| Dear No One, My roommate moved out, he was on the list for a single bed apartment and one finally became vacant. There was an age when all the prisons in Virginia were single bunk cells. That's how this one was built. Economics changed the picture, along with a swiftly growing population, and legislation that ended parole. So my celly moved, and for one and a half glorious days I had my own solitude. During this time, people who I rarely spoke to, or knew only peripherally, came to counsel me. I was warned by four different individuals that someone who had been moved out of the pod was trying to come back. He was like a boogey man, his name called up images of glowering ghosts and rattling torment. They were terrified that he would return, and they wanted me to be terrified. Drama consumes us, and gossip, it is our sacrament and bread. There was never any chance of the boogeyman returning. Coming home from work on the first day, a man met me at the door and suggested his openness to our being cellies. When there is an opening, it's not so difficult to have the unit manager switch someone around, as long as you catch him in the right moment. I agreed to the match, and he said he would try to catch the unit manager while I was at the tailor shop the next day. The unit manager was not at work the next day, and my new celly arrived at around eight o'clock that night. His name is Country, and he's in his thirties. He has a child, a lot of tangled relationships with women, and a supportive family. His sister is also in jail. He laughs like "Heuh heuh heuh" in a deeper than normal voice, and one of the first things he said to me was, "man, I'm glad your white." He's a fantastic bunkie. He has money, and he spends a lot of his time in the pod and outside. He transfered here, and he already knows more people than I do. An empty cell is something special. We spend all of our days surrounded by voices and human shapes. Behind the door, the sounds still enter, the faces slip by, a small man with an afro irons other offenders pants on a board bolted to the wall. It is impossible to escape the humanity. In an empty cell, when the pod is asleep, it's almost like being alone. Country saw the copy of "Six Easy Pieces" I'm reading, read the word "physics" on the cover, and asked if it was about psychic stuff. When I said no, he asked if it was about reading body language. Country has done a lot of drugs. I'm genuinely glad to have him in the cell. The bottom bunk is mine at last. Hearts and Stars William Myrl Letters to No One |
Sunday, March 5, 2017
William Myrl; Letters to No One (71)
Friday, January 27, 2017
William Myrl; Letters to No One (70)
| "It's the feeling that compels us to reach out for others even as we curl away from the others around us." Dear No One, There was ice cream today, meat burgers. These things are donated on occasion. It's an awful lot of build up for what is essentially a kid's meal, as we all gossiped about it for a week and a half before the actual lunch, expectations rose beyond reason. Ice cream is one of my favorite things, basically a drug of choice. The boulevard was packed with officers out to catch the double backers, beat the deucers, tray thieves. They hand out 111's, stealing charges, if they catch us going through the line more than once, and today they were serious. Potential hazards; loss of phone use, rec, commissary, or a twelve dollar fine. The fine seems much harsher if you're paid thirty five cents an hour. It's hard to guess how many extras were served. As we eat lunch in the Apparel Plant (way less fancy than it sounds), I didn't have an opportunity to test their hamburgler alarm system. It's embarrassing to think about how much we and how eagerly we fixate on and anticipate this sort of meal. In actuality it is less and less exciting than a stop at Wendy's. I remember Wendy's. Writing these letters, I try to avoid repeating myself, the danger of a diary is falling into the habit of recording mundane cycles of thought and feeling. But feeling, when straying from the humming average of a psychologists ten point scale, is often at the forefront of my mind when I want to write. This kind of feeling isn't good for stories, isn't helpful for detailed argument. It's the feeling that compels us to reach out for others even as we curl away from the others around us. The feeling of being wrapped in a soft and permeable malaise, an unhappy fog. I don't know what to say. Wait a day. Whenever I have a dull period, it is almost invariably followed by an upswing. Today, folding the same canary jumpsuits I was folding yesterday, I had to tamp down on my smiles. My internal dialogue was too amusing. There are other factors. Thursday is the end of my work week, and I had just counted two boxes of band-aids. Inane tasks put me in a good mood. (199 adhesive medical strips, they shorted us one.) Perhaps more salient, we had our group today. It wasn't as negative as last weeks gathering, where patients complained about medical mistreatment, and being locked in seg when they tried too hard to get someone to listen to them. Some droned on, some always do. There were three students there, one with a strange name, indeterminate ethnicity, huge eyes and pouty lips. I happen to hate that descriptor, but pouty is exactly what they were. Some cliches are there for a reason. Most of the session for me was an exercise in staring at her without being overtly creepy. I don't generally feel compelled to contribute to the conversation unless it falters. I've got a new j-pop fixation: Passepied. I've only got three tracks of theirs but each is excellent. Then there's Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. Still insane. Tonight will be my Pathfinder game. We had to change the schedule because we lost a player. He went to segregation chasing his lover, we'll get into that another time. The new guy won't stay awake after nine in the evening. Continuing to play Friday and Saturday late night rec periods will be impossible One happy consequence, I can catch the second half of this Crazy Ex Girlfriend season. The gaming gang consists of Dick, who has an accurate name, Mao, who is impossible to reason with, and Darn, who is the soft pudding with which I shall mix them together. Yours, William Myrl Letters to No One |
Saturday, January 7, 2017
William Myrl; Letters to No One (69)
Dear No One,
There is a conversation that keeps rewinding, actually, there are a number of them, but one bothers me more than the others. When talking about themselves, about living in prison, offenders often use the word alert. They say you have to be alert, you have to remember where you are, because anything could happen at any time.
No.
These people do not understand what alert means. Alertness is a state of heightened awareness, which it is not possible to maintain indefinitely without inviting serious physical and mental health concerns. Purse likes to talk about how alert he is, both in group and in the pod, its one of the speeches he keeps tucked in his back pocket along with his address book. An example he uses is not going to sleep with your cell door open, because someone could enter and do you harm while you were helpless. This behaviour is not a sign of alertness, it's a sign of not being an idiot. When the people who work in the prison leave home in the morning, they don't leave their doors open either. They don't leave the doors to their houses open in the middle of night while asleep, just as college students don't leave the door to their dorm rooms open onto the hall, because they are not idiots.
There are very few offenders that, when pressed, will say they are not alert, do not keep alert. So what do they mean? Purse might say it means being aware of the people around you, aware that you're dealing with criminals. Again, the technical name for being aware of the people around you is called consciousness, or not being an idiot, you don't get kudos for being awake. There is more violence per capita in the prison systems than in the nation at large, but we happen to occupy a very relaxed section of that system. Inmates won't always honor their debts or their promises, but that's also true of humans in general. If to be alert means to remember that you are surrounded by criminals, because they might try to cheat or otherwise take advantage of you, it would do just as well to remember that we are surrounded by humans, who do much the same thing.
The "alert" comments are a pet peeve, possibly because they remind me of someone describing how self aware they are, or how perceptive. How would they know? The individuals I interact with who are clearly sub par people readers believe themselves monuments to perspicacity. Remember the above average effect? Nearly ninety percent of drivers will aver to being above average navigators of the roads. Those same respondents would call themselves "alert." If anyone can do it, than anyone can think they're good at it.
I told the students I was not alert. I live here.
Hearts and stars,
William Myrl
Letters to No One
There is a conversation that keeps rewinding, actually, there are a number of them, but one bothers me more than the others. When talking about themselves, about living in prison, offenders often use the word alert. They say you have to be alert, you have to remember where you are, because anything could happen at any time.
No.
These people do not understand what alert means. Alertness is a state of heightened awareness, which it is not possible to maintain indefinitely without inviting serious physical and mental health concerns. Purse likes to talk about how alert he is, both in group and in the pod, its one of the speeches he keeps tucked in his back pocket along with his address book. An example he uses is not going to sleep with your cell door open, because someone could enter and do you harm while you were helpless. This behaviour is not a sign of alertness, it's a sign of not being an idiot. When the people who work in the prison leave home in the morning, they don't leave their doors open either. They don't leave the doors to their houses open in the middle of night while asleep, just as college students don't leave the door to their dorm rooms open onto the hall, because they are not idiots.
There are very few offenders that, when pressed, will say they are not alert, do not keep alert. So what do they mean? Purse might say it means being aware of the people around you, aware that you're dealing with criminals. Again, the technical name for being aware of the people around you is called consciousness, or not being an idiot, you don't get kudos for being awake. There is more violence per capita in the prison systems than in the nation at large, but we happen to occupy a very relaxed section of that system. Inmates won't always honor their debts or their promises, but that's also true of humans in general. If to be alert means to remember that you are surrounded by criminals, because they might try to cheat or otherwise take advantage of you, it would do just as well to remember that we are surrounded by humans, who do much the same thing.
The "alert" comments are a pet peeve, possibly because they remind me of someone describing how self aware they are, or how perceptive. How would they know? The individuals I interact with who are clearly sub par people readers believe themselves monuments to perspicacity. Remember the above average effect? Nearly ninety percent of drivers will aver to being above average navigators of the roads. Those same respondents would call themselves "alert." If anyone can do it, than anyone can think they're good at it.
I told the students I was not alert. I live here.
Hearts and stars,
William Myrl
Letters to No One
Sunday, September 18, 2016
William Myrl; Letters to No One (68)
Dear No One,
I didn't finish the Republic, and I can't imagine a reason why I would. People shouldn't read Plato, they just shouldn't, except as an example of how not to argue. He isn't necessary for that though, you could get into politics and listen to the same contortionist rhetoric today that was invented long before Rome started being interesting. I made an effort because a student asked me to, but I can only go so far. I was starting to feel the same kind of upset I get from reading young earth creationism propaganda material.
We lost someone else at the shop, they were making an unauthorized clothing repair. The strange bit is that he wasn't caught in the act, but trying to carry it out. They occasionally select a few of us to be strip searched before we can leave. Its perfunctory. Two COs have to be present while you are stripped, so whoever isn't first is left outside the little room with no one watching. He could have disposed of the garment, or even just set it aside, without issue. Instead, he waited with it in his clothes, waited for his turn. I imagine he was panicking, and not thinking. There's a trashcan within a pace of where he must have been standing.
So I'm sitting here listening to a band called Cream n' Chrome, of all things, and waiting for the Americas Got Talent finale. More importantly, Mr Robot is on tonight. You should give it a try.
I read Darkness Visible, by William Styron, another book recommended to me in the context of an interview. It's brief, pretty, and dramatic. One can take it as a happy omen that his swollen descriptions of depression seemed far away to me, he repeats, as I often have, that there is an insurmountable incommunicability to the illness. He was a famous literary presence, and an alcoholic who quit late in life. Defeating his addiction probably helped bring about the episode that nearly defeated him, and taking the wrong medication to help him sleep. He talked about depression being a humdrum and inadequate term for the disease, and I am inclined to agree. But any word is prone to misunderstanding, and increasing misuse over time. I still would rather they hadn't changed "manic depression" to "bipolar". Much of the stigma he and others faced, has been meliorated.
It's 2016, and Demi Levato, one of Disney's pop princesses, appears in public health messages about living with bipolar disorder. Famous persons still commit suicide, Styron lists a number, but their struggles are openly acknowledged by the media instead of hidden. Part of that is interest mongering, but I believe it can also serve a purpose. Robin Williams' illness wasn't broadcast during his life or in his career. Perhaps it should have been. An unacknowledged disorder can be the most dangerous kind.
Styron, I think, did eventually kill himself, a sad end to a mixed story. He was eighty years into the game.
Yours,
William Myrl
I didn't finish the Republic, and I can't imagine a reason why I would. People shouldn't read Plato, they just shouldn't, except as an example of how not to argue. He isn't necessary for that though, you could get into politics and listen to the same contortionist rhetoric today that was invented long before Rome started being interesting. I made an effort because a student asked me to, but I can only go so far. I was starting to feel the same kind of upset I get from reading young earth creationism propaganda material.
We lost someone else at the shop, they were making an unauthorized clothing repair. The strange bit is that he wasn't caught in the act, but trying to carry it out. They occasionally select a few of us to be strip searched before we can leave. Its perfunctory. Two COs have to be present while you are stripped, so whoever isn't first is left outside the little room with no one watching. He could have disposed of the garment, or even just set it aside, without issue. Instead, he waited with it in his clothes, waited for his turn. I imagine he was panicking, and not thinking. There's a trashcan within a pace of where he must have been standing.
So I'm sitting here listening to a band called Cream n' Chrome, of all things, and waiting for the Americas Got Talent finale. More importantly, Mr Robot is on tonight. You should give it a try.
I read Darkness Visible, by William Styron, another book recommended to me in the context of an interview. It's brief, pretty, and dramatic. One can take it as a happy omen that his swollen descriptions of depression seemed far away to me, he repeats, as I often have, that there is an insurmountable incommunicability to the illness. He was a famous literary presence, and an alcoholic who quit late in life. Defeating his addiction probably helped bring about the episode that nearly defeated him, and taking the wrong medication to help him sleep. He talked about depression being a humdrum and inadequate term for the disease, and I am inclined to agree. But any word is prone to misunderstanding, and increasing misuse over time. I still would rather they hadn't changed "manic depression" to "bipolar". Much of the stigma he and others faced, has been meliorated.
It's 2016, and Demi Levato, one of Disney's pop princesses, appears in public health messages about living with bipolar disorder. Famous persons still commit suicide, Styron lists a number, but their struggles are openly acknowledged by the media instead of hidden. Part of that is interest mongering, but I believe it can also serve a purpose. Robin Williams' illness wasn't broadcast during his life or in his career. Perhaps it should have been. An unacknowledged disorder can be the most dangerous kind.
Styron, I think, did eventually kill himself, a sad end to a mixed story. He was eighty years into the game.
Yours,
William Myrl
Thursday, September 8, 2016
William Myrl; Letters to No One (67) - Kneading Plato part III
Dear No One,
Phaedo is the dialogue that covers the death of Socrates, his last words with friends, nattering away until they reach the hour appointed for him to drink poison. His closeness to death makes the afterlife an excellent topic for their discussion.
According to Socrates, the philosopher must always be in pursuit of death and dying, because he abstains from worldly things, and seeks the pure essence of concepts and truth. Physical pleasures are to be despised, because to have pure knowledge of anything we must have quit of the body. There are echoes of eastern philosophies in Plato's writings, and I wonder how familiar he was with them, and whether they were plagiarized.
If the body and the world are corrupt, and there is such a thing as a soul, then why not commit suicide? Socrates has an answer for this (he has an answer for everything), and it is that we are the property of the gods, and therefore have no right to self destruct. This is a very strange position for him to take, given his own proximity to suicide, but like all of Socrates other hypocrisies, this issue not addressed. In the dialogues, nothing Socrates says is ever criticized in earnest, because he is the mouthpiece of the author, and the author is the only person in the room.
How do we know that there is such a thing as a soul, and that it persists after death? That is solved quite handily with the baseless asseveration that opposites always create each other, and that as death is the opposite of life, death must create life, and visa versa. So there must be a soul that exists before the body- I honestly don't know how that connection is made. Someone asked me whether I wasn't enjoying Plato because it was difficult to understand. Let us be clear, Plato's dialogues are not difficult to understand. In order for it to be difficult to understand a thing it must be at least possible to understand it. Unalloyed nonsense is not difficult to understand, it is just nonsense.
The soul is immortal because it is invisible, and all of the invisible realm is immortal. The soul is a harmony, and a harmony can allow no disharmony within itself. The soul is immortal, and immortality cannot suffer death, therefore the soul can never die. He goes on and on, this Socrates, before he finally kills himself with hemlock (because the opinions of the many don't matter, unless they sentence you to death, in which case they become the law, and you cannot break the law without destroying society and being hated by all men who love good, which makes suicide okay).
Plato's arguments tend to revolve around the realm of pure concepts, where words and ideas have an unchanging existence outside of and above the petty material world. He defines a word, like good or immortal, in a given way, and then says that we must behave in accordance with these words, reality must adhere to these words and to their perfect natures, or else we are not lovers of knowledge and true philosophers.
Mystical claptrap is as old as mankind, and he is quite accomplished in the field of pretending to be wise. The more that I read, the more bored I become, and the more confounded. How can a literate person be exposed to Plato, read his whole body of work even, and conclude that it is something worth doing, that it is something worth recommending to others? His characters debate back and forth, bandying jabberwocks, like the emperor's attendants discussing the fineness and variety of his invisible (and therefore immortal) panoply.
I'm not trying to be mean, I don't think Socrates and his creator are valuable or interesting enough to attack. They are ancient peoples, plagued with all the ignorance of the ancients, and they serve well as intellectual curiosities. Why do we hold them up as anything more than that? What kind of mental gymnastics must we undertake to read this collection of weird assertions and perceive them as profound?
yours,
William Myrl
Letters to No One
Phaedo is the dialogue that covers the death of Socrates, his last words with friends, nattering away until they reach the hour appointed for him to drink poison. His closeness to death makes the afterlife an excellent topic for their discussion.
According to Socrates, the philosopher must always be in pursuit of death and dying, because he abstains from worldly things, and seeks the pure essence of concepts and truth. Physical pleasures are to be despised, because to have pure knowledge of anything we must have quit of the body. There are echoes of eastern philosophies in Plato's writings, and I wonder how familiar he was with them, and whether they were plagiarized.
If the body and the world are corrupt, and there is such a thing as a soul, then why not commit suicide? Socrates has an answer for this (he has an answer for everything), and it is that we are the property of the gods, and therefore have no right to self destruct. This is a very strange position for him to take, given his own proximity to suicide, but like all of Socrates other hypocrisies, this issue not addressed. In the dialogues, nothing Socrates says is ever criticized in earnest, because he is the mouthpiece of the author, and the author is the only person in the room.
How do we know that there is such a thing as a soul, and that it persists after death? That is solved quite handily with the baseless asseveration that opposites always create each other, and that as death is the opposite of life, death must create life, and visa versa. So there must be a soul that exists before the body- I honestly don't know how that connection is made. Someone asked me whether I wasn't enjoying Plato because it was difficult to understand. Let us be clear, Plato's dialogues are not difficult to understand. In order for it to be difficult to understand a thing it must be at least possible to understand it. Unalloyed nonsense is not difficult to understand, it is just nonsense.
The soul is immortal because it is invisible, and all of the invisible realm is immortal. The soul is a harmony, and a harmony can allow no disharmony within itself. The soul is immortal, and immortality cannot suffer death, therefore the soul can never die. He goes on and on, this Socrates, before he finally kills himself with hemlock (because the opinions of the many don't matter, unless they sentence you to death, in which case they become the law, and you cannot break the law without destroying society and being hated by all men who love good, which makes suicide okay).
Plato's arguments tend to revolve around the realm of pure concepts, where words and ideas have an unchanging existence outside of and above the petty material world. He defines a word, like good or immortal, in a given way, and then says that we must behave in accordance with these words, reality must adhere to these words and to their perfect natures, or else we are not lovers of knowledge and true philosophers.
Mystical claptrap is as old as mankind, and he is quite accomplished in the field of pretending to be wise. The more that I read, the more bored I become, and the more confounded. How can a literate person be exposed to Plato, read his whole body of work even, and conclude that it is something worth doing, that it is something worth recommending to others? His characters debate back and forth, bandying jabberwocks, like the emperor's attendants discussing the fineness and variety of his invisible (and therefore immortal) panoply.
I'm not trying to be mean, I don't think Socrates and his creator are valuable or interesting enough to attack. They are ancient peoples, plagued with all the ignorance of the ancients, and they serve well as intellectual curiosities. Why do we hold them up as anything more than that? What kind of mental gymnastics must we undertake to read this collection of weird assertions and perceive them as profound?
yours,
William Myrl
Letters to No One
William Myrl; Letters to No One (66) - Kneading Plato part II
Dear No One,
After the Apology comes Crito.
This is a dialogue between Socrates and his friend Crito who has come to persuade him to escape prison and evade his sentence of death. Socrates refuses, and they argue back and forth, but like nearly all of the characters in these dialogues, Crito uses most of his lines to agree wholeheartedly with whatever Socrates happens to be saying. Contrary ideas are abandoned as soon as they are proposed, as if they had an understanding with the great philosopher all along and merely wished to hear him put their own beliefs into words for them.
Crito begins by telling Socrates that he cannot possibly allow him to die in prison, because then all men will think badly of him for not trying to help his famous friend. This is, like much of what you will read in the dialogues, not a thing that any actual person would say, except as a joke. Socrates' response is that the opinions of the many are not to be regarded, only the judgments of the good. Not a bad piece of advice, with the understanding that Socrates himself doesn't regard the opinions of anyone but himself. Why is it that the fact that Socrates can't lose an argument is taken as a sign of his intelligence, rather than his obstinance?
In any case, the philosopher cannot allow anyone to help him escape his sentence, because doing so would violate the law, and he cannot violate any laws, because to violate a law is to violate the social contract that allows men to live together in society. If he did betray himself by leaving, it would also be a betrayal of his family, who would have to live without him or go with him and therefore be deprived of Athens, the only city in the world worth living in. In exile, any government would see him as the treasonous enemy that he was for having broken the laws of another country.
There is nothing about his position that is not ridiculous, so I will talk about something more interesting. The Socratic method, the method by which he reaches his many risible conclusions, is in need of analysis.
Socrates asks people to set their own terms, to define an idea related to what they are talking about, and then picks at that definition until his opponent is forced to agree that his original statement leads to absurd conclusions, or it supports Socrates position. It works because his opponents are all fictional straw men, and because language is ambiguous, and he exploits that ambiguity. He defines a good life as one in which no wrong is done, defines escaping prison as wrong, and finds escaping prison to be therefore impossible if he is to live a good life. All the while, Crito says whatever Socrates would want him to say, nodding or shaking his head as appropriate for a puppet.
Human beings are not internally coherent. What this means is that our beliefs would not all agree with each other, if they were laid out all at once. Most of the time, when we are asked what we believe about a given issue, we fabricate our beliefs on the spot, rather than storing those beliefs in a memory bank that checks behind itself. It's more efficient, and it allows us to hold multiple conflicting beliefs at any given moment.
The statements we make about our beliefs are not iron clad, they do not stand alone against scrutiny, but require caveats and codas to support them. When we have a conversation, it is difficult, impossible, to hold everything that is said perfectly in mind, topics bounce about, statements are amended or forgotten, and no one changes heart on any subject they feel strongly about. You can try the Socratic method on anyone you care to; if you keep asking questions they will eventually contradict themselves. This does not make you, or Socrates, clever, it's simply a fact that humans are not good logical calculators, and we have limited RAM.
Socrates argues from the general (but is not life, but a good life, to be chiefly valued?) to the specific (if I disobeyed the law I would not have a life to be chiefly valued) in a convoluted and contrived fashion, and he is only capable of doing so because Plato is the one writing the story. A tenth grade seminar student would be able to cut him short.
You may accuse me of reading Plato with an eye jaded by concepts modern students take for granted. Plato didn't have our advantages. Of course he didn't, and that's exactly why we shouldn't take him seriously. Be aware of him, mention him in a history course, fine- but stop buying into the conceit that he was prophesied to be wise. Perhaps he was wise then, and it was a sadder age. We do not live in that age any longer, and what was impressive then is not impressive now.
Plato decides that he must kill himself because he believes killing himself makes him the better man, the best of men. He refuses to live in a world where he is not right, where he cannot live by exactly his terms. I'm sure there are people who think this is nobility. I think that it is cowardice.
Yours,
William Myrl
Letters to No One
After the Apology comes Crito.
This is a dialogue between Socrates and his friend Crito who has come to persuade him to escape prison and evade his sentence of death. Socrates refuses, and they argue back and forth, but like nearly all of the characters in these dialogues, Crito uses most of his lines to agree wholeheartedly with whatever Socrates happens to be saying. Contrary ideas are abandoned as soon as they are proposed, as if they had an understanding with the great philosopher all along and merely wished to hear him put their own beliefs into words for them.
Crito begins by telling Socrates that he cannot possibly allow him to die in prison, because then all men will think badly of him for not trying to help his famous friend. This is, like much of what you will read in the dialogues, not a thing that any actual person would say, except as a joke. Socrates' response is that the opinions of the many are not to be regarded, only the judgments of the good. Not a bad piece of advice, with the understanding that Socrates himself doesn't regard the opinions of anyone but himself. Why is it that the fact that Socrates can't lose an argument is taken as a sign of his intelligence, rather than his obstinance?
In any case, the philosopher cannot allow anyone to help him escape his sentence, because doing so would violate the law, and he cannot violate any laws, because to violate a law is to violate the social contract that allows men to live together in society. If he did betray himself by leaving, it would also be a betrayal of his family, who would have to live without him or go with him and therefore be deprived of Athens, the only city in the world worth living in. In exile, any government would see him as the treasonous enemy that he was for having broken the laws of another country.
There is nothing about his position that is not ridiculous, so I will talk about something more interesting. The Socratic method, the method by which he reaches his many risible conclusions, is in need of analysis.
Socrates asks people to set their own terms, to define an idea related to what they are talking about, and then picks at that definition until his opponent is forced to agree that his original statement leads to absurd conclusions, or it supports Socrates position. It works because his opponents are all fictional straw men, and because language is ambiguous, and he exploits that ambiguity. He defines a good life as one in which no wrong is done, defines escaping prison as wrong, and finds escaping prison to be therefore impossible if he is to live a good life. All the while, Crito says whatever Socrates would want him to say, nodding or shaking his head as appropriate for a puppet.
Human beings are not internally coherent. What this means is that our beliefs would not all agree with each other, if they were laid out all at once. Most of the time, when we are asked what we believe about a given issue, we fabricate our beliefs on the spot, rather than storing those beliefs in a memory bank that checks behind itself. It's more efficient, and it allows us to hold multiple conflicting beliefs at any given moment.
The statements we make about our beliefs are not iron clad, they do not stand alone against scrutiny, but require caveats and codas to support them. When we have a conversation, it is difficult, impossible, to hold everything that is said perfectly in mind, topics bounce about, statements are amended or forgotten, and no one changes heart on any subject they feel strongly about. You can try the Socratic method on anyone you care to; if you keep asking questions they will eventually contradict themselves. This does not make you, or Socrates, clever, it's simply a fact that humans are not good logical calculators, and we have limited RAM.
Socrates argues from the general (but is not life, but a good life, to be chiefly valued?) to the specific (if I disobeyed the law I would not have a life to be chiefly valued) in a convoluted and contrived fashion, and he is only capable of doing so because Plato is the one writing the story. A tenth grade seminar student would be able to cut him short.
You may accuse me of reading Plato with an eye jaded by concepts modern students take for granted. Plato didn't have our advantages. Of course he didn't, and that's exactly why we shouldn't take him seriously. Be aware of him, mention him in a history course, fine- but stop buying into the conceit that he was prophesied to be wise. Perhaps he was wise then, and it was a sadder age. We do not live in that age any longer, and what was impressive then is not impressive now.
Plato decides that he must kill himself because he believes killing himself makes him the better man, the best of men. He refuses to live in a world where he is not right, where he cannot live by exactly his terms. I'm sure there are people who think this is nobility. I think that it is cowardice.
Yours,
William Myrl
Letters to No One
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
William Myrl; Letters to No One (65) - Kneading Plato, part I
Dear No One,
One of the medical students suggested reading Plato. He told me he would bring Plato's anthologies with him onto a desert island. I wanted to know what he saw in it, so I checked out a collection from the library.
Classics can be difficult reading, translations, archaic language, unfamiliar names and references to bygone idioms all contribute to that difficulty. Ancient philosophy is actually smoother going than its modern counterpart, as there isn't a logic equation in sight. Plato's arguments can be convoluted, but they can be parsed with a little patience. There is a mystique about his work, a near sanctity, that prevents people from examining his words as they would if he were not Plato.
The pretension of wisdom is a pet peeve of mine. My apologies, No One, for what is to follow.
The Trial of Socrates
We had to read it in high school, and it's the most famous of Plato's works. It's also one of the most readable. A fine place to begin.
Socrates defends himself against a number of charges, but not before he seeks to prove to the audience that he is smarter than any of them. The oracle at Delphi prophesied that he would be the wisest man in the world. He came to believe that it was true, he says, because he went to all sorts of men (not women, of course) who were said to be wise and discovered that they all possessed the same flaw. They had opinions on matters they were not qualified to have opinions on.
Socrates, on the contrary, knew that he knew nothing, and was therefore the wisest of men. Take a moment here. Socrates is chastising others, calling their reputations into question, as well as crowning himself wisest, because other people he happens to come upon in the city he won't leave have opinions about matters they are not qualified to have opinions on. This from a man who opines at every opportunity, on every subject, who believes himself to have the finest insight into every art and puzzle, and always insists on the last word. He surrounds himself with sycophants, and rambles on about his humble nature, being but the gadfly of Athens, but betrays himself with his actions. He is humble, yes, and knows the limits of his knowledge, and yet he will not bow his head to any assembly, or admit to any possibility of his own ignorance.
Those of you who have read the Apology, as well as Plato's other popular fictions, may scour them as you will for lines that disprove my assertions. You will find them, and thereby prove my point; Socrates is a hypocrite. He says all manner of humble things, he is kind and generous with his words, and all of that is belied by his actual actions and beliefs. I cannot emphasize enough, Socrates calls himself the wisest man in the world because only he knows that he knows nothing. Taken out of context, its a very pithy statement. What it actually means is less dramatic or striking, a wise person is aware of the limits of their own knowledge. Even a casual reading of the dialogues should be enough to convince you that Socrates is not that wise person.
The Apology is Socrates' defense against trumped up non crimes that you could apparently be put to death for in ancient Rome. Atheism and corrupting the youth of Athens stood out to me.To paraphrase his defense against the charge of atheism: "I can't possibly be an atheist, I talk about the gods all the time."
Genius.
His defense against the charge of corruption-"I can't possibly be corrupting the youth of Athens, because if my accusers were good people, they would have stopped me from corrupting the youth already, and they say they are good people, but they haven't stopped me; therefore, I am not corrupting the youth."
Absolutely no foolin', that is his argument.
Also, he says, "If I had been corrupting the youth all this time, the youth I corrupted a generation ago would be here to accuse me now, but they are not, and therefore I am not corrupting the youth."
That's how corruption works in my book.
Socrates takes many pages to say these simple things, but they are what he says.
What shocked me the most about the Apology was how chummy Socrates appears to be with death. He acknowledges only two possibilities following the end of life, an eternal rest, or a Dumbeldorian "next great adventure." This implies a failure of the imagination at the very least. I won't dwell on this subject here, as Crito and Phaedo address it more fully, as well as the arrogance that causes him to choose death over life.
My point, if I have one, is that nothing Socrates argues is exceptionally insightful. He philosophizes at an advanced high school level. Teenagers do better on internet message boards.
If Socrates is noteworthy because of the age in which he wrote, because of his antiquity, then wonderful, but let's not pretend the words themselves are more sagacious because they were a temporal anomaly. No one watches black and white televisions because they were amazing for their time.
Yours,
William Myrl
One of the medical students suggested reading Plato. He told me he would bring Plato's anthologies with him onto a desert island. I wanted to know what he saw in it, so I checked out a collection from the library.
Classics can be difficult reading, translations, archaic language, unfamiliar names and references to bygone idioms all contribute to that difficulty. Ancient philosophy is actually smoother going than its modern counterpart, as there isn't a logic equation in sight. Plato's arguments can be convoluted, but they can be parsed with a little patience. There is a mystique about his work, a near sanctity, that prevents people from examining his words as they would if he were not Plato.
The pretension of wisdom is a pet peeve of mine. My apologies, No One, for what is to follow.
The Trial of Socrates
We had to read it in high school, and it's the most famous of Plato's works. It's also one of the most readable. A fine place to begin.
Socrates defends himself against a number of charges, but not before he seeks to prove to the audience that he is smarter than any of them. The oracle at Delphi prophesied that he would be the wisest man in the world. He came to believe that it was true, he says, because he went to all sorts of men (not women, of course) who were said to be wise and discovered that they all possessed the same flaw. They had opinions on matters they were not qualified to have opinions on.
Socrates, on the contrary, knew that he knew nothing, and was therefore the wisest of men. Take a moment here. Socrates is chastising others, calling their reputations into question, as well as crowning himself wisest, because other people he happens to come upon in the city he won't leave have opinions about matters they are not qualified to have opinions on. This from a man who opines at every opportunity, on every subject, who believes himself to have the finest insight into every art and puzzle, and always insists on the last word. He surrounds himself with sycophants, and rambles on about his humble nature, being but the gadfly of Athens, but betrays himself with his actions. He is humble, yes, and knows the limits of his knowledge, and yet he will not bow his head to any assembly, or admit to any possibility of his own ignorance.
Those of you who have read the Apology, as well as Plato's other popular fictions, may scour them as you will for lines that disprove my assertions. You will find them, and thereby prove my point; Socrates is a hypocrite. He says all manner of humble things, he is kind and generous with his words, and all of that is belied by his actual actions and beliefs. I cannot emphasize enough, Socrates calls himself the wisest man in the world because only he knows that he knows nothing. Taken out of context, its a very pithy statement. What it actually means is less dramatic or striking, a wise person is aware of the limits of their own knowledge. Even a casual reading of the dialogues should be enough to convince you that Socrates is not that wise person.
The Apology is Socrates' defense against trumped up non crimes that you could apparently be put to death for in ancient Rome. Atheism and corrupting the youth of Athens stood out to me.To paraphrase his defense against the charge of atheism: "I can't possibly be an atheist, I talk about the gods all the time."
Genius.
His defense against the charge of corruption-"I can't possibly be corrupting the youth of Athens, because if my accusers were good people, they would have stopped me from corrupting the youth already, and they say they are good people, but they haven't stopped me; therefore, I am not corrupting the youth."
Absolutely no foolin', that is his argument.
Also, he says, "If I had been corrupting the youth all this time, the youth I corrupted a generation ago would be here to accuse me now, but they are not, and therefore I am not corrupting the youth."
That's how corruption works in my book.
Socrates takes many pages to say these simple things, but they are what he says.
What shocked me the most about the Apology was how chummy Socrates appears to be with death. He acknowledges only two possibilities following the end of life, an eternal rest, or a Dumbeldorian "next great adventure." This implies a failure of the imagination at the very least. I won't dwell on this subject here, as Crito and Phaedo address it more fully, as well as the arrogance that causes him to choose death over life.
My point, if I have one, is that nothing Socrates argues is exceptionally insightful. He philosophizes at an advanced high school level. Teenagers do better on internet message boards.
If Socrates is noteworthy because of the age in which he wrote, because of his antiquity, then wonderful, but let's not pretend the words themselves are more sagacious because they were a temporal anomaly. No one watches black and white televisions because they were amazing for their time.
Yours,
William Myrl
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