Driven Through Distractions

The afternoon has mostly been a car thing. I was trying to find two other locations for this big hardware store in the area, one in the extreme west, the other extreme east. I should have did a google map of each before leaving, but instead I just headed out and figured I knew roughly where they were.

Of course, after I found them, their locations were familiar. However I drove widely in the wrong direction, while listening to some CBC2 radio about Andre Previn's composing, his Jazz work (did some stuff with Ray Brown recently apparently). It was interesting, except for the bit from his Opera of Street Car Named Desire. Sheesh, should be called Shreikcar Named Desire, at least the aria they played. The bit of jazz I heard was okay. One bit had a weird vocal that sounded like a guy doing a fake monty-python woman's voice. I don't know where CBC finds these vocalist selections.

Anyway, some good music, a bit of interesting interview. A pretty impressive basist whose name escapes me - I can probably google him up as he won some sort of International Protege award in Toronto. Aha - that was easy - he is Roman Patkoló. Nice work.

So an interesting mix of paving stone shopping, directionless driving and serious music. And I came home with 100 pavers, though I'll need to scare up another 60 of the darker variety for the project(3).

Reading

So at home with a cup of hot tea and a couple of squares of Cocoa Camino, and I jump back into Plato's The Republic (Proj5), which I've been picking away at. I've read very little of Plato's stuff before, and I must say I'm not too impressed. The stuff that passes for logical argument is a bit much. Perhaps they just weren't very sophisticated back then, or the translators job is extra difficult to capture the nuance of the words, but I have problems with some of the logical arguments.

Okay, for example... Wait a minute. If you haven't read his stuff before, he's got this formulaic approach. He's writing from the POV of Socrates, and he'll say something like "You want me to prove that death is bad? Well, are cupcakes not creamy?" And the reply from his adversary is "Yes." "And thus we can say that a creamy cupcake is a typical cupcake?" "Yes, I'll agree to that," is the reply. "And are Wednesdays not in the middle of the week?" .... and on it goes, until he concludes, "Therefore, you'll agree that death is bad." "Gee, yes Socrates. You the man."

I like logical, deductive reasoning, and a well structured argument. Plato would have you beleive that this was a common pastime, when they weren't out torturing various foriegners and half starved exotic animals. But my issue is that some of the logic is a huge stretch. I'll read along, going, okay that's reasonable, so is that, and YIKES that's not even close!.

Okay, so for an example, after going on in that plodding fashion about things having their functions and if they don't do their functions they are bad, we get this exchange:

"It follows therefore that a good mind will perform the functions of control and attention well, a bad mind badly."
"It follows."
"And we agreed, did we not, that justice was the peculiar excellence of the mind and injustice its defect?"
"We did."
"So the just mind and the just man will have a good life, and the unjust a bad life?"
"So it appears from your argument."
"But the man who has a good life is prosperous and happy, and his opposite the reverse?"
"Of course."
"So the just man is happy, and the unjust man miserable?"
"I grant that."
"So it never pays to be miserable, but to be happy, we can say, my dear Thrasymachus, that justice pays better than injustice"

And hence I think, huh? How many leaps of logic are in there!? There is a constant issue of definition of terms, but also total ignoring of any randomness in the world. Just the definition of "happy" alone could fill up a volume. But to assume suddenly that if someone acts with justice they will be happy is silly. And to further go on and deduce that it never pays to be miserable, and that being good makes you prosperous (and they are talking literally in terms of remuneration). That's nuts.

You can do some interesting philosophical stuff with elmeents of that though. I mean again defining prosperous in other terms, without monetary elements, perhaps one is prosperous in knowing they have done the right, just thing and has no regrets from situations they've been in. But even in Plato's world. If his buddies are suggesting it's good to be put youself first, and screw the justice, there would be a lot of good, just people getting screwed over. I'm sure they weren't happy or prosperous as a result.

Anyway, interesting reading to plow on through The Republic but I'm not seeing a lot of life-changing insights here. It is cool that people were talking at a somewhat nuanced level about this stuff over 2430 years ago anyway.

So a bit more of this and maybe a patented 20min power-nap to wrap up my afternoon.