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?

The Effects of Early Sophism on Modern Democracy

Upon reading Harold Barrett’s The Sophists, I can definitely see how the rise of the Sophists and the birth of Western democracy are very likely closely related. I don’t know if we ever received an answer to our chicken-and-egg question of which came first (though it was implied that democracy did come first, or so it sounded like from the reading), but I can see how the mentality that the Sophists had can be related to the rise of the first democracies, and even how some of these ideas can still be seen today in modern democracies.

So I guess I’ll go on a bit here about the Sophists we read about, and how what they’re remembered for relates to modern politics/democracy:

First of all, Protagoras. One of his revolutionary ideas that apparently excited and inspired his students was that “on every argument there are two sides” (10). I admit, upon reading that part I was stunned for a moment that such a seemingly obvious idea could ever be seen as revolutionary. But it seems that arguments before had a stricter binary of right and wrong, as opposed to Protagoras’s idea that an argument is where “the ‘truth’ of one side will be tested by the ‘truth’ of the other” (10). Truth was suddenly no longer seen as iron-solid, but something that could be shaken by the truth of another. Such is today’s debates – no matter how many people will try to tell you otherwise, there isn’t really a clear-cut “right” party and “wrong” party in politics, but two parties pitting their truths against each other, with the voters left to decide which truth is the most sensible (or the least twisted, as the case may be).

Which leads to Protagoras’s other idea of “man is the measure of all things.” Like many during Protagoras’s time, I find his idea a bit of a struggle to understand – if I saw a tree in the distance that I mistook for a man, would that mean the tree was temporarily a man? Finer points aside though, the idea seems to bring about an idea of personal responsibility that is a necessity for democracy – the voter of today needs to use his personal senses to understand the reality that surrounds him, and try to figure out what people/solutions are best for dealing with that reality.

Gorgias, meanwhile, brought about style to rhetoric – not merely talking at people to persuade them, but using various appeals to win them to your side. In particular, mixing pathos with logos and ethos, the skillful use of emotion in debate. Even simply turning a speech into a work of artistry, using the balance of words and phrases, or invoking listener response to his pieces (for they seemed to be considered practically art in his time.) Certainly, we see this today, not just in political speeches that can invoke anything from stirring appeals of emotion to catchy, chantable phrases (yes we can), but really in any form of persuasion such as advertising.

Prodicus seemed to be a strong advocate for semantics, being able to invoke precise meanings of words, for Aristotle said he attempted to “assign to every term its own peculiar significance.” In today’s politics, we see the parallel with our obsession with every phrase within a speech, especially when an opponent or the media can get that one soundbite – in or out of context – that can make or destroy the original argument. I can’t think of any examples of the top of my head, but I’m sure there are examples too of a single word being up for questioning of “when he said it, did he mean this or that?”

Hippias – well, he just sounds like a hoot for one thing, with his pride in all of his handmade clothes and whatnot. But besides his love of variety and accumulating a wide array of skills and knowledge, it was apparently his memory that made him stand out, and his work on developing his students mnemonics and methods of retaining information. This is a trait less seen in modern society, in the era of teleprompters, notecards, and hastily scrawling things on the back of your hand. But there is sometimes a certain derision for politicians, particularly Obama in the recent years, who do rely on teleprompters in order to perform their speeches, no matter how fantastic. There seems to be this idea, at least within certain portions of the media, that if a speech isn’t memorized then it isn’t truly “from the heart,” but rather simply an orchestrated, possibly deceitful, argument that exists purely for winning support and no other reason (which admittedly is the reason of existence behind most/all arguments, but the idea is that the argument isn’t “from the heart” or worthy of memory seems to give a more cynical origin. Supposedly. The point is, that perhaps some of the media implies that it might be a good idea for modern politicians to take note of some of the mnemonics of old, to perhaps protect themselves from (some) cynical analysis.

Finally, Thrasymachus. Like Gorgias, Thrasymachus seemed to focus on the art of delivery, particularly in the rhythm of the delivery of his rhetoric. As noted earlier, we see this in today’s rhetoric not only in helping to create emotional or catchy appeals, but also just to help captivate an audience’s attention.

There is also the originally controversial idea that many of the Sophists shared, that law is a social construct, rather than natural rules from human nature itself that all of man feel compelled to obey.  The rise of this idea I would say is crucial for stressing the necessity of democracy, especially as we see it today. If law were truly only from human nature, then there would be no need to change them, and to do so would be purely madness. Unfortunately, we still see some who say changing the laws of old (the original constitution for example) would be madness. But as society changes, so too must certain laws as they grow quaint and outdated.

Thus, early Sophism laid much of the groundwork for early democracy, not only presenting the ideas of why democracy is necessary (how laws are a human construct, and how truth and reality can vary by person), but also some of the rhetorical strategies necessary to have debates and convince others that change is necessary. 

Finally, I guess I'll end with my two questions for the class (mainly so I can remember them for tomorrow, haha):

1. Going off of what I said about Hippias, do you think it is necessary to restore memory to current speeches and debates? On one hand, modern politicians have a lot to do and think about during campaign season especially, and I can see how trying to memorize every speech and debate strategy could be a hassle, and no one wants to be stuck on stage when you've forgotten what you want to say. On the other, it seems like modern media is trying to implement a narrative that a politician loses ethos when relying on outside sources (notecards, teleprompters, etc.). Should memorization be included again in modern rhetoric, or is the possible consequences of not memorizing easy enough to ignore?

2. There is still a pervasive idea in society that some laws are simply not meant to be touched (popular examples of today being the 2nd amendment in the constitution, and the idea of "traditional marriage" being disrupted by allowing homosexuals to marry). Do you believe that there is such a thing as an untouchable law, that is perfect the way it is? What is it, and why?