Platos Republic

Genuinely so sorry for not posting on Sunday. I got super excited to write about a topic that is so near and dear to my heart, that I wanted it to be perfect so I just didn’t end up doing it. The way I’m going to counteract is by posting it anyway, and then one of these weeks I’ll just come back to it, and make it better.

Perfection is the enemy of progress fr

I’m kinda crazy about living life in the right way, which I don’t even think exists as a universal but it definitely exists for myself, and perhaps there are some general principles that we can adopt universally.

I’m super gun-ho about doing the “right things” even if it causes me discomfort, and I hate it when I catch myself doing that was working for me so well, and having to change because I don’t think it’s right.

For example, getting into an event that I really wanted to attend during AI conference ( one of the biggest in Canada). I didn’t buy tickets and the people at the door were not checking lanyards. I could’ve easily gotten a friend to slide me his lanyard, and then proceed to network like crazy, but I didn’t because it wasn’t right. I talked to the reception to finesse my way in, and she said there’s no way. I waited another 10 minutes, revised some jokes, came up with some objection handling, and went back in, this time she got mad, and I have to leave. Honestly, I don’t blame her, she’s just doing her job.

Anyway, the point of this isn’t to illustrate that I am a saint, for that you’d have to meet me in person( just kidding). The real, self-serving reason I choose to always follow the rules is so that I don’t start slipping ethically. Today it’s just parking and getting into an event, but I don’t want that to snowball into me cheating on my wife or anything.

I used to be the most devious man I knew. I did not have a moral compass if it didn’t mean killing. I remember the first time I stole something in grade 6, and I got caught so I stopped stealing entirely. If I didn’t get caught I’d probably steal a lot more. I cheated on the chemistry test in grade 12, I had the answer key in my calculator, and I wrote a song about it. Recently, I don’t think I’ve been the best friend to people, and I wish I had treated people better, something that I wasn’t really thinking about it.

"The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

I don’t really believe in hell, but the version of hell I do believe in is me hurting the people that I love the most.

Now the reason I WAS SO EXCITED to share this is because in Plato’s republic he says

The unjust man has a better life than the just man

Which is essentially what I believe too, but I couldn’t have said so concisely. I don’t want to breakdown the entire argument, if you want it that bad you can ask me. However, the part I enjoyed the most about it was the disharmony in the soul. If you commit injustice against your fellow man, it is disharmony in your soul that you have to live with.

The natural question is what if you don’t feel that disharmony, GREAT QUESTION! This is why Plato/Socrates says education is super important, because only education can show what an ideal situation would look like, and yes the ideal situation probably doesn’t exist, but if you feel guilty about not doing the ideal things, especially in the big things in life, we will have a better world, a more ideal world. Even though people say that the world is evil, and everyone is out to get you, it’s still a lot better than before, women have rights now. I’m not a slave in India, I do feel like we are making steady progress to a better and better world, a more ideal world, but it starts with education of the ideal.

NOTE: If you are really interested about if you commit a crime and don’t feel the guilt, a great book to read is Crime and Punishment, that book changed my life, and I really started to think about truth in a different way, but Dostoevsky’s so good at writing that you might take something else away from that book.