Philosophy as Revolution, Socrates as Master of Equality

The leashed hunting dog has more targets than the unleashed.  It is unable to loose itself in the satisfaction of its triggered behavior and so “attention” itself now goes by the name of “frustration” and must hunt for a satisfying target … another trigger. Being commanded to “pay attention” does not mean that one had not been paying attention, only that one’s attention was somewhere other than that which pays respects to the social hierarchy.  Now one has multiple targets available for “attention” – and one experiences the intellectual nausea for which one must sit down and sort the targets out. 

Moral: if one is chafing under the collar of social necessity, do not forget that one would not otherwise have moments of moral clarity. As Socrates sat down amidst his social superiors, after precisely he alone had experienced the distinctions, where he alone had multiple targets due to his additional frustration -- as their otherwise inferior, he declared, “Here, we are all equals” – commanding their attention by questions which he himself had sorted out, and their answering of which led them by the leash under command of clarity, making Socrates their master – for hadn’t he himself led them by a leash of reasoning to undeniable clarity, the refusal of which itself would result in demotion?  

Having one’s “own” command perfectly superimposed over a masters would arrive with a confidence in one’s “own” ideas, precluding any distinctions by which one could authentically claim sole ownership.  No self-respecting third party would envy such a “clear thinker.” Comfortable obedience precludes clarity. To be at the top of the hierarchy and to be a “philosopher,” would require that philosophy be something closer to discovery in science or mathematics.  But to only experience one’s own illusion of a “status” known as “alpha” would be to slip over the double-life required to experience and see distinctions between social ranks, from each the other’s perspective, and thus experiencing the value reversals and conversions within consciousness.

The link between cultural morals and social hierarchy suggests a critical link between true and false --  and not the pervasive nervous system that it is – measured from the tip of our precise cognitive rationales to the extremities of our un-thought reflexes.  Morality is neither a hidden strategy for dominance nor a strategy of exposure for temporary reliefs from dominance but a superimposition of one over the other, where each member of society takes what he can get, depending upon the circumstance, suffering from countless moral inversions on a daily basis. It’s a mess.  Who will sort it out from either the comfort of compatibility through obedience or the addiction to delusions of dominance?

Thus, the impossible: one would have to be disciplined enough to release oneself from the leash of either illusion. (Social rank is an unavoidable illusion.)  It would require stages of intellectual nausea.  The target for attention which would compete with all others would be precisely a nudge to a “Moral Code” which would be capable of enriching the members of civilization, and without leaving civilization herself behind, throughout the rest of human endurance as a species … not without sustained contradictions and which would demand that one keep oneself on the leash in order to keep the maximum number of targets available to consciousness.  It would require a new class of society, a nauseated class.

Who would find such a life desirable without having to lie to himself about his actual status, in order to feel something in provoking others’ envy? Thus a second moral: If one wants both happiness and to think of oneself as a clear thinker, wait until a sufficiently later stage and then simply do the math.  Socrates in his seventies had both the right and reason to lord it over others with the superior contribution of his prior social inferiority.  The case could be made that a final contradiction here did not interfere with his presentation, and was not as much tolerated as used, since a stage required for discovery was followed by a stage of presentation which itself required the confidence of a master.