Are we in this day and age afraid of instability? Or do we embrace it? Is it true that there is no stability? Or is it rather a fact that things – if looked at in the right way, can show some solid foundation, and that the word myth, when attached to thinkers like Plato is nonsense, because they have really found the truth? In a sense, whatever the answers to these questions are, the words of people like Plato become the foundations of the society they build, which builds itself into the minds of the people. Plato’s myth, the noble lie, is the most emblematic of this. It is an idea that has many different implications past just the notion of foundations of a system, notions which look into the nature of human concepts and their relation to the universe, and another more important one that may show a reaction to instability is fear - and that this is quite possibly the origin of all of Plato’s metaphysics, but not the foundation of our current system of democracy.
But first, we must look at what the noble lie really is. The noble lie is what will be used on the quest that Plato embarks on to create a class of people who have the state as “the rule of their lives” (20). This is the Platonic system of education. He focuses the energies of the individuals, or guardians, away from themselves and focuses their minds on the ruling of a populace. How does he do this? He sets up a situation that puts a set of people through numerous and rigorous tests throughout rough circumstances, to train them in conviction and honor towards the state. This, at first seems fine – putting the guardians in their natural habitats and having them grow stronger while dealing with the world around them. But this, is not the case. While engaged in these trials, it is actually told to them that it wasn’t the Platonists who had put them through these tasks, but rather the earth itself. This noble lie will go on to set up the system of the “perfect state”, allotting the citizens to their respective classes based on their original relation to the Platonic test. Now we know why philosophers for ages since have been concerned with the question, “What is truth”.
But to return, we can see in this place that Plato’s order is something that has to be created, not something that already exists and that we have the ability to just find out. Plato himself is partaking in the creation of a form, society. This shows there is a lack of order that Plato is making up for and creating. This inherint instability is frightening. I believe that in today’s society as well as in Plato’s time there has always been a reaction against it and a creation of order. Plato may have been the one of the first thinkers to have embodied this idea
The other thing, along with the previous idea, is that Plato’s order will only temporarily create this kind of order. This may be a more important issue. As we see in the republic there is a necessary slippery slope after the state is created. Once the Platonic state is set up – Plato hopes everyone will live in their class and do their duties, but Plato, even with his keen observational skills, cannot be the ultimate judge of everyone. As people change, so do their morals. They will start to mix the classes and destroy the previously established order. That beast of inner change will end up rising in somebody in the guardian class, and they will explore the life of a bronze. That wish to aspire that was not present earlier in the bronze or silver class will rise and cause them to chase after the dreams of the guardian system, pursuing the search of philosophy. That is why the system will break up, and that is the reason for fear in instability. It leads to chaos or, “un”knowledge, which as we see, may just be the natural way of things. It is like molding a statue out of clay and then leaving it to the natural world. It will come against forces, rain, wind, and heat that will change it. It will mold to the stimulus it comes across. And the path the weather takes, as far as we know, cannot be controlled - just like the minds and plans of the citizens in the state, or, the "stately weather".
To return again to the original idea, that fear of instability is part of political structure, we will see that this may be true, and that modern democracy might have this still, but modern day democracy has dealt with this fear in a different way. Instead of solidifying the citizens to one unbreakable tying class system, it allows for the changing of classes – although it is not an easy process. We must go to school and become educated. Our parents are allowed to work to give us the money to rise out of the lower class and into the higher realms of society. Class change is possible – it is even welcomed when those who have the right ideas are available. We have moved away from that purely aristocratic society that Plato set up, one based on "original power", but not totally. There is still that type of education available that Plato set up for his guardians, now only tinged with an oligarchical way to get to it. Those who have the wealth have access to the type of training a guardian would receive are allowed to work for it. In all, it seems the power is not fully chosen by the powerful, but by the oligarchical system of power as well, ie: money = power. That first step down from Plato’s highest point of aristocracy to oligarchy has truly affected the world like Plato thought it would. But again, we in this modern day are not so in fear of change as were Plato and his contemporaries were then. We allow it, and we are more comfortable in working towards it. Even most love stories from our day have had this central theme. Breaking out of what was originally established, shooting for the ability to love out of one's class - having the climax of the story as the character's realization of how this can be accomplished!
What about an opposition to our theory? An opposition might say that this is not the case. Maybe Plato’s insight was right, and he did find a true basis for a political system, not just some myth. Maybe we just needed him to tell it to us like a story so that people could understand it, which he definetly did when telling the citizens that the earth raised them instead of him. Does the grandfather telling his life story through a bird's eye, or a novelist telling his life in snippets through a narrator change the essence of the central idea? I believe if you look at it the right way, then no. In today’s society one cannot just become a neurosurgeon if his parents have the money. He, like in Plato’s time, has some “golden” qualities in him. People may be born with inborn talents and might have different inherint duties because of their natural "fate"?
Plato’s theory might have some merit, we can’t discredit that, but what we can say is that Plato was not the utmost judge. Plato did not have a "bird's eye view on time. Golden qualities may stay dormant in someone until their later years, people may change, events can bring out the "better", or "worse" in somebody, and the world – does change. In a quote I could not find by Leslie Silko in her novel, Ceremony stated that “The old do not understand the concept of change, even if it right in front of their eyes, in the growing old of people or the decay of the skin on the medicine rattle.” Those who try to solidify the state of the world and the state of men like Plato are the ones in fear of change. In fear of an instable world, a confusing world. But today, we are coming closer to the knowledge that there is a different type of doctrine, and that we grow better when we are confronted with confusion, only to overcome it. If we keep our eyes on the present we can see that these forms do change, that the trees and earth that once protected us are now calling out in a struggle. Democracy and environmentalism are the heralds of this want for change – this want to recognize the instabilities and move with them, not solidify our minds to a point in time and forget what is happening right in front of us in the present. So to those who are afraid I say, I disagree, and that we are only just now learning to run with it.
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