The Philosophers, the Sophists and the Rhapsodes

An Athenian holotrope of momentous modern import.

I HAVE HEARD IT SAID that in the time of Socrates, in Athens, there were many travails familiar to our modern circumstance, however novel they may appear in present guises. It was a time of crisis and sudden transformation, of propaganda and war — and the culture was struggling to survive its own birth in an atmosphere of lies, invective, and the currying of wealth, military force, public favor and economic or social power. A clusterfuck of conflicting imperatives, many of which were the ironic opposites of all they were presented as. These are matters with which we are all intimately familiar. As in ‘matters of the collective, the marketplace, the courtroom… the family, the mob’.

In spirit, we may suppose that, as today, many of the worthiest philosophers despised counterfeiting, satire and hyperbole. More than a few were painfully aware that ‘entertainment’ was a lethal idea that too easily became a soporific. Some surely dismissed as outright lies the emotional pandering of ‘dramas and tragedies produced for the masses’, and were intent upon interrupting a process that simulated virtues by way of promoting and celebrating their lethal opposites or even their absence.

As bait for spectators.

Like us, the philosophers were aware that they were everywhere surrounded by ‘traditions’ and behaviors that, allowed to simply proceed, would quickly overwhelm the origins and roots of our humanity, possible divinity, insight and the true benefits of communal agency or endeavor. And thus demand ironic tragedy as their result.

Their situations are our own, and we owe the foundations of many of our common ideas to their struggles, successes, and failures. And much of our experience of language is forged of something like the ossified remains of theirs.

Fossils.

The lenses left to us by the Athenians may grant us immediate insight into many urgently common concerns and agonies. It is paradoxically appropriate that the modern catastrophes of ‘public communication’ that inhibit or redirect the potentials of our communal intelligence were already well-established over a thousand years ago.

What are we to wisely make of our myriad problems and their apparently infinite sources? Are they are not ‘human nature’ as the cliché goes, and thus indomitable? Here we see the power of a deceptive truism that invites us to forget or abandon the reality of our own presence in agency and intelligence.

No, when carefully examined, they are revealed to be little more than the well-nourished artifacts of damaged or counterfeited culture preserved in and as compelling language.

Most of what confuses ‘us’ are not precisely ‘problems’, but rather questions or ideas so poorly forged that they cannot even qualify as erroneous; and these assertions or explanations are often so seemingly compelling that they stand in for minds, especially in arbitrarily associated groups whose ‘bonds’ are verbal, addictive or fictional — instead of relational.

In this sense, ‘the falsified we that our mobs become’ invents the problems ‘we’ appear to be afflicted with — by misframing reality and relation, particularly in online forums and ‘appland’. Identity and meaning are duplicitously declared, as if statements were or could be universal laws, divine edicts, or reality itself rather than something we discover, become and invent together.

As if mere words were gods.

Everyday cognitive sabotage is not easily detected by ‘mob mind’ or superficial contact, and thus many absurd ideas are promoted to unimaginable popularity, or celebrated (and transmitted) as certainties. So the beginning of the problem starts with groups: how and why, or if we form them. What is the nature and purpose of their real or feigned unity? Of their real or possible intelligence? And where we do not form them, others may form them ‘for’, against or ‘of’ us. We will then see absences of unity presented as presences of force and tyranny. Corporations. False nations. Prisoning systems. Facebook.

All that is necessary for this to happen is: people using language.

And the easiest place to get that happening is: a crowd. Luckily for the endless throngs of predatory or parasitic pretenders, many ways of simply using language — can invent and instruct mobs for just about any purpose you can imagine. And we know this.

We call it social media.

But is it?

In crowds, ‘theaters’, and wherever common people collect or can be caused to, certain species of ideas, words, and figures can be ‘injected’ into the communications body of the group in order to effectively ‘hack the mob’ and exploit them for any or many purposes, often perpetually. This requires nothing more than a framework that rewards standards that lower themselves with every repetition of the schema.

The ‘between’ of people is the source and arbiter of identity, relation, intelligence and authority. Compromise that? You have everything. These understandings comprise a crucial part of the toolbox that Sophists and Rhapsodes share, and they are the source of and purpose of nearly all the common media ‘popular’ today.

Yet empty words and ideas will only be valued in a social marketplace nearly or completely divested of intelligence, agency, personhood or active inquiry. A wasteland. A market of the disenfranchised, the disembodied, the enslaved, and those who are ‘present as absence’. In short: the common people, especially wherever their attention can be ‘collected’ for purposes as inventively fake as they are common.

Any authentically intelligent person or communal collective is relatively immune to such compromise. Which is one of the reasons why there are exceptionally few examples in or as our present culture.

Though the situations in ancient Athens at the time of Socrates were complex, and will reward careful research, our time is limited and my goal is focused. I wish to distinguish between those engaged in a kind of highly public pretense for power, attention, or other rewards — and those who stood against and opposed to this, and why they felt it absolutely essential to do so.

The simplest answer to that question is of course so that we might do something else with the eternities of attention and effort that could, in a single modern hour, become a platform for an entirely different story. One more like our humanity, intelligence and potentials in unison, rather than what we are being told and scripted to become or reproduce.

I will here explore figures related to a few Greek words: Philo. Sophia. And Rhapsode. I encourage you to examine them on your own, but shall here sketch my intended meanings of them.

Philo: ‘affected by’, allied with, friend of, adoring of, and ‘for’.

Sophia : ‘true seeing in and as relation, being and speech’. This necessarily involves a travel into for and as learning rather than its opposite: dogmatic didactery, the soulless mimicry of excellence, lecture, and so on. A process continuous in travel for and into truth as insight, speech and action.

Rhapsode : one skilled by the arts of performance in song, drama and poetics… in inducing hypnotic trance, profound emotions and deep engagement; sometimes by any means necessary. We shall imagine there are those whose spirits are true, and those who, unlike these others, are essentially a kind of prostitute paid in cash and attention for their ability to force the emotions of groups and individuals into easily instigated modes. Anger. Lust. Laziness. Helplessness. Enthusiasm. Egoic Grandiosity. Etc.

Philo: to adore and be for. Sophia: wisdom, insight, truth and learning. To be a philosopher is to be one seeking to see, to learn, to truly understand.

The philosophers in Athens at the time of Socrates were unique men and women, children, and were often simply ordinary people. The word means something like ‘to be for truth and insight’. This is not a status or a title (though it may be used this way); a philosopher ‘comes to life’ where and whenever someone is seeking an experience of learning and insight, understanding or awareness. And with this comes an adoration for and recognition of the nonordinary nature and experience of Truth. Not as a possession or achievable goal… as a living direction for travel — toward and into, as and for.

So the philosophers were not any kind of church, school or a social group, but rather, they were people of all races and classes who were seekers of learning, understanding, communal intelligence, and excellence. As relatively few of them could be dominated, corrupted or bought, they were valued as fountains from which waters unpoisoned might be drawn. Indeed, after Athens executed Socrates for causing trouble in the power structure, they made him a God.

Here we must distinguish between the purposes that imbue our innate and passionate thirst for learning (and wise correction) against its many pretenders and opposites: stimulation for the sake of deception or entertainment, intoxication, mimicry and simulation, recreation, display, coercion, deception, hyperbole, and other undesirables. In these distinctions we may observe the crucial ‘difference’ between the true expression or resemblance of our humanity or intelligence… and most or all of common idea, language, ‘art’, thought, commerce, and opinion.

Those who speak for duplicitous or invented purposes ‘have a tongue that lies professionally’. Our cultures are ignorant of this matter; and are inclined to celebrate its avatars; and we are thus subject to the endless emergence of deadly repercussions that would in any even modestly intelligent culture be both unthinkable and impossible.

We may imagine that there were Sophists in Athens at the time of Socrates, and that he was largely or completely unfond of them. For the purposes of my figure, we shall concern ourselves with people who are employed to produce the ‘wrapping paper’ versions of wisdom, facile argument or penetrating assertion with incredible flair and momentous skill. Essentially, verbal prostitutes. They were also employed in the rhetorical education of the noble and citizen youth.

Paid to serve their clientele, the sophists were wordsmiths capable of impressing people with the arts of language. They were there to fascinate or compel eager audiences who ‘hung upon their every word’, or as lawyers and advocates for those who, having deprived themselves of humanity or honor, required defense. They worked their lips for profit and attention, or even adulation. Such ‘mouthpieces’ are are seductive ‘by purpose and nature’, and are expert with the production and delivery of ‘powerful’ clichés that easily beguile the ignorant and those incapable or too overwhelmed to detect the empty void inside their produce. They can make a tragedy into a comedy, and a murder into a cause for jubilation.

Many sophists are trained experts in sophisticated (lit. ‘wisdomicated’) speech whose roots are manipulative and professional; rather than heartfelt or trustworthy. Nearly all politicians are as they long were, sophists. But in Athens, a skillful sophist could be hired by anyone for any purpose whatsoever. A Citizen who had raped the minor daughter of a slave in public could employ a Sophist to casually spread compelling stories, each one unique, to various people throughout the marketplace, and these phony eggs would soon hatch maggots that exploded throughout ‘the social network’. Soon, our villain would be well known to be ‘a true hero’, and those he had victimized would disappear or be cruelly defamed.

So it is not surprising that any philosopher might be inclined to detest ‘professional mouths’ whose agenda is to collect and pander to the least common denominators of humanity, intelligence, community, heroism and virtue itself. And to insure their continuance or further degradation. Anywhere they can lower the common standard even slightly, their own profits and powers will rise in generous proportion.

In this figure, the sophists are ‘Wisdomists’-for-hire. They are pulbic whores of verbose fatuosity, whose skills produce figures shaped and sold for the benefit of themselves or the highest bidder, in pursuit of personal notoriety, profit and power. Their arts are amongst the most compelling available for courtrooms, dramas, public debate, or argument — partly because precious few may acquire the incredible skills of memory, improvisation, argument and figure that the experienced sophist can table at a moment’s notice.

They are, perhaps, more powerful even than rulers, in their way… but their way is to serve the elite, who are primarily predators and parasites — not become them. They are not made for combat, but for seduction.

As for the Rhapsodes, many of these are blameless, and some, indeed, heroic. Essentially, they were performing artists, actors, singers of tales and such. But there are a number of sub-species of rhapsode that were and are today blatantly corrupt or malignant; they who intend to produce and leverage strong emotions in people whose lives and relationships are deprived of them — on command.

Outrage. Love. Extreme religious fervor, Tragic compassion. Heroic wonder. Sympathy. Empathy. Nostalgia. Hatred.

At the drop of a hat. For cash, power, and social influence.

So we may imagine a party at which the elite citizens of Athens are gathered for entertainment, drinking and relatively open debauchery (i.e: sex), and a small troupe of rhapsodes arrive. One of these steps forward and begins what is, effectively, a sophisticated hypnotic induction process.

From and within the bubble of this induction, the rhapsodes deliver compelling stories, songs, tragedies and comedies. These have been specifically modified for the audience present in order to produce maximum emotional impact, outrage, sadness, nostalgia, prediction and many other feelings relatively ordinary to actual people in true relationships.

But this audience does not have true relationships. They live in and as deadly fictions, and have little memory of such feelings, knowing instead mostly rage, boredom, frustration and impotence.

The rhapsodes are an intoxicant that these half-dead ‘elites’, the citizens and the slaves — are ‘ever-hungrier for’: one that brings a brief but sensational ‘jolt’ of recognition, of memory — of recollection. A brief reunion with a simulation of some tiny aspect of the humanity and compassion, intelligence, creativity and heroism… they became the living graveyards of.

The rhapsodes are familiar from our time, but we have largely if incompletely replaced this species with with comedians, evangelists, ‘rap-artists’, critics, political gap-heads, pop stars, movie stars, films, and spectator sports. The goal is to mimic empowerment, activism, creativity, intelligence or education, while delivering ever-more binding servility. Usually with trauma attached.

As should be obvious, the explosive schizoid rants of Christian evangelists have absolutely nothing to do with human minds, divinity, intelligence, or living lives as true or noble beings. The goal is, instead hypnosis — induction, conversion, manipulation and fleecing. It almost doesn’t even matter if the evangelist is ‘aware’ of this or not, because the result is effectively the same.

“We shall, here tonight, Ladies and Gentlemen, repeatedly electrocute the half-dead remains of the minds of the assembled. We shall galvanize them, so that they may feel some simulation — or intoxicated recollection — of anything resembling humanity, community, agency, heroism, adoration, divinity … and their own intelligence!”

Within the bounds of my admittedly primitive figure, then, rhapsodes are concerned with the rapid catalysis of emotions and emotional sequences ‘on command’, to audiences varied and sundry, in order to bind, control, manipulate, convert… and otherwise ‘entertain’ them.

We could profitably obscure a portion of the term entertainment to arrive at entrainment. Scripting.

Programatic mind and behavior modification.

We see this kind of ‘bizarre carnival’ of Sophistry and falsified Rhapsody everywhere we look in media today, from books, to television, films, sports, ‘government’, ‘science’ and information transfer in general. ‘Popular’ series’ such as Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy, and Breaking Bad are prime examples of the power and reach — not to mention profitability — of these endeavors.

Our favorite fictions are not epic tales; they are spectator franchises. Their plots are not literature, or even stories: they are slipshod frameworks set up to stage, prime and manipulate our emotions, to simulate allegiances that neither can nor shall ever exist, to deliver or force upon us a brief sense of having belonged… to a fucking fiction invented to simultaneously depersonate and addict us.

And thus we find in ‘popular media’ the dire analogs of ‘toxic nonfood’ for our minds, souls, communities and futures. No one would ever consider consuming such food had they not first been long and explicitly denied what is being counterfeited: humanity. Minds and lives. Relationships. Our planet. Communities. Nations. Once these are counterfeited, the possibility of originals is ‘no longer on the table’.

Thereafter? Everyone is a customer.

Glaring examples of such ‘come include yourself in our mob’ franchises are Fox News and Facebook, where nearly every aspect of context, content and communication has been mimetically compromised and replaced with the rhetoric of invented hyperboles. The result is damage. Personal, intellectual, social, communal and national.

Indeed, it appears that there is no sphere of our common thought or communications activity which has not been cruelly and profitably (for many others) manipulated into … the active desire for more ‘sudden emotions over fictions’ dressed up as humanity, heroism development, agency, communication or … understanding. More forgery. More pompous grandiosity in favor of deadly lies. More rapists aping the hero. And so on.

The thronging mobs of depersonated isolates, bonded only by fictions and language, ache with desires born of tedium and isolation dressed as membership. Jobs. Titles. Statuses. This ache will invent its own addictions, and celebrate all who can advance or sustain them. At any cost. At all costs. At new costs each moment.

I suspect you get the picture. In fact, you’ve probably gotten so many pictures that you had to hide most of yourself somewhere where they couldn’t intrude.

Back in Athens, to hear it told, the philosophers held an Agora; a public place that was carefully and democratically managed so as to exclude fictions, sophistry, hyperbole, simulation, and ersatz rhapsody. The essential imperative was that those assembled sought truth, not fiction. And wished at once to advance with and for and into insight, while managing the constant threats of dogma, masquerade, and stubborn insistence upon perspectives or assertions easily shown to be lies or conceits.

And since speech and inquiry were action, their sources and purposes had to be made and held as true as they could become. So they had a public place, where people of every class and status could form a unity for the purpose of seeing, learning, and discovery. Much of this was apparently critical; it often involved conflict with ‘popular’ ideas, myths, legalities, explanations, and so on. Effectively, there was a strong spirit of ‘debunking’ — the careful examination some subject with the purpose of disclosing and understanding both why it was false and how a fiction could become compelling.

But more importantly, they had a shared identity. They formed a unity in which everyone’s mind and perspectives could be advanced, explored, examined and developed. It wasn’t perfect, it was an experiment. An experiment in the model of a working mind, culture, or situation in which humanity and intelligence are allowed to speak and act beyond the bonds with status and opinion, faction and function impose. Somewhere to take off the robes or rags of office and be in communion with others of like and worthy minds, wild intelligence and knowledge, wisdom and wonder at it. A garden of sorts, in which no infection could long intrude or prosper, and thus whose fruits were true and good.

This was too much of a threat to the tyrants of Athens. The elites could not survive such constant scrutiny or the public penetration of their ruses. Socrates himself did not survive, and the matter of his death is more strange and exotic than the remnants of the tale suppose. He was indicted by politicians, and sophists and rhapsodes were responsible.

But that is not at issue. What is at issue is whether or not we shall adore the poisonous produce of sophists and rhapsodes paid to induce falsified intelligence or humanity in contexts where it has been ejected, prohibited, and is explicitly unknown.

What is at issue, for each one of us in every moment of our waking existence is whether continue to accept and celebrate the appearance of anything that manages to deliver a jolt that can penetrate the armor of our absence from ourselves, the possibilities of our communities, humanity and ecologies, while we by so doing obliterate them forever.

No. We shall not.

I remember the first time I realized that my favorite television show was effectively just being made up by professionals who were tasked with manipulating my emotions over fictions I had no part in. I remember noticing they were using a kind of semi-hypnotic pace and structure, using trauma and extreme violence to punctuate the process.

I remember the first time that I withdrew in horror from the media and the effect. I remember reflecting upon that abuse, and writing the first essay I ever penned. Then, over time, I saw other manifestations.

The constant hammering of spectators by clichés and ‘cuteness’, ‘sexyness’, ‘style’. There were, it turned out, an endless mall of counterfeit virtues ‘just poised to electrify me’. One of the deadliest is ‘share the damage’ — a game where some mob helplessly exchanges some kind of emotionally toxic vehicle that is usually almost completely invented for this purpose. This, instead of forming any body capable of the active rejection and disclosure of these agendas wherever they dare emerge. This, instead of the immediate and intelligent formation of cooperative bodies capable of understanding and responding to the problems or topics ‘everyone is talking about’.

It took me a while to recognize the confidence trick in its every incarnation, but once I did, I was immune.

And this kind of immunity?

It’s unimaginably contagious.