The Public Square

[Steven]

What are your thoughts on this concept? I’ve been mulling over the Jungian idea of a king archetype being a unifying force for a community/ society. Do you think it’s enough to have a principle/ idea that a community can form around? Do you think there needs to be a physical manifestation of that principle for people to rally around?

Discussion

[Mike]

Plato’s concept of a philosopher king is indeed an interesting one as he lays out the faults of all other common political systems from pure democracy to despotism. There is a book I intend to order from H W Percival called Democracy Is Self-Government which postulates the notion that we have a sort of democratic governance within us with the Triune self and until we master that no form of government will work since we are missing the internal moral compass of rightness and reason. Plato would say the philosopher king has already mastered that and is fit to rule the immoral masses but I have yet to really see that work here on this plane!

[Steven]

Dude! The Republic and the Philosopher King concept totally come to my mind whenever I think about this question. Good call!

I agree with Percival here, that we need to master ourselves before we can ever delegate any collective power to an authority(Assuming of course, that any fully self sufficient person would want to). Assumedly, the philosopher king would be so enlightened that he could be an impartial, compassionate and fair leader. But is that enough? Doth not the people require a certain level of self mastery too? If they don’t have any, or too little, I feel like no matter how enlightened the king may be, he’d have to resort to some kind of violence against those who refused to follow his will, even if the king was correct in his beliefs. And the people would likely still be tempted to want to use the power of the state against those they disagree with. So, I think in the end the people need the same education in how to think that the philosopher king is getting, because in order for a society to avoid violence and civil strife, they need to be able to agree on guiding principles for their society

This is the kind of thing I think about when thinking of voluntary societies. For a society to be truly voluntary, they would have to willingly organize with each other. What do they organize around? The principle of freedom? The idea of equality? Mutualism? Are those kind of abstracts enough to keep a community glued together, or does it require (at least in part) a physical manifestation of the king energy to embody those principles?

• This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by  Steven.

[Mike]

I’ve been meaning to re-read Plato’s The Republic as I haven’t read it since college. On my current to-do reading list…

[Steven]

Definitely re-read it! It’s been a few years since I’ve read it myself, but I found it fascinating. Plato’s description of Justice that he lays out in that book is still my preferred definition to this day

[Penny]

Plato came up his his noble lie, in an attempt to build structure and give people purpose. He wanted to reframe the old god myths into stories that teach ethics and morals. Then, ( if I recall correctly) he suggested the philosophers and rulers tell the people that the gods infused each of them with one of three metals, Gold, Silver or Iron. This metal had nothing to do with your physical lineage but was a feature of the soul and it was one’s duty to figure out which metal they were infused with and thereby structure a vocation around this metal (this is where “test your metal” comes from)

Here we see that even Plato struggled with the issue of the ruling of the population without some type of unauthentic application.

I can steel man Plato’s argument as I understand his conclusions and even admire the intellectual idea of giving the people moral stories and structure, but I don’t agree with it. He was very focused on public health and not overly concerned with the individual.

Even if we had a philosopher king, humanity would never meet perfection or a utopia. Part of being human is being flawed and messy. When there are many humans…it is exponential. Our best bet is to get back to right relation with the land and the energetic field we live in. A philosopher king would indeed be better than what we have now, but…I honestly don’t think we need an overarching human sovereign. Perhaps I am naive. There are certainly times when I interact with the public that I wonder if many of them are willing to take hold of their own desires and rule themselves properly. I also know that much of our garbage is due to the massive corruption going on in the people who are supposed to be our “leaders” .

I still believe in what our founding mothers and fathers built, and that we are currently in an alchemical process that is in its grotesque phase. I think that we will come out on the other side of this sludgy mess, living in something closer to what the founders had in mind, closer than even what they themselves experienced when they were incarnated.

[Author]

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