Really True Fiction14 Jul 2021

Ep. 13 - The Open Society And Its Enemies Pt. 2

This episode is part two of a four part series on the book The Open Society And Its Enemies by Karl Popper. Please listen to episode one before this as it will give context for this episode. In this episode I discuss:

- Plato's formulation about who should rule is a useless question - rather we should ask how we can make institutions that prevent bad rulers from doing too much harm, as many to most rulers are below average in real life.

- Shortcomings in a democratic state are the responsibility of the citizens in that state and should not be blamed on democracy itself.

- Focusing on the question of who should rule will turn the education of leaders into a kind of race or competition rather than having those students focus on their studies for its own sake. They will rather be focused on furthering their careers instead.

- My formulation of the Noble Truth to counteract against Plato's the Noble Lie - we have to create and discovering our own meaning in life by consciously selecting our own stories to live by.

- The concept of philosopher as made clear by the distinction between Socrates and Plato; the former as a lover and seeker of wisdom and the latter as a proud possessor of knowledge.

- The difference between the Utopian and Piecemeal social engineer

- Plato as noticing the strain from the rise of democracy, and took advantage of existing sentiments to use language duplicitously to attempt to bring a more closed society.

- And how we can't return to the closed society without becoming beasts.

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