The Consequence of Ideas
During the life of Socrates, the philosophy titan, it could be said that he lived in Athens during a period of time which mirrors what we see in our culture today.
Athens had lost a civil war with Sparta; the once affluent city, capital of culture, turned their attention away from the quest for ultimate truth by Pre-Socratic philosophers, which remain unanswered; instead, pragmatism is the currency of thought; doing what we can now and today to solve real problems.
Arising from the Sophists, a group of learned men, is a man called Gorgias and his teachings that found a home with the disillusionment of the people of Athens: he believed that the “good” is to serve one’s own self-interest to the best of their abilities.
In the face of such an idea, Socrates projected its threat to science, culture, politics, leading to an erosion of virtues in knowledge. He made it his life’s work to counter this trend. He sought to stir the minds of students through the method of questions; for, by causing men and women to think, he believed they could rise above the plane of pragmatism and obtain an understanding of virtue, and desire pursuit for truth.
History repeats itself. I found this to be the case especially at a recent interview given by Christopher Wylie and Carole Cadwalladr for the Guardian at Guildhall. These are two protagonists responsible for wiping out $60bn of Facebook’s market capital. Harking back to mine and Andra’s Shitty First Drafts, The Starting Point Counts and Where Are The Scientists, it seems that the pursuit of truth, knowledge, and virtue has been made at the expense of the system we game for power and profits, expressions of Socrates’ battle with self-interest. Their account of Cambridge Analytical reveals an entangled tale of business at Facebook, political ambition, and mass public manipulation. History repeats itself, but it returns in a different form. The same pragmatism magnifies in scale and complexity.
Who are the Socrates of our time? And in what form do they appear? His city of Athens is our interconnected, multi-realm, multi-disciplinary, adapting, evolving, accelerating world of 7.5 billion people. The futurist Alvin Toffler has answers to this conundrum of clashing values which promotes a happier solution than Socrates’ conclusion: he was charged with rejecting the pagan gods of the city, poisoning the minds of their young people, and executed.
More on that next week.
