We are discussing Socrates in my Philosophy class this week and next. Here was a philosopher the citizens of Athens put to death for questioning the norms of the city. He criticized and exposed the lack of reason and knowledge the Sophists and other authorities revealed when Socrates engaged them in dialog. Here is a recent, good overview of his guilt and innocence, his irony, and his sense of humor from the University of Chicago:
What Socrates’ ‘know nothing’ wisdom can teach a polarized America
If wisdom can lead to a sentence of death, living in a world of oligarchs and climate change can be perpetually a hazard. Millions of people do not have the education, the life experience, or the common sense to see through the myths and pretense of those in power. We succumb to abuse by insurance companies, banks, hospitals, lobbied legislatures, special interests, the numbing religions, their foolish, empty prayers, the norms of our own regimented society.
Darryl's younger brother Bill died this week from neglect and the inability to care for himself in an inattentive nursing home. My own brother languishes in Savannah with a bladder catheter left inside him with an appointment to see a urologist 10 days later, next week. The weak and the poor are regularly left with poor, neglectful treatments by a society obsessed with money. I think of my own misdiagnosis of cancer when the tumor I was told I had failed to appear during a biopsy, as did the alleged cancer. "We are 90% certain you have cancer," the physician at Emory Hospital told me. When questioned about that traumatizing statement, the doctor said, "we assume everyone your age has cancer." Of course, because thereby the hospital can charge my insurance company $39,000 and me a copayment of $1000.
Today over 2000 people in Morocco died in a huge earthquake. Is it possible to have empathy for these people? Or does our expression of sorrow, our empty, insulting prayers for so many people amount to little or nothing in a world of loss and suffering such as Buddha spoke of? Most people are incapable of grasping such suffering, incapable of comprehending the scope of devastation facing us from the warming climate, the rising seas, the melting glaciers and ice caps. We are fragile beyond our understanding.
Our civilization, like the wildlife in the world, is grinding, painfully grinding, to a glacially slow extinction. We see the destruction, the storms, the hurricanes, the wildfires, the disappearing of species, the famines and droughts. Then we jump in our SUVs and drive to the airport for an international flight. We simply cannot make the necessary transition from macrocosm to microcosm. So we do next to nothing, or add to the waste. Being almost blind, we elect the very politicians who are making things worse, ignoring climate, supporting the vast pollution of corporations, ending human rights, moving our society away from democracy to the autocracy of the oligarchs. "Say, what?"
Please, do not despair; the vast universe will continue to birth stars; galaxies will collide; what we do on Earth will not matter in the great scheme of the universe. Beings who live in the Andromeda Galaxy have never even heard of us, and never will.
