Ah, Socrates has so much to teach in a couple paragraphs. You can get amazed in how much you can get out of those.
In the paragraphs read in this phase, Socrates is arguing how he is not afraid of death, of the unknown. Also, how his death is more harmful for others than that to himself.

He gives us an interesting lesson. I made a vlog for this one.

Ah, Emerson. You just keep amazing me.

"The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise."

In the first paragraph we read today, the quote I just wrote was mentioned. Amazing, it is, that we are the meaning makers. We are the humans that give things that power to be valuable according to out own values. And us, as individuals are those who dictate that value.

Also, Emerson goes to the categorizing, hierarchical issue we've been having for centuries. We're trained to think with a category from the very first time we start to learn things. But we must be free and care about our own shining. That is were the real selves lie.

We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; — the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun. 


I must apologize for such a big quote I just posted, but it is of great importance for me to share this. I first ought to mention that Emerson is a Transcendentalist, for this I mean that he believes in an external universal ethic. He is a theist, undoubtedly. But in this, Is there consilience breathing underneath these words? 

Socrates' last day in Earth. A wonderful piece. This is the defense that Socrates presents when he is accused for corrupting the young and innovating the gods.

He's an amazing orator. He doesn't recall ornamented nor emotional way of speech, but truth. He calls out his enemies: the recent and the ancient. The ancient being those that made the young have prejudices and reject Socrates. He's being accused under this assumptions:

"Socrates is an evil doer and a curious person, who searches into things under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause, and he teaches the before said doctrines to others"

Then, Socrates claims that his wisdom is human. Then, he talks about the origins of the accusers hating him. And that is because, he was called the wiser man on earth by the gods, and he wanted to contradict that. But, when he went towards politicians, poets, and artisans; who had a reputation of wise men, he noticed they weren't wise at all! And we he said to them that they were not wise, they came to hate him. So the accusers present in court are three: one representing each group.

But, he argues that he's wiser because he's recognized that he doesn't know. When, the others think they know when they don't. And that is why the gods consider Socrates the wiser, because he came to understand his ignorance.

Meletus, one of the accusers argues that Socrates is corrupting the young because he has divinities of his own. Socrates asks if he means that he believes in other gods, or because he is an atheist? Meletus answers the latter. But Meletus is contradicting himself! Because Socrates believes in godly things, he has to believe in god then!

Afterwards, Socrates also talks about how the envy and redaction of the world has been the death of good man. Wow, this is true. People rather hear the voice of the ignorant and false than listen to the truth. People like the pretenders of wisdom. But Socrates reflects Integrity, he is virtuous, he is willing to die for what is right. He wants to search for truth only, and he is willing to bring reality. He is not afraid of death.

He is a lover of the conversation on what is and what is not. He better questions, because the "unexamined life is not worth living" he says. And I love that. And at the end, he says that he would die again, again and AGAIN if death was a path to be with the great men like Homer.

He ends with this wonderful phrase:
"The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better, God only knows."

The definitions for pious in the text were found:
1. "I say the pious is doing what I am doing now, to prosecute the wrongdoer"
2. The pious is what is dear to the gods
3. The pious is that what's loved by the gods
4. Is that concerned with prayer and sacrifice to the gods
5. Serving the gods


So basically, these are the definitions we've came up with so far, and I do see a majority of "gods" here. There's a lot of responsibility in the gods, deciding what the pious is. It is related to a third party, of someone else deciding what is good for me and what isn't.

Also, the way that Socrates adapts to the dialogue is in a really interested way, with respectful insight. He searches for truth, even if he wouldn't believe in the existence of these gods from the beginning!

What is Piety?

Two men are speaking in front of the court: Socrates and Euthyphro. Socrates was charged by Meletus because he was corrupting the young by innovating the gods. Euthyphro, a priest, was condemning his father because he "killed" a servant, who had killed a slave. Euthyphro's father had isolated the servant and he had died of hunger and cold. That is why Euthyphro was charging his father, who was angry. Others had told him that he was being impious by doing this, but Euthyphro doesn't believe that. He thinks he knows what piety is. He even mentions how one god makes the same thing with his father.

Surprised, Socrates asks him what he thinks piety is. Euthyphro brings arguments: that which is godly is pious and that which is ungodly isn't pious. But who is the wrong doer if still the gods argue what is the pious and what is unpious? Because the gods are different. Then Euthyphro mentions that what is loved by the gods, that is pious. But that is just a quality of piety!

The god beloved is not the same as the pious, there is a difference between the bearer and the thing. The gods may love piety but they are not piety.

The dialogue went slowly. Not everyone understood, and we accorded to find the definitions of piety that Euthyphro gives us:
Pious is...

• what is dear to the gods
• what is cared by the gods
• what is agreed by the gods
• what is godly
  

Once again, Emerson caught my love.

"For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them."


These are basically the paragraphs our conversation went through. Multitudes want to see you in one way: conform and according to what that majority thinks. Makes me think about political issues or other problems that become popular just because the press says it is popular, and not because people give a genuine importance to those. And when the majorities become crazy and angry, a great man has to know how to stand in "magnanimity and religion" : standing for their own beliefs. This makes me think of all the German people in the Nazi Germany who stood out for their own beliefs being certain that anti antisemitism was an insane idea.

Another thing that calls out the anger of the multitudes is the consistency. The availability to keep with the thought we think is the best instead of adopting ideas that are wrong just because the cultivated masses agree with them. 

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

Emerson again. I can't stop quoting this marvelous work. There's something of a great man:
He is able to stand up by himself, not letting the "community of opinion" eat his strength.
He mentions this in his quote is "The objection t conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force".

There's a "correct", "good" side in society in which you're just going with the flow and you don't have problems. But there's something inside us. This inside nature that actually makes us respond unconsciously to things we don't really l like: that's were fake smiles and reactions happen. ;)

This Emerson guy is truly redeeming me. Haha!

"What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, -- "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "The do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil. No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong is what is against it."

This message is definitely intriguing. The text went along on how the "good path" is actually different from goodness itself. How people pretend and are not self reliant and just start to be eaten by some entity called society. He says that the greater virtue of society is conformism and that "self-reliance its is aversion". 

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.


There are things like traditions and last names or credentials that give the popularity to certain people. WHY is that. I'm always asked of what title I'm gonna get, what is my last name, where do I live, etc. Why am I so banned and expected to be something in order to be accepted? Indeed, the present society devours the reality and restricts creativity. As I once heard in an interview: people try to categorize you because they want to explain you. But really, they can't. They can't explain such a complex being.

Now, this is the huge bomb that I loved but still I am doubting about:

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

I agree in almost everything he says in this paragraph. This is some kind of protest of what is being real and being simply just "right" because that is the "right" people say.

Now my concern comes to the highlighted part of the paragraph. For I don't know for what rights he means... and if this is some kind of anti-state protest I would totally agree. 

The conversation flux was really sincere, and I really enjoyed it. Gaby was kind of asleep through the dialogue. I was really thrilled with the reading. This is a redemption... 

After reading Leonard E. Read's essay "How to Advance Liberty" I felt dazzled. According to Read, spreading the ideas of liberty is "a learning, not a selling, problem".

Throughout the text Read emphasizes on how masses are the ones who defines the course of society, and how the approach of the libertarian to the masses should be. For the libertarian thinkers tend to be close minded and omnipotent, their ideas can't be shared successfully. Pretending to be "Know it alls" can be a really dangerous weapon when sharing ideas.

Leonard Read mentions it's not a matter of marketing or a matter of getting into people minds like conquering someone's perspective.

That is what we got to discuss today with Alexander Mccobin, founder of Students for Liberty. 

Alexander commented he thinks he disagrees with Read because he believes that marketing is necessary to let the ideas of liberty be known. Alejo disagreed. The dialogue flowed interestingly since that.

Quotes like this went to the table:

"I wish to repeat that the strategy of achieving a free market economy -- or, the same thing, advancing liberty -- does not require "selling the masses," that is, bringing the "hosts of common men," or what Keynes called "practical men," into a state of comprehension. Were that the problem, I would have given up the ghost long ago.

So Read considers that one, by attracting others, can share authentically the ideas of liberty. I wonder if it is possible in a society where most of the people stand willful in nonage and are not willing to get out of that. Is isolation the best option?

Mccobin emphasized on how selling as Amazon.com could be one great example or analogy of how the ideas of liberty should be spread. I agree with that. When talking of the ideas, it would be more kind of a conversation. Out of that, one can invite the other to learn more about the ideas. The thing is, to shine one's own light. That sounds like Emerson.

"The fact that only one in hundreds of individuals encountered shows any interest in or aptitude for the free market or libertarian philosophy should be no cause for discouragement. This is simply a common blindness; there is yet no eye to see the subject; the blindness is the problem! Keep in mind self improvement and the related fact that the art of becoming is composed of acts of overcoming. The blindness, be it recognized, is an obstacle to overcome -- a stimulus to self-improvement. Reflect, for instance, on subterranean animals and those committed to the depths of the ocean -- living in utter darkness. They have no eye to see. What brings forth the eye? Why, light itself brings forth the eye!"

Besides, the dialogue went pretty well. We got to genuinely discuss and people was committed to the rubric. It was a wonderful experience!