Estremera: Plato's Republic

IT WAS while browsing through Plato's "The Republic", specifically in the portion when Socrates was describing tyrants and the making of tyrants that I stopped and pondered. How appropriate indeed to get to know Plato again, in this time of political greed and perpetuated avarice, as he wrote:

"And now, I said, years will have passed away, and you must conceive this man, such as he is, to have a son, who is brought up in his father's principles." That's Socrates talking to the philosophers in Book 9.

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"Then you must further imagine the same thing to happen to the son which has already happened to the father: he is drawn into a perfectly lawless life, which by his seducers is termed perfect liberty; and his father and friends take part with his moderate desires, and the opposite party assist the opposite ones. As soon as these dire magicians and tyrant-makers find that they are losing their hold on him, they contrive to implant in him a master passion, to be lord over his idle and spendthrift lusts -- a sort of monstrous winged drone -- that is the only image which will adequately describe him."

Anything good picked up in childhood is totally erased "amid the clouds of incense and perfumes and garlands and wines, and all the pleasures of a dissolute life".

"To these better principles he puts an end, and casts them forth until he has purged away temperance and brought in madness to the full..."

Tyranny is learned and tyranny is taught and propagated by those who have come before, partook of the lustful existence, and got drunk with it. And so the tyrant and his alleluia singers seduce the young and implant in him a master passion for this unquenchable lust.

"And you know that a man who is deranged and not right in his mind, will fancy that he is able to rule, not only over men, but also over the gods?"

We could almost chorus with the philosophers as they replied, "That he will."

Very interesting. In so short an imagined dialogue, Plato described the making of a tyrant, the passing on of the torch, the continuance of greed. Plato should become required reading for today's voters.

After the honing, the progeny becomes what he has been honed to be.

"Love is his tyrant, and lives lordly in him and lawlessly, and being himself a king, leads him on, as a tyrant leads a State, to the performance of any reckless deed by which he can maintain himself and the rabble of his associates, whether those whom evil communications have brought in from without, or those whom he himself has allowed to break loose within him by reason of a similar evil nature in himself."

So when does the clown act come in and where? You know, the little tyrant who doesn't have his own dominion yet along with his hangers-on, the trouble-makers and rubble-rousers, and yes, "those whom evil communications have brought in from without"? They must be somewhere in that tyrannical state. Plato did see them coming and described them several sentences later...

"And if there are only a few of them in the State, and the rest of the people are well disposed, they go away and become the body-guard or mercenary soldiers of some other tyrant who may probably want them for a war; and if there is no war, they stay at home and do many little pieces of mischief in the city."

These mercenary soldiers are enumerated as: "the thieves, burglars, cut-purses, foot-pads, robbers of temples, man-stealers of the community; or if they are able to speak they turn informers, and bear false witness, and take bribes." I'd love to add to the list, but the slammer isn't the most comfortable place to write in.

"When such men are only private individuals and before they get power, this is their character; they associate entirely with their own flatterers or ready tools; or if they want anything from anybody, they in their turn are equally ready to bow down before them: they profess every sort of affection for them; but when they have gained their point they know them no more..." (Why is it that I suddenly get the itch to break out in that hand-clapping-finger-pointing dance move?)

Perfectly described, dear Plato, I wonder if some people in the Philippines are actually learning from you how to be a tyrant. There sure are a good number who seem to fit the bill too comfortably, it couldn't just be coincidence...

The young tyrants who still have no dominions are thus described: "They are always either the masters or servants and never the friends of anybody; the tyrant never tastes of true freedom or friendship."

How sad, how miserable a life; but for Socrates in the book, that is not yet the depths of misery that can be achieved.

The most miserable is "He who is of a tyrannical nature, and instead of leading a private life has been cursed with the further misfortune of being a public tyrant."

Yay!

With no real friends around, with no other choice but being the master or the servant, even the one who becomes master becomes the real slave because to remain in power without real friends and compassionate colleagues, he "is obliged to practice the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions and distractions."

There are the higher-ups to spread lies to, the hands to grease, the goons to keep healthy and quiet, and the mouths to pay to say lies and yes, the whole grand production to stage these lies on.

"Moreover, as we were saying before, he grows worse from having power: he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless, more impious, than he was at first; he is the purveyor and cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is that he is supremely miserable, and that he makes everybody else as miserable as himself."

By the way, it was Plato who wrote this. I'm just quoting him and commenting along the way. Now, onto Machiavelli and his amoral concept of leadership... Bato, bato... saestremera@yahoo.com