Debase the Currency - Whether Coin or Clout - Show Who Rules Them - And Set Yourself Free - Go East Old Man - To Learn Something New - Make Peace With Darkness - And Shine Your Light - Witness Inaction In Action - Before the Great Game - Of Two Competing Conceits - Leaving a Strange Legacy
7
365 B.C.
One day, Dio and Anti walked five miles from the Piraeus to the city center to attend a party. This was a near daily occurrence for the pair of dogs the city had grown to love and hate in unequal measure. It was unclear which was which.
Why they kept getting invited to parties was a great mystery. One evening, a mob of students at the Academy amused themselves throwing the bones of their dinner to Dio. In response, he simply urinated on them and their sense of fraternity.
During this walk, Dio asked, "Anti, what was Socrates like?”
“The best man who lived,” Anti replied. “He suffered much. But he knew why and how he did so. It crafted his character and propelled him as he moved others. Cyrus was the only other of his kind. Both gone now.”
“Why?”
“They made him kill himself, idiot.”
“I meant why did he suffer?”
“Socrates is loved everywhere now. But in life, he was ridiculed by most and respected by few. He called himself a gadfly, not a socially hip contrarian begging for likes and shares on the internet like our narrator does.”
“Why?” Dio asked.
“Because R.B. Lamb is a cunt stuffing words in dead men's mouths from ten stories high,” Anti declared. “He seems a bit smug and pretentious, really. At least he’s trying to be funny about it, I guess. Maybe that's worse.”
“I mean why did Socrates call himself a gadfly?” Dio pressed. “I already know more about the narrator than I'd like.”
"It was the best analogy. He couldn’t stand inaction. Change doesn’t come from those in a place to change things advocating for or against change. He was an environmental stressor. He forced change through demonstration.”
“Why?” Dio asked again, earning a bonk on the ear.
“Warms my heart to see you getting it already,” Anti gushed.
Dio rubbed his head in mild pain and confusion. “Getting what? Brain damage?”
“Demonstration. Your constant, bloody whys are perfectly Socratic, but still just words. The bonk was a reaction and if you ask me why one more time, I may murder you, too.”
"But Anti,” Dio protested, prepared to dodge another bonking if necessary. “Don’t children ask why endlessly, too?”
“Yes,” Anti admitted. “And full-grown adult philosophers spend their entire lives trying for the words to articulate what we all know already. The trick is forcing people to say it out loud. Then they hear themselves.”
“But…” Dio stopped another why. “How did the city come to kill him if he was just articulating wisdom even children know? Didn’t they charge him with corrupting the youth? Seems like the youth were corrupting them.”
“With the law,” Anti sighed. “You must learn this about people. They already know better than everyone and refuse to unlearn that. They're educated enough. They'll do anything to remove what they don't want to know, for themselves and others.”
“Petty philosopher-kings,” Dio spit. “That’ll be the day. Gods, I hate Plato.”
“Don’t hate him,” Anti admonished. “Everyone suffers. He suffers more than most and his ultra-rationalism comforts some. No need to change anything, just be born right or wrong. And any exceptions? Deep down, in essence, they’re not really.”
“Blech,” Dio barked. “Souls aren’t pure. If I was born anything, I was born a crook. I made choices between my birth and now and I suffer them like Socrates did. Made a real bad one in Corinth a few hundred times, in fact. A man shouldn't pee fire.”
“Don’t compare yourself to Socrates, Dio. Ever. You can’t win that. You smell really bad. Women can look straight at you, diseased or otherwise. And you’ll never be famous. And your body is weak. And you fart in your sleep.”
“I get it!” Dio protested. “Except the farting thing. Didn’t know that.”
“You put ketchup on sushi,” Anti continued. “You'll never inspire enough emotion to make anyone want to kill you. You cruise the left lane, longer than to pass! Awful! And you seem to want to be a dog, which is really weird, you know.”
“I just meant I suffered, too. If suffering crafts a man’s character no one is born whole. No better or worse than the next guy. I don’t know what I’m saying yet, exactly. But I think Pericles came close. Every man has a mind, a unique one.”
“You believe a man can change his character, Dio?” Anti asked.
“I have to, Anti. I experienced it. I can’t ignore it. But all these biographers don't seem to think so. Even Xenophon thinks Cyrus was born great, instead of becoming great.”
“Xeno is a soldier. He doesn't think that much about it. Good fellow, smart, but simple in his way. He farted in his sleep, too.”
“He was a kid once, right? Does he still pick his nose?”
“Yes,” Anti blasted a snot-rocket on the street. “Who doesn’t pick their nose? That’s how you get sick.”
“I don’t know,” Dio confessed, extracting his knuckle-deep index finger from a brutally savaged nostril. “Barbarians, I guess.”
Plato was drunk, his mind scarred with dissatisfaction, disaffection, disgust. The alcohol didn’t help, but he saw things if he didn’t drink. One night, he called them forms and ideas. It stuck and he was hailed a genius, rather than a junky. Philosophy!
The elite of the city were enamored with him, he knew that. But so long as the people had a say he would never be king. There were too many of the cockroaches running around, half-breeding with whoever they felt. A god-crafted world gone to Hades.
The worms called it democracy. But he was too proud, from such a glorious family, and of such a towering intellect to believe it anything but chaos. An evil innovation. A perversion of the natural order. Slaves usurping power.
They insisted on bettering themselves rather than being bettered by their betters. If he had to put a percentage on how many of the general populace was born to rule, he would put it at about five percent. Ballpark. The rest were idiots.
Some were born to rule and the rest to follow. Always. Even in the smallest matter they should stand under leadership. His leadership. Who else? Men like that awful Pericles? With that head? No. Only a slave's skull could be that malformed.
Plato traced his origins to Poseidon. His was the blood of gods. But unlike the pretenders his divine roots were totally, absolutely true. And even if not technically true, it was true in itself. He giggled in his cups. In their Form. In their cupness.
He had great ideas. How couldn’t he with that pedigree? His best was the idea Ideas were more real than reality. No matter the evidence he never had to change his mind.
The ascent of Athens occurred in the democracy, sure. But he knew it was really about envious half-breeds seizing power out of jealousy. He’d taken the idea of essence and weaponized it to keep his Guardians' eyes on the ball. Power.
One developed defenses if they were going to hang with Socrates. With his incessant whys that made you question and change yourself if you let them. No change was a good one.
Change was evil. Origin the only good. The only perfection. Where does one go from there? Only downhill, like dog dookie. Heraclitis refused to see it, but the great Plato saw it immediately.
He was so inside himself he hadn't noticed they had arrived. He missed the puppy spitting in someone's face, as appeared to be his style, until laughter filled the hall. The freshly moistened man laughed hardest for some reason.
Antisthenes the half-breed moved through the crowd cracking jokes and having a good time. Revolting. Inappropriate. Perplexing.
“The dogs,” Plato chuckled as he rose unsteadily. "Have arrived. Late. So, I’m afraid I’m a bit drunk.”
Diogenes quipped, “No matter when we arrived, Plato, you’d still be an ugly drunk. Drunkenness itself never changes no matter the time.”
“I have struck upon a definition of man,” Plato announced, ignoring the pup and the laughter filling the hall. “As the intellect allows man to soar among the gods, it is quite clear man is a featherless and flightless, bipedal bird.”
He sat to the roar of applause from the flattered circus seal intelligentsia about the hall. But again, he failed to account for the dogs, one of whom had disappeared the instant the great wrestler-philosopher-mathematician sat on his great wrestler's ass.
“Plato,” Antisthenes asked, stroking his beautiful, manly beard. “Are you sure? That’s a bit expansive even for you.”
“Of course,” Plato replied, stroking his own beautiful, manly beard. “I am Plato, and I am wicked smart. People will read and know my name millennia from now. If I want to define man, I can do that, and it will be correct.”
“Well,” the elder dog warned. “If that’s your final answer. But authority and pride are no arguments. Our master would be disappointed in you.”
“Get off it,” Plato slurred. “The Idea of Socrates is more real than…”
A commotion at the door. The pup had raced in too quickly to even spit in anyone’s face. He slammed a plucked, put-out chicken on the table with a BWOK, declaring, “Behold! Plato's Man!”
The walls shook with laughter. The circus seals arfing in the latest, hysterical delight placed in front of them. All but Plato, whose vision doubled with the weight of hate and public embarrassment. He vomited, right there, in a nearby basin.
“Hmmm,” Antisthenes mused, inspecting the Platonic vomit with a boogered index finger. “I see bile and wine, but not a drop of pride. It looks a lot like any other vomit. Nothing gold about it, I'm afraid.”
Plato only groaned. The wolves weren't at the gates, they were in the hen house, and people still thought they were just dogs. This is what democracy gets you.
Debase the Currency - Whether Coin or Clout - Show Who Rules Them - And Set Yourself Free - Go East Old Man - To Learn Something New - Make Peace With Darkness - And Shine Your Light - Witness Inaction In action - Before the Great Game - Of Two Competing Conceits - Leaving a Strange Legacy