NIETZSCHE AND PLATO IN THE NEWS

Sorry, it wasn’t exactly Nietzsche and Plato in the news. It was a variety of issues that reflected the root causes of our social decay these days that these two great thinkers wrote about many years ago, namely, nihilism and sophistry.

These are two maladies, nihilism and sophistry, we are suffering in American society, if not in the world. Their manifestations are many and varied. But we can always rest assured that we are dealing with these social evils, so to speak, when someone is accused of either not worshiping the proper God or, secondly, diddling the little children in one way or another. Those are the charges Socrates was framed with, “impiety,” or, not believing in the gods of the community and, secondly, corrupting the youth. And we all know what they did to Socrates. But first, what is happening in America today and how does it relate to these philosophers.

Where to start? How about FLDS, the Fundamentalist Later Day Saints down Texas way? Apparently an anonymous phone call, from a woman only known as Sarah, alerted local authorities of some shady goings-on in this little religious community of some 700 or so people. Or so Sarah alleged. But on the basis of this anonymous allegation, Social Services with the help of a heavily armed police force raided the community and handily removed almost 500 children from the custody of their parents. Several buildings were ransacked by police who confiscated computer files and other personal belongings of the families. Social services ain’t what it used to be. ... Next issue!

Hot upon the heels of Reverend Jeremiah Wright defending his “Momma”, so to speak, at the National Press Club, Juan Williams, referred to by some at Fox News as “the Voice” proceeded on national TV to spin the Rev as duplicitous, divisive, anti-American and several other things on the talking points list of the “Let’s Destroy Barak Obama and the Democratic Party” hit squad. Juan Williams is an Oreo cookie at best and what some would call a race traitor at worst. Let the truth be known: Juan Williams better not lose that dark tan! It’s one thing to betray the history of your race; it’s another to not even be aware you are doing it. Poor Juan!

Moving right along, Miley Cyrus, latest little sex trollop cashing in on tits and titillation in the media, has proclaimed how “embarrassed” she was that suggestive photos of her appeared in Vanity Fair magazine. The poor little dear! How could her mother and father who were at the photo shoot let such a demeaning thing happen to this poor little girl? How could Walt Disney who has her under contract ever let its high aesthetic standards and good moral sense ever let this “poor little dear” be so outrageously exploited by this big bad wolf, excuse me, I mean big bad “magazine.” Disney, Mom and Dad accuse Vanity Fair of “manipulating” poor Hannah Montana at the shoot. The Bastards! Such a sweet little innocent dear so brutally exploited by this big bad …. well you get the point. And I’ll tell you how this happens: a sex image industry projected to make over $1 billion by the time this poor sweet innocent exploited little 15 year old girl is 18. So, guys, put your tongue back in your mouth and your dick in your pants. This is another little girl you’re never gonna get to fuck, except of course in your minds. In the meantime, while you’re “getting off,” Miley is getting off to the bank. Simply put, Miley Cyrus is a sex worker air brushed by Disney and a duplicitous media with huge double standards.

Be patient. I’ll get to poor forgotten Nietzsche and Plato shortly.

Meanwhile back on the local scene we have various nihilistically and morally, not to mention intellectually, corruptive happenings having to do with, you guessed it, sex, drugs and violence. Three students in the local town of Wilson have, it seems, been charged with felony sexual assault on a fellow teenager on the school bus. Whatever happened to shiny red apples and chalky blackboards?

Moreover, gang violence broke out in the lovely little hamlet of Lockport. Ten police cars showed up. It wasn’t a friendly, neighborly fight over the pitcher brushing back the batter at a local ball game. When tempers fly at that level there’s got to be drugs and big bucks around somewhere. What? Drugs in Lockport? What? Gangs in Lockport? And I thought their only problem was censorial, proto-fascist Boards of Directors of LCTV purging the cable airways of talk show hosts who have been accused of unacceptable political opinions. How naïve I am!

Let’s not leave out my hometown of North Tonawanda. Lockport and Wilson have nothing over on us. Certainly and damn it all, we have more and better drugs than them, comparable violence and an unsolved sex kidnapping of a little girl not too long ago, still unsolved by the FBI none the less.

Lastly on WLVL radio today Doug Young went ballistic when a caller suggested that Young wasn’t taking into account our right to be considered innocent until proven guilty during discussion of the Wilson teen sexual harassment incident. You’d have thought that Young had been accused of raping the Virgin Mary. Even though, the radio talk show host began with the admission that we had virtually none of the facts of the incident at hand, other than the arrest and charges, Young was coming off like we would be perfectly justified in getting out the rope and finding a sturdy tree limb, thus saving the tax payers money for litigation and dispensing with the nasty difficulties of actually finding out what happened. Now I do understand the dilemma of a talk show host having to beef up ratings, but there’s a little thing that all too few these days are paying attention to, namely, the American Constitution.

So what’s the common thread here? Why invoke Nietzsche and Plato? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, does it? The Nihilism is clear. A collapse of moral values, and a devaluation of what might be laudable if not sacred is manifesting in the abuse of sex, drugs and the media, not to mention our government. Our moral fabric has worn too thin and holes are showing, revealing the spiritual emptiness. The schools, police and church have failed to remediate the nihilistic ethos. The institutions of education, law and spirit can no longer make up for the corruption of community and the loss of the individual’s sense of the good of the whole, the "sensu communis," of the Humanist tradition. This nihilism, the crisis of man as the creator and keeper of values, began back in Greek times with Socrates. Socrates said at the age of 70 that he no longer knew what it meant to be a human being. This disclaimer was prophetic for those with ears to hear. Socrates was asking what was happening to this being that we are, a being higher than the angels, capable of loving like God, able to know the Divine, yet descended to a level indistinguishable from beasts and barbarians?

What has happened to a creature, as Plato said, capable of being motivated by love, guided by truth and aimed toward the good, consciously descending to a vicious self-interestedness, a myopic self-serving distortion of self-understanding and a blindness to the simplest virtues of honesty, caring and courage? Plato’s Socrates battled the Sophistry of the Sophists. At their worst the Sophist mind was capable of collapsing mere accusation and allegation into truth and making it appear as truth. Such a mind was able to turn ‘saying its so’ into its seeming ‘to be so.’ It nurtured this need to be right even at the cost of truth. Jesus called it self-righteousness. Doug Young illustrated this nicely today when he insisted that even though we didn’t have the facts of the Wilson case and even finally agreed that we are innocent until proven guilty he still insisted that “We do know some facts. Something happened…. This is wrong!” he ranted. But Doug, what happened was that there was an allegation of something having happen. We don't know WHAT happened. That's not a "fact" that allows you to accuse anyone of wrongdoing. Allegation is not conviction and it doesn't justfy further character assassination.

There was something of the witchhunt hysteria in Doug’s voice, even if it was for the ratings. Even if Doug really didn’t fully believe or feel what he said, he was still playing on this readiness to round up the lynch mob at the drop of a hat. But just like in Salem back in the 17th century, so today, given that things are out of hand with respect to moral respect, truth telling and a patient listening to “reality,” sometimes it just feels good to hang someone, purge the blood, kill a scapegoat.

But, as Doug Young implored, “There’s something wrong here!” And there is. Not necessarily on the school bus in Wislon but in our culture, society and political ethos. When good and bad are indistinguishable, when truth is not knowable, when saying it’s so makes it so, when wanting to find a witch leads to a witch hunt wherein a witch is sure to be found, then there really is something wrong here. When political discussion has irrevocably descended to and been conflated with character assassination; when discussion aims only at winning, being right and distorting the intention, context and integrity of one’s neighbor or fellow citizen, then we have descended into Nihilism, a nihilism of truth and goodness not to mention also of reality and beauty. In such a world there is “mere opinion,” sophistry, that is so construed as to annihilate truth. Truth is relativized to serve one's immediate, short term, short sighted self-interest. In such a world, there is only what’s good for me and not the good of the community let alone the world.

So what do we see as the common thread here in these events today. Allegation, accusation, assassination and avarice confused with truth, goodness and justice. The hierarchy of value, the capacity and concern to distinguish good from bad, right from wrong, true from false, have all collapsed into a one-dimensional rush to judgement in which one must take abstract, unreal sides or seemingly perish. The willingness and ability to be wrong, to stand in the gray area, to moderate, mediate and modulate the violence, conflict, dissension and the raising of voices calling for vengeance, has disappeared.

Nihilism and Sophistry prevail. Late in the 19th century, Nietzsche predicted 200 years of such nihilism, the devaluation of all values and the impossibility of sharing meaning in the spirit of truth. I fear he was right about the first 100 years. It’s not too late for the second 100. He would agree if we could agree to once again become the creator of values worth living for, as opposed to those only worth dying for. With Nietzsche I too remain “tragically optimistic.” Though the vicious indifference of Nihilism could be with us for some time it would help to distinguish its spirit. Also, since the spin of Sophistry may well always be with us we can at least know the difference between it and truth.

Another philosopher born in the 19th century, Martin Heidegger, said before he died, “Only a God can save us now!” I hope Heidegger was wrong. But, on the other hand, if we can become that God as Jesus did, then such a One as ourselves can save us. As John Fitzgerald Kennedy once said, “God’s work must truly be our own.”