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Heroism

Heroism has been defined in so many ways throughout history and throughout this class. However, I do not feel like I am any closer to figuring out what I define as a hero personally. At the beginning of the semester, I considered anyone that is able to build a movement of people behind them in order to enact good to be a hero. But considering that “good” can be subjective, I do not know if that counts. I certainly agree with the idea from earlier in semester that heroes do good for people that do good for them, although I do not think that is enough to be considered a hero. Since I have not completely decided what a hero is to me, or even if heroes even actually exist, for the sake of this post, I will combine my theory from early in the semester with the other one I just discussed. I think a hero is someone that is able to garner support from others in order to create large movements. I think a hero needs to be involved in a large movement because any action done alone cannot be significant enough to be encompassed under heroism. I also believe that heroism needs to be derived from an externalized expression of communal justice. Justice, to me, is that previous theory regarding doing good to those who good to you. So, combining all three of my last three premises, a hero is someone that is a leader in a movement that hopes to raise the overall well-being of as many people as possible. While the concept of good is still subjective in this theory, I argue that the stipulation of raising the overall good of as many people as possible prevents a person that mobilizes people to hurt others or to achieve a perverse concept of good from being called a hero. Overall though, I do not know if there is one exact way to define a hero. It is one of those conceptual questions that can never truly have a definitive answer.

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Coolest Thing I Learned

While I have enjoyed most of the stories that we have read so far, my favorite stuff has come from the pure philosophical texts. The thing that really stuck with me was the way that Aristotle described the different forms of government, as well as how compares those government types to more day-to-day relationships. The difference between a timocracy and a democracy was something that I had never thought of before, and that difference was made even more clear when Aristotle compared a timocracy to a relationship among brothers. Brothers will have a unified goal and will be able to work together to achieve those goals in a very cooperative manner. Democracy, while probably the best we have ever achieved, falls short of the unified brother relationship because we are yet to see a democracy with a population that has a unified goal and are actively cooperating to achieve that. They instead all have their own interests and vote accordingly to achieve said interests, which often splits the population. I immediately thought of Stirner’s egoism when I read that. Although I have read very little so I may be way off base here, Stirner seems to suggest that altruism is impossible and that all we do is operate off our own best perceived interests in any given moment, which is exactly what Aristotle seems to be saying about participants in democracy. I do not know if Stirner is correct, but if he is, then it seems like a timocracy is impossible too. I like to believe that humans will someday overcome their differences and achieve some sort of species-wide transcendence through political unification, but we are certainly yet to see it. There are also a lot of other philosophers that draw on similar subjects, but Stirner was the one that just popped to my mind for some reason. The other relationship comparisons that Aristotle uses are cool too, such as a monarchy being a father-son relationship, although democracy is the one that hits closest to home. It also made me realize that even though political philosophy has grown and expanded since the days of Aristotle, it still seems to be exploring very similar stuff that humans still have not even come close to collectively figuring out. 

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The greatest downfall of Roman general, Caius Martius, was his inability to appeal to the lower classes and not have disdain for them. Julius Caesar succeeded where Martius failed because Caesar was able to use populist support in order to garner political power. And populism has only remained popular since then. Populism does not necessarily mean good though. It can be used to build up political support for the best politicians, but also for the worst. Looking at American politics and looking at all the political parties that have ever existed, we actually see a long history of populist rhetoric, both good and bad. 

In 2020, there are two main political parties in the US. Since WWII, the democrats have typically been thought of as the more populist party out of the two. But in recent years, I feel as though they have not been appealing to that populist base and they are slowly losing hold of it as a voting base too. And on the inverse, it seems like the republicans, the party that has not been as populist since WWII, are beginning to adopt more populist rhetoric, which ultimately culminated in the Trump presidency. Whether those things are good or bad is subject I suppose, but at the very least, if the democrats want to win more elections, they need to invoke populism again. 

Right now it’s easy to say that they do not need to change their strategy since they just won the presidency with Joe Biden. But they lost a ton of down ballot races, which is way more important when considering power structures as a whole. And I believe that is because they did not offer anything particularly different in those elections. In the presidential election, it makes sense that Biden would win because anybody compared to Trump seems like a good alternative to most voters. But even still, Biden did not win by nearly as much as he probably should have considering the state of the country right now. But in the down ballot races, the democrats that offered nothing new besides being an alternative to the republican lost, overwhelmingly in some cases. Amy McGrath raised around $88 million for her race against Mitch McConnell, but besides not being McConnell, she essentially offered nothing else to please voters, including being a pro-Trump democrat, and she was completely destroyed in the election because of it. Of course, McConnell isn’t really a populist either, but most people will usually just choose the evil that they know if not offered anything else. And without Trump in office driving people to vote blue no matter who, we could potentially see huge republican gains in the midterms and in the next presidential election. If I am in charge of the democratic party, I am viewing the results of the election and realizing that something else needs to be done if we want to make legitimate gains in power. Unless they do not really care if they win or lose, they will need to run candidates that are capable of appealing to more populist movements. If they do not, they may just fall the way of Caius Martius. 

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An article with similar headlines have been in the news almost every day for the last couple weeks. Nebraska continues to skyrocket in covid cases. Higher than ever before, we are now in the “red zone” which has been a fear of many ever since the pandemic started. Yet, once again, I am writing a blog post about how nothing will change regarding covid practices and policies. In most towns, including my hometown, masks are still not required. And students are not being sent home from school either, even though many schools said entering the red zone would force their hand. Just like everything else in this country, we have quickly hyper-normalized the virus and the resulting deaths. 

We the people are partly to blame of course, given that we are the ones not wearing masks and going to parties, but it is also true that our leaders should shoulder more of the blame. If they would have gotten a hold of this earlier, we may not even be in this situation in November. Instead, however, the economy has continued to keep moving, which has put many people through the grinder during the pandemic. If the relationship between leaders and the people is supposed to be like a parent-child relationship, then the United States needs to desperately reevaluate their political structures. Most of our leaders do not care enough about us to give us any relief from this virus whatsoever. They won’t provide financial relief, they won’t mandate health procedures, or really do anything else other than just keep watching people get sick and die. They are not executing their function as the parents in this relationship at all. They need to stop us from going to bars and restaurants and just make us take more precautionary measures. It is no wonder that our role as the children is not being fulfilled either. We are supposed to love and appreciate them, but how can we do that when they are literally the least caring parents of all time. Which is partly why so many people turned out to vote for a new president. I am unsure of the newly elected president’s ability to be a better parent than the last, but I am cautiously optimistic. If only we could get some parents for the state of Nebraska, because our current political leaders would be in so much trouble if they were accountable to child-protective services. 

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At the current moment, we do not know who won the 2020 Presidential Election. But we do know who lost, which as expected, were all the independent and 3rd party candidates. In order to keep things light in this news post, I wanted to talk about Kanye West specifically. Kanye lost, only getting 60,000 votes, but that was always to be expected. But now I’d like to make an argument for what he should do now that he has officially lost. 

Aristotle believes that one of, if not the most noble and worthy past time is the pursuit of music. Just like your soul, music can come together in perfect harmonious fashion, which can be very healthy for your soul. Also, music can be reflection of the soul expressed outwardly for the world to hear. Kanye West is one of the best people to ever do that, which is why I wish he pursue it as a main past time again. He constantly talks about being a genius, however he is only a genius through music. I believe that his genius can only better the world in a utilitarian sense if he is making music. Of course, that is not to limit him to just one key characteristic that can define his entire personality, which is something that people do to many artists and artisans, claiming that they should only stick to what they know. I think Kanye is capable of pursuing other things, but I wish those things would be secondary or at least more proportional with his music making. 

I cannot speak for him, but I believe that he would greatly benefit in his mental health if he shut off a lot of outside world for a little bit and spent more time creating full length albums (preferably not completely about Jesus again) and just poured his heart and soul into them. He would only have to primarily focus on his desired product of his expression of his soul through music, which is a noble past time and should definitely be done if you��re one of the best ever to do it. In doing so, I think he could clear his mind of many of the contradictions that seem to have been plaguing his soul recently. He would feel better, and then also his fans would get a new album out of it. However, I fear that he just keeps releasing sporadic singles for a while. I do not think he puts as much of an artistic vision into those as he does with his albums, and thusly I do not think they are as good, and I do not think his soul is relieved of any issues. That is why I think running for president again in 2024 is a fruitless effort for him, because it would detract from his ability to unload his entire soul onto albums, which is the reason that he and many others consider him a genius in the first place.

However, what I really want is for Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and maybe Young, to begin performing again. This is unrelated, but I think they too are deeply troubled individuals and would benefit greatly from pursuing their friendship again now in their older age, as well as being able to harmoniously share their souls together in one cohesive musical package once more. I wouldn’t be mad if they and Kanye collaborated together too, although I am unsure of the quality of the product that would be produced. Hopefully this was light-hearted enough of a news story for today.

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Here we are, a few days before the election. I am so glad that all the psychic energy that we all have put into this for the last four years can finally be released, for better or worse. Of course, going into the week, we already know that there’s going to be way more important news stories, so I wanted to highlight something that might go under the radar once Tuesday is here. The Ricketts family, who are outrageously rich, has spent an outrageous amount of money on elections that do not involve Pete. Obviously, this is in an attempt to shift the elections towards his political party so that he can continue to enact more of his awful (in my opinion) policies. And why shouldn’t his family do it? Disregarding morality, something the Ricketts family is very good at, there is absolutely nothing illegal about donating money to campaigns that you hope win, and if money is not a factor, the benefits far outweigh the negatives for them to do this. Of course, there is a huge difference between them donating millions to conservative candidates and me donating $40 Bernie Sanders earlier in the year, but the legality is virtually the same.

If this is how the law works, and it is, then I believe that is fairly clear that we are living in a state that somehow has merged democracy and oligarchy. Recently, as the years have gone by, I have observed a shift further to oligarchy. In Book IV of “Politics” by Aristotle, he argues that there a few different types of democracy and a few different types of oligarchy. The form of oligarchy that Ricketts and his family represent is the kind where a person needs to worth a lot in order to qualify for office, and then the people already in office get to choose the other people in office. Pete Ricketts is worth so much money, and he is attempting to use that money to sway elections in his party’s favor, effectively attempting to use his wealth to choose the next officers. 

Aristotle, surprisingly enough, predicted this kind of thing would happen. He believes that states with democratic institutions tend to also be partly oligarchies. He says that people with the leisure available to actually be in public office are the ones with enough wealth to afford it. The wealthy will take public office and then slowly they as officers will become sovereign rather than the law. He refers to this as a Politea, which is a constitutional government that  combines parts of an oligarchy and a democracy. As I said earlier, Ricketts and other wealthy politicians are perfect examples of what happens when the oligarchy begins to overtake the democracy in the Politea. I believe this will only continue to worse over the years until eventually the American people reach a tipping point where enough is enough and then not even five superhero movies a year is enough to distract us from the reality of our Politea. Or, perhaps it will still continue to worsen, but nothing ever snaps us back into reality, and we the people will continue to watch from the sidelines as the world plunges into a pit it can never come back from (*cough* climate change *cough*). And it’s all thanks to people like Pete Ricketts, who can never actually fill the whole inside their souls, choosing to instead dedicate their lives to the pursuit of more money, even if it means hurting every other person on the planet. Because the people of this country cannot work together towards one ultimate goal, half of our Politea is a democracy instead of timocracy, and because our wealthy elite have absolutely zero empathy for us, the other half is an oligarchy rather than an aristocracy. Truly a despicable form of government.

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Argumentative #4

Aristotle discusses the idea of a democracy being a corrupted version of a timocracy. In a timocracy, all people have a say and all people are working towards a similar goal, much like a brother relationship, whereas in a democracy, all people have a say, but there is no united goal or direction. Some argue that we as Americans do not live in a democracy, believing that we were designed to be an aristocracy, in which the elite have most control while the masses had a little input. That designed aristocracy has since devolved into an oligarchy, in which the normal people have very little say. Regardless of whether we are in an oligarchy or democracy, the goal that I would one day hope to achieve in a timocracy.

How do we create a timocracy? Some say it is impossible because it would require creating a combined human consciousness capable of cooperating in mass to achieve the same goal, which sounds especially difficult to achieve today. Many philosophers do not think that would be impossible, such as Engels and Marx who believe that creating a class consciousness first is the best way to eventually have a overarching human consciousness. However, I want to attempt to use Aristotle exclusively to create a human consciousness.

In Book X of Aristotle’s “Ethics”, he discusses pleasure and his mistake to once assume that it was the ultimate good. In Book VII, he stated that the pursuit of pleasure is not different than the pursuit of the ultimate good, but now in Book X, he walks that back and says that pleasure is neither necessarily good or bad, depending on the situation, but that the ultimate good comes from contemplation. In order to realize that contemplation is better than pure pleasure, the world must first shed itself of the constant individual desires for pleasure that seem to never stop. Pursuit of pleasure is especially a barrier to contemplation at the current moment of time as well, but hopefully be overcome. If all of this is true, we can assume that if humans all were capable of deep contemplation and were to actually do so, they would arrive at an ultimate good. Humans are not always perfect, so some may arrive at the wrong conclusion, but if we were to rectify another one of Aristotle’s issues with society, which is that communities can die and that some are necessary for achieving the good and just. We would need to spark community involvement on a mass scale like it never has been done before, and then once people actually know each other, they could discuss the conclusions of their contemplation and work together to draw out the actual ultimate good that may have been buried underneath their preexisting biases. This will allow for the ultimate good to be known by all, and would allow it to persist through the community and its actions and goals.

Of course, Aristotle does not have a clear and concise theory for how to actually going about beginning to achieve any of this. Some other have tried, such as Rousseau, who argues that we would need to find a way to educate all people equally and correctly in order to create a combined human consciousness, which is similar to Aristotle who argues that it is the responsibility of the state to educate the masses and teach them virtues and ultimate truths. Unfortunately, neither ever came up with an actual method for making the state actually do this or what kind of education would be. As said early, Marx, Engels, and their followers of thought believe a class consciousness would help to take over the state and begin anew, and other philosophers have also proposed similar ideas related to a better structured community. However, if this consciousness, whatever it may be, is achieved at the same time as instilling a functioning timocracy, I believe that we would have created the most near perfect form of government and political organization that we as a species could achieve. We would all have a say, but would all be ultimately working hand in hand towards an ultimate good.

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Husker football is back! And in typical Husker fashion, they were absolutely dismantled in the season opener. With the Big Ten coming back last weekend, college football is back in full swing amidst the covid pandemic. As great as this may sound to some, this of course is such a terrible idea and is counterintuitive to stopping the virus. Once again, in a frantic attempt to return to normalcy, we have only prolonged an actual return to normalcy. Even as of a few hours of writing this, Wisconsin just cancelled their game with Nebraska because of a covid outbreak. Unlike the NFL, these players are not being paid to go out and play in dangerous conditions, although I am unsure that making NFL players also play right now is ethical even if they are getting paid. However, especially in the case of unpaid college athletes, they are being exploited by the heads of universities that are raking in all the money from their risk to play. Of course that was always true with football given how dangerous it is, but now it’s more true considering playing now means contracting a deadly virus. 

An argument I often hear against stopping college football this year is because the players and coaches want to play. In my opinion, most players do not want to play because of their own desires, although I am sure some do. But I am willing to bet that the coaches and athletic programs that the players spend most of their lives in college around might be having a little influence on their choice to keep playing and to ignore the virus. And all those people influencing them do get paid, sometimes millions, and they also are often obsessed with college football and want nothing more to watch it every year no matter what. Also, many players have hopes of going pro, which could be hurt if they do not have the opportunity to show off their talents to scouts. So of course the players are going to want play. Everything in their life is telling them too, including their own choices and biases, but that does not mean they are not essentially being sacrificed for the benefit of the University and that we should necessarily allow that as a society. 

However, I am a hypocrite because I have been really happy to have the NFL back. It has given me some joy in my life spent primarily in my home away from others. I do think it is slightly different because the players make millions of dollars to go out there and play, and are also some of the top competitive athletes in the country, so they really want to go out and play, but I do agree that NFL players are also slightly exploited by owners just as the college players are by universities. At this point I have no control over what happens in the world, so I’ve just decided to enjoy the NFL season while I can, and just hope for the best for all involved, but I wish we didn’t live in a world where so many people could be so negligent for the sake of wealth. 

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Aristotle argues that it is injustice when goods and wealth are unjustly distributed, and that when that happens, it is more the fault of the distributor than the people who are given the largest sum. But what happens when the people who are given the largest sum use that power to directly influence and control the distribution. We see that kind of economic model in a few modern countries, but this particular article discusses Ireland’s failing economic model.

Ireland has a very low corporate tax rate, which has helped pump money into the hands of the people who already have tons of money simply by not taking a fair amount from the corporations. But it also has helped them by making Ireland a corporate tax haven, which means that many foreign countries, especially other European ones, have been pumping money into the country in order to save on taxes. In the past, this has helped to increase the country’s GDP, which sounds great until you realize that the country’s unemployment rate has fluctuated from high to extremely high over the years, disproportionately hurting lower income people and benefiting the rich. 

However, in recent years, it seemed like they were finally finding some footing towards making an economic system that works for more people. Yet, the underlying problems still existed because the people that benefitted of the low corporate taxes and other economic structures had a vested interest in maintaining the systemic base that helped in the first place. Essentially, instead of building a new boat when the whole crew was sinking, they used their wealth to make sure that their part of the boat sinks slower while only plugging up leaks in the boat. And with all sinking ship economies that merely plug up the holes, the pandemic unplug the holes and the ship is sinking faster for the poorer side. And still the rich continue to block any meaningful change, such as trying to prevent Sinn Féin and his party from participating in the political sphere. While they are not only people offering solutions to the economic problems, they are the closest to actually being able to hold power, meaning they are the closest to actually changing the distribution of wealth.

Related to Aristotle, he argues that absolute justice trumps all, but that equity trumps legal justice. And since absolute justice is pretty difficult to actually define and obtain, I would argue that Ireland, and other countries, should fight for equity rather than continuing to follow the legal processes that are set in place by the people with power, because that isn’t nearly as just as equality or near equality would be. At the very least, anything more equal than as things are now would be a wonderful improvement. 

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In most of my posts, I am fairly cynical about both political parties in the United States. But I always have to highlight the Republicans for not even trying to pretend that they care about the people the say they serve. McConnell is upset that some Democrats are pushing for another stimulus package, which would be a good thing for many struggling people right now. And their proposed reason for being upset is because the Democrats are trying to block the new Supreme Court Justice from being confirmed by using the stimulus package. Although I do not like her and could honestly care less if the Democrats are just playing a political game in this situation, I think the benefit of the stimulus package would greatly outweigh any worries about partisan fighting. Yet, the Republicans do not shy away from outright admitting that running up the score on the Supreme Court to a 6-3 majority is more important the actual people of this country.

This relates to Plato’s critique of democracy because it shows how democracy shows hints of tyranny at points. Only in a tyrannical government could leaders so callously say that helping people is the selfish thing to do and that nothing is more important than pushing every institution in their own personal favor. They are seemingly driven by nothing by pure desire in their own self-interests. And you could also argue that if the Democrats are only doing this to further their own self-interests, that too is a form of tyranny nestled within our democracy, although, again, I do not like her and would prefer them to use the stimulus package to block her nomination. And most of the thumos typically associated with democracies has been drained too, because we only really get to vote for representatives, and they must fall into one of two pre-established ideological divides. There is no room for political growth whatsoever when we can only have the same two options now until forever. And one of those parties outright admits that they don’t care about us on a consistent basis. It would probably be the case that if the people could outright vote on whether or not to have a stimulus package that they would actually vote for it, and that’s especially true if they were also free from any of the polarized partisan nonsense that plagues our society. The United States is a democracy that is ran by a few select people that are driven by their own desires. They then tell us what our desires should be, only giving us two options, which completely drains our political participation of any thumos or agency. If a democracy is devoid of thumos, and is primarily being driven forward by perverse desires, then maybe it’s something else. Regardless, I hope the second stimulus packages happen, there are sadly many people that could really use it right now. 

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About a year ago, there was a coup against Bolivian President, Evo Morales. He was banned from running for any form office again and is facing charges for terrorism, which many suspect are made-up charges. A proposed reason that this actually happened was to prevent Morales party, who refer to themselves as socialists, from taking over the government and slowing the trade of valuable resources, such as lithium. But one year, and a deadly pandemic later, Morales party has once again prevailed. In my eyes, the Bolivian people have corrected a great injustice through voting, which has somewhat brought back my faith in democratic institutions (not necessarily the United States).

Under Luis Arce, the newly elected President and Morales’s hand-picked successor, hopefully Bolivia can start making strides towards calming the virus and then progress towards making many other improvements for the people in the state. If justice is defined as doing good to those who good for you, the Bolivian people stood up to the attempted coup and did a great good for Morales and Arce. Therefore, the just thing to do in return would be to deliver on the promises that the party made to the people, which is a task easier said than done, but is certainly worth a whole-hearted attempt. I am excited to see what is next for Bolivia and am really hoping that there is not another nonsensical reason that this election is eventually said to be illegitimate. Afterall, he at least didn’t lose the popular vote and still win the election, which is allowed in some countries with much weaker democratic institutions, although I won’t name any names.

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As the old saying goes, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” In this case, the cake would be the ability to watch football without either getting covid at the game or afterwards as a result of the mass spreader event. Nebraska Football and its fans are supposed to make the sacrifice of watching from home exclusively in order to watch the games. I talked about in a previous post that our society’s reliance on overindulgence is causing major problems. And this is another example. They haven’t even played a game yet and the fans are already itching to watch in a crowd. How long will it be until they want to bypass the pandemic restrictions entirely and just watch it in the stadium? With the Pinnacle Bank Arena hosting a watch party, it is already very obvious that people will be tailgating.

Considering we give away our authority to govern ourselves in a lot of ways, you’d think that the very least the government would at least be trying to be a just state. In a just state, those that are actually trying to uphold pandemic rules in order to slow the spread would not have to worry about institutions encouraging other people to be reckless, completely nullifying any effort to slow the spread. Yet the state has shown no willingness to stop people from hurting themselves. A main driving factor for so many people in this country is to seek pleasure, and when seeking pleasure causes harm to the rest of the world and themselves, it is clear that the people will always choose pleasure. Why does the state not stop this? They stop so many other, comparatively insignificant actions. Marijuana use is illegal in most of the country, which is usually argued to be at least somewhat safe. Yet certain actions that will spread covid cannot be illegal, even temporarily, for whatever reason. This is unjust, not even necessarily just because marijuana should be legal, but because we give up our political authority to the state because they are supposed to benefit and protect us, and here they are showing that they care more about profit and normalcy than actually protecting us. 

I’ve lived in Nebraska all my life, and I am absolutely ashamed of the football fanbase. The fact that they can barely even give up even one little aspect of watching football shows that we too are engulfed in overindulgence at a societal level. We don’t really deserve sports back in the first place and now they won’t even accept minor concessions. In my opinion, it is really not hard to watch sports from your couch, in fact it’s my preferred way of doing it, so I wish that people would be willing to try it for at least this one year in order to maintain a more just society. I just really want people to stop dying and getting sick, and I don’t know why so many people don’t care.

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I find it extremely ironic that we are in a class with the words, “The Good Life” in them during this time of civil unrest and sickness. We’ve discussed a lot in class about what it takes to achieve a good life. In the times of Athens, people have had conflicting opinions about it. Some sought justice, and others sought glory. But in the year 2020, achieving the good life is seemingly much more complicated. Covid-19 cases are rising back to higher numbers than they have been for a while. There are many reasons why, such as never having it under control in the first place, sending students back to school, and even things like sports returning. And for these reasons, I believe that achieving the good life is not actually complicated, but is actually very simple, just not necessarily easy for most people. 

I believe that good life can be achieved if we stop overindulging ourselves in all aspects of our life. For most people, it is impossible to even fathom giving up aspects of their lives in an attempt to overcome the virus. They need to keep going to restaurants, going on vacations, having gameday parties, and whatever else brings people pleasure through pure consumption. And the reason that nobody could leave work and fully quarantine is because millionaires and billionaires also refused to quit overindulging. For example, sure Jeff Bezos could allow his workers to quarantine and be safe, but that would mean that he would lose out on billions of (untaxed) dollars. And that would mean that his customers would lose out on all the great crap they want to buy. Every time we risk our health to overindulge ourselves, we are proving that consumption is worth more than our own lives. Instead of what Socrates said when he was alive about examined lives, we now seem to operate our lives under the idea that an un-hedonistic life is not worth living. And I am completely guilty too. While I don’t eat inside restaurants, I still order out all the time. Even though I don’t think the NFL should have come back, I have been thoroughly enjoying my favorite team, the Packers, go undefeated in the first quarter of the season. And I literally just bought socks on Amazon 40 minutes ago. Even though I believe that I have given up way more than most people have during the pandemic, I too cannot stop consuming and overindulging. And that’s why the numbers can’t stop rising, and that’s why we’re all just hoping for a vaccine that we can consume and just move on with our lives. And the same goes for all other existential problems in our world. Climate change could be stopped if we all just stopped having such high levels of production of non-necessities to consume. In last century, most militaries answers to combat the threat of nuclear destruction was to continue to build enough nuclear weapons to blow up world many times over, an idea that only makes sense in a world wrought by overindulgence. And the existence of 3rd world countries is primarily because there is not enough stuff in the world for every country to consume as high as 1st world countries, so instead of equalizing so that they can consume more and we can consume less, the answer is once again the pursuit of pleasure for those that already have so much stuff. 

As the numbers rise, I hope the 1-3 people who might read this considers giving up some of their reliance on pursuing pleasure, as I too will try to. Any sort of laxness that I have grown accustomed to during the pandemic may soon need to be thrown out if the Covid numbers get high enough. I guess the ultimate plan is to just wait for the vaccine, as depressing as that is. Even though some people can clearly see the problems that are causing the virus’s persistence, I genuinely do not know how to fix them. But I really wish I did.

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Argumentative Post 3

In Plato’s “Crito”, Socrates is faced with the choice to either face his punishment from the Athenian government, or to escape from prison with the help of his wealthy friend, Crito. Socrates argues that escaping would be an unjust action, even if it is in response to the unjust ruling that sentenced Socrates to death. He believes that one unjust action does not make another unjust action become just. In layman's terms, two wrongs do not make a right. However, I disagree with Socrates in this situation. I believe that it is possible to overcome an injustice through imperfect means, and insofar that the consequences of the action are just, then the action itself is just. In this particular case, I think he could have escaped prison and still would have been able to consider himself just, or at the very least, I think he could still live life without a soul corrupted by injustice. 

To start, Socrates argues that leaving the prison would harm the people of Athens. He says that leaving will harm the people of Athens. If he means that the people will be upset that he does not accept his punishment and just die, then I would argue that an earlier statement of his rectifies that. Earlier in the interaction between Socrates and Crito, Socrates tells Crito not to be concerned with the opinion of many, for the many are not powerful enough to bring the ultimate good of wisdom. So if he is concerned with the people being upset, then he simply need not worry what the many think. If he believes that him leaving will cause harm to Athens by virtue of him not being there, I would argue that him dying would be the same thing. Or if leaving meant civil unrest, then so too would his death, probably at a much higher rate. And lastly, if he says that him leaving will hurt Athens because it undermines his argument, then I would remind him that his argument was about how unjust the state was being in the first place, so leaving the state would only cement his commitment to the argument further. Allowing himself to be executed would only reinforce the state’s argument that he was detrimental to the state, because if even he has accepted his death, than he truly must be guilty.

I believe that if he did leave, the worst case scenario for him would be that some of the people would believe he was a coward, but for the most part, anyone that wanted him to pay for his crimes will likely be reaffirmed in their beliefs, seeing his actions as cowardice and proof that he was a degenerate. And those who believed he was innocent would likely be reaffirmed that his leaving is just him fighting the good fight. The idea that some cataclysmic event would occur just because Socrates did one thing or another shows, in my eyes, the hubris of Socrates. I understand that he is an important figure, obviously since we are still debating his decision in 2020 and beyond, but I do not think he could have ever have known that, especially since he knows that he knows nothing (more a joke than actually part of the argument). I hate analyze a person characterized in a play from a couple millennia ago, but if I had to guess, Socrates knows he is old and nearing death and likely wants to go out in a public way. That way his legacy could live on, maybe even as a martyr, much better than it would if he fled and died in some random place years later. And also too, he may believe that desperately trying to cling on to the last few years of life is a lot more difficult than simply shuffling off the mortal coil. In this way, I believe he chose to accept his punishment because it would be much easier for him and give him a legacy, as much as he tells himself that it is to uphold justice, to protect the people of Athens, and to prevent the deterioration of his soul. Of course, I could be wrong. Because I too know that I know nothing, I realize that I am only operating off of my best guess of what he was thinking, and in doing so, I am likely projecting. I too sometimes lie to myself to pretend that the easiest or amoral actions are actually the hardest and most moral. 

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In Plato’s “Phaedo”, Socrates makes the Argument for the Affinity, which differentiates the immaterial world from the material world. The soul and the body are also distinguished, being that the body is how we interact with the material world, and the soul is what interacts with the immaterial world. A soul that is not properly separated from the body can never reach transcendence in any meaningful way because that person is alway focused on the material world. 

This relates to Donald Trump, especially now, because he is refusing to just quarantine in an attempt to overcome the coronavirus. He is making it very clear that he is so obsessed with the material world, even to the point that he is not willing to sit in a hospital room for more than a day, that his soul must not properly detached from the body. Any person whose soul was properly detached would have been humbled by their infection, especially someone who is as unhealthy as Trump. I am not surprised that he is unable to properly understand his own personal reality, that is nothing unusual for him, and I’m sure that multitude of experimental drugs that he is reportedly hopped up on is not helping with his grip his situation. Even when contracting a deadly virus, the president is still unable to consider that there may come a day that he no longer exists. This means to me that even at his older age, he still really has not accepted his eventual death, which I argue is a part of having a healthy soul. He is so focused on the material here and now, that he is somehow disconnected from considering even two or three weeks from now. It is entirely possible, if not likely that he dies in the upcoming weeks. He is very old, he eats like garbage, he is refusing to just sit still and quarantine in a very nice hospital, and he is completely drugged up on experimental drugs. Honestly, if he survives, it would be an enigma. So ever the was a time that he was going to properly detach his soul and recognize his own mortality, now would be the time to do so. If this does not do it, then nothing ever will.

[sput-knicks]

We have been recently discussing Socrates and his refusal to commit an unjust action to avoid his death sentence, which was also unjust. He refuses to let his wealthy friends pay his way out of the sentence because he believes using an unjust action to fight another unjust thing does not make your unjust action become just. 

This relates to the current moment because currently the Republican party is desperately trying to push Barrett through the nomination process so that she can be appointed as the next Supreme Court Justice. This is considered by many to be an extremely unjust action, for a number of reasons. To start, it is only about a month away from the next election, one that may lead to a different person being nominated depending on its outcome. It is even more unjust if we remember what the Republicans did to Obama’s last nomination, for which they refused to even have a hearing. And as this article covers, it is now unjust because they are risking spreading Covid-19 to anyone in the same room as the hearings.

But the question is, what should the Democratic party do to fight this? I have heard many things discussed, but the main one I keep hearing is the idea of packing the court. This could reasonably be argued to be unjust, given that the number of justices on the Supreme Court has been 9 for a very long time, but the real question is not whether it is unjust, but whether or not they should do it. Similarly to Socrates, an argument against it is that it would violate the political norms of our county and would be like taking the lid off of Pandora’s box, meaning that we could never return to those norms once they have been destroyed. This could be the beginning of years of political norm destruction that could ultimately leave us with a different-looking government in a short few years.

However, my argument, which is one that I will be going into more detail in my argumentative post about later this week, is that it does not matter whether the initial action is unjust, the only thing that matters is its consequences. In the modern case, if we only look at the two outcomes of either packing the court or not, I believe that packing the court would be the right thing to do. Yes, it would violate norms, but our country has already been in downward for spiral for years, arguably for decades. And it is those norms that got us here in the first place. It is pretty widespread now to call racism systemic, but I think we also need to realize that the system is systemic, if that makes sense. Everything the system is currently, it is that way because it was supposed to be that way. As hard as it is to accept, the United States government is functioning exactly as intended. The Republicans have every power and right to have stopped Obama’s nomination, but not Trump’s. Even if its unjust, it does not matter because they can and will do it anyway. And so I believe that the consequence of packing the court, which would likely the unraveling of more norms, is not necessarily a bad consequence. It may actually help to build a better system of government once we have settled on new norms and laws. 

Of course, all of that is dependent on who is there to guide us into those new norms. If the Republicans design the new government, it would likely be something in their favor. And if the Democrats, who seem to be obsessed with maintaining old norms and already dead bipartisanship, design the new government, there is a good chance that it is almost exactly the same as the current one, which we know is not necessarily all that great. That is why I do not really believe it is likely that they pack the courts, even if they want to use it as a threat. But maybe I am wrong about the Democrats’ conviction towards challenging the country’s recent pull towards conservatism. And maybe they are totally willing to properly guide the country into better governmental systems. Even though I am highly skeptical, I would love to be proven wrong. 

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Thrasymachus was completely right when he argued that justice is defined by the strong, although of course I wish he wasn’t. Naturally, anyone can define justice as they so choose, but in terms of justice’s actual effects on the world, it is true that justice is defined by those in charge. And Socrates, the person who disagrees with Thrasymachus, would have to look no further than his own charges put against him by the state. In most ideas of justice, his charges would be unjust. But because the state defined justice, they get to decide his fate.

In this story, an Omaha man shot himself while in jail. There needs to be an investigation of the jail and the police to find answers as to what happened. How did he get the gun while in jail? How come nobody could have stopped him? Why did he shoot himself? Or did he even shoot himself at all? All of these need to be answered so that any possible wrongdoings could be brought to justice. And who would be better to investigate the police than the police themselves? Of course, that is facetious. But right there in action is literally the strong defining justice. If the police find anything wrong with the suicide, what would be there incentive to report it? Likely none because it would only give them backlash. What will probably happen is that nothing will come of this internal investigation, just like so many others from other police forces around the country throughout the years. 

If we want Thrasymachus to be wrong, then we need to build a world in which accountability of the state isn’t internally inforced. And this does not mean creating a state above the already existing state, because that would only lead to the same problems. We need to make the state into one that is ruled by the people, not just the powerful elite. While I, as a 21 year old Nebraskan, am not entirely sure how to go about doing it, this would be the only way that we can ensure that justice can be defined by all, and not just the strongest few individuals.