are doing is, yeah, they're wanting to get money, but what are they selling? Or what they're selling and trying to accumulate as if it were a commodity, is political influence, correct, right? And so what's unspoken is that, yeah, the root of it it's still money, but the way they acquire political influence is to essentially tell the people that they are there to protect their freedom, and their freedom is under threat, and that so, and so is an oligarch. So the accusation of being an oligarch never disappears in the democratic system.

Aneesh: 15:15

No, it does not.

Eddie: 15:16

And in fact, pointing to somebody and accusing them of being an oligarch does two things First, it identifies for the public escape goat for troubles, but secondarily, it actually makes the person being accused an oligarch. Right, they start to behave oligarch, like an oligarch because they become miserly, they become like, as you said, they become political donors and you know, if they don't get their way in certain situations they may actually lead the country. So history is full of examples of where there's a sort of a political elite class and when the winds of change political change start to blow inexorably toward authoritarianism or tyranny, they bounce.

Eddie: 15:57

They've got the resources to leave Right and in fact there are usually some of the ones that make it out quote, unquote before the feces hits the fan hits the political fan, and so history is so full of examples that it line up with what we're reading here.

Aneesh: 16:14

But these, this finger pointing, is what happens, right?

Eddie: 16:17

So the masses don't have the time because they are just busy, just going through the mire of just a regular day to day life, and you know what Finger pointing is a much more lucrative commodity than even 100 percent that, even oil, that's right, I mean, the oligarchs say that the politicians are corrupt.

Aneesh: 16:35

The politicians look at the oligarch and say that they are fleecing the country. And so this finger pointing this is going, this keeps going on. The masses get tired of it. Right, and it is not that the masses are actually trying to do something to fix this. They are working two jobs. You know, they're trying to get their kids to school and pay their bills. Right, they did. Everybody is just tired of the rich people and the politicians.

Aneesh: 16:58

Till one of these rich people, or maybe a politician with some means, says you know what? I'm going to blame both of them. I'm going to blame the. I'm going to fight against the rich people and I'm going to fight against these politicians. I'm going to come up with this old people's populist agenda. You know people are. The only way to get power is to tell these, because the power actually rests in the hands of the people, right, the populist people who don't have the energy to fight, to do anything. I'm going to tell them that I'm going to fight for them and that is the populist agenda. Right, you start up saying, oh, no, more taxes, and you know we're going to get your jobs back and you're down with, you know, all these big companies and, you know, down with the political elite. We're going to, we are going to come up with this whole brand new system.

Eddie: 17:47

Now, right, and I've heard that you know this is not. This is happening right now.

Aneesh: 17:54

This is the state of our country right now. If you talk, think about it.

Eddie: 17:59

Yeah, I mean the dynamics are obvious.

Aneesh: 18:02

The rich companies, right, they are not good and the politicians are not good. You know, I am this. One person is. I know everything and I'm going to change everything, right.

Eddie: 18:11

Only I can fix this.

Aneesh: 18:12

Yes, and so that is the. The people tend to set up one man as a special leader right, nurturing him and making him great Right.

Eddie: 18:24

And the way the special leader essentially consolidates power is by stirring up faction against the rich. And what happens is that there's a critical mass of support that gets reached where, now for the tyrant to become the tyrant, they become somebody who is cannot be extinguished. If they're, if they're expelled, they're unable to do so and they, you know they will bring them back. And if he ever returns from exile, then he's hailed as a hero. It ends up being this process of a self-fulfilling prophecy toward power, where the the more this future tyrant is perceived to be being driven away or driven down from the path of power. The sense of injustice okay, the Thrasymachus sense of injustice, is actually what fuels their rise to power. And then, when things work out their way well, then there's always this idea that it was well. This is because you know it was predestined for them to be the one that's going to help, you know us rise up against, you know, the rich and the powerful.

Aneesh: 19:32

I mean this, this is. There's so many parallels that can be drawn, right? So you know this. This charismatic leader stands up. You know that I represent the people. Right, this person is independently wealthy, right, has nothing like the people who vote for him. Right, but apparently, but somehow, represents the masses against the political elite and against the oligarchy from which he descends. He comes from that, but now suddenly he's this, the savior of the masses, and he gets vilified in the press. He gets vilified by the political elite, he gets vilified by other oligarchs, but more, the more he gets vilified by these people, the more he's praised by the masses, right, and the more they try to bring him down by trying to attack him and literally, you know, going after him, the more this person is, is has vitriol towards them and he tastes blood in the process. And he tastes blood and comes upon victorious. That's it. The bloodlust is there now. Right Now, nothing can stop him.

Aneesh: 20:35

Now the he can say all the barbs that were tossed at him, he can absorb and say yes, you know, I said that. Yes, you know, I touched this woman inappropriately. I did, you know, I said those words, I took money, I stole it, all those things. But I am reformed now and you guys are worse, right, and the crowd cheers them on yeah, right.

Eddie: 20:53

So this is the right, now the arrival of the right the Lycian wolf right, that's this why Socrates uses the analogy of the wolf, who you know legendarily. Once they've tasted blood, it's you know. Then they get, they acquire a taste for it, they get used to it.

Aneesh: 21:07

That's right, they want it. They create the, the, the, the human blood, the human sacrifice.

Eddie: 21:13

Right, they're drunk off of their unexpected triumph. And then that's you can't turn that off.

Aneesh: 21:17

And they want that triumph. Right, see, if you take an oligarch right, just like you said, right, the oligarch, if they are, they find themselves where they are being tested, that you know people are rising up against them. They will flee. They have no, they have no taste for this power that comes from the populist popular world. They, they are interested in their money and so once, as you said, the political wind is not in their favor, they will leave. They will go to a foreign land, because if they stay, they are worried that they are going to get destroyed. But the tyrant is different. The tyrant loves the fight and he's proven victorious before. He's going to pre-proven victorious again. And once he and if he's proven victorious, oh boy, watch out, because he's going to stand there, like he says, right, having brought down all those others, he stands in the chariot of the city as a complete tyrant instead of a popular leader. Right.

Aneesh: 22:18

I mean you literally see him like this Welcome to 2024.

Aneesh: 22:22

Man this is the the. The thing here is people. There are always going to be people who are going to be brave and bold enough to stand up against that. The tyrant right Now, think about who this tyrant is. This tyrant is not somebody who is, you know, on the path to purpose like you described. This is somebody who comes from this feverish desire for freedom to expend their wealth however they want, in any area that they want, in any pursuit that they want. Now they chose power now, and so they're going to spend lavishly towards the accumulation of power, and once they get it, this person is going to be unstoppable. Because they have this popular support, they have vanquished all their enemies. Now what is to stop them from continuing down this path of destruction? There will be some trusted advisors, maybe some friends, someone in that group that's going to say hey, listen, you know, maybe this is you've gone too far, right.

Eddie: 23:44

And they will have signed a death warrant when they do that.

Aneesh: 23:47

This tyrant is not. Tyrants have no friends. There is nobody in their circle that can tell them counter to what they believe. Because they really believe. The tyrant believes that they are supreme right. They are God.

Eddie: 24:02

And what gets eroded, ejected systematically within the sphere of the tyrant, is trust. Trust becomes progressively barren and gone, which is why the tyrant must ultimately not have friends.

Aneesh: 24:19

That's right. That's a very important point, because anybody you look around, you look around you and you find everybody is. You have either offended them or they are scared of you. You've done something, or you were just worried that they are going to usurp your spot. You cannot trust anybody and all the well-meaning people you had. You put them to death or got rid of them?

Eddie: 24:42

And so now you're, this insomniac wolf. You're never gonna sleep again, that's right.

Aneesh: 24:48

And so now you could go to the masses and say you know what I fear for my life? I've done all of this for you and now I have enemies everywhere. So the populace people are like no, we're gonna give you the, we're gonna create for you an imperial guard, Like every dictator had this, you know, the imperial guard, a praetorian right that were created of men who were, just you know, brainwashed into protecting their leader, the elite troops. Why would a dictator, if you were a tyrant loved by the people, right? Why would you need to have an elite group of people around you all the time?

Eddie: 25:25

Well, they end up taking assuming roles. And now here we're gonna. You know this, a lot of this synergizes with Orwell a lot too, sort of like. You know, the animal farm, the leader pigs what do they have? They have the Dovermans right, they had the dogs that not only protected them, but when they would make proclamations, and if the, if anyone any of the animals in the farm expressed doubt, the dogs would sneer at them, and then all of a sudden everything was okay.

Aneesh: 25:50

And so I mean, this is such rich political discussion here, but yeah, there is also something to be said about how this power is maintained, how people continue to believe that this tyrant that they have sitting on this road is actually a benevolent leader. Right, there has to be a they have to be primed.

Aneesh: 26:20

They have primed because they made the choice. You see, people have to believe it's their choice. So once you make a choice, once it's your candidate, your car, your house, you are now, some of you, responsible for whatever that thing, whatever that thing is doing Right, even if it's a bad choice. This is actually a very well-known concept among humans Once you take something as yours, you suddenly feel responsible for it.

Eddie: 26:47

Now, Right, it's very difficult to let it go, and and yeah, and that's some cost fallacy or something, I think it's because you already paid the price.

Aneesh: 26:57

You already made the choice. You don't want to get rid of it. And so this person, you will not think of them as a tyrant, you think of them as the benevolent leader, and you will. You will believe that the people that this benevolent leader associates with are wise people. And so there is this line here that talks about this I called it a Thresimachian line where he you know Socrates didn't like tragic poets, he didn't like comic poets either, but tragic, apparently, or equally bad. He says, um, uh, tyrants are wise by associating with the wise, and the wise here is is not wisdom that we have defined as one of the virtues? This is a, this is a um, a Lycinian or a wolf like wisdom?

Eddie: 27:52

This is this is like street wise, this is just like uh wise in the ways of manipulation, almost like a Machiavellian wisdom.

Aneesh: 28:00

And yeah, and so you would think about. You know you have practical wisdom, but of all things evil, and I would hate to use the term wisdom because I've come to understand wisdom to be something else altogether. But he says that tragic poets would say that tyrants are wise by associating with the wise. This is, this is Thrasimachian, thrasimach. Thrasimach is said at some point that this way of being is good.

Eddie: 28:26

This is the good right To be unjust is good secretly to be openly appearing as just but to secretly have all of the quote unquote benefits of being unjust Correct.

Aneesh: 28:37

And he said that being temperate, being just being courageous, are not good. And Socrates was just aghast when he heard that. So this was one of the most Thrasimachian lines that tyrant tyrants are wise and by associating with the wise. This is conventional wisdom.

Eddie: 28:56

Right.

Aneesh: 28:57

Right, okay, the off today, right. And these people, these tragic poets, are like influences. You see what I mean, right? They they go from place to place, influencing people, talking about how great their lead, the leader is, how great this democracy is and why one should not live in aristocracies, democracies, and so, as a matter of fact, the inside of a, inside of a of an aristocracy, that's the philosopher king, the ideal republic. There is no role for tragic poets or influencers. It's in the earlier versions, in the earlier chapters of the republic. There's actually a, a passage about training the guardians and talking about what kind of poems should they listen to.

Eddie: 30:00

Right how important the education is for that precise reason.

Aneesh: 30:04

And how Sophism and this kind of comics and tragedy should not be part of their upbringing, because they sometimes talk about things that are inflammatory and introduce the possibility of victim mindsets and things like that.

Eddie: 30:23

What you're talking about are political pundits and panders, yeah, but the main challenge, though, as you look at our current democracy, though in our particular democracy, I think that's a huge problem, but the problem is that the pundits and the people who you could say are maybe trying to affect positive change for the benefit of what we could call the common good. The problem in our current democracy is that they end up using the same denominator, which is this is what the people want. There's a presumed infallibility of the voters will.

Eddie: 31:02

And here's the biggest problem currently, right now. So politicians often assert the infallibility of the voters will and they suggest that any failure lies with other politicians who fail to execute it, rather than the will of the voters themselves or the will of the voter itself. And think about that. How many times do you hear politicians, whether you agree with them or not, will still invoke the American people want this, and I would listen and be like I don't want that or nobody's talking about what I want, but it's what they use. It's the commodity that they use, but it's the currency of pandering that's required, and whether you're a pundit or if you're a principal politician, you end up having you to use the same commodity. That's the only commodity you've got, and what ends up happening is that the message, the reliability, the trust of the politicians will completely erode, because at that point, if both people are using the same currency to try and buy your vote right by pandering that way, nothing's really going to happen.

Aneesh: 32:06

And then the other way to look at this also is when you say the American people, as if it's like one mind right, the only one mind that exists 350 million the only one mind that exists is that of a philosopher king, that of an ideal republic. As a matter of fact, in a democracy it is a multitudinous mind. We have all of this freedom, all of these ways of thinking and expressing and being. There is no one thing that you want, you see, except for money and freedom.

Aneesh: 32:38

Maybe money is the one thing everybody wants as a matter of fact, the reason why you devolve into a tyranny from a democracy is because the largest, most populous group has the least amount of money. But they want more money. And now they are looking at the oligarchs and the politicians to make that happen.

Aneesh: 32:55

But when they find the tyrannical leader, they believe that that person is going to make them rich. At least, if not them rich, he's going to make sure he or she's going to make sure that the oligarchs don't get any richer and the politicians have to pay for their sins.

Eddie: 33:10

But it is this multitudinous mind that's why democracies fail, Right Well yeah, they fail because and again it goes back to this idea of how the guardians to the extent that they even exist in the society were trained, and so this is why democracy lives and dies on the education of the voters, how they're educated, what they're educated about. And as the quality and content of the education deteriorates, they become even more susceptible to the process of demagoguery.

Aneesh: 33:54

And you know, when you say education I know it's not you don't talk about the education that we receive in schools. No, we're not talking about math.

Eddie: 34:00

Okay, we're talking about and understanding the rules of your own republic. I mean, how many people are completely unaware of the pillars, sorry, the principles that forest the constitution, principle pillars and people. They're lost in them, they're misinterpreting them, they really don't understand the civic workings of a constitution and understanding the idea, the strength of the checks and balances and how they were really intended to limit authority.

Aneesh: 34:40

That's the whole point of you know, understanding the American constitution requires you to the US constitution requires you that's an example. That's an example of what type of education you should yes, that's right, the founding fathers who wrote the constitution, the education that they had-.

Eddie: 34:57

Capital J justice, capital H happiness. That's right, that is the education that they read this.

Aneesh: 35:04

That's how they came up with this. They read the republic and that's why they could come up with the constitution for the US constitution. And who's teaching the republic? To whom?

Eddie: 35:11

No, not happening.

Aneesh: 35:12

So education when you say the masses should be educated, people say, yeah, maybe we have free education. That's how the education is Right, I mean in the Socratic sense, right and then even and Socrates lays down the education that's required for a mind to be able to look away from the shadows in the cave. He talks about the education there. Right, it's not only the education that comes from books. There is physical training, there is training in music, there is training in dialectic discussion. There's all of these things that need to happen Now.

Eddie: 35:43

If you do that, you're not going to find enough programmers and the people to go to medical school, and I think that's why they focus so much on the checks and balances because they knew they weren't going to have a philosopher king. Right, because if you have a philosopher king, then who decides who the philosopher king is from the starting point that they were at? So the best thing that you can do, since you can't have a philosopher king, is better essentially to, in a way, treat nobody as trustworthy, which is the whole idea behind the checks and balances in the system, right, everybody can check somebody else. Nobody has absolute authority.

Aneesh: 36:24

Now you're talking about the US Constitution. Again, I think that there is something to be said about this is not about We've always said this right the Republic is not about creating a writing a constitution. If you had to go ahead and do it and Sakri spoke about how it's possible, it is not impossible to create the ideal Republic run by a philosopher king. It can be done. But he talks about what is required for that to happen. He talks about the great lie. He talks about those things, but in order for that to happen, every individual inside of that Republic has to have an ordered Republic inside of them. It is an individual's responsibility to create an ideal Republic inside. But I can tell you that you know someone would say well, you know. Someone could say I have the ideal Republic inside of me. How would you counter that? How would you know? I'm saying you can tell there is a way to know.

Eddie: 37:27

You'd have to see You'd have to determine that by their actions. The actions are the only way and the decisions they make.

Aneesh: 37:35

The actions are the only way. And what is the driver of those actions Right? Acting good so that you're perceived as good as doing it for it, acting good for its own sake.

Eddie: 37:47

Good for what? Freedom for?

Aneesh: 37:49

what Right.

Eddie: 37:51

I do get it.

Aneesh: 37:51

Like. This is not I'm not saying that this is possible for tomorrow for the United States or for any other country to suddenly have a bunch of like you know philosopher kings walking around and say it is this is not-. The reason to read this book is not to figure out what's wrong, what ails your democracy or your country. It is to figure out what ails you.

Eddie: 38:11

But I think there are some very lucid insights in this description of democracy that obviously you know. I mean, you see it around you. That's why this book was written.

Aneesh: 38:22

It is written in such a way that you can take what is happening to 350 million people so that you can look at what is happening inside of you. Right, that is the exercise here. We talked about it. In order to look at justice in an individual, let's look at justice in a republic, and that's why we talked about the constitution of tyranny as opposed to we're going to go into this next. What's a tyrannical mind or a tyrannical man?

Eddie: 38:49

Well, yeah, and in sort of my reflection of democracy. There's one other sort of question or critique that I came upon as I sort of reflected on this description of the democracy, and this is kind of a more practical interpretation of this idea of being unfocused, like by rationalizing the paradoxes putting the needs and the goods on the same level.

Eddie: 39:17

And the problem in a democracy, one of the baked in problems, which is why it's so dependent on the education level of the citizens, is that democracy is obligated to preserve a system of participation, even to those who would aim to destroy the system. So think about that. So when you think about, like, the operating system of the mind, the republic of the mind, this is why it's so important to have an apex principle or a philosopher king, because you don't allow for participation of individuals who are there to destroy the system. Because, think about it. So I mean, in a hypothetical situation, and the answer to this question is something to just think about, but are people who committed to democracy obligated to recognize as legitimate a party that has succeeded to gain control by a majority vote? That's a good question. So we have a system of checks and balances, we have this political party within the system who they want to sort of rewrite everything and they win. Let's say they win through legitimate concerns.

Eddie: 40:30

This is the problem with majority rule. That's the point. What I'm pointing out is that there's a majority rule fallacy and the majority rule only works if there is an ambient level of education and commitment to checks and balances and once that's lost, it's like what happens to the person who becomes themselves tyrannical. They become somebody who says, well, I'm going to do because I've tasted this, I'm going to do it because it feels good, or this is what I want, and this is why the idea of having an aristocratic mind wouldn't allow for these things. This undergirds the importance that Socrates put on the education and the things you allow to use as informing principles as to how you order your mind to avoid this situation in particular.

Aneesh: 41:22

But also he also talks about innate ability Right.

Eddie: 41:27

There's an innate ability to it too.

Aneesh: 41:30

Because some people are innately by nature, are democratic. That means they're honor seeking. They are those who are wealth seeking and those who are freedom seeking and those who are power seeking. And so you may try your best to temper your innate nature, but it's going to show up in some point or another, and it's important for one to realize that. So again, let's, if we move on from this, the next order of business, when this tyrannical human being is now getting rid of all his friends and wise people and has surrounded himself by this imperial guard Right. So finally they find themselves in this.

Aneesh: 42:11

They are tyrannical by nature, they are driven by passions. They are, they are illiberal in their appetites and they are spending. They are acquiring and spending, and beyond a certain point they cannot. They can no longer be supported by the masses that initially put them up on their pedestal, and the only way now to topple the tyrannical leader is by rebellion. But before you get to that rebellion stage, there's a stage when the masses come to understand that, in order to protect their freedoms this goes back to the line that you said they chose the worst form of slavery by being by, by, by choosing to be a slave to this person, who is himself a slave to his passions, right, there is no master in this except for passion.

Aneesh: 43:11

Passion is the mass. What I mean by passion is like this is they talk about passion. There's a beautiful line here about what that passion is, and we'll come to that, but that, so that is what the whole state devolves into.

Eddie: 43:20

Right, it devolves into a state of abjection, it's everything is just abject meta-slavery. Essentially is the thing of it. But I do get this. I don't want to give the listeners an impression that we're going to like I don't know. I don't want to say that we're bashing democracy, because I don't think that we, we can democracy. And I just want to end on a positive note on democracy, and here's, here's what I would say. So, yes, it's true that people don't always know what's best for them, but democracy allows us an opportunity to change things so that we don't have to suffer our stupid decisions once we recognize them.

Aneesh: 43:58

Again, man, this is not about constitutions. This is you know again. The democracy that they're talking about here is not a democratic republic like how we have in the US. This is not one man, one vote in the US there's no, I don't think there is. There are very few places where that's the case, but there's a democratic caucus where there's one person, one vote.

Eddie: 44:17

I'm not saying that, the same thing, but what I'm saying is that I draw reflections from this reading and obviously there's going to be practical applications to the political landscape around me, and so, and that's that's what we're talking about. I see, I see what you mean and I agree.

Aneesh: 44:33

I mean I'm not saying that you know we should. Maybe we should go back to, like the, you know, the Gilded Age. What was the age when it was all monarchies and stuff? I'm not saying we should go back to that the medieval times.

Eddie: 44:44

Yeah, that's terrible.

Aneesh: 44:45

Like that's not. That's not what I'm going to be talking about here. This is about how you order your own mind inside of you, and I think there is when we talk about the tyrannical mind. It'll make sense as to what is when we talk about a democracy. How does that come about inside of? How does that evolve into a tyranny inside of your own mind, right?

Eddie: 45:05

So right, we essentially enter the mind of what would Thracymachus would call, ironically, justice, justice right, this is Book Nine, so we start with Book Nine.

Aneesh: 45:15

Finally, we've reached Book Nine.

Eddie: 45:16

One more chapter to go man, it's crazy Okay.

Aneesh: 45:19

All right. So the tyrannical mind? So this is a conversation about how what's going on inside of a tyrannical mind, right, tynanical mind is there is lawlessness. It is just full of thoughts of pleasure and fulfilling of pleasures, and these appetites. And these appetites and pleasures are not the necessary ones. I mean in oligarchy we discussed this. Where in oligarch has this wants to seek money and would only spend that money on necessary things and not on the unnecessary things? And that's what separates the oligarch from the democrat. The democrat also seeks money, but then ends up spending it also on things that are unnecessary. And when it comes to a tyrannical mind, tyrannical mind also wants money, but only wants to spend it on the unnecessary ones as much as they can, right? So this it would be.

Aneesh: 46:26

You could think of this tyrannical mind to be driven by the appetites, and not just any appetite, appetite that is like the beastial appetite, and Socrates talks about it Any human being. Instead of our minds, we have that, that beast existence in all of us. It's kept in check, but it's there inside every man and woman. There's a, there's, this beast that can be unleashed any moment and it's kept in check by our better parts of our mind right Now, inside of a philosophical mind which is ruled by the apex principle, the, the philosopher king, and is governed by the guardians who are trained and you know, the wisdom is what rules and the appetites are kept in check. And even the appetitive side, the appetitive elements are, exist only in a, in a way to support this triad.

Eddie: 47:29

Right yeah, I would say channeled over, check, correct, yeah, and you need that appetite.

Aneesh: 47:35

You need to eat, you need to to procure, but you do it only in a way to kind of keep everything in order. There's this temperance, there's this order. It's all guided by wisdom, right, and now it, it tyrannical mind is flipped the other way around, like the base is on top and the apex is is towards the bottom. As a matter of fact, there's not that much wisdom really, so it's all just driven by the appetites. The appetites rule roost, and so that's the, the, the distinction between a tyrannical mind and a philosophical mind. And so how does a tyrannical person come to be the one? This is the father son analogy, where there's a oligarchic father leads to a democratic son.

Eddie: 48:17

Now, the democratic son who was is yeah, I mean Socrates says, I mean going back right before book nine. He says a tyrant is parasite. So this analogy of the father son, father son, degradation of the States, tyranny is when the son kills the father.

Aneesh: 48:33

Right, it's coming up. And so the, the the democratic son, remember, he was the one whose father was oligarchic. He had money, but he only spent money on what is necessary, right, uh, high, good quality clothing, but not lavish. Good food, healthy food, but not. You know, the, the luxuries, things like that.

Aneesh: 48:54

And the, the the democratic son, though, because of his friends and the, the drones that are surrounding him, who tell him and by the, by the heck, do you live like your father? Does you know he's? He's too, uh, uh, he's illiberal. You know he doesn't have any class, like you know. Come on, you could drive this fancy car, you can eat all this food, you know you can do all of this, you know, participate in luxuries. And so he chooses that life. And then, but, but since he has a little bit of his father's upbringing, he's come, son, comes a little bit in the middle where he shows off his wealth, but not too much, right, he chooses to participate, but not so much. And so that that moderation, that middle ground, which which is a, which is a quote, unquote moderation, is where he lives. That's the democratic father.

Aneesh: 49:37

Now he's grown up to be a man. He has a son, right, uh, who's brought up in this, in this lap of appetitive uh, luxuries, where driving fancy cars, eating fancy food, showing off your wealth, you know being involved in this, not being involved in something else or whatever. Now you can imagine the drones that this person is going to encounter in his life. Right, they are. They are going to try to persuade this person to be even more liberal with the way that he spends his time, money, um, and the way they do that is by injecting him with passion, passion for Something, whatever that thing would be. Most likely, it's going to be power. They inject that passion in them. So now, now, gone is the moderation of his democratic father and now, suddenly, you have this person who has this passion and he calls passion the great winged drone, the largest is you can imagine. Like this is caricature in your mind, like this, you know big huge winged slothie drone you know the arch drone.

Aneesh: 50:43

Yeah, of all these little tiny drones, and the and around this drone are buzzing. All of these appetites of you know, incense and perfume and wreaths and wine and all the other pleasures that are found in such company. They feed the drone, make it as large as possible and plant the sting of longing inside of it. Now you have this passion and longing, and then this popular leader of the soul adopts madness as their bodyguards. This tyrannical leader now, who has this full of passion and longing for all this of the appetites, now has madness as his bodyguard and his tongue to frenzy Right. If there are any such beliefs inside of this being that are channeled towards the good, the rational right, what is going to happen to those thoughts? They're just going to be squashed. So we talk about that.

Eddie: 51:40

I would say they'd be vaporized. I mean they'd be blips.

Aneesh: 51:46

I mean this ordered relationship.

Eddie: 51:48

It would only serve to fuel just reactionary behavior.

Aneesh: 51:52

I mean, the reason is gone right, this ordered relationship between the philosophical mind, the apex principle being the apex of the pyramid and the base being the appetites. These things are going to be flipped over. But guess what? It's not just going to be flipped over. There is no, there's not going to be an apex pointing downwards. There is no reason, there is no wisdom here. Right this, he says this. It is just a word. That is why passion has been called a tyrant. Passion is tyranny. Now, inside of our minds, we say this all the time and follow your passion.

Eddie: 52:31

I don't think that's the passion he means.

Aneesh: 52:33

Man, I'm telling you, like there is, if you think about it right, when you talk about passion, what can you be passionate about? Passion means that there is a there is, there's, it's not reason.

Eddie: 52:44

You are driven by something. Reason is dispassionate. Yes, you see.

Aneesh: 52:49

So you have to be. These words have meaning, they carry a lot of meaning. And if you go back to I was thinking about this when you go back to chapter one of the Republic, right, kephalus the wise old man, right, the guy that Socrates this is all happening in Kephalus' house. By the way, he's still in Kephalus' house, paul Marcus, who's Kephalus' son, and Kephalus comes and wants to talk to Socrates. Socrates says hey, tell me about old age. You're an old man, I'm an old man too, but I can learn from you. And he says you know, tell me what happens. What about? You know the sex?

Eddie: 53:21

and good food. He's free from his passions, and that's right. He's happy because he's free from his passions.

Aneesh: 53:26

He says you know the word is I, that I don't. I feel like I'm no longer a man, I'm no longer a slave to a deranged and savage master. Old age has rid me of this, of these passions. The passions are a deranged and a savage master, and that's exactly what the tyrannical Right, a hedonistic passion, and that's what it is. That's what I mean. This is what, inside of our minds, we have to be. We have to realize where, what role these passions play.

Eddie: 53:59

Right, passion for what Correct. I think it's very important to add that for at the end.

Aneesh: 54:03

But you see, even if you say passion, you can passionate for wisdom. This doesn't work. Yeah, it does. Because why not? Because it is that, in order to choose wisdom, it cannot. It is not something that you would do because you're passionate for it.

Eddie: 54:17

But it means, but the context matters. When you that's what I'm saying when you use the word passion, I interpret this as hedonistic passion when he's talking about it. But yeah, but again.

Aneesh: 54:26

I don't think there's any other way to look at passion, because the way, the way he describes it here, passion has long been called a tyrant, because if you choose, if you are passionate for wisdom, it's not a choice that you're making, but passion is not a choice. At least this is the understanding that I get from you. You don't choose your passion, and if you don't choose your passion, it's like saying you know well, you know this guy, you know you. This is, this is joke, this thing, but this is. There's this guy who's walking along a short line and suddenly he sees this person, like you know, is drowning and they're, like you know, crying out for help, and he's about to, like, just dive in. He sees this brave person just jump off the bridge into the water and lands right next to this person who's drowning and then, you know, somehow makes his way to the shore with this other guy in tow. He rescues him, essentially.

Aneesh: 55:24

So the and so this, both of these men the men who the man who got rescued and the man who rescued him both come out of the shore. This man, before he's about to jump in, he goes up to this guy and says oh my gosh, you know, you saved this man. You risked your life by jumping off this high bridge and all that. You're just awesome, like you know. You tell me who you are. You need to be felicitated. He's like forget all this. We need to find out who pushed me off the bridge. Yeah, that is what this is, if you're just. You just find yourself in a situation where you did something good.

Aneesh: 55:59

You know that's the most involuntary of all things. Passion is the most involuntary of all.

Eddie: 56:03

of this, yeah, I get that I get that and I just the word passion the way it's used here to me. I ascribe to it a very specific hedonistic aspect to it and not the loose. I would totally agree that it's used very loosely in common parlance and it's probably something that people should think deeply about.

Aneesh: 56:21

But but then you have this person. Now right, who has these, this, this passion, this, this run? He, this person is not, is not the master of his own mind. The master of this person's mind is passion. The person is already a slave to a deranged and savage master.

Eddie: 56:39

Right, this is the word I was looking for. Was that? This is? This is kind of a narcissistic drive. Well, the passion of self love.

Aneesh: 56:48

Maybe you know, but what I'm saying is that this person is is it's like you know there's this. There's a parasite that is sitting on top of this person's head and is controlling his mind. It's like one of those weird alien movies where you know they, you're just now a zombie to this thing that's sitting on top of his head, this great wingless drone sitting on top of your head this passion, it's, it's the the ultimate state of objection.

Eddie: 57:12

Correct it's it's abject slavery a slavery to the point where you're. Even your will has been co-opted.

Aneesh: 57:19

Now you take this person, right, who's the tyrant right? Who's metting out injustice to everybody who lives inside this lap of luxury? But it's just being stung into a frenzy by this passion and the the philosopher, king, and you ask yourself you know who? Which mind would you rather have? Where is, where is happiness? Where does happiness reside? Where does peace reside? Where is you know? Purpose, common good, where does it reside? Right, this is where they're coming to eventually, right?

Eddie: 57:46

This is the cusp now of the the Thrasamakin question.

Aneesh: 57:49

But he talks about what this person would do.

Aneesh: 57:52

As they go through life, as they are being consumed by this, this parasite of passion right, they're slave to this how their life will unfold in front of them, how they will be taking, just taking, as much as they can for themselves.

Aneesh: 58:07

You know, first of all, the reason why they can do this is because they have the property and the wealth of their father. You know, they didn't come up, they didn't. They weren't the multitudinous poor, they were the son of an oligarch Democrat. And now they have money, they have all that, and they start from that position of privilege and they keep using and using, and using, you know, and and eventually they come to a point where they become like a parasite onto their father or their mother and they're willing to at some point strike them down for their own personal gain. And that is the point that you are making and all of these father and son conversations. None of the sons ever caused harm to their father. As a matter of fact, the oligarch comes from the democratic man, from democratic father. After the downfall of the democratic father, he sees the downfall of his father and vows that is never going to happen to him.

Eddie: 59:06

Right, there's an unleashing process that happens because in the early phases of the degradation there's always at least a residual token commitment to the founding principles of the previous system.

Aneesh: 59:18

Right you respect your father.

Eddie: 59:20

And in tyranny, and so that's why, from the operating of the mind standpoint to the political interpretation of this is that you are literally decapitating the system. So, just like the middle and higher elements of the soul essentially become amputated and tossed away in the process of becoming a tyranny, it happens in a real and practical sense in authoritarian political systems. It's precisely what happens. There is no middle class, there is no lower class. There is people in abject states of subservience and a leader, like you said, who's subservient to their own narcissistic, hedonistic passions, and that's essentially what you have.

Aneesh: 1:00:07

And then, in this concept of not holding anything, sacred, you know the oligarchic son who holds the honors of his democratic father. Sacred, the democratic son holds the appetite, the restriction of the appetites of his oligarchic father. Sacred, that's why he comes to moderate himself. The tyrannical son doesn't hold any of the concepts of his father's upbringing. He doesn't hold any of that sacred.

Aneesh: 1:00:44

He's driven by this passion, this wing draw, and it says here that Ida Matis says that you know he would sorry. Socrates says that he's going to basically strike his old father, the oldest of his friends, who was no longer in the bloom of youth.

Eddie: 1:01:04

And Socrates says when he says that's a great blessing to produce a tyrannical son it seems to be a great blessing to produce a tyrannical son.

Aneesh: 1:01:12

Obviously he's being sarcastic.

Eddie: 1:01:13

Yeah, it's a chronic irony and it's really in its ultimate form.

Aneesh: 1:01:22

The tyrannical mind man and you know the. I have looked at this process. I the only thing I just that I find that that it is unlikely that one starts at the beginning, that is, has a philosophical mind run by an apex principle and devolves into tyranny. I feel if one is most, most of us have a tyrannical mind. What mean is, we are driven by our passions and if you're lucky, we make it to a state where we are democratic. That means we are, we are we. We figure out what is the necessary and the unnecessary ones. We do partake in the unnecessary ones, but at least we find ourselves not being drawn completely towards one or the other. We part. We feel that is the best life.

Aneesh: 1:02:07

You ask somebody I want, I want to do what I want to do. I don't want to be told what to do and we participate in what we want. If we lose interest, we participate in something else, and that that is the democratic mind. And then we go from there into an oligarchy mind where we only participate in what we believe is necessary and then we hold on to our resources and our reserves and the best we can do is make it to that oligarchy state. And you find very few people are actually able to do that, but they're able to not now worry so much about their passions.

Aneesh: 1:02:38

And this would be, this would be someone like capitalist, in a way right, who's made his money and you know he doesn't spend too much on his passions or whatever. He's just living his life happily. Now you take that person and the next step up is doing things that will bring you honor. You have the money, but now you're ready to spend that money for honor and in honorable pursuits. Right, not for passions, for honorable pursuits, but that is probably. You would still see fragments of that few people in the world who are, who are able to do that. There are books written about these people and they have done honorable things, but they've done it for honor's sake.

Eddie: 1:03:22

But you will very rarely find somebody who's transcended from that to a true philosophical king, the the aristocratic mindset where, practically because they were, you wouldn't know about, you wouldn't even know about that's right. Where?

Aneesh: 1:03:37

virtue reigns supreme. Everything is done for the common good, everything is done only for virtue, for virtue's sake. Justice for justice sake, not to show, not for money, not for anything else, right.

Eddie: 1:03:48

Yeah, I think ultimately, here I mean, the issue has to do with issues of restraint, reason and maturity, and in many ways we all come into this world as tyrants. I mean, we're all a little tyrannical infants right driven by our drive. And you know, the quality of the education is what really makes the biggest difference. Now, everybody has innate tendencies toward, you know, the tyrannical, hedonistic side of things. You know you can argue that people have natures that predispose them one way or the other. But if you, if you have a potent, robust, formidable education, you can at the very least mitigate the likelihood that you'll fall into a tyrannical state of mind which is largely, I think you can think of quite accurately as a regression. You're regressing to that you're, you're the most immature you could be in the tyrannical mindset.

Aneesh: 1:04:43

That's right. It is the most immature state, but it is a. It is a state where I think you find you find yourself in life. I know I've been in in this tyrannical state driven by passions and you cannot help it. It's not like a choice. Your passions are not necessarily a choice. It's part of that brain that is not necessarily developed. It takes a while for your prefrontal cortex to get wired in, and how that gets wired and what leads to its wiring. When does it get wired in? Like you know, it is known that in some people the prefrontal cortex wires gets wired at a much younger age, almost when they're 18, 19, and some people doesn't get wired in their 30s Average is 25, 26, before your rational part of your mind actually kicks in. So how you train yourself?

Eddie: 1:05:26

The training is of utmost importance. Correct, because? Because you realize.

Aneesh: 1:05:32

The nature is you can. You can choose when your prefrontal cortex are wired in. There's some people, there's some kids out there whose prefrontal cortex starts getting wired in at 1516. Right, those people are the gold.

Eddie: 1:05:43

So those can be the garden. So, whether you're talking about actual republics or republics of the mind, education is everything.

Aneesh: 1:05:50

But you see, there is, there's also. There's also this thing about the innate ability. But there's also something to be said about when you say education, it does not. Again, we have to be careful about what we say I'm using education in the Socratic sense yeah.

Eddie: 1:06:03

Yeah.

Aneesh: 1:06:04

This, this, this development, what they're talking about, that, coupled with this innate ability and understanding that that daily or prefrontal cortex is wired in, you don't know what that means and once it gets wired in, you have an idea of what it means. That means there is, there is no, you know, 18 year old CEO man. I mean, come on like you know, even 25, 20, if you're prefrontal cortex.

Eddie: 1:06:26

I mean, it seems like now.

Aneesh: 1:06:28

Dot. I mean, these guys are making you got startups and I mean, mr Kamil, you have no idea of what it is. You would not. You would not know what it is to lead a good life, because your rational brain is not active. You are still, you have a tyrannical mind and not, it's not a fault, it's just development. That's how, that's what happens. Yeah, there's a maturity process.

Eddie: 1:06:54

And there's a there's, there's exposures, not just, I should say, education, but exposure as well. You've you've got to live in conversation with the trials and tribulations of life, with the consequences of your decisions, and that's part of the, that's the unwritten education.

Aneesh: 1:07:09

No, that's what he talks about in this right. He talks about the Cape Alligorie. He talks about the timeline, and the timeline is that at 2025, that is a time when you are ready to start having conversations about what is the nature of the good. In order to be able to talk about the good, you have to have a rational mind, and that rational mind gets wired around 2025. And but it's not enough. You then have to start having conversations with people and have the ability to have a dialectic conversation where you are not trying to argue for the sake of arguing to win. That's what a tyrannical person would do. There's always the four right.

Eddie: 1:07:46

arguing for what? For what? For truth shaking, yeah. Arguing to win a debate, that's something else entirely. And that's right and that's not of the realm that they're interested in.

Aneesh: 1:07:56

That's what a democratic person on the divided line.

Eddie: 1:07:58

That's not of the intelligible realm.

Aneesh: 1:08:01

If you try to understand the intelligible realm, that's a different thing. Right, the democratic person would, would want to argue with someone wiser than them, just to put them down, because they have the paradox they feel that wisdom is unnecessary, it's illiberal. You see what I mean. And so you go from a tyrannical mind to a democratic mind. You're still not ready. There is still some sharpening of stuff that has to happen and the dialectic conversations and all of that. Then your appetite start getting you know. You start controlling your appetite, you come to understand necessary, unnecessary ones. Then you have to go out in the world and actually gain, not a right in the world, because if you want to influence the world you have to go back down the cave and participate in the world, and that takes time. So this, this, this process, this, this conversation, everything kind of lines up with our life.

Eddie: 1:08:58

I think the challenge of maturity is being able to because again you remind, that reminded me about going back down to the cave and when it's happening within yourself, the introspective, metacognitive version of this is that once you've reached a level of maturity, you could almost define maturity as the ability to move the epicenter of your thinking from the apex principle in into the, into the guardian level and into the, the ambitious drive level things, and back up, without ever disrupting the symmetry and geometry of that pyramid.

Aneesh: 1:09:40

That's right, that's a very good way, and that's that right. That's the way I would think of it, yeah.

Eddie: 1:09:48

We should end it there.

Aneesh: 1:09:53

It's getting too passionate.