Pittsburgh,
I will start with the one personality you did not mention, the Tyrant,
and move more specifically to your question soon afterwards. At the
end I will add a spiritual point of view. Socrates/Plato saw the
seeking of the overall good of society as the only necessary desire.
He saw the desires for honor, money, freedom, and love as unnecessary.
In fact the desire to be loved according to Socrates/Plato when
exercised becomes the master passion unleashing the other unnecessary
desires in force. This is the Tyrant. Because all these desires are
unnecessary to the happiness of a human, the human who has all these
desires raging is the least happy of all humans. For some it may be
hard to understand today, but the idea is that the only truly happy
man is he who is looking out for the good of everyone: “Love your
neighbor as yourself”. The Tyrant wants everything to come to him,
but since he gives nothing in return, he must rely on increasingly
criminal means to get what he wants. He always sees himself as being
wronged and thus justified in doing whatever is necessary to get his
desires filled. He despises himself and others because he and they
won't give except under force, i.e. never willingly. He goes mad.
The maddest of all becomes the leader, and the Tyrannical society is
born. The good people, of course, leave rather than be persecuted and
the society just gets worse (as I suggest later the best stay or come
back and sacrifice themselves – these martyrs are the seeds of the
rebirth of society). Eventually the mad leader takes on the worst
criminals to protect him (i.e. - the body guards) and a fury is
unleashed.
Below I will provide an expansion of my understanding on the topic of
Plato's Republic and his ideas about the five types of personalities.
I want to warn you that at the end, I provide a Christian "Apology".
Plato seemed to be able to quite accurately depict how (at least in
Western societies) would go through a series of stages to an end stage
of tyranny, but he seems to have less to say about how to rescue a
Tyrannical society from its state. He has some ideas but doesn't get
into specifics of how a natural evolution might occur from the
preponderance of the Tyrannical man and a state of Tyranny, back to
the Aristocratic (the man of merit) and the Aristocratic society.
Perhaps he implies that a conscious effort must be made to restore a
destroyed Tyrannical society to an Aristocracy (Meritocracy). I will
make a case that this conscious effort starts with a belief in a good
and loving God.
Aristocratic personalities in the (8th?) 9th and 10th book of the
Republic could really be retermed Meritocratic, because they are the
personalities with the most merit. The term Aristocracy is used today
in a different way than the one in the Republic. The goal of the
Aristocrat/Meritcrat is to seek the greatest good for all. They only
take power under protest and not under selfish ambition. This could
characterize the power of the priests during the "Dark Ages".
Timarchic personalities could be retermed the untimidic or courageous
personality or perhaps even the military personality. Their highest
good is honor. The society ruled by the Timarchic Class is
characterized by a rule of a few elite who have the most honor, or are
held in the most honor. Honor could be characterized perhaps as human
respect for a kind of selflessness that is not true selflessness, but
arises out of selfish ambition. It is selflessness out of a desire
for fame, renown and human rather divine regard. This characterized
the Medieval period in European history dominated by the crusades and
knights of honor. Timarchic personalities are respected. The
"Aristocratic" or Meritocratic personalities are instead loved for
true selflessness. The Meritocratic person may not even be aware that
he is loved. I am honestly a bit unclear as to how Plato describes
that a Timocratic man and a Timocracy develops from the "Aristocratic"
society.
Oligarchic personalities according to Plato and Socrates are the next
step down in de-evolution of personalities. The Oligarchic man's
chief aim in life is the accumulation of money. I think
Plato/Socrates delineates that the child of a Timocratic person
becomes disgusted with how his father's funneling of all his resources
into doing noble things has left the family in poverty, and that the
society is unappreciative of the father's efforts to begin with. The
father is sort of made fun of behind his back by the society at large
and is considered a fool in a Don Quixote sort of way. The son thus
sees the pursuit of honor as futile (it doesn't work i.e. - no one
appreciates it and you only fool yourself) and it even threatens your
very existence with poverty. The Oligarchic society is one where the
society is ruled by the rich. This would characterize the Renaissance
where families like the Medici’s ruled the land. The Oligarchic
personality subsumes all his other desires in the aim of making money.
The Democratic personality chief goal is freedom. According to Plato
and Socrates, the Democratic man sees how miserable the life of his
Oligarchic father has been since he has subsumed all his unnecessary
desires for the purpose of making money. The Democratic man says a
little pleasure won't hurt. The Democratic societies appear to be the
best kind of societies, but they are a prelude to the worst, Tyranny.
According to Plato/Socrates, Democratic societies are characterized by
the freeing of slaves, women’s rights movements, the finding of all
varieties of people, criminals are let go with light sentences, and
all problems are blamed on the rich (e.g. - the rich corporate
lobbyists in the U.S.). Yes, that stuff - except for the lobbyist
specifics - is really in the Republic in the 8th, 9th and 10th book.
This kind of society is found in the "Industrialized Democracies"
today.
I know I haven't done too good a job at defining necessary and
unnecessary and desires I know you have not asked for it but the last
step in the downward path is the Tyrannical Personality. The chief
aim of the Tyrannical personality is power and unconditional love.
According to Socrates/Plato the desire for love is actually implanted
by in the sons of the Democratic by idle sons of Oligarchs that still
exist in the Democracy. Note again that Democracy includes all the
types of personalities including maligned Oligarchs. It is as if the
sons of the rich take advantage of the idealism and innocence of the
sons of young Democrats. They plant the ideal or encourage the young
men to seek Romantic love, even though the Oligarchic sons don't
believe in it. Maybe they seek revenge for their loss of power and
prestige that occurs in the Democracy, but the idle children of the
richest Oligarchs (they can afford to be idle) are puppeteers to the
most innocent and idealistic of the sons of Democrats. This desire
for Romantic Love drives the once Democratic mad, because it is an
unnecessary desire and an unleasher of all the others.
My own spiritual and psychological explanation of the derivation of
the madness follows. If your chief goal in life is to find someone
who will love you unconditionally, and you subsume everything to this,
you will die. You will die at least to reason, and sometimes
physically. This is because perfect love is unattainable in this life
apart from the love of God. No person will sacrifice himself/herself
completely for another human imperfect human being unless he/she knows
that God loves him/her and that God wants him/her to sacrifice himself
for that person and by doing so attain eternal life. The budding
Tyrannical person has no relationship with God (the Oligarchs and
Democrats have removed it from him) but is going around looking for an
angel who will sacrifice himself/herself for him. The sacrificing
person he is looking for is very rare, and since humans are
essentially sinners, even the most selfless saint of a human being
does not have enough love and resources to satisfy the atheist-budding
tyrant. The tyrant is the least happy and needs more and more human
love to fill his vacant atheist heart, however the more he attempts to
get people to love him the more people turn him away as a needy
person. Since he only believes in human love not divine, he becomes
more and more disenchanted with human beings and their ability to love
and with more disenchantment people love him even less. It's a
vicious cycle that leads to despair, mental illness and even suicide.
Perhaps out of the ashes of despair comes the will to power, to
control people into loving him even though he does not love back.
Basically the tyrant becomes a big baby.
What follows I'm afraid is a bit of a spiritual polemic, but you can
see how the children of the rich manipulate the media in the rich
Democratic societies today, in two ways. Way one: the idea that
Romantic Love will save you and solve all your problems (just listen
to the radio or turn on the TV). Way two: the undermining of the
belief that God exists, he loves us and we should seek to please him
by doing good. The second way is seen in the secular idea that man
will figure out everything through science, and man is the master of
his destiny along with a creeping despair that perhaps man will be not
be able to solve his political, energy, and environmental problems in
time to prevent him from destroying himself. Put to you slightly
differently, there are increasing amounts of "madness" or mental
illness in our society today, because people have been indoctrinated
to believe that human love is the answer to all their problems along
with a creeping anxiety that man can't solve his problems and there is
no God who can. The obsession with Romantic love at least is a
"natural" progression of history according to Socrates/Plato but from
my point of view it is totally wrongheaded. We are led to believe
that until we find someone who will love us for who we really are, we
will not truly live. Unfortunately the truth is nobody will love us
for whom we truly are, unless we are loving and are a seeker of the
good. No one can be that way until he believes in God and believes
God loves him unconditionally. Society today tries to remove, in
every way possible, the belief in God, thus we go mad and die. "The
Culture of Death" as Pope John Paul II puts it.
Tyranny in the worst way (what, I'm afraid, we're in for) existed
around the time of Christ's birth. The only salvation from the
despotism in that time came from...the Christians. That is those who
believed in God, believed God loved them, and sacrificed themselves
willingly for their enemies, neighbors and friends. They loved
unconditionally even though it meant their death, but their deaths
allowed Western society to experience a rebirth. Their leader, the
example they followed is Christ. It is hard to imagine that this
whole movement could have gotten started if the early Christians had
made up the key parts of his life. The very fact that Western society
exist today and is so vibrant is a testament to this one man, his
Words, his deeds and his resurrection. We would not be alive today if
Christ had not existed, spoke, went through his crucifixion and was
raised again. Believing these things are what Christ said are the
work that God the father has given mankind. In fact in doing this
work of believing, we are cocreators with God. In doing the work of
believing we are furthering the work of creation. I believe in some
way God created the universe and it was good, but man through the sin
of believing in the fallen devil's words caused the universe to fall
and go into the entropy and decay we see today. The purpose of life
is to restore the creation of God through the work that he has given
us, which is to believe, but work is painful, even the work of belief
and it must overcome many, many obstacles. The words of the Bible
guarantee us of the eventual success of restoring the paradise of
creation; however, we will not be part of that restored creation
unless we are part of restoring that creation through the work of
belief. As Christ said "If you abide in my word, you shall know the
Truth and the Truth shall set you free". |
