Utopia

Hi Again

Yes, I am perfectly aware that I did not blog yesterday, so if you feel the need to chide me at this moment, then please do so.

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I have been venturing further into Russell's accounts of the history of Socrates and Plato (call me eager!) However, in light of being a recent student at university, one tends to forget the world outside seems to be currently on the brink of financial collapse: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/worst-quarter-for-ftse-100-since-2002-2363686.html. Indeed, you might be for given when I bought my daily newspaper last Saturday reading "Six weeks to save the world", you might forgive me for thinking that we're heading to a much more severe crisis than that of the brinkmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis and, of course, the threat of WMDs from Iraq in 2003. Considering these views, would the world really be better off under Plato's's "totalitarian" Utopia?

And even the SU can't do anything about this mishap.

In his volume Republic, which was written about 380 BC, many of the ideas influenced from Sparta such as an enlightened and "intellectual" government and the entire world dictated by the "Guardians", maybe perhaps we wouldn't have a Chancellor Merkel, who has a degree in the sciences, just like Thatcher, and an Osbourne, who with his History degree from Oxford, we van have somebody who might do better. But really, with over 100 billion being spent, than 200 billion euros, (Greece, anybody?) is Plato contradicting himself when we have an enlightened government and to have Wealth and Poverty as the key forces of harm? Really,  it should have been that the Wealth remained distributed among the "Guardians" and...the poor being poor (surprise, surprise). But he might be, oh I don't know, just a little 2000 years late in retrospect.

One of the key reasons Russell states that Plato turned his back on democracy was that his revered Socrates was executed by Anytus, a political democrat who prosecuted Socrates to his death in 399 BC. In many ways, after that, it was Plato's way or the highway, as an idea from Thrasymachus states, if you "liked" the state of Plato it was "good" for you. And if you didn't...well, you get the picture. If you look at the bitter feud between Obama and the Tea Party faction in the US congress on the $13 trillion deficit debate this year, one may see a reason why Democracy itself becomes an after-dinner joke for the Americans reputation. However, if I was to choose between having a voice in a debate and being house imprisoned in states such as Myanmar and North Korea, I know which I would choose. Heaven forefend that Michele "gaffe prone" Bachman shall ever ascend to the stage in 2012 as the first female president of the "most powerful nation on Earth"!*

Seriously though, to confirm I do not agree with Plato would be an understatement. His views on the aristocratic citizens being made out of gold as just as crazy as the 15 codes of Pythagorean law and in Russell's words:

"it has always been correct to praise Plato, but not to understand him...My object is the opposite. I wish to understand him, but treat him with as little reverence..."

And on that note, until next time...

*Please watch this and feel VERY afraid, as the Republicans select their candidates: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PsLfL9vMaUY&noredirect=1