Plato's Retreat

Hola mi gente,

I’ve had it up to ::here:: with the Clintons and their playing victim. It’s sickening. Hillary could shoot democracy dead in the middle of Fifth Avenue and her supporters would still vote for her.

Regarding the widely echoed charge that Russians hacked the DNC? Stop it! As the folks at ZeroHedge stated:

No, there is absolutely no proof that the Russians hacked Podesta’s email account, so please stop saying it. If the idiots in the intelligence community expect us to believe them after all the crap they have told us (like WMD’s in Iraq and “no we don’t collect data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans”) then they need to give clear proof of what they say. So far, they have failed to prove anything.

Which suggests they don’t have proof and just want to war monger the US public into a second cold war with the Russians.

After all, there’s lots and lots of money in that for the military-industrial-intelligence-governmental complex of incestuous relationships.

Plato once said that, “If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life. I think he nailed that time. Life is the most precious gift we have and we all take it for granted to varying degrees. I was fortunate in that my father instilled within me a love for knowledge. I have an insatiable curiosity that has been the source of constant enjoyment in my life. This love for knowledge is a value I have attempted to instill in my son.

One day, when he was about eight years of age, we were watching some martial arts movie and I mentioned to him that Steven Seagall couldn’t hold a candle to Bruce Lee. He had never heard of Bruce Lee. So, we rented some Bruce Lee movies and he got the “Kung Fu bug.” At various times during my life (beginning at age 12), I have studied the martial arts under several teachers, mostly in the Wing Chun style (which was Bruce Lee’s first art). So I made a pact with my son: we would study together under a sifu (teacher) I knew, but he had to commit to become a “scholar-warrior.”

The “Scholar-Warrior” is an archetype that appears in most cultures throughout history: the samurais, the knights, the Buddhist monks, and nuns of China, etc. The Scholar-Warrior learned not only the martial arts, but also the fine arts of poetry and painting, and music; and they learned the healing arts. Scholar-Warriors were well-rounded individuals who represented the best of their culture.

My son and I studied the martial art of Wing Chun for several years. As part of that training, we learned many things: reiki, chi exercises, knowledge of herbs, healing arts, etc.

The following, which I find very much relevant, considering the current political environment, is one of the first lessons I taught my son after he took the “Vow of the Scholar-Warrior”...

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

Plato is considered one of the most important intellectual figures in Western history. He was the founder of the first university, “The Academy,” where students read the Socratic dialogues. The essence of Plato’s philosophy is demonstrated in the allegory of the Myth of the Cave, which appears in his work, The Republic.

In this myth, Plato proposes the following vision: Imagine prisoners chained in such a way that they face the back wall of a cave. They have been there for life and can see nothing of themselves or of each other. They see only shadows on the wall of the cave.

The shadows are caused by a fire that burns on a ledge above and behind them. Between the fire and the prisoners is a path lined with a wall along which people carry vases, statues, and other artifacts on their heads. The shackled people hear the echoes of voices and see the shadows of the artifacts, and they mistake those echoes and shadows for reality.

The point of the allegory is that our purpose in life is break free of those chains and venture out of the cave into the open in order to experience reality. That “steep and rugged ascent” is Plato’s allegory of education and leads us out into the real world of sunlight and knowledge where we can truly gaze upon the sun (the sun being the allegory of enlightenment).

Plato suggests that if such a man were to attempt to return to the cave and liberate the others, they would set upon him and kill him. The allegory of the cave, with its story of the liberation of the individual from darkness, deceit, and untruth, and the ensuing hard journey into the light and warmth of the Truth, has inspired many philosophers and social leaders throughout history. 

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…