Re Plato essay

Bled Welder bledwelder at gmail.com
Mon Jan 21 13:33:39 CST 2013


I fucking knew you are a Platonist, Starman.

And do you know what?  I think I'm becoming one.

There has to be some point, where we take the foundations of this country
seriously, and fear not, speaking, and having unique thoughts, even though,
talking freely, despite being possibly, maybe, on, say, parole, of all
absurd things (don't go there, it's not worth the experience. Being an
entity, such that i am, who experiences all things, and by now I have done
all things, been there done that, I have traveled the world, to put it
lightly, and the stars).

And this bullshit thing we are taught to teach, "democracy", is, at some
point, what is that thing about kings being nude?

We are a *deeply* hypnotized, fucking, people.  We *already do* live in a
Platonic Underworld.  Overworld.

I am.  An *overman*.

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 12:41 PM, alice wellintown <
alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> How do we or how should we read Plato?
> As a younger lady, I read Plato and thought that Socrates was just the
> badest badass of all the philosophers. He has nija moves and can punch
> holes in a locamotive faster than a falling building in a single
> bound.
>
> Of course, I hadn't even studied a handful, when I became convinced
> that Aristotle was, as the famous phrase sez, "the philosophers
> pholosopher."  And, when I discovered that the "Socrates" of Plato's
> dialogues was but a shadow of the real philsopher, the great old greek
> with the buff physic, with the bumps and lumps and pecs of an American
> footballer, pointing to the heavens under the brass lamp hangind in
> the museum down the block, well...and when I discovered that
> Aristotle, who actually cared about getting the ideas of others in the
> history of ohilosophy right, unlike Plato, who distorted and reduced
> their ideas to punchingbags, well, but then, I began to see that logic
> was riddled with problems and that often itz driving force is getting
> things right, or winning the day....and I decided that success was not
> a very good way of going about evaluating what was valid....and that
> what follows from beginning, or in the beginning, and moves to the
> heavens often involves a great Fall, and, as I was raised by
> Jesuits...I began to think that what comes at the end of days may
> make valid what we put away as childish things, though these will be
> valid enough in their time, for everything there is, of course a time,
> the whole determining the parts or the other way about. But this, even
> though I always suspected those Jesuits, for who didn't suspect them,
> of putting to much on a transcendence they, half-agnostically preached
> bu did not care to calculate the graces of...and anyway, a unified
> theory or theories smacks of conspiracy...and so, after losing my
> cherry, I decided to consider the preterit again, so back to
> Aristotle, sort of, only this time I would focus on the losers. Yes,
> dialctic is certainly Not about winning the day, in fact, itz not even
> against the day, but about losing, losing one's position, one's
> struggle against the other by taking turns at talk. Or better song.
> The battle of songs or poems.
>
> I hope that the President and the Congress will try a little Plato in
> the coming years. But first, they shall need to surrender the idea
> that winning is a win, that a win-win is about dialogue. The pragmatic
> American, however, is essentially a student of Aristotle. So were all
> our Metaphysical Club members, pragmatists, but, there is, in the very
> Principles of the American, something Creative. This nis something
> Plato would ban and Aristotle would turn into a vocational school for
> the Booker T Boyz in the hood, but this Creativity is what makes of
> us, we the people, we Americans, the most innovative people in
> history.
>
> Now if only we can elect someone who believes this is more than mere
> rhetoric.
>
> Did enjoy that poem, though a halmark ripp-off of Walt.
>
>
> > Mm. Ages since I read Pirsig. Interesting idea for an argument, though, I
> > admit. It was my impression that Pirsig mostly got Plato pretty wrong, in
> > that Plato, like his teacher, was all about the nature of dialectic and
> what
> > might be gained in terms of human understanding through mastering the
> > method. Was writing down those examples of dialectic inquiry useful in
> > expanding human understanding? Was it useful in expanding the
> manipulation
> > of human understanding? Was it to posterity a gift and a bane alike?
> Maybe
> > it depends on who reads Plato, and how.
>
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