Plato
was a Greek philosopher who lived from 428-348 BCE. He was the student of
Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle. Plato was one of the most important thinkers
of his time and arguably ever. His writing is so beneficial that even though it
is over 2,300 years old, it is still studied, used, and relevant today. The Republic
is comprised of several books written about Socrates. Of these books there are
two that I find particular relevant and I reference them quite often in my
everyday life. Books II and VII of the Republic are very powerful and, when
studied deeply, can depict the world we live in today.
The Ring of Gyges
Book
II is about the Legend of the Ring of Gyges. In Book II Socrates asks us to imagine that a noble man
is given a ring which makes him invisible. Once in possession of this ring, the
man can act unjustly with no fear of reprisal. Glaucon Claims no one can deny
that even the most just man would behave unjustly if he had this ring. He would
indulge all of his materialistic, power-hungry, and erotically lustful urges.
This tale proves that people are only just because they are afraid of
punishment for injustice. No one is just because justice is desirable in
itself.
Glaucon ends his speech with an attempt to demonstrate
that not only do people prefer to be unjust rather than just, but that it is
rational for them to do so. The perfectly unjust life, he argues, is more
pleasant than the perfectly just life. In making this claim, he draws two
detailed portraits of the just and unjust man. The completely unjust man, who
indulges all his urges, is honored and rewarded with wealth. The completely
just man, on the other hand, is scorned and wretched.
His brother, Adeimantus, breaks in and bolsters Glaucon’s
arguments by claiming that no one praises justice for its own sake, but only
for the rewards it allows you to reap in both this life and the afterlife. He
reiterates Glaucon’s request that Socrates show justice to be desirable in the
absence of any external rewards: that justice is desirable for its own sake,
like joy, health, and knowledge.
This Allegory is presented for Socrates to explain what
he thinks justice should be as well as how fallible man is. I chose this story
primarily because it makes me wonder: what is justice?
In
the Republic, there were several
definitions given by several people. Polemachus said that justice is “doing
well to your friends and harm to your enemies.” Thrasymachus explains justice
and injustice as "justice is what is advantageous to the stronger, while
injustice is to one's own profit and advantage." Glaucon says that justice
is “a social contract that emerges between people who are roughly equal in
power, such that no one is able to oppress the others, since the pain of
suffering injustice outweighs the benefit of committing it.” To Socrates,
justice was “carrying out one’s duty to one’s station.” By his definition, if
one’s job is to lie, then the just thing to do is to lie.
I
think that the word justice is something that cannot be defined by what it is.
I can only think of defining it by what it is not. Justice is not harming
another human being. If you do acts that result in someone’s harm, you are
committing injustices. This definition makes it hard to be a just person. It
forces you to be educated on all possible outcomes so you can decide which act
is just and which acts are not.
The
Ring of Gyges metaphor really makes
me think whether or not a definition for justice really exists. In the Ring of
Gyges, Gyges discovers a magical ring that can turn him invisible. Using this
ring, he deceives, murders, and manipulates his way into becoming king.
Regardless of what he does as king, using my definition, nothing he does can
make what he did just.
So
this begs the question, is the ring of Gyges metaphor a powerful argument for
doing injustice if one can get away with it? This question has plagued my moral
compass. The metaphor clearly points out that no person could be just if they
had the power of invisibility. A person would become consumed with that power
and would act out every fantasy. It would start with little things like
sneaking into a girl’s locker room and would progress to stealing money out of
a cash register. It would eventually turn into doing possibly evil things. If these
are the acts that a person plans on committing then the ring is not a good
argument for this.
There
are other acts that may be more persuasive in convincing me that you can use
the Ring of Gyges to commit acts of injustice. For example, if I was alive in
1941 and had the ring, would I be able to use the ring to kill Adolf Hitler? I
would be saving millions of lives and I would only have to kill one person if I
did it right. Many people could easily justify committing one murder to save
millions of lives. In fact, in a class discussion I had a few years ago, one
classmate defined justice by calling it “a balance.” Whatever does the most
good is justice. By this definition, killing Hitler would be a just act. Or
perhaps it would not. Because we have only seen the outcome of Hitler’s
holocaust, we have no way of knowing what would have happened in history if he
was killed. If a greater tragedy happened because we killed Hitler, it no
longer stands as a just act. By my definition, this could not be just because I
think you can never justify murdering a human-being, regardless of the evils
they commit. I believe in rehabilitation and if I were to use the ring in any
way back then, it would be to capture Hitler in an attempt to put him to trial.
In this way, I think you can avoid committing the great injustice of murder and
still do the right thing by saving the millions of lives.
Another
example for committing injustice is the act of Robin Hood: rob from the rich and give to the poor. This is one
that rocks my moral compass the most. Because I believe so strongly in the
community and helping everyone survive and succeed, not just the richest one
percent, I may be able to, in good conscience, use to ring to steal to help
those who need it. The reason I could do this is because if I was faced with the
choice of a rich person having another car, and 1,000 people eating for a month,
I definitely choose the latter. But in order to be able to do it without
affecting my conscience negatively, I would have to exhaust all other possible
solutions. Because once I decide that stealing is the solution, where do I
stop? Do I stop the second everyone has food but no shelter, do I keep going
until everyone has food and shelter but no car, or do I push it to the point of
Communism, where everyone has an equal share? Once Pandora’s Box is opened, I
find it impossible to decide where the just point to stop is. And where am I in
this predicament? Do I give myself a percentage, do I leave myself out of it,
or do I treat myself like any other poor person? Where do I draw the line?
I
think if the Ring of Gyges existed, it would be too much for any one person to
handle. Even if they were the noblest person without a selfish thought in their
brain, they would not be able to handle the great powers and responsibility of
the ring. Would they choose to kill Hitler, or let him be? Would they steal
from the rich to give to the poor, or let the “free-market” decide where the
money goes? What would they weigh in as pros and cons? And once they have the
ring and see the great power the ring holds, would they still be so noble, or
would they allow it to consume them like it would a normal person?
As
noble as I think I am, I would be afraid to see what kind of person I would
become if I had possession of the ring. I would be unable to resist committing
atrocious acts. I could only hope that watching unknowing women undress would
be the worst of my crimes and I would use the ring towards more noble things. I
know that death is not a penalty anyone should receive for any crime. But
because it is such an easy solution, I may become consumed with certain goals
that I may see it as just a means to an end. When I am the only possible
governor, will I ultimately do what is right?
The Allegory of the Cave
In
book VII, Socrates and Glaucon discuss education through the metaphor of a
cave. Socrates tells the story as a what if scenario. In his story, a group of
people lived in a cave their entire lives, never seeing the outside world.
These people are chained in such a way that they cannot look anywhere else but
directly in front of them. In front of them is nothing but a blank wall and
behind them are fire and a partial wall with different people carrying
different kinds of statues on it. Some of the people converse as they move the
statues and different noises are made. The only thing the people in the cave
can interpret is the shadows the statues make on the wall and, because this is
all they have seen, this is their reality.
One
of the prisoners was then freed from his chains and is forced to see the fire
and the statues. It pains him and he refuses to accept it at first but
eventually does. He then is forced outside of the cave and into the real world.
He is only able to adapt piece by piece. First, he is able to see the shadows,
then reflections, then able to see the people and animals. It progresses that
way until he is finally able to see the sun and understand the world around
him. To me, this story is religion.
I
was raised Christian in a Christian society. I chose to go to church on my own
every Sunday and listen to the pastor, my best friend’s father, speak his
sermon. This is what everyone around me and I perceived as truth. I continued
to perceive it as truth until I was about 16 years old. I started to see the
statues and the fire. I started to question my faith. It started out with
little questions like “When did the dinosaurs live if the world is only a few
thousand years old?” This got me to start looking into the possibilities of
other beliefs. I continued question little things at a time all the way through
high school until I finally saw the sun. With all the ties of politics and
religions I knew that Christianity could not possibly be the truth because, how
Anne Lamott put it, “you can safely assume that you’ve created God in your
image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” I continue
my personal evolution as I learn more and more about all the bad things
religion shoves down peoples’ throats. I have reached the point of the Allegory
of the Cave where I would rather go through suffering then to go back to
swallowing the hate speech.
This
was just my personal relationship with this book, but it relates to so much
more. Our Society as a whole tries to keep us in Plato’s Cave. Our political
system, religion, media, our education, social norms, etc. are setup to keep us
ignorant and as I always say, education is the cure to everything. People may
claim that I am a conspiracy theorist, but we are slaves to the elite and we
are too ignorant to see it. With our public education system, The Powers That Be do not want us to
really learn. They dumb down everything, have us teach to the tests, and
completely forbid any real open discussion. Politics and religion are the
easiest ways for them to divide and conquer. They keep us fighting each other
and we don’t see who our real enemy is. “Religion is regarded by the common
people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful” (Seneca the
Younger). The media is just the icing on the cake. It keeps us entertained and
informed enough to make us feel good about ourselves. “Fox News: Rich people
paying rich people to tell the middle class people to blame poor people”
(Unknown).
The
Powers-That-Be, as I like to call them, are the holders of the Ring of Gyges.
Whether they felt just at the beginning or not is unknown, but they have become
consumed by the powers that the ring possess. The ring in this instance is
power and money. They use their ring to manipulate the media and the political
system to pass legislation and to propagate the ideas behind them. They destroy
our environment, healthcare, and our education system to line their pockets
through privatized prisons, the Military Industrial Complex, Big Oil, Big Tobacco,
Big Alcohol, and Big Pharmaceutical. They use this ring so well that they have
us thanking them and voting against our best interests. They have locked us in
a cave behind the boob tube and the American Dream.
The
Allegory of the Cave and the Ring of Gyges are metaphors that still fit society
today. We are living in the cave. Whether it is the hidden agendas of religion
or the Oligarchical-Plutocracy masked behind the false image of Democracy we
have in America, we are blind. The only cure for that is to face the pain of
exiting the cave and bare the light of the sun.
How
we do that is the obvious problem. The people in the cave are many and the Powers-That-Be
outside the cave are few. But they possess the ring that puts a boulder in
front of the entrance of the cave. To solve this issue we must take our first
step. We must turn away from the shadows on the wall and see them for what they
are. We must work together to move the boulder out of our way. As Morpheus said
in the famous Matrix movie (based on Plato’s Cave), “The Matrix is a system,
Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do
you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters-- the very minds of the
people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of
that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of
these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so
hopelessly dependent on the system; that they will fight to protect it.” This
tells me that the battle cannot be over an adult mind. Sure, we can get some to
crossover and free their mind but the battle must be fought and won with our
youth.
We
must unite for education reform. If we can create real change in our system, we
can change everything. If we can teach our children to read, analyze, and
question everything, they will have the tools to escape the cave and destroy
the Ring of Gyges for good.
