2020-11-07 My Philosopher-King fantasy

James Lindsey's twitter feed pointed to an article by Edward Feser that outlines Plato's ideas about human nature and governance.

Woke Ideology Is a Psychological Disorder

A professor I looked up to as wise and kind taught at Rollins College in the 70's. I remember saying to him that I my desire in life was to "run for Philosopher-King" and feeling shame at my desire for vainglory as I said it. I had a similar experience when the President of a company I worked for and was a minor partner in said I was the acting boss when he and the 2 other partners were off to some conference or other. I felt an exhilaration at the investment of power and imitating He-Man said something like "I have the power". I immediately felt wrong and ashamed. Since then I have eschewed any earthly authority over anything but my property and my wife. And my authority over my wife consists exclusively of maintaining that she should be true to the light that she has.

In the article linked above Democracy is described as one of the degenerate states of government where:

> In general, the young set themselves against their elders, while elders fear being thought "disagreeable or strict" and are reduced to pathetically "aping the young and mixing with them on terms of easy fellowship." The teacher "fears and panders to his pupils" but the pupils despise him anyway. Democratic man insists on "complete equality and liberty in the relations between the sexes," and on drawing "no distinction between alien and citizen and foreigner." Plato tells us that license is extended even to domestic animals, who freely roam the streets of the democratic city.

This put me in mind of my second year teaching math to middle school children. One class in "general math" had two black girls who I wanted to "mix with on terms of easy fellowship." I ended up literally standing on my head trying to get them to do their lessons. That proved to be a fool's errand gaining me not fellowship, but shame. The quote's last sentence brings to mind the ethos of some of my neighbors who let their dogs roam at large (as I did only a few months ago).

> In the end, "in their determination to have no master," the citizens of a democracy "disregard all laws, written or unwritten." This democratic lawlessness, Plato tells us, is "the root from which tyranny springs." ... The very idea of a natural order of things that determines that some desires are disordered and forbidden by reason becomes hateful to democratic man.