#2016 #Interview with #Socrates

On human ‘progress,’ winning the endgame of today’s exposure of unlawful empire 

by Carl Herman

Hat tip: Professor Rufus Fears.

“The strong do what power allows. The weak accept what they must.” – 

Athenian envoy to the small government of Melos, with the offer to either join Athens’ empire with paying them tribute, or have all men executed, and everyone else sold into slavery. Melos politely declined Athens’ offer. Athens attacked, did what they threatened, and resettled the emptied island with 500 Athenian colonists. – Melian Dialogue of Socrates’ contemporary historian, Thucydides.

Carl: Socrates! Thanks for agreeing to a conversation!

Socrates: Carl! My pleasure; conversations are what I do!

C: Anything you’d like to say to our readers to begin?

S: Yes, thank you, on two topics. First: humans have made little progress in living virtuous lives since my lifetime 2400 years ago. Second: perhaps this lack of progress will make our conversation more helpful to the public.

I’d like to go into detail. Feel free to interject with comments or questions.

First, let’s consider the extent of human progress for truth and virtue in the last 2400 years. My life as the historical Socrates was a citizen-soldier under an Athenian Empire. Athens demanded tribute-taxes and slaves from dominated city states, which supported the beautiful public buildings I witnessed construction of on the Acropolis. Athenian empire through tribute and servility was our hubris, and despite civic attempts to educate the public through tragic plays to teach the fatal consequences of hubris, we fell into civil war with Sparta and her allies.

This history sets the stage of my historical dialogues with the people of Athens: to inquire into our best human responses for truth and virtue. The result of my vocation was public trial on charges that inquiry for truth “corrupted the young” and was somehow in denial to the Gods. Although my prosecutors offered no evidence other than baseless words, and I did my usual best to reveal these citizens didn’t know what they were talking about, I was found guilty in the first part of the trial.

There was a second part of the trial, Carl, to determine punishment for my guilt. By law, I was given first response. Do you know what I proposed?

C: I do, but you’re on a roll.

S: Thank you. I proposed that I should receive free meals for the rest of my life; the same reward

given our Olympic Games’ winners! Ha! Before I was shouted-down, I told the jury truth and virtue seems at CONTINUE READING PART 1

US today is Athens’ empire of hypocrisy and hubris; will US public stand for obvious justice or remain oblivious to evil? 

“The strong do what power allows. The weak accept what they must.” – 

Athenian 415 BC envoy to the small government of Melos, with the offer to either join Athens’ empire with paying them tribute, or have all men executed, and everyone else sold into slavery. Melos politely declined Athens’ offer. Athens attacked, did exactly what they threatened, and resettled the emptied island with 500 Athenian colonists. – Melian Dialogue of Socrates’ contemporary historian, Thucydides.

language warning: Socrates and I speak in the same direct language that caused his execution for “corrupting the young.”

Carl: Socrates! Welcome back!

Socrates: Carl! Thank you for continuing our dialogue. We began discussing Greek history, with connections to your United States of today. I’d like us to continue that point for Americans’ “real-world” philosophical consideration.

C: Awesome.

S: I witnessed Athenian Empire. Athens demanded tribute-taxes and slaves from dominated city states or death at the hands of our military, as with Melos. Empire is hubris; and the opposite of what we defended from Persian invasions. Quest for empire split our people, and led to civil war with Sparta.

Let’s pause here to summarize my society before comparing to the US of today: we used foreign subsidies/tribute-taxes and slavery to fund an expanding military empire. Empire ended with civil war, ignited by the hypocrisy of dominating other free societies while declaring our philosophy of personal freedom. Carl, would you agree this is a fair summary of Athens’ history?

C: Yes.

S: Good. Let’s compare one empire to another: yours.

Do you recognize how the US is subsidized with tribute-taxes and slavery to maintain a global military empire?

C: Yup. It’s called the “petrodollar” (and here): the US cut a deal with the Saud family (a family-owned country called Saudi Arabia) to sell oil only for dollars, then use profits to buy US debt securities. This strengthens the value of the dollar, and allows the US government to fund its empire by selling debt as US Treasuries. So, our CONTINUE READING PART 2

I was Athens’ ‘wacky conspiracy theorist’ for honoring my military/citizen Oath: are people today to live as educated humans, or remain obedient sheeple?

language warning: Socrates and I speak in the same direct language that caused his execution for “corrupting the young.” 

The truth is like poetry. And most people fucking hate poetry. ~ quote from The Big Short

Carl: Soc! Back so soon?

Socrates: (cocks his head) Well, talking is pretty much all I’ve got. (smiles)

C: So, you were the “wacky conspiracy theorist” of your day? And this is related to your honoring your Oath that all men take in military training to serve as citizens? That’s what you said you’d like to discuss.

S: Yes. Let’s put today’s conversation in context: our first conversation was to present Americans today with history to consider Earth’s ongoing criminal empires. Our second was connections of the US to the Athenian Empire that destroyed itself through hubris and 27 years of civil war. Now, I’d like us to consider that who you uphold as your brightest historical humans were often highly disrespected in their own time.

In fact, “wacky conspiracy theorist” is perhaps the best label to describe us.

If you agree this argument is valid, then perhaps this label is used today against other bright humans pointing to important truths, and defending their points as required honor of their Oaths to protect and defend your Constitution.

C: Let’s look. How were you a “conspiracy theorist,” Socrates?

S: Among a lifetime of examples, let’s begin with the most obvious: I challenged the hypocrisy and hubris of Athens’ empire. As we discussed in our first two conversations, our ideals of individual freedom we defended from Persia’s empire devolved into forcing other free states to pay tribute to Athens with servitude, taxes, and slaves.

Rejection of our empire meant death, as with the free citizens of Melos.

Imagine, Carl, Athenian “love of freedom” and rhetoric that Sparta and Persia “hate us for our freedoms” when exposed over 27 fucking years as hypocrisy (excuse my Greek) because the “freedom” we loved was only meant for us, and not anyone else. Everyone else had to join our empire to pay tribute to freedoms for us alone! Ha!

The most basic questions of virtue, values, and what the Gods want from us were met with intense avoidance, no matter how practiced I became in asking.

Ad hominem became the usual practice to refer to me. How dare CONTINUE READING PART 3

Golden Age of Greece,’ my Aesop! But you can have one for all Earth now if you want

“Thinkin’ ‘bout how many time I have fallen,

Spirits are using me, larger voices callin’

What heaven taught you and me, cannot be forgotten.”

~ Crosby, Stills & Nash: Southern Cross

Carl: Well, well, well! Look who’s back with more to say!

Socrates: I really thought we were done talking, but hey, I’m never done, am I! I’m driven by questions, Carl, and I have another one: How did the Athens I knew become a “Golden Age” in your history when I knew it was, frankly, as fucked up as one could imagine.

C: (smiles) Please begin, Socrates.

S: Athens was a slave-driver, empire driven, tribute taking, freedom-hypocritical, sexist, war-plagued, civil-war destroyed, and Socrates-murdering society.

I think I’m done. (turns and walks away)

(spins with arms opened and broadly smiling) Nah, I think we should elaborate!

C: Didn’t fool me with that.

S: So let’s inquire into this: the ideals of personal freedom, government under law, and unleashing human creativity were breakthrough values that once revealed were embraced by all men and women of conscience.

These ideals produced a love of diverse self-expression; periods of ethical government (although those were always subverted); beauty expressed in physical bodies, art, architecture, outstanding literature and plays.

Those are the highlights.

C: So what went wrong? I mean, these CONTINUE READING PART 4

Standing for Truth, Love, & Technology on a planet of lies, sadism, & slavery

Be good, and you will be lonesome.
Be lonesome, and you will be free.
Live a lie, and you’ll live to regret it.
That’s what living is to me.
~ Jimmy Buffett, “That’s what living is to me”

language warning: Socrates and I speak in the same direct language that caused his execution for “corrupting the young.”

Socrates: (laughs) One conversation leads to another! Now you want to talk to me?

Carl: Yeah, please. May I explain?

S: Of course.

C: So here’s the deal: as I’ll discuss, we live on a planet of lies, sadism, and slavery. Let’s feel this for 5-minutes with, for examples, Hillary Clinton cackling about assassinations and war on Iran, President Bush joking about not finding WMDs in Iraq, Senator McCain joking about bombing Iran, and President Obama joking about drone assassinations: CONTINUE READING PART 5

Another day of Life in the Empire! Are we near an endgame, or fools to ever ‘hope for change’?

“It is no use trying to escape their (Empire’s) arrogance by submission or good behavior. Robbers of the world, having by universal plunder exhausted the land, their drive is greed. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if poor, they lust for domination. Neither rule of the East nor West can satisfy them. Alone among men, they crave with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To plunder, slaughter, seize with false pretenses, they give the lying name ‘empire.’ And where nothing remains but a desert, they call that ‘peace.’ ” – Tacitus, The Agricola and the Germania (analyses here, here). Tacitus wrote ~ 100 AD, a century into empire. Emperors proclaimed to the public that their government still upheld the highest ideals of their Republic, claiming expanding empire was only and always in “self-defense.”
“One Love!
One Heart!
Let’s get together and feel all right.
Hear the children cryin’
(One Love! );
Hear the children cryin’
(One Heart! )”  ~ Bob Marley, One Love

language warning: Socrates and I speak in the same direct language that caused his execution for “corrupting the young.”

Socrates: Carl!

Carl: Soc! (bro hug)

S: How may I be of service? (genuine smile)

C: I just want to talk with an honest person, bro. We last talked 6 months ago. I don’t know if I have anything new to say, but I want to talk with someone who can hear.
S: I’ll try. What about?

C: We’re finishing a so-called “election” season that’s “jumped the shark” (and here) with the Left-wing candidate a proven criminal, and Right-wing candidate a depraved Roman Emperor wanna-be. These are Left and Right arms of one illegal rogue state US empire, of course.

S: Of course.

C: So I keep feeling that we have to be near an endgame, Soc. We have to be, given the open floodgates of evidence about sooooo much criminal activity by the .01% centered in war, looting, and lying.

I mean, really, how much longer can this go on?!

S: (smiling) Are you asking me, or just pausing for dramatic effect? CONTINUE READING PART 6