Plato hid the Secret of Socrates--His PTSD

Plato was a tragic poetic and author of fictional drama of great impact. His favorite character was his adored mentor Socrates. The sad secret is that Socrates was but a minor philosopher in his native Athens until he found himself drafted by lot to serve at in the ill-fated Battle of Delium.

Socrates returned from his defeat at the Battle of Delium suffering devastating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). After that he wandered the streets of Athens harassing citizens as unworthy beasts not fit to rule themselves. He made no specific arguments, he simply attacked them as unjust, their city gods (who allowed Socrates to be drafted) as unholy and in general they needed to be treated as sheep with a shepherd to control them and protect them.

His views attracted young aristocrats with time on their hands who admired his method of attacking anyone and belittling their position whatever it was. His attacks upon earnest citizens were appealing to idle aristocratic youth always eager to jeer at their elders, especially those who were working hard since they didn't.

Socrates did not take a position, he said he knew nothing. Thus he avoided having to defend his position. He did not make any specific arguments either since that would require listening to his opponent and responding. Instead Socrates would simply attack the character and fitness of his opponent claiming his definitions were not perfect therefore he had no right to speak at all.

These were all positions derived from the specifics of Socrates' traumatic stress in the Battle of Delium, though it is only be going over the details of ancient Athenian warfare that it becomes clear. Athenians were subject to be drafted by lot for all manner of duty to their City-State: juries, minor officials, or military campaigns. How a citizen served was determined by their resources. Aristocrats who could afford to own a horse were cavalry officers. Those without resources were rowers in the navy. Those who could afford the heavy armor, lance and shield served in the hoplite heavy infantry.

The phalanx was the signature military innovation of Athens where free citizens joined together to make a formidable fighting force. Standing together with their long lances and full-body shields the community formed a phalanx where the shield of the man to the left protected the powerful thrusting lance on each man's right arm. The rows behind the front line gave added power, and if a man fell in battle his place was taken by a man behind him.

The entire phalanx operated as a levered multiplication of the individual. The right side of the phalanx attacked and the left side stood its ground against the attack of the opposing phalanx. Often the battle was decided by the success of the attack on the right or the failure of the defense on the left.

What the phalanx formation could not withstand was a major attack from the rear of the entire formation. They were totally committed to their heavy equipment facing one way and totally vulnerable to attack behind them. The worst outcome was a mobile cavalry attack appearing suddenly behind the phalanx.

At the Battle of Delium Socrates, 45 and past his prime was in the defensive left side of the phalanx facing an equal infantry formation before them. The right side fought well and the opposing left side was breaking, about to give them an easy victory in what had been an poorly executed campaign which started late in the afternoon with the surprise appearance of the opposing army.

However, rather than lose, their opponents sent in a large cavalry reserve that came over a hill and attacked the Athenians from the rear. This panicked the Athenian army and the entire phalanx flung down their weapons and armor and tried to run away. Many were run down and killed by pursuing cavalry. It was a catastrophic and traumatic defeat for all the survivors.

The fascinating fall out of Socrates' PTSD was its effect upon his adoring disciple Plato. Like the neoconservatives of today, it was the next generation after those scarred by their experiences who were totally unhinged. These younger acolytes took their elders distorted views for their fundamental reality.

Late in his life Plato wrote his Republic and his Laws in which he envisions an ideal world that would make his mentor Socrates feel better. He proposes that everyone, men who might fight a war but also women and children who would not, should train all day at regular intervals to defend themselves from the kind of attack Socrates suffered when his phalanx dissolved at Delium.

His is clearly the deranged paranoia of a veteran disabled by PTSD. Plato never suffered any war trauma, but he based his worldview upon Socrates' PTSD problems. He accepted the view that citizens were literally sheep needing to obey their shepherd, not free citizens capable of self-government.

Plato accepted Socrates' vision of a society organized totally for defense against the trauma of an enemy assault that Socrates suffered but was not part of general reality in Ancient Athens. The paranoia about unknown enemies that might inflict traumatic defeat has been a hallmark of conservative politics ever since.

The elements of a free society remained, but only in a twisted, traumatized form. Elections would be held, but the results were to be rigged to benefit the real masters of the society although the citizens who were to risk their lives in military defense would be deceived into believing the election results were free and fair. This has become the hallmark of conservative government ever since.

Plato's work was of little note to the Ancient Greeks who knew the reality of what was involved in Athenian Democracy. However, the vagaries of history soon dissolved all the independent Greek City States into the Empire of Alexander the Great and then the Romans. Democracy disappeared from the face of the Earth, but Plato's published works survived.

Millennia later Plato's works were added to the Medieval Scholastic Library since they had been declared virtually Christian in the intervening centuries. Being assumed to be Divine Truth, no one noticed the context (Tao) or background (Yin) of the seductive, dramatic fiction.

From the 12th century "modern" university to Orwell's 1984 the implicit horror of Socrates' PTSD has been built into Western civilization and politics. Now that the "modern" millennium is over and the blind tunnel vision of the medieval Scholastics is being overwhelmed by the Global Warming their work set in motion.

Today we are enmeshed in a ghastly race between those trying to cling to their ancient Platonic nonsense and those trying to get beyond the cloistered Library of the Academic (Platonic) and live free in the interplay of sunshine and Planet Earth topography.

Plato Wrote Fiction NOT Philosophy
Socrates was NOT Wisest

Even the closest reading of the Dialogues finds no philosophical principles set forth. Instead there is a debating trick of taunting one’s opponent to state a position which is then teased and questioned until it can be declared imperfect. No alternative is offered or needed. You said you knew, I show you ridiculous, I win, you lose. End of debate.

When originally used to support the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, the people of Democratic Athens found it criminal abuse of their openness to all opinions. There is a difference between stating an opinion, any objective opinion, and ridiculing and denigrating any and all positions as contemptible and imperfect. Freedom of speech requires an objective debate between competing opinions.

Socrates claims his opponents are all terrible and he has no need to state any opinion of his own, they are unworthy of that. It was for this refusal to accept the level playing field of Athenian Democracy that Socrates was accused. He offered his followers the easy trick of attacking any specific opinion as imperfect and therefore negligible.

Socrates started out saying he was uncertain or knew nothing, and then when his sophistries showed the same of his opponent he claimed victory. In the real world this never works very well; however in the dramatic pages of Plato’s fiction it wins all the drama and universal appreciation. It is an ideal portrait that inspires and seduces its readers to wish they could be the next Socrates.

No objective content, just the boast this is the best philosophy, Socrates the wisest man, and all others ignorant fools. The accomplished professor gets to be the Socrates of his class. The appeal is to students with more ambition than ability, more passion than reason. The more they lose in honest debate, the more they can dream that they too someday will be the next and greatest Socrates. The thrill of winning any and all argument blinds the academic to its being all trickery.

Even those who can figure out there is no hard content to Socrates arguments dare not call out that the Emperor is naked. How could this bedrock paradigm of Western Academic philosophy be total trickery? Easy. Anything published in the cloister library and accepted as proper Medieval Scholasticism is taught by Established professors and expected to be believed by dutiful students.

Postmodern deconstruction notes there is nothing real there, just the admiration of Dead, White Europeans for being the great ancestors of the modern academics. The next step of realizing Plato was a dramatic fraud and his beloved hero Socrates was a corrupt trickster exposes the detail that even the most ardent postmodern is still an academic.

The ultimate trick of the Dialogues is a bit of sleight of hand combined with the author Plato’s dramatic writing assuring Socrates of the universal support and credibility of the crowd. It is the Tao of the Dialogues that Socrates is the best and wisest and will handily win the argument. Given control of the context, the details easily follow as intended.

Socrates was rightly accused and justly condemned for his assault upon reason. He was a corrupter of youth, raising a following of potential lovers who admired his style and cared nothing about any objective content. They were rich young men who wished to put the hard working middle class community in its “proper” place. They were the ultimate believers that status was more important than success.

The other charge against Socrates was that he denied the gods of Athenian Democracy. This is an intriguing charge that highlights the question of what is random and what is divinely ordered. The Athenians realized that power corrupts. Anyone holding a position of executive power tended to want to stay in power and to profit from their power position.

Their solution to this problem was to make all minor elected positions chosen by lot. In our eyes, they chose randomly from their citizens to hold every power position. In the eyes of the pious Athenian democrat they were trusting their gods to determine the outcome of their mixture of white and black balls and make the divinely right choice.

Plato has Socrates defend himself by saying he supports the gods; without noting that the gods he is accused of denying are those that make a “random” process result in the ideal results. Religion was infused in every aspect of ancient Greek life. To support the politics of open discussion democracy without any power vested in executive officials meant to believe that their casting lots was invoking their gods to safeguard their elections.

Plato left public life after the suicide of Socrates. He retreated into his abstract musings and fictional writings. Since he did not come out in public discussion to promote the subversion of open discussion by forensic trickery he was allowed to do as he pleased. His works were created in Plato’s mind and published privately.

The quality of his dramatic fiction guaranteed Plato a warm reception by later generations, especially as the amazing productive success of the Athenian democracy was over by the time he came to write. By Plato’s time Athens had become only a University town where folks made their money as a tourist and teaching city for wealthy families from all over the Mediterranean.

The actual reality of the Athenian democracy was long gone, and any published book that promoted the teaching excellence of any school remaining in Athens was good for the economy of all Athens. The simple negation tricks of Plato and his idealized character Socrates would fit any situation. Learn Socratic method and you can win any argument on any subject without knowing much of anything else.

Since negation is so much of Socrates’ debate style it fits all arguments throughout time. Plato also moved away from reality into the abstract realm of ultimate unity and not-whatever specific others were suggesting. This easily fit into later Christian ideals where the Pythagorean ideals of the Monad as universal unity and Triad as the trinity that brings harmony made immediate connections.

Once declared Christian, Plato’s writings were perfect to support Church rule as the representatives of absolute Truth requiring and deserving total obedience from all citizens. This union of faith and political power despite any objective reality has been a powerful dynamic through the centuries.

The published paradigms of Plato divide into three topics:

• The dramatic dialogues involving the character Socrates.
• Pythagorean mathematical philosophy and the theory of abstract Forms.
• Conservative, idealized government where dissent is the only evil.

The Socratic dialogues were the basis of Plato’s beliefs and personal commitments. The abstract number philosophy and theory of Forms was his alternative to relating to reality. The good part, it kept Pythagorean number theory in the published academic library. The final works of conservative government represent the dreams to keep all dissent and public opinion out of power.

Many government leaders have appreciated his ideas of how to deny, avoid and repress the will of the people. None have ever been very successful or even stayed in power several decades. However, it remains the ideal of all those who have failed in representative politics. They dream of attaining power and making themselves the philosopher-king.

Plato remains important in Western philosophy. Wide swaths of students are educated that his works are ideal, admirable and powerful. Those who succeed find more reasonable alternatives. Those who fail at leadership and resent their failure come to admire Socrates and The Republic as their ultimate revenge against all those who bested them.

The great secret is to notice that although promoted by Established Authority, Plato is abstract avoidance and fundamental deception. Seeing through Plato is to be free of the bonds that chain his believers to be sheep misled. Not noticing the contradictions and trickery of Socrates is to be eternally the prisoner to be abused by those seeking power and deriding free discussion.

Plato is our only source for the teaching of Socrates. Even the closest reading of Plato finds no philosophical principles set forth. There is only the claim this is the best philosophy and all others are ignorant fools. As the great paradigm of Western philosophy this is still the bedrock of modern academia.

Socrates claims that the Oracle at Delphi told him no one was wiser than Socrates. This Oracle, a woman who sat over a vent of toxic volcanic fumes and made cryptic remarks from her resulting trance was always known for cryptic messages. What did this Oracle mean? Was she saying Socrates was wise or just a wise guy?

Looking at the exact Delphic statement shows the meaning. “No man is wiser than Socrates” this is a negation from an ancient time when negation was a difficult and sophisticated concept to understand. When Ulysses gets the Cyclops to say he was blinded by Nemo—No Man, his fellows were afraid. In ancient Chinese the ideogram for not is an orderly set of logs set on fire. The logs, clearly something, is being negated by fire.

When we look for the strain of negation in Socrates philosophy we find the trick. Socrates never sets forth any position or belief. He tricks in opponents (in the neatly crafted dramatic dialogues by Plato) into making their positions clear. Next Socrates claims he has no position or knows nothing—another negation.

Having only his opponent’s position on the table, Socrates then proceeds to ridicule it. He may ask hypothetical extremes or in the pure form of Socratic questioning simply note that he does not agree. The context of the dialogue is always that the crowd knows Socrates is the wisest and knows all so if he refuses to agree there must be something wrong.

No reason is given, just a refusal to agree. Socrates then claims that true knowledge would be agreed by all reasonable men. Therefore, either Socrates is not reasonable or the position offered is wrong. In the Dialogues Socrates is always right. In the trial of Socrates it was adjudicated that Socrates was unreasonable.

I.F. Stone in his book The Trial of Socrates ferrets out the actual case against Socrates. He finds that it was a political case, Socrates was advocating the overthrow of democracy and the imposition of aristocratic rule as his favorite students and the Thirty Tyrants had imposed on Athens a few years earlier.

I.F. Stone taught himself ancient Greek in order to read the original sources and figure out the trial. He was not able to cut through the Tao of Western Philosophy that insisted that Socrates and Plato were great philosophers. The objective truth was that Socrates was an enemy of free speech, putting the rhetorical weapons out to destroy any and all arguments without any evidence or opinion at all.

Clearly, the trial jury just wanted him to stop. The vote to condemn him for teaching disrespect to the gods of democracy was small. It was his arrogant claim that as a democratic assembly they were to be laughed at, not respected resulted in a larger vote to execute him. Even then it was clear it was open to him to flee rather than die.

Socrates was over 70 with a number of adoring disciplines, including most adoring Plato. He preferred suicide which would make his students work all the harder to maintain his views and principles. The dramatic narrative made Socrates a famous and beloved figure for millennia.

Modern apologists not only continue the bald assertion Socrates was wisest and best, but add to it a denial that he considered the two leaders of the Thirty Tyrants his best pupils, showing it by taking them as his homosexual lovers. This is a sore point in modern academia, though it meant very little in Ancient Athens.

In Ancient Greek religion, all of one’s biological children were demanded to meet at one’s tomb every year and perform the ritual for the repose of your soul. This made paternity a desperately important issue in that religion. It was not women who were not allowed out of their houses alone, it was wives. Athens was a gossipy town and a wife seen near men would raise gossip her next child was not fathered by her husband.

Since paternity was so desperately important and birth control uncertain, the practical solution was to have casual sex with those of the same sex who could not produce surprise children at some later date. Sex was the most natural of acts to the Ancient Greeks. A pious Athenian proudly displayed a figure of Hermes most notable for its large erect phallus on his doorpost.

However, Plato was mistakenly identified as Judeo-Christian by Philo of Alexandria trying to make peace between Jews and Greeks in that thriving port city. Early Christians took it that Plato was a Christian and Socrates his saintly mentor. Thus the Medieval Scholastics had all the published works of Plato preserved to them and available for them to enjoy in their academia.

Second only to the Bible, Plato became the paradigm star of philosophy and no one was allowed to notice Socrates was teaching only a technique of negation trickery to destroy free speech. The opponents in the dialogue who support equal justice, teaching as a profession, and other bedrock tenets of Democratic society were declared fools holding excessive and ridiculous views in order to justify Plato’s hero.

Plato is a great dramatic writer. Using his control over the narrative, Plato makes Socrates universally loved and revered and his audience applauding his making fun of every opponent. The Assembly of Athens was not so pliable or easily fooled as modern academics. They recognized Socrates as not speaking any philosophy or argument of any kind. He was simply the verbal advance guard for storm troopers who would club their opponents and take over.

Socratic Method is used today in law school and even in our courts. Its more extreme form is reserved for conservative political argument and election fraud. Plato sets out in his later works, The Republic and The Laws his model of government by one leader who is convinced he knows best and all others must by deception or force by made sheep obedient to their shepherd and his dogs.

Conservative parties, U.S. Republicans, and tyrants down through the ages have all adopted Plato’s principles. The secret of Plato is that he was a dramatic writer who never did anything in the real world. Governments based upon his principles never are able to survive—they always fall of their own internal contradictions.

Plato and his conservative admirers are annoyed by the differences and limitations of the general public. They fear what others might do, projecting out what they want to do. The lack of connection or respect for the populace is difficult on any government. When combined with brutal suppression of any dissent or opposition they create insurgencies even if none existed before.

However, a successful government must be able to appeal to the general public, not just order them to stay docile. The secret of democracy is that folks support the government they elect. When only a few run things out of fear of everyone else, they find their fantasies run them into walls and pitfalls.

In law courts, each side is arguing how they should be recognized as the local Socrates and the other side therefore loses. It is the principle in court that notes that if you are guilty you only need a better lawyer. In law school, the professor is always Socrates and the point of the exercise is to show that arguments are not won by having the best evidence, but being able to present the most convincing argument.

Plato rose to historic fame on the beauty of his writing and the universal appeal of being the local Socrates who wins every argument by the support of his audience and his ability to ask questions no one can answer well. The later works are the ideal of every aristocrat afraid of what the mass of society might do if allowed to rule.

The secret of Athens, and all functioning democracies is the difference between the collective herd and the productive community. Those capable of doing good work enjoy working together and managing to produce far more than they can alone. Whether they are competitors or colleagues is far less important than each one must have the skills and confidence to produce their own fine product.

Plato and all aristocrats, that is everyone who makes their money from having land or possessions that others pay them to use are excluded from that community of productive individuals. Those who continue to do good work despite having income from the work of others cease to be typical aristocrats and join the democratic community.

The group of those seeking to make their way by taking the production of others must believe the general public to be beasts of burden that deserve to be treated as livestock not free citizens. Cut off from the reality of achievement, they can not understand the personal satisfaction that comes with productive activity.

Plato never imagined what it would be like to have one’s own inner direction and self-esteem. As a young man he clearly pined to be Socrates favored pupil, but he never succeeded. Eventually, he settled into running a school where others came to pay him money to learn the techniques he taught since his writings had gained renown.

Both democracy and Plato’s Republic were remembered throughout history. Democracy always accomplishes remarkable things when a community develops of free and equal productive citizens. When there is wealth in abundance, generally Plato’s Republic becomes more attractive for those who can seize control can gain wealth and power.

Neither democracy nor conservative elitism last very long in power. Democracy produces wealth that others covet and elites destroy productive society in their self-absorption. The universal constant is the work of individuals to establish their own inner direction and personal productivity. This survives political machinations of elites and flowers in productive communities into earthly paradise.

The process of becoming a conscious and inner directed adult person is called initiation. That means the beginning of personal maturity beyond the mammalian childhood that looks to others for instruction upon how to survive long enough to reproduce. To initiate your own independent understanding is to balance the demands of the world outside with your own internal process.

Developing your inner potential and independence requires just the right mix of challenge and safety in the world around you. Eventually something goes out of balance, ending this brief season in the glorious sunshine of freedom and community. Our Planet Earth manages to use its topography and Solar System sunshine to succeed.

Everything upon our Planet Earth has its season and then must move on to the next set of cycles. Every spring matures to autumn and then must surrender to the winter. Every winter will see a new spring eventually. The dreams of freedom and personal development never dies it just waits for the next fertile ground to sprout and grow again.

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