Socrates on Modern Entertainment

The world is full of distractions, and in the age of information with social media constantly buzzing for our attention it is really an overwhelming amount of media. Recently I have read a lot on Socrates, scholars comments of his work. Or the pieces of the puzzle of his work since Socrates wrote nothing himself. Instead the idea of Socratic's philosophy comes from the characterization of him portrayed by contemporary writers and students. Socrates was against the idea of writing books believing that books would lead to weakened ability to remember since humanity would no longer memorize poems and stories, etc. With that in mind plus the philosophical character of Socrates in mind I began to wonder what his opinion of social media be. Assuming the cleverness of Socrates let's include all the media there is in terms of entertainment, social media, information outlets. Another way of looking at is what would a Socratic take of media be?

First we must say something about the philosophy of Socrates, which I will refer to as the Socratic dialectic. I will keep the description brief since I will have another piece of writing which explores Socrates much more thoroughly. The simplest way to explain Socrates' method of philosophy is the way that he did. His described what he did as intellectual midwifery; meaning that he was not giving his participants any answers or ideas but helping them to formulate their own. Socrates motivation was the pursuit of truth in a general sense, he wanted to understand what things were, what it meant to be excellent, or have knowledge, or to have piety. Socrates believe that a life of good virtue comes from good understanding.

The Socrates represented in plato's dialouges is a very clever man who always finds holes in the arguments or definitions put before him. Nowadays an person can be expected to have the ability to access the internet. The concept of the internet, not to mention it's intergration with society, would make no sense to the mind of someone from Classical Age Greece. Yet, from the Platonic dialogues which scholars study the philosophy of Socrates we can piece an idea of how to approach his ideas to this world. For starters all of the dialogues involve the use of language in a particular way. The Platonic Socrates functions as an interviewer keeping the dialogue moving along without Socrates adding any specific claims or positive assertions. Socrates engages the interlocutor for an explanation, asks questions if something is not clear, and proceeds to guide the interlocutor to clear definition. In many ways it seems as though Socrates knows where the dialogue will go directing it all the way. It could be said then that the character of Socrates does not abide by the idea of guiding the ideas out of others minds, but that he instead is constructing them as he leads his interlocutor. This is a fair claim and in some dialogues Socrates is just acting as a character for Plato. But the early dialogues which is the focus of most study for the philosophy of Socrates give a clear character. The Socrates in this dialogues takes what claims or explanations are put before him and only deconstructs and contructs with questions. The questions follow along dialogue arising because of it not to guide it. In another post I will discuss the Euthyphro dialogue in some detail, this dialogue carries the fundamental character of Socrates.

Socrates values language as a tool for reaching better and more accurate layers of truth about the world. Given this perspective almost all the media there is to see would not be valued by Socrates. In Socrates's time and in our own most of the media that is create acts as a way to reinforce our cultural beliefs and values. Socrates is said to have criticized the poets of his day for telling to many stories about the gods and not focusing on the here and now. The world today is designed for distraction. The overwhelming amount of entertainment option, access to information, and social media, drown the mind in a wash of distraction. This networking phenomena is intergrated with society, this blog is dependent upon, but does it have us thinking to often of some "other world" rather than focusing on our lives here and now? For Socrates the pursuit of truth was the pursuit of self-improvement. He believed that to know the good was to do the good. If we look around how many of the messages we receive are about finding greater understanding of truth? Media plays the role of reinforcement or certain ideas and certain vaules. It must be approach with a mind attuned to the bias inherit in it.

Again nowadays there are those that approach truth in a completely relativistic manner, this idea of " it being true for me". But this is not using language in its proper function in the Socratic view. Language came from the effort to communicate complex ideas between individuals. To value truth and reason means to ask questions and ' go where the answers lead' if there are inconsistencies then ask more questions. It may be said that truth may never be reached by this method, which then brings up the question of what truth is exactly? Is truth what is agreed upon by the majority? Or is Truth in existence in the realm of ideas? Or is it simply a characteristic of things? We often talk about truth without knowing what truth is. Is there some objective truth? That is an active and difficult philosophical question, specifically regarding the meaning of objective truth. For my own part I say that regarding objective truth there must be some common denominator of experience for all observers otherwise there would be no agreement at all on the simplest of matters, which among other things would mean language would be rendered meaningless and useless. There are points where we find agreement and humans have the ability to discuss ideas. There may not be a final truth to arrive at, but perhaps by finding better and clearer understanding of the world we may start actually improving it.