Farewell Socrates, sleep well…

The chairs still suck.  For the kind of money they're charging you'd think they could provide better seating.  But that's a small and petty thing, I forgive them.  A bit ago I put up the post "A Disclaimer of Tuition" giving the reasons I have in times past deliberately avoided any formal exposure to the work of philosophers past.  Having examined my own thoughts as a consequence of the ambition spoken of in many recent posts, having concluded that my own thoughts are sufficiently anchored as to be trustworthy I decided to reverse that position and investigate what academia might reveal of the philosophical roots of the culture.  No matter the nature of the job at hand it's always a good idea to begin at the beginning.

Socrates got himself killed, no doubt of that.  I'm wondering if we're going to be told the other side of the story, the side of the story the ancient Athenian's could sense but perhaps not set into words.  Or perhaps Plato's words survived, and theirs' didn't.  Who knows.  Long and short of it is Socrates was indeed guilty of corrupting the youth, but not by intent.  Of course the thing about the Gods was total bullshit.  Had I been there I'd have voted for acquittal, and then bought the old man a draw of whatever they enjoyed and explained to him how to fix the subtle but deadly error in his manner of honoring his version of his God's request.  I'd owe him the brew, I tread dangerously close to that same error myself at times.

His error was using his opponents examples as part of his arguments.  He did such to demonstrate the errors in their conclusions, but never realized that if he didn't teach them how to build better examples (from which to question and debate) all he'd really done was enable a great many more erroneous conclusions in the future, those errors created by working from poorly constructed examples (those based on social protocal rather than logic), examples of the same sort he himself had validated using similar as negative examples in his arguments.  They would remember he'd won the one argument, his conclusion proven, theirs unseated, but by what I've seen of what Plato recorded he never took the time to show them why he won, the headwater source of the common error he exploited. 

Socrates told the truth at his trial, he wasn't a teacher.  He left them thinking that next time they might prevail without ever showing them how, and in so doing sent them back to their lives with the potential for error even more expanded and entrenched than before.  Yea, he was guilty, but not by intent.  If he was the only one across the sweep of history to have been guilty of the same we'd be in great shape today.

Third Reality of Man Ch 4: Awakenings in Utero...

“Open the pod bay door Hal.”

          “I’m afraid I can’t do that Dave...”

We’ve imagined it a dozen if not ten dozen times, the moment our technology takes on a life of its’ own and refuses to serve us in the manner to which we wish to remain accustomed.  We’ve imagined our technology turning on us like a wolf pack, we’ve set technology as the synthesis of government and religion awarded the status of an emerging God complete with temples and rituals.  There is no shortage of examples in modern works of fiction where technology is the platform from which some  self aware and self serving extension of the human persona commences to conquer the species which served as the template of its' creation.  Of course what evolves to become reality will be more surprising than any feat of imagination captured as an entertainment, truth is always stranger than fiction.

To perceive evolution at its’ work is no small accomplishment, and even more difficult when you yourself are a player in evolution’s effort.  To realize that evolution is in the process of demoting you from the top of the food chain is an intimidating thing, hard on the ego, harder on the mythologies.  But challenging or not when evolution goes active someone needs to keep an eye on the proceedings for several very good reasons, chief among them evolutions’ very uncertain success ratio, particularly when your level of life could easily become a collateral casualty of one of evolutions' many failures.

Pirates...

Yes, they were, both of 'em.  My former boss that is, and his arch rival.  I'm pretty sure the rivalry between the two men was somewhat of a legend back in the day, back in their industry.  Pirates, and skilled managers of the sort that actually keep the world turning.  You know, the kind of men John Galt was looking for.  I learned a great deal from them.

You see, for my boss the job we were working was more or less just a sideline thing I think, a way to keep retirement from becoming to terribly boring.  It wasn't supposed to turn into the fubar'd mess it turned out to be.  You know, one of those things where corporate did half their job and then retired for martinis leaving those in the field to figure out how to make the damn thing actually work.  I got to work with one of the old men of the mountain when things were down and dirty.  You hated to see him coming, and you heaved a sigh of relief when he was there.  Nine out of any ten times he'd make one hell of a mess and then go to lunch leaving you to clean up the disaster, but on the tenth time his thirty years of experience would find some traction amidst the confusion and things would get better.  Interesting times they were, the kind where once it's over you go "damn, that was fun."