Epiphanies

Once in a while things just suddenly come to me, and not necessarily profound things, just observations or realizations that suddenly dawn on me, often obvious, but sometimes still interesting.

The Blogosphere is so popular because on those occasions when you can’t really do anything about something that’s bothering you, it makes you feel better (if only for a little while) to talk about it, to get it off your chest. I find that such ventilating, however, goes only so far, unless you get paid for it, in which case you’re no longer a blogger, but a professional opinionator, an official member of the bloviating or chattering class, where it’s all talk all the time. In other words, talk is cheap, unless you can find some sucker who will pay you for it.

The problem with democracy -- and this was something that Socrates figured out a very long time ago, sometime before he was put to death by his fellow citizens in Athens -- is that most people are stupid. Now, Socrates got in trouble when he set about proving this fact to himself and anyone else willing to listen to him as he asked questions of the Athenian ruling classes. His point was simply that most people aren’t nearly as smart as they think they are. Unfortunately, stupid people are very comfortable with other stupid people. Just as smart people like to hang with other smart people. If you design a system of government based on the rule of the majority, what are you going to get every time?

Based on the previous epiphany, I suddenly realized why it is that despite the fact that teachers are paid so little in this country, we still have many smart people willing to be teachers: Having observed that they are at the mercy of the vast majority of stupid people, teachers have determined that their only hope is to try to raise the general level of knowledge. Having also observed that most stupid people are quite content to remain so, they have given up all hope of being rewarded for this service. Thus teaching the young becomes an act not only of relative altruism, but actually of patriotism. It’s also a form of self-preservation.

Finally there’s this. Ambrose Bierce’s definition of a “republic,” from The Devil’s Dictionary:

REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience. In a republic, the foundation of public order is the ever lessening habit of submission inherited from ancestors who, being truly governed, submitted because they had to. There are as many kinds of republics as there are graduations between the despotism whence they came and the anarchy whither they lead.

Given all the chaos in the world just now, and the fragile state of some of our democracies, I wanted to conclude my somewhat glum remarks with that ray of sunshine from the master.