Timaeus
It’s funny how little nuggets of wisdom are in places you hardly expect to find them. I mean, I am reading the Great Books, but it’s easy to think you’ve got a piece figured out and then get surprised.
The Socratic dialog Timaeus is basically a run-down of the formation of the universe and everything in it. There’s a lot of talk about how the the four major elements of creation — fire, water, earth and air — are made up of triangles and how that affects certain things. Here’s a tidbit:
But when the roots of the triangles are loosened by having undergone many conflicts with many things in the course of time, they are no longer able to cut or assimilate the food which enters, but are themselves easily divided by the bodies which come in from without. In this way every animal is overcome and decays, and this affection is called old age.
I started reading at a faster clip, but embedded within to the discredited science I found eternal truths or things that shine light onto the modern world — at least my dim understanding of the modern world.
Here’s one:
That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state; but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is.
That pretty much describes all political messaging and commentary, as far as I can tell. Also logical versus emotional argument that makes so many relationships so much fun.
And, more to the point of my language studies, there’s this:
Thus, then, as the several elements never present themselves in the same form, how can any one have the assurance to assert positively that any of them, whatever it may be, is one thing rather than the other? No one can.
And this one sums up where I come down in the “lock ‘em up” versus “addiction is a disease” argument:
…and is for the most part of his life deranged, because his pleasures and pains are so very great; his soul is rendered foolish and disordered by his body; yet he is regarded not as one diseased, but as one who is voluntarily bad, which is a mistake.
Which explains why Portugal, which decriminalized drugs, is having more success than we are filling up prisons.
If you want the deep discussion these guys have it. If you want to read it for yourself, here you go.