Connections between Politicians, Morality, Happiness, and General Efficiency

In the first two dialogues that take place in Plato’s Gorgias, questions are raised about what role an orator plays, followed by questions about the responsibilities and morality of those in power, the orator, whether it is greater to be wronged against or cause wrong, and whether orators are responsible when a student or listener is lead astray by them.

I found the dialogue with Polus particularly interesting, particularly Socrates’ idea that the wrongdoer is more miserable than the wronged, especially if the wrongdoer is never punished. It pretty much took the entire length of Polus’s section of the dialogue to understand what the blazes Socrates was thinking with his premise, but I do agree that, in an odd way, there is some sense to it. While I am not an active wrongdoer myself (or at least, I certainly hope not), I can understand what Socrates means by the prolonged stress of avoiding punishment may be worse than the punishment itself. The parallel I face is more along the lines of the many times when I’ve avoided doing something out of fear or laziness (say homework, or calling someone), but when I finally got around to doing it, it turns out the fear or stress I put myself through was far worse than the thing I was avoiding. That seems to be the crux of Socrates’ argument for how a wrongdoer will suffer more than the wronged, for at least the wronged is also just in his suffering. I do question Socrates’ argument in the sense that it ignores the possibility of sociopaths who may truly have no knowledge or caring of the fact that they are doing anything wrong, but for the most part, I actually can see where he/Plato comes from.

Now to keep with my blog’s current theme of tying in rhetoric of the past with current politics:

Today’s equivalent of the orators of the past seem to be primarily advertisers and politicians. In the first dialogue with Gorgias, Socrates and Gorgias agree that the target audience for orators are largely the masses, rather than a specialist audience. And like the orators of the past, the primary aim of the two mentioned groups, politicians and advertisers, is to persuade, whether the point of persuasion is exactly “right” or not.

However, a similar problem exists in both of these fields: people are largely not held accountable for untruths or wrongs that are spread to the masses. That is not to say that they are without responsibility – advertised products do have to meet at least certain safety standards, and if caught, politicians have to deal with scandals and possibly eventually having to step out of office. But often it seems that the more powerful the party, the less likely they are to face the same consequence as if a non-powerful person committed the same crime.

Now to focus primarily on the politician, because that seems to be the closer parallel to the orator of the past: In U.S. politics today, it is difficult to be successful in politics without lying at least a little. One of the problems with the two party system as it exists today is that the box for each party is growing tighter and tighter as it seems people grow less likely to accept compromise. The problem is that people don’t generally think in exact boxes, but to get elected and to be successful, a politician has to pretend that they do. Between that and the obsession of staying elected, that seems to count for some of the epic flip-flops that made from government officials.

There is also the matter of happiness of the people. While the role of congressmen and senators and the like is to act as a mouthpiece for the will of the people, the happiness rate with the government seems to imply other things. A gallup poll conducted in early 2014 rates the approval of congress at 13%.  This is actually an improvement over an all-time low of 9% in November 2013, a month after the government shutdown. But the point is, with happiness ratings so low, a non-sociopathic politician would feel that the people are being wronged by their actions.

However, politicians are barely held accountable for this. Scandals are rather common among government officials, but upon being caught the punishment usually ranges from a few days/weeks of annoying media coverage to maybe actually having to step down from office, but rarely criminal charges. As for the general efficiency of our current government and the people who are being harmed by it, many people have accepted bickering, gridlock, ignorance, and nothing useful being accomplished as “business as usual” in Washington D.C.

Here lies the scenario I’m clumsily trying to lay out:

A) U.S. Politicians are vaguely attempting to function in a broken system.
B) Because the system is broken, very little that is good gets accomplished.
C) A non-ignorant, non-sociopathic politician (though I will accept that it is debatable if one exists) would realize that the people they were sent to represent are being wronged by the lack of good coming from them.
D) A politician may be miserable because of this, also assuming that they haven’t --
E) somehow gone mad with power somewhere, and are doing any activities that they would like to avoid finding out, which adds additional stress/shame/misery.
F) Misery brings the morale at the center of operations to a low, which leads to --
G) Nothing being done, and the cycle continuing forever. 

In conclusion, using Socrates’ argument I can make this argument for accountability of politicians in Washington D.C. Not only is it generally a good idea to keep an eye on people who sort of have power over us, but also for the sake of creating a not-completely-miserable work environment so that maybe something can get done.

My questions:

1) In terms of the tyrant especially, do you think that Socrates is right when he says that the wrongdoer is more miserable than the wronged? Why or why not?

2)Socrates says that the orator is a sort of pandering, a false equivalent to truth and righteousness, like how cookery can be a poor replacement for medicine, or beauty-culture a poor replacement for physical training (32-33). If the politician is the modern day equivalent to the orator of the past, what would be the modern-day, better alternative (in Plato's mind) to the politician? Would it still be justice, or something else?