There is such a great ruckus made about “the arts”, that celebrated pursuit of beauty. And rightly so. In another year I’ll have an associate’s degree in arts, whatever that means. There is music, dancing, poetry, painting, filming, flailing…and a million more. But I have uncovered some others too. Lesser known, but quite useful and not to be overlooked, forms of art.

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1. Making Yourself at Home:

I begin with the art of making yourself at home. This one might be taught, but I reckon it’s mostly born.

I was in Pennsylvania once in the height of summer. While passing through, we were staying with some relatives of a friend. I found myself assigned to a room adjacent to the garage and bordering the kitchen. These people didn’t have air conditioning in their home. I guess they thought, like many people of the northwest, that the few weeks of high heat aren’t worth the price of A/C. So they (and any resident guests) just crank up the fans and bear it out. In my room beside the kitchen it was positively sweltering. No amount of turning the pillow over could make me comfortable. What was there to do but find relief? I quietly made my way out to the dark kitchen and peered into the light of the refrigerator. Juice. Now a self-conscious guest might have gone banging around the place, slamming through cabinets until he inevitably found the glasses in the last place left to look. But not me. Me and my associate’s degree, we drink from the jug – leave no trace, wake no hosts. This is a small sample of the art of making yourself at home. If unfamiliar, one might start with helping himself to bathroom toiletries or pantry snacks before tipping back the jug.

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2. Looking the Part:

Secondly, there is the art of looking the part. To keep peace inside, you’ll need to align your actions with your beliefs about the world. However, if for an evening it is advantageous to be someone else, it can be done.

I remember playing baseball as a young lad and vastly overestimating opponents. In little league, prior to the game, each team takes a side of the field to warm up. Sometimes I would hold the ball a few seconds and gaze across the field at the giants who were pretending to be ten-year-olds. We’re about to get destroyed. Then, more often than not, they were just too tall for their own good – and clumsy too. We’d beat the tar out of them. But the next week, my senses would fool me again.

We can all recount times when we judged someone to be more than they were, fooled by appearance. I myself had to practice this art for months at a time on stages across the country. I became part of a band (of sorts) one week, and then the next week found myself on tour trying to play songs I’d barely heard. But what can you do? I stood up straight, put the guitar strap over my head, and played like I knew what the heck we were singing. And people bought it, most times. The art of looking the part can be a lifesaver. And while I wouldn’t consider myself good at it, I’m inspired by masters such as Frank Abagale who wrote “Catch Me if You Can” and Jimmy from ”Better Call Saul”. If you’re good at looking the part, you can bluff your way out of just about anything.

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3. Laughing at Bad Jokes:

Aren’t there times when the whole truth is just not appropriate? “Your opinion on this matter is literally the dumbest thing I’ve heard all week.” “That was your casserole? What, did you make it on the way over here?” “I would rather spend my eternity eating shards of broken glass than hear this story one more time.”

It takes a certain awareness to be able to discern the nature of social situations. Sometimes it is appropriate to let fly the truth – and sometimes it’s better to just laugh at the bad joke, choke down the casserole, or settle in for another retelling of a tired story. My favorite application of this delicate art comes from a prison chaplain who’s name and state I don’t recall. Prison chaplains are often the unfortunate victims of prison food. This food, I can attest, makes fasting seem more desirable. This guy said he was sometimes asked on the spot how the food was. His response, no matter how good or how awful, was to smile and say, “It’s very tasty.” Which is actually true. Very bad food usually has a very bad taste…and is therefore quite tasty. The art of laughing at bad jokes is a good one to keep in your pocket. And, if I’m honest, one I hope my friends are willingly to use on me too.

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This has only been a small sampling of the art forms not taught but ever useful. I don’t have time to tell of making lemonade at restaurants for free, or speaking eloquently about that which you have no idea, or reading at the speed of light, or eating a meal and changing clothes while driving. Jonathon Rodgers says that if we were to simultaneously rid the world of plumbers and writers, we would miss the plumbers much more quickly. And I reckon that if we rid ourselves of both the arts taught in the universities and the unspoken ones, we’d miss that second kind much more.

This is an essay I wrote for philosophy class. We’ve just finished reading Plato’s Republic, which is basically Socrates and friends sitting around trying to figure out what justice looks like. It’s crazy to think that colleges are still teaching a book written before Christ was born – we’re talking 2300 hundred years ago. That’s a pretty solid shelf-life. This book has taught me about as much as anything I’ve ever read. So maybe this essay will be a preview, and you’ll decide to read it for yourself.

The assignment entailed giving answers to about 12 questions, which is why the paper reads the way it does.

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The Philosopher King

The Philosopher King (or Queen) is a person who has demonstrated excellence in every area of training; they have what Socrates refers to as a golden soul and, most importantly, a definite knowledge of the good. This knowledge of the good, as well as a nature of “philosophy, spirit, speed, and strength”, is what makes the Philosopher King a just person and the best choice for ruler of the just city (376, c). Socrates says this person will be compelled to rule because, “the greatest punishment . . . is to be ruled by someone worse than oneself” (347, c).

Socrates proposes that the just city is made up of three kinds of citizens: craftsmen, auxiliaries, and guardians (415, a-b). Similarly, the soul consists of three parts: appetite, spiritedness, and reason (435, e). Socrates’s definition of justice is tightly interwoven with the theme of moderation. Each thing, within the city and the soul, must do that which it is intended for if justice is to be achieved. For moderation to be achieved, it also means that the city must be ruled by the guardians, and that the soul must be ruled by reason. It is when, as P.G. Wodehouse says, “reason. . . wobbled on its throne” that chaos ensues (Wodehouse 42). Socrates says that the city and the soul are just when “each of the three classes in it [do their] own work” (441, d). The appetitive part of the soul must inform reason as to the needs of the body. And the spirited part of the soul must ally with reason to enforce its dictates.

According to Socrates, philosophers must be without falsehood; they must “refuse to accept what is false, hate it, and have a love for the truth” (485, c). The nature of the Philosopher King is one that is completely without and opposed to “true” falsehood. He even goes as far as to claim that “true” falsehoods are hated by every god and human (382, a). The distinction that we must make here is between falsehoods which are told maliciously with the intent to corrupt and those, like the parables of Christ, which are told in order to spur towards the truth or prevent destruction. Socrates says that, “No one is willing to tell falsehoods to the most important part of himself about the most important things” (382, a), but a short time later he says that some falsehoods may be useful to prevent people from doing something bad through madness or ignorance (382, c).

The goal of the educational system is to turn the soul around by directing its desires away from becoming and towards being. The thing the soul loves and values above all else is what will determine the different classes of people. Socrates says that, “What we need to consider is whether the greater and more advanced part of it (areas of study) tends to make it easier to see the form of the good. And we say that anything has that tendency if it compels the soul to turn itself around towards the. . .[things] the soul must see at any cost. (526, d-e) The knowledge-loving nature of the Philosopher King becomes evident as he excels at every turn in the educational system. From birth, all the children in the city are provided with the same educational opportunities. They advance (if they are able) through music and poetry, physical training, calculation, geometry, solid geometry, astronomy, harmonics, and dialectic. Each of these fields of study shapes the understanding and appeals to the nature of the one who is to be a Philosopher King. Then it will become apparent, through close observation of the children in their roles of small responsibility, which ones are suited for which tasks. The ones who are to be philosophers and someday rule must be exemplary in everything, the golden souls. And only the ones who will become guardians of the city will ever be allowed to know the truth about their own society and origin. This is a sort of brainwashing, even if it does produce a desirable outcome.

The Philosopher King, whose soul is bent on being and who knows the good, is compelled to tell medicinal lies to the people whose souls do not love knowledge above all else. Socrates is adamant that “the majority cannot be philosophic” (494, a). Because their souls are bent on becoming and not being, they will never reach the level of thought of the Philosopher King. And even the ones who will someday be philosophers will not immediately be capable of high-level reasoning and understanding. In this way medicinal lies must be told as a crutch for lower intellect. As mentioned, these “lies” are comparable to the parables that Christ told when he wanted to communicate a truth or idea to his disciples. He knew that they would be more able to understand a story woven to illustrate than an intellectual dialogue of the thing itself.

The allegory of the cave illustrates the point that not everyone can be philosophic. In the illustration, the masses are chained up inside the dark cave looking at illusions which they mistake for clear depictions of reality. Because the philosopher has been up and out of the cave and seen by the light of the sun, he has a knowledge and truth unattainable by everyone who remains in the cave. Because the Philosopher King desires the best for the city and the people therein, he re-enters the cave with the hope of sharing his knowledge with those still in the chains of ignorance. Yet it is apparent that they will not be able to understand him or the foreign things he tells them about. Socrates asks, “Wouldn’t it be said of him that he’d returned from his upward journey with his eyesight ruined and that it isn’t worthwhile even to try to travel upward?” (517, a). This necessitates the telling of medicinal lies, a sort of weight hung upon truth to bring it down to the level of the cave dwellers. The Philosopher King’s love and pursuit of knowledge is what led him up and out of the cave, and those who remained were held there by the chief desires of their souls which will also compel them to kill the philosopher if they are able.

This type of lying is compatible with the Philosopher King’s nature and being a philosopher. His nature is that which loves knowledge, and as a philosopher, he wants to make the best decisions for the city’s best outcome. These lies are what Socrates describes as medicinal lies and are not deserving of hatred. They are told to prevent harm from coming on the city by the “[attempt], through madness or ignorance, to do something bad” (382, c). The Philosopher King’s knowledge of the good allows him to recognize these attempts to do something bad. In keeping with his own nature, he must try to prevent them from successfully perpetrating bad things through madness and ignorance.

In my estimation, if a man such as Socrates dreams of were to come about, one who truly knew the good, it would not be unjust for him to use medicinal lies to promote the health of the city and prevent bad decisions from being made. I think that if he did know what the good is, then he would be able to do what he is compelled to do with goodness. As the Philosopher King, he is compelled to rule justly, and the medicinal lies, or parables, or children’s tales, or whatever you may call them are necessary for the Philosopher King in his attempt to communicate the truth to the masses who are not philosophic.

Additionally, I believe that the greatest problem with Socrates’s system lies upon the basic premise that the knowledge of the good can be fully attained by careful study. These rulers are supposed to have intimate knowledge of the good, to be so well acquainted with what is good, that they can choose it and make laws which promote it in all circumstances. Socrates allows these philosophers fifty years of education to develop an understanding of goodness. Yet, I believe that if you were to ask a practitioner of medicine or math or astronomy who had been in the field for fifty years whether he had grasped the highest handholds of knowledge, he would be inclined to say he’d only begun to climb. I don’t think true knowledge of the good is at the top of a staircase which starts on earth; it appears to me that Socrates is constructing a tower of Babel. I tend to agree with George Bernard Shaw who, at a celebratory dinner in honor of Albert Einstein, raised up a toast and said, “Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating ten more.” And I reckon that if you gave a man two hundred years of schooling in Socrates’s education system, he would be inclined, after his centuries of learning, to confess that his finite mind and human hands still did not hold the keys to justice and her great mother, goodness.

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Works Cited

Firestein, Stuart. “The Pursuit of Ignorance.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, Sept. 2014, http://www.ted.com/talks/stuart_firestein_the_pursuit_of_ignorance

Plato. Republic. Translated by G.M.A Grube, Revised by C.D.C Reeve, Hackett Publishing Company, 1992, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Wodehouse, P.G. Uneasy Money. Penguin Books, 1958, London, England.

This is a paper written for my Sociology 101 class after reading Francis Bacon’s essay The Four Idols. Bacon was a philosopher from the 16th century who became frustrated with the science of his day: namely how deduction was no longer contributing to anything new or interesting. My paper is a summary and conclusion concerning the idols which he proposed are blinding us from seeing the truth.

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 The Four Idols

An idol is that which inhibits the ability to see clearly. Our idols distort our vision so that we cannot see clearly into and from the world. In his essay, The Four Idols, Francis Bacon says that idols “have most effect in disturbing the clearness of understanding”. At the end of the essay, Bacon likens the cleansing of oneself of idols for the purpose of seeing the things of the earth to the innocence of a child by which men may see the kingdom of heaven.

Idols of the Tribe

Bacon says that, “The idols of the tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things.” To rid ourselves of the idols of the tribe we must realize the errancy of our sense perceptions of the world. The senses of the mind are “according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe.” When our own sense experience shapes our understanding, we are prone to worship the idol of the tribe. A personal example of the idol of the tribe is my love of lemon. According to my senses, lemon makes everything better – lemon pepper, lemon juice, lemon slices, it is always an improvement on flavor. This tendency of mine to add lemon to any substance is noted by my family, and they get wary whenever I approach pots of food or gallons of tea with good intentions.

 Idols of the Cave

In the absence of the idols of the cave, “understanding may be rendered at once penetrating and comprehensive.” Yet the tendency is for a man to become obsessed with a few laws or properties of the universe and elevate those to the highest degree. Bacon criticizes the school of Leucippus and Democritus as being too busy with particles to give due diligence to the structure. Still he accuses other schools of being “so lost in admiration of the structure that they do not penetrate to the simplicity of nature.” The hope is that instead of eradicating those things and areas which we are biased towards, we can study them in turns – this way our understanding will be more complete. In my own experience, I have noticed that when handed a guitar I almost always tend towards the key of E. I find that the notes and chords there make the most sense to me. They sound the best. They are the best.

Idols of the Marketplace

Bacon terms the idols of the marketplace as “the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through the alliances of words and names.” We must realize that our language is not completely accurate in its attempts to explain. Bacon divides the idols of the marketplace into two kinds, the first being “names of things that do not exist.” There are things which remain unnamed for lack of observation or are ill-defined and based upon faulty theories and suppositions. The second kind is that which “springs out of a faulty and unskillful abstraction.” Bacon gives the example of the word “humid” which, depending on the circumstances and the speaker, could mean any number of different things. Different senses of the word infer different meanings – thus an idol which obstructs understanding. An example which I’ve noticed in my circles is the way we refer to the agendas of politicians. It isn’t uncommon to hear a candidate touted as good on education and healthcare. And it always leaves me wondering what it means to be good on something. It could mean the politician used to be a teacher and now wants better salaries for teachers, achieved by raising the budget for schools. Or maybe it means he or she recognizes wasteful spending within the system and wants to tighten the budget.

Idols of the Theatre

The idols of the theatre obscure our understanding by way of conventions. These have to do with the society we’re born into, the beliefs we’re brought up in, and the ideologies we buy into. The idols of the theatre beset us when we no longer bother to question or investigate established lines of logic. In the absence of the idols of the theatre, perhaps every generation would put on trial the accepted theories, beliefs, and customs that rule the day. Bacon says of these idols, “[They] are not innate, nor do they steal into the understanding secretly, but are plainly impressed and received int the mind from the play-books of philosophical systems and the perverted rules of demonstration.” We witness the idols of the theatre in the education of children. Whether a child grows up believing in the theory of evolution or the account written in Genesis will depend on the beliefs held by those who raise him.

Conclusion

One way to think of bias is that which we naturally tend towards. Our biases are often fundamental players in our erection of idols; yet they don’t have to be – the two things, bias and idol, are not twins. There is no question as to whether our idols cloud our vision and pervade our judgement. But the problem of idols is not our certain demise. Perhaps the cure to the problem of idols lies with the community. We need each other; to review our papers, critique our experiments, challenge our belief systems, run against our political candidates, to praise us for our faithfulness, and call us on our treachery. Almost nothing profitable is done in a vacuum. Often our biases stem from our love. And our love, of fields of study, of laws of nature, of worlds within the kingdom of men, is what enables us to be productive to society. But when bias turns to idol, we are no longer fit to look into any kingdom, that of heaven or of earth.

Written in blue ink: 9/3/18

Revised: 9/23/18

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I’ve had the tale of Revelations, and Johnny Cash’s song, in my mind lately. Cash says it like this:

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Whoever is unjust – let him be unjust still,

Whoever is righteous – let him be righteous still,

Whoever is filthy – let him be filthy still,

Listen to the words long written down,

When the Man comes around,

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I hear sometimes about the absurdity of believing there’s a God. And some say that maybe there’s God and maybe there isn’t – but better to live like there is. And I hear people making a god of the scientific method and well-reviewed theories and tenured ideas. And tonight I reckoned that I’d like to be a writer for the Post one day, but I don’t feel like I have much to write. But I reckon I’ll go on writing anyway. And I have a lot of questions about Christianity and the things I’ve always held as true. But, regardless, I think I’ll just go on believing, having faith. They’re always changing minds about what the world needs: sometimes it needs Christians, sometimes we’re the idiots. So I reckon we ought to just go on believing whatever the case may be.

There’s a line from the Greeks that goes,

“I would rather labor on earth in service to another,

to a man who is landless, with little to live on,

than be king over all the dead.”

And I think Homer’s right. Perhaps it’s better to be a savage praying to a beetle and hoping for a miracle than a nihilist. Paul said that if we’re wrong about Christ rising from the dead, then we’re of all men most miserable. And I’ve never been able to come to grips with that. Isn’t it better to have hoped than to have believed in nothing, bowed down to chaos, and inaugurated the underworld?

Anyway, I think I’ll go on writing, though I’ve not much to say. And go on believing, even if I sometimes doubt. And I’ll go on hoping – what are we without hope? The one truly without hope, the nihilist who embraces despair, lives only in the darkness of the hallway, only in the dampness of the cave. He doesn’t know what it feels like to see a corner up ahead and wonder what’s around it, or why he’s walking towards a warm, bright pinhole of light. And I think I’ll go on loving, even though my love goes wrong. For after all of all have rotted away, been exposed, and cut down, love will remain. I suppose the only thing then will be to find out who it was that allowed us the pleasure, built the hallway, and poked the hole.

And I hear them – making love to the void,

But I suppose I’ll go on,

For the kings of the dead will be made low,

When the Man comes around,

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I’ve been reading Huck Finn for English 202, and it’s a wonderful story, at least until Tom Sawyer gets involved. He’s aggravating and really drug the thing on longer than necessary. But since I’ve been reading a story through Huck’s voice and thought processes, I notice that I seem to think to myself sometimes with words he would use. It was the same way after watching a lot of Better Call Saul, I found I thought in the voice and likeness of ole Jimmy. Perhaps a dangerous activity. Twain anyway is sheerly a genius. He makes conversations like:

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“I sha’n’t ever forget you, and I’ll think of you a many and a many a time, and I’ll pray for you too!” – and she was gone.

Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she’d take a job that was more nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the same – she was just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judas if she took the notion – there warn’t no backdown to her I judge. You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she has more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it ain’t no flattery. And when it comes to beauty – and goodness too – she lays over them all.

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Anyway, the best scene in the whole book comes a little while later when Huck decides to do the “honorable thing” and write a letter back home to turn in his friend Jim, a runaway slave. He tries to pray away his guilt for harboring a slave.

Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself, by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn’t so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, “There was Sunday school, you could a gone to it; and if you’d a done it they’d a learnt you that people that acts as I’d been acting about the nigger goes to everlasting fire.”

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray; and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of boy I was, and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come . . . It was because I was playing double. . . . I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie – and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie – I found that out.

So Huck writes the letter, and then his conscious is light as a feather. But then he gets to thinking about how Jim hasn’t ever done him any wrong, and how happy he’s always been for Huck’s help and company. So that it goes:

I happened to look around, and see that paper. It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, a sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “Alright then, I’ll go to hell” – and tore it up.

Socrates thought that justice was really worth something if the just man developed a reputation for injustice – and kept on being just. When he did right, was viewed as wicked, and did right anyway. But I reckon even Socrates didn’t think to make a man consider himself unjust and still choose the right thing out of the justice in him. He’d of needed Huckleberry Finn for that.