Hi all and welcome to another post from me. For the first time I am sharing a post that I did not write but rather read myself and felt rather moved by it. I do believe that Van Bryan (the writer) is correct to suggest that we are slowly moving from a democracy to an Oligarchy. I shall post links to more of their work at the end of the piece.
Also I like the fact it sounds like a storm crow.
To the article......
Oh, dear reader, are you certain you want to know how this story ends? It’s a sad story. Full of heartbreak. We stand on the edge of a precipice… Beneath us, dark waters of unknown depth churn. Among the eddies and the white caps, we see sorrow… anger… social unrest...abuse from authority… and “autonomous zones.” These are dark waters, dear reader. And your editor has always had a healthy fear of drowning. We should step back from this ledge. The sun is shining here on the Atlantic coast. Outside we spy an osprey diving towards the shallows in search of her breakfast. It would be such a shame to spoil the day by plunging these depths. Because down deeper, there are troubling undercurrents… Historic parallels from the days of classical antiquity. A two-thousand-year-old prophecy. And a solemn warning of things to come. Well, if you insist… We brace for the plunge. And dive. The Five Regimes
Living during the late fifth and early fourth century BC, Plato was the student and disciple of that granddaddy of classical philosophy, Socrates.
It was once believed that all a philosopher really needed to know could be found in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Plato’s Republic.
That’s overstating it, of course.
But give the old teacher his due.
The Republic is ambitious in its scope. Written in the Socratic dialectic tradition, the text tackles subjects spanning from ethics… epistemology… and—important to us—politics.
It remains one of the most influential pieces of literature in human history. It is in book VIII where Plato describes the transitions of the “five regimes.” They are…
Aristocracy (ruled by a just king)
Timocracy (ruled by warriors and generals)
Oligarchy (the rich rule over the poor)
Democracy (power is distributed evenly)
Tyranny (strongman leader, the most unjust regime)
Each regime—Plato says through the voice of Socrates—degrades and bleeds into the next. It is the transition from oligarchical to democratic state that interests us. In the oligarchical state, “the rich have power and the poor man is deprived of it.”
(Van Bryan. Classical wisdom).
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