Plato

Now that rich white men have seized power, studying dead white men is all the rage. Mostly it’s a social signal to show who has “merit.” Among the things one must know to be admitted to the club is a gloss of Plato .

I’ve read Plato. I found him a boring ignorant old fool. As are the philosophical musings of anything written before the 19th century – particularly before Darwin and Einstein who finally placed humans properly in the universe .

I enthusiastically enjoy history. I freely admit that any human over the last 50,000 years could think as well as I do, experience life just as deeply. People are complex, amazing, and deal with existence in miraculous ways .

But logic – Plato is very logical, for example – is a tricky tool. Useful but easily dangerous. Politicians, preachers, and various madmen are always able to construct wonderful logical castles on completely wrong and stupid foundations. Plato sees visions of “real ideal” and imagines fairy tale perfect men who wisely use logic to rule everything. He includes souls and reincarnation. In fact, he has no idea of everything we actually know about – well – everything .

Oh, there are major things still unknown and maybe unknowable. The nature of time, the meaning of consciousness, the purpose (if any) of life. None of that related to the cold dead weight of writings such as the Republic.

Venal

“Venal” is a useful old word for describing someone in government who is susceptible to bribes. In the most egregious cases, that someone also actively solicits them. Usually this is accompanied with threats if the bribes are not forthcoming .

Much of the world works this way. It always did. Local officials can rarely avoid it, even if they are basically honest. It’s human nature to expect gratitude and to return favor for favor .

The sometime naive idealism of Americans believed they could avoid it. Laws. Checks and balances. A free press. Strong opposition parties. We happily followed accusations, investigations, trials, convictions .

Now? Well, venal often refers to monetary bribes, but there are others. Flattery for example. Stroking the ego, right or wrong. “No backbone”. We see the signs.

Not that money is out of the picture. Billions are being made by high and low officials on crypto deals, inside trading, and pure slush spending .

Nor are the massive threats missing .

I guess, given that everyone thinks it’s okay, a venal government is what we have come to deserve. A payout for our native cynicism. No longer exceptional. Just like everyone else .

Taxes

The Roman Empire ran government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. Wealthy individuals were required to pay a lot for government positions, in the expectation that they would be more than reimbursed (by bribes, extortion, etc, within reason). It worked remarkably well .

The Roman Empire mostly ignored individual taxes. Entities like cities and provinces were expected to pay decreed amounts, and were free to raise money any way they wanted. If they failed to do so, the legions went in and looted it. That also worked well for hundreds of years .

Modern government is more “enlightened”. It is run “for the people” meaning, by definition, the poor. It is paid for by multiple … well, the problem is that it really is not paid for. The wealthy, as always, have ways to protect their wealth. Their bribes go to preventing taxation, sometimes by illegal evasion, more often by legal maneuvers like “exemptions” or “investment”. The result is increasingly government by debt

In an age when everything will be made by machine and billions of humans helplessly consume, all bets are off. The very idea of paying for scarce items may be obsolete.

But, of course, that land of cockaigne remains ever over the hill, far away, and in the future .

Crowd Pleasing

We all love a crowd-pleasing act. It is fun to be amazed and entertained by improbable performances that lift us out of our ordinary thoughts. We willingly spend time and money to enjoy the show .

Every crowd pleaser starts as a clown. Bright clothes, exaggerated gestures, loud sounds, and crazy antics. No magician wants anyone to be looking at the sky while they pull a rabbit out of a hat. They must keep us focused all the time on what they want us to see. A wonderful moment, when all goes well .

But is it any way to run a country? Democracy relies on it. Other systems may use brute force, or rigid tradition, or even intellectual logic. But votes (real free votes, anyway) require a massive crowd-pleasing act, first to grab attention, then to follow through on what must be done .

All systems have flaws. The exact type of the democratic tradition matters. Technology and situations radically change things. In a rainstorm a magic show doesn’t work. There’s no reason to believe crowd pleasers are worse than any other kind of ruler .

The only problem – in all methods – is when the audience is too small, too isolated, too ignorant and begins to believe it represents everyone else, or a god, or the universe. Then the performer becomes purely a cult leader rallying fanatics – and often only trying to maintain a tiny audience’s attention and duration .

Conventional

I consider myself fortunate to have led a fairly conventional life. By that, meaning to have fit in, done well enough, a little ecstasy, not too much heartbreak. Accepting of most of the rules and tradition of society .

Conventional connotates the core of a civilization, even in its various groups. What the conventional peasants do, what the conventional rulers might direct. The basic conservative principle that keeps tribes from falling apart, and which helps individuals support each other to face the world .

Lately, conventional has also come to mean fashionably correct within a given cult. Conventional leftists, apparently, are all snowflakes who think the world should be cotton candy sweet. Conventional right, on the other hand, believe bitter harshness is the only survival skill in a hostile universe .

The center that I thought I inhabited has apparently melted away. It’s too boring for the young and restless, too naive for the old and cynical. Nobody wants to just try to improve things little by little – time to tear it all up and start over .

Perhaps the fringe fanatics are right. I think not, but none of them (nor anybody else) cares what I think. So I sit in my conventional backyard and, as Voltaire would say, concentrate on growing my equivalent of vegetables .

Future Jobs

Imagine for a moment that civilization survives its many current existential crises. Automation and artificial intelligence would surely fulfill their promise and do all the unpleasant and necessary jobs. In fact, the very idea of having a “job” would vanish .

Of course, that also requires that we imagine a world of plenty, where machines equitably provide endless bounty for everyone. But suppose that happens. What remains? Traditional moralists, naturally, claim that with no “jobs” people lose purpose and degenerate. Those very moralists often emerge from an elite strata of wealth that abhors the idea of “job”. Aristocrats find purpose in many things – social games, hobbies, whatever .

I imagine such a future would be filled with nothing but aristocrats, good and bad, who resemble the aristocrats of old without requiring servants or peasants to support their needs .

Others might claim there are two equally likely outcomes. One is a new society that resembles European explorers’ vision of South Sea Island Paradise, where everyone is happy and lazy and all needs are supplied by nature. The other is the garden of Eden, where all is peaceful and wonderful as long as you don’t anger the AI running the show .

Ah, but that’s all just imagination of the destination. Getting there – or wherever – is going to be a lot more interesting, and maybe unpleasant as well .

Deregulation

Laws and regulations are both necessary and infuriating. It all depends. We imagine they have been around in one form or another forever – sometimes as traditions or taboos, sometimes merely as the whims of the strongest ruler or group. It is impossible to imagine a society without them .

And that is really the key to the problem. Because with social tribes, we imagine things to be more fluid. “Let me do what I want or I’ll go somewhere else!” We believe that as civilization takes hold, every individual becomes encrusted with responsibilities and prohibitions until he or she cannot breathe. “What is not mandated is forbidden .”

We further imagine the frontier as freedom. Cities are confining. Run away to open space, where each can do as each desires. There may be some truth in that, but people are complex. For some reason, throughout history, folks often ran away from rural pastures and small farms to the great cities .

The advantage, of course, has been anonymity. In a city you feel free because the mobs (usually) don’t know you. In spite of those pesky regulations on everyone .

Regulations do tend to hinder innovation and progress. Keeping them “under control” or focused on “common sense” is difficult. Yet cities usually manage to work it out .

It’s when the rural yokels with little experience take charge and get rid of regulations that things really fall apart .

Enough Rope

“Giving someone enough rope to hang himself” seems to be the current position of the opposition party. Sober and sensible people can see that what “he” is doing is totally wrong, but he’s convinced himself and others that he can pull off a miracle .

In some cases, it’s true that active opposition is useless and often counterproductive. It’s the nature of braggarts to blame others when they fail, and who easier to blame than those who worked against the plan. A glib orator can even carry a lot of his charmed audience along with him .

So let him do what he will and then pick up the pieces after the inevitable destruction .

The problem, of course, is that sometimes the person with the wrong vision is totally drunk and going to drive you home in his car. Giving him enough rope to prove he’ll wreck the vehicle and kill others may end your life as well. Not to mention being morally wrong to let him drive under any circumstances .

We are already in the car. I understand that the “enough rope” approach is tempting. I truly hope it ends short of disaster .

Mercenary “Warriors”

It’s a truism that the military always prepares for the last war. A new element is that our current leaders want to prepare for war as depicted in movies and video games. Manly men who can savagely destroy all opposition with increasingly massive personal weaponry .

Of course we’re not quite sure what the “last war” was for the US, but we didn’t seem to win it. On the other hand, the Ukraine conflict seems to prove that any tween in her city bedroom can wipe out a squad of bazooka toting cowboys with a remote drone strike .

And if a “real war” starts, both the cowboys and tween are one nuclear blast – delivered hypersonically – away from oblivion .

But manly men want jobs and the military life seems to fit a certain psychology. The problem is that building an elite group of well-paid volunteers (aka mercenaries) who follow politics – which seems to be the current goal of the administration – will surely lead _ as it always does (witness the Praetorians, Mamalukes, Janissaries) _ to that cadre getting rid of leaders they don’t like (i.e who don’t pay them enough .)

Obviously, I am hardly a fan of manly men syndrome. But personal squeamishness aside, I just think the idea is ineffective, historically inaccurate, stupid, and based on adolescent male fantasies .

Idiot Savant

The classic “idiot savant” is an individual whose brain is wired differently. Brilliant at something – math is a frequent example – but unable to shop for food. We have expanded the idea into “spectrum” to account for the fabulous complexity of human consciousness, but the idea remains useful .

Thus I imagine a new breed of idiot savant, less based on basic brain wiring (although of course genetics may be strongly involved), and more on shallow but focused training. Such a person can become rich and even powerful, but treats other people as if they did not exist – or rather exist only as other objects like rocks or bacteria. Because of such focus, that idiot may have undue influence on society. Like any other amoral cripple, that person may have disastrous effects on everyone else.

Unfortunately we have been educated to admire financial success more than social success. Making more dollars seems much more important than making people happy. We easily offer excuses for the worst behavior of billionaires .

Worst of all, we have let them advance to become rulers, where they fail miserably.

Government is about people, not money. But the “idiot savants” never learn that fundamental truth .