Why Did Socrates Die, Really?

How and why did Socrates actually die?

“He was forced to drink poison hemlock because he was accused of corrupting the youth.”

Well, there’s a little more to it than that. Gather roun’, chillen, I got a story to tell.

Socrates went to war and distinguished himself somewhat against Sparta, which is why he’s always a brick shithouse in his statues and paintings. When he got home, not much was expected of him because he was an Athenian citizen, then, so he wore the same wool toga every day and cruised around Athens barefoot asking questions he thought were interesting. He asked them of anyone who would stand still long enough.

That was his day.

He never suggested a thing as true. He only asked questions of people. What’s your opinion? What do you think? Does it seem correct to you that … ? He was not paid for this annoying hobby.

Dude did this for TWENTY YEARS. Much like the obnoxious guitarist on your local street corner, he got sorta famous.

Let’s cut to it, now:

Aristophanes wrote a popular play in which Socrates teaches stupid things for money (false). Rich people and politicians resented him constantly pointing out that they didn’t understand the things they thought they did (true). The wealthy were also very upset that they’d lost the war. Traditionalists scapegoated Socrates.

He was accused of corrupting the youth with anti-democratic questions, as well as anti-religious questions because in Aristophanes’s play he teaches about crazy made-up gods in the clouds — you know, besides Zeus and Athena and other real things like that.

The court was like, “Do you believe in the actual gods?”

And he was all, “Dude, I don’t know. I don’t think I know anything.”

“You mean you don’t even know democracy is the greatest form of government?”

Socrates balked.

“Did I stutter? I don’t f-ckin’ know! What do you think?”

So, he doesn’t simply say, Bro, I went to the oracle just the other day and the oracle told me to teach the people stuff, so that’s what I did — all of which is true, BTW — which proves I’m religious. He didn’t say that. He could’ve pointed out that he was a steadfast voter, too, which would’ve proved he believed in democracy. Didn’t say that, either.

Naturally, they vote him guilty (by not that wide a spread, 280/220). Then they have to decide what to do with him.

He could’ve suggested exile. He could’ve asked for a fine or indentured servitude. Instead, he calls them motherf-ckers again by saying, “Dude, after all that free teaching? I think Athens owes my ass. You should give me a free place to live and food for the rest of my life on the taxpayer’s dime.”

In other words, this is how he’ll view imprisonment if they put him away.

So: was it suicide? Was he murdered by the system? Was he lynched by the rich people? It’s a philosophical question he’s asking us from beyond the grave.

My interpretation is that this stands tall among the biggest middle fingers held aloft in human history. Let’s not forget it.

——

From James Snell:

“Socrates’ defense failed and the jurors voted him guilty. The essential moment of the trial arrived. Socrates could have chosen many courses of action. He could have paid a fine; he could have asked to be banished. He could actively have done a number of things to spare his life.

“But Socrates did not, instead asking, per Plato, for his punishment to comprise eating free meals for life at the expense of the city. Another vote was called and the result of this arrogance was clear. Many more jurors agreed to a sentence of death than initially voted to convict him. He left them no other option.”

Revolution and “The Perfumed Court”: Wealth, Stench, and Stupidity in the 17th Century and Beyond

In the 1600s, almost nobody had more than one set of clothes. Almost everyone needed to bathe once a week just to keep their clothes from becoming unwearable. The super rich, however, had many clothes, so they didn’t need to bathe. Hence, cleanliness became inversely proportional to wealth. Louis XIV went about smelling “like carrion,” to the point that his fiance almost passed out when she met him. If you were poor, you were cleaner. If you were rich, you stank to hell. The French aristocracy were called “The Perfumed Court” both because of their stench and because of the perfumes used to combat it. This continued until the French Revolution.

This made me think of a similar dynamic today. If you’ll allow me:

 Today, automation takes the low-skill jobs. Fewer and fewer workers can afford to skip college. College grads have less than half the unemployment of non-grads. If you have to work, you have to go to school. Facing increasingly crushing competition, students join two, three, even four extracurricular activities besides their multiple AP classes. They weep over A- marks and sleep four hours nightly just for consideration at their college of choice.

But wealthy students don’t really have to go to school. Wealthy grads don’t need to attend professional development to keep up. Rich kids, if forced to go to college, have no duress to graduate with honors, to achieve high marks, or even to learn, except to keep the respect of their parents.

If you are born poor, you have more impetus towards higher learning than ever in history. If you are born rich, you don’t. This will likely continue.

Today, the poor are finding their ways into universities more and more so it’s probably not surprising that the federal government has shifted financial aid from those who need it to those who don’t, making a great big buffer just in case the poors get too prominent in academia.

So, when I think about how cleanliness became inversely proportional to wealth 400 years ago, and how it got so bad the King nearly knocked out his fiancee with his stench, and how the “Perfumed Court” got worse and worse until the Revolution — when bathing came in style and Napoleon instituted a standing order for 50 bottles of perfume a month to smell even better …

I can’t help but wonder how many poor and middle-class students it takes to make a revolution.

Thanks for reading.

Expect Little!

My mission to procure cigarettes and beer from the liquor store nearly ended in disaster one night last summer when a woman in a swell car almost ran me down.  She had responsibly checked for oncoming traffic — in the wrong direction — before executing her turn, and as she passed me our eyes met through the passenger window.  She looked at me as if to say, “oh! how long have you been there?” and I stood in the street, toes mere inches from her rolling tires, grinning back at her in frank amusement.

I should have been outraged.  I should have spit upon the hood of her car.  The thing is, I just didn’t feel any anger toward her at all.  I found it funny that she might have killed me outright and, altogether oblivious of her  manslaughter, simply gone on to shop at Target.

Was it remarkable that a person should make such a glaring error among the throngs of humans negotiating the myriad avenues and boulevards of Los Angeles County, thought I?  Oh, hardly.  In fact, only an idiot wouldn’t expect it.

Then suddenly, as I went on my way with a wide smile warming my face, I shrugged, and an epiphany descended upon me as if from heaven.

“Expect little,” I said aloud.

And I’ve been saying it every day since.

The obnoxious behavior of others is normal for human beings. Expect little.

Expect little is a prayer.  It soothes and calms.  It educates.  It’s an unlikely mantra which inculcates a sort of passive humility.

It may be a nice gesture to presume that everyone is endowed with friendliness, elementary skills and common sense, but it’s an unlikely supposition which can only lead to discontent.   One ought rather to expect little of others.  Hate becomes very difficult when people act in accordance with your already-low expectations of them.

It behooves us all to acquaint ourselves with the idea that humanity may not be cut out for greatness, not even in our own hackneyed estimation.

Expect little, friends, because the highest percentage of people is always more rude, stupid, and unkempt than the minority of well-mannered, intelligent, and hygienic people.  This is because exceptional characteristics are by definition above average — which is to say, that they are the exception, rather than the rule.  Expecting little from people allows you to be content with the way people actually are, and pleasantly surprised by above-average behavior, which is as it should be.

To expect excellence from people, on the other hand, is silly.  People have never been cool en masse, but mass media has programmed us to expect everyone to be beautiful, polite, and at least somewhat intelligent.  This is (ha, ha!) not the case.

Expecting excellence from people is not even respectful to them.  In fact, it’s condescending.  You aren’t so cool, yourself, you know, particularly from the perspectives of people who don’t live up to your high standards.  We — you and I — are not cool enough to expect good things from others.  We don’t even know what cool is, in the universal sense.

Let people be stupid.  Let them be themselves, for God’s sake (big G).  Let them be stupid today, because you’re probably going to do something stupid tomorrow.

Think you're especially brilliant? Wrong. Each of us is just as gloriously idiotic as the next. Embrace humanity.

Expect little, because you can quickly become depressed by the amount of people who fail to meet your expectations.  That’s not any good.  Discontent with others leads to treating people as though you do not like them around — which tends to convince people that you do not like them around.  Pretty soon, you find yourself without anybody around, and where do you suppose everyone has gone?  Why, into the next room, of course, where everyone is frowning in your direction and calling you an elitist asshole.

Of you, they would do better to expect little.

We don’t only have irrationally high expectations of people, though.  Occasionally, we even find ourselves angry with luck, itself, as if it were slacking or something, remiss in its duties, not paying close enough attention to us and producing the wrong kind of random event.   This is perhaps our most common madness.  Why should we expect good fortune from random chance?  Random chance is the one thing from which we shouldn’t expect anything at all!

The world’s smartest computer can’t make accurate predictions of what random chance will produce.  Why bother lamenting an unfortunate mishap as if shocked that it might inconvenience you?  Mishaps happen.  In fact, mishaps happen so regularly — and with such colorful variety — that we ought long ago to have stopped guessing what should or should not transpire within the course of a day.  However, the rusty computers between our ears are always half-dedicated to overestimating their ill-collected data and faulty projections.

You see, then, we even expect too much of ourselves.  We’re only human, friends.  Chase your dreams in earnest, quest valiantly for glory, and by-all-means be the change you wish to see in the world, as the neo-hippies say — but…

Expect little.

Luck of the draw got you down? Dice come up snake-eyes again? Take my word for it -- expect little.

Expect little!  Expect your neighbor to make too much noise.  Expect your boss to give you too much work.  Expect helicopter parenting, drunk driving, and repeat offending, often by the same culprits.  Expect your favorite band to use too much cowbell.

Expect people from poorly educated states in poorly educated countries to act poorly educated.  Expect people crammed into tight quarters with millions of others to develop hurtful prejudices.  Expect full-grown adults to parrot what they see in movies, in magazines, and in mainstream music, and expect their teenagers (raised likewise by televisions and gangsta rap) to be perfectly disrespectful.

Expect politicians to lie, and cheat, and steal, not to mention fornicate with people you’d rather they wouldn’t.  Expect people with guns (soldiers, cops, and criminals) to shoot people.  Expect druggies to do drugs and go about in public on drugs, and to act just as though they might be high on drugs.  Say to them when you see them shrinking from the demons down aisle nine at Rite-Aid, “Hello, druggie.  How do you do?”

Expect preachers to sin, marriages to fail, and sons and daughters to leave the family religion.  Expect athletes to take steroids, psychiatrists to prescribe poison, and models to mutilate themselves surgically.  Expect wonder.  Expect marvel.  Expect to be astonished at the spectacle in which every one of us plays a humble part.

In other words, expect people to act just as though they were human — but for your own sake as well as that of others, the next time your friend complains that a significant other has forgotten an anniversary, or that some ruthless businessman has destroyed the local economy, or that a hapless driver has run over his or her favorite author (ahem), just shrug your shoulders and smile sympathetically, offer a beer and say to your friend,

“Expect little.”

With a great big smile and my fingers crossed, I remain,

Yours Truly,

-BothEyesShut