Oligarchy- A Historical Look from Plato's Dialogues

Backreaction: A little less conversation, a little more science please

An Oligarchy (Greek Ὀλιγαρχία, Oligarkhía) is a form of government in which power effectively rests with a small elite segment of society distinguished by royal, wealth, intellectual, family, military or religious hegemony. The word oligarchy is from the Greek words for "few" (ὀλίγος olígos) and "rule" (ἀρχή arkhē). Such states are often controlled by politically powerful families whose children are heavily conditioned and mentored to be heirs of the power of the oligarchy.[citation needed] Oligarchies have been tyrannical throughout history, being completely reliant on public servitude to exist. Although Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as a synonym for rule by the rich, for which the exact term is plutocracy, oligarchy is not always a rule by wealth, as oligarchs can simply be a privileged group. Some city-states from Ancient Greece were oligarchies.( bold added by me for emphasis)

Change "public servitude" to "consumerism" and this exemplifies for many what democracies have become?


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Not only from a historical perspective do I introduce this material, but to indicate, that I along with many, have become disillusioned with the current politicization structures.

A desire then, for a more "introspective look" would then be accorded in a search for the political ideal. It was done for an "economic ideal," so it must be mustered in the same vain as the Economic Manhattan project where scientists had gathered for perspective. A desire then for a "21st Century View" toward a "just society."

See: Search function for concept here.


A search function listed by percentage of importance was then done in respect of Plato's commentary to be revealed in the Dialogues to offer perspective.

Plato : LAWS

Persons of the dialogue: An Athenian stranger - Cleinias, a Cretan
- Megillus, a Lacedaemonian
Translated by Benjamin Jowett - 60 Pages (Part 2)

Laws-Part 2 Page 23

Ath. I will do as you suggest. There is a tradition of the happy life of mankind in days when all things were spontaneous and abundant. And of this the reason is said to have been as follows: - Cronos knew what we ourselves were declaring, that no human nature invested with supreme power is able to order human affairs and not overflow with insolence and wrong. Which reflection led him to appoint not men but demigods, who are of a higher and more divine race, to be the kings and rulers of our cities; he did as we do with flocks of sheep and other tame animals. For we do not appoint oxen to be the lords of oxen, or goats of goats; but we ourselves are a superior race, and rule over them. In like manner God, in his love of mankind, placed over us the demons, who are a superior race, and they with great case and pleasure to themselves, and no less to us, taking care us and giving us peace and reverence and order and justice never failing, made the tribes of men happy and united. And this tradition, which is true, declares that cities of which some mortal man and not God is the ruler, have no escape from evils and toils. Still we must do all that we can to imitate the life which is said to have existed in the days of Cronos, and, as far as the principle of immortality dwells in us, to that we must hearken, both in private and public life, and regulate our cities and houses according to law, meaning by the very term "law," the distribution of mind. But if either a single person or an oligarchy or a democracy has a soul eager after pleasures and desires - wanting to be filled with them, yet retaining none of them, and perpetually afflicted with an endless and insatiable disorder; and this evil spirit, having first trampled the laws under foot, becomes the master either of a state or of an individual - then, as I was saying, salvation is hopeless. And now, Cleinias, we have to consider whether you will or will not accept this tale of mine.
Cle. Certainly we will.
Ath. You are aware - are you not? - that there are of said to be as many forms of laws as there are of governments, and of the latter we have already mentioned all those which are commonly recognized. Now you must regard this as a matter of first - rate importance. For what is to be the standard of just and unjust, is once more the point at issue. Men say that the law ought not to regard either military virtue, or virtue in general, but only the interests and power and preservation of the established form of government; this is thought by them to be the best way of expressing the natural definition of justice.
Cle. How?
Ath. Justice is said by them to be the interest of the stronger.
Cle. Speak plainer.

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Plato:POLITEIA

Persons of the dialogue: Socrates - Glaucon - Polemarchus
- Adeimantus - Cephalus - Thrasymachus - Cleitophon
Translated by Benjamin Jowett - 71 Pages (Part 4) - Greek fonts

The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; the same disease magnified and intensified by liberty overmasters democracy —the truth being that the excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction; and this is the case not only in the seasons and in vegetable and animal life, but above all in forms of government.

True.

The excess of liberty, whether in states or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

Yes, the natural order.

And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty?

How Do You Stop a Oligarchy?

Was introduced from a "consumerism point of view." It was directed toward the idea of governments who "gather money" to operate "their ideal structures of government" while depleting the resources of the "private citizen for that government operation."

Tax grabs to support that positions?

I am trying to orientate myself amidst these political terrain and would like nothing better then to be set straight to remove wrong thinking directed toward finding a "just government?" How do you define a "just government?"

Searching for the "Ideal Government for the 21st Century?"


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Then is Now?

The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; the same disease magnified and intensified by liberty overmasters democracy-Plato:POLITEIA

Can we recognize the decay in the processes of democratization?

It is when we are left with this "feeling of the electorate" to see that they have lost control of the government, that one senses this alienation from the process of democracy. Recognizes "agendas that are being played out," that were not part of the party stance with which they promised to govern before an election.

So what recourse then to see that the processes of legitimacy are recognized and drawn out, that it will become part of the rule of law and implemented, that there was really nothing that could have been done, citing petitions and initiatives toward recall.

Not so much now is there, as to what party and their allegiance, but to the recognition of democracy in decay that we all can now recognize.

The incapacitated people

The people feel disenfranchised. And it is disenfranchised. But the parliament) is directly legitimized by the electorate (at country level, the provincial assemblies. All other constitutional bodies, President and Chancellor (in progress), derive their legitimacy from it. Shift the political choices but from the circles of power in parliament and coalition rounds, who knows the Constitution does not, therefore, is sidelined by the Bundestag and abused only later to formally rubber-stamp, is a de facto policy demokratiefrei.

Sure I may point to "another country" to demonstrate the social construct of the democracy in question, but it is "not far" from what we can identify within our own, that we see the signs of the time?

Follow Up to the Economic Manhattan Project

Dr.Conway,  I thought this might be helpful for you to see the whole works. Not often is perspective in science used to arise above what has been normally happening with the economy to see it in a new light. Imagine using the term "Economic Manhattan Project," for us to consider how seriously this undertaking is presented?

 

Photo by Steve Hsu->

The first photo is the morning panel discussion. From left to right, Eric Weinstein, Nouriel Roubini, Richard Freeman and Nassim Taleb.

The Economic Crisis and its Implications for The Science of Economics.

May 1 - 4, 2009
Perimeter Institute

Concerns over the current financial situation are giving rise to a need to evaluate the very mathematics that underpins economics as a predictive and descriptive science. A growing desire to examine economics through the lens of diverse scientific methodologies - including physics and complex systems - is making way to a meeting of leading economists and theorists of finance together with physicists, mathematicians, biologists and computer scientists in an effort to evaluate current theories of markets and identify key issues that can motivate new directions for research. Perimeter Institute was suggested to be the gathering point and conference organizers plan to foster a very careful, dispassionate discussion, in an atmosphere governed by the modesty and open mindedness that characterizes the scientific community.

The conference will begin on May 1, 2009, with a day of talks by leading experts to an invited audience on the status of economic and financial theory in light of the current situation. Three days of private, focused discussions and workshops will ensue, aimed at addressing complex questions and defining future research agendas for the world that can help address and resolve them.

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Perimeter posted some recommended reading as follows:

• Liquidity and Leverage
  September 2007
  Tobias Adrian and Hyun Song Shin


• An Historical Perspective On The Crisis Of 2007-2008
  Cambridge 2008
  Michael D. Bordo


• Origins and Responses to the Crisis
  Berkeley 2008
  Barry Eichengreen


• Information, Liquidity, And The (Ongoing) Panic Of 2007
  Cambridge 2009
  Gary B. Gorton


• Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?
  September 2005
  Raghuram G. Rajan


• The Financial And The Policy Responses; An Empirical Analysis Of What Went Wrong
  Cambridge 2009
  John B. Taylor

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This is a follow up to the conference that has already taken place.

PIRSA:C09006 - The Economic Crisis and It's Implications for The Science of Economics

The Perimeter Institute conference on economics is being organized in an effort to better evaluate the state of economics as a predictive and descriptive science in light of the current market crisis. We believe that this requires careful, dispassionate discussion, in an atmosphere governed by the modesty and open mindedness that characterizes the scientific community. To do this we aim to bring leading economists and theorists of finance together with physicists, mathematicians, biologists and computer scientists to evaluate current theories of markets, and identify key issues that can motivate new directions for research. The conference will begin on May 1, 2009, with a day of invited talks by leading experts to a public audience of around 200 on the status of economic and financial theory in light of the crisis. We will then continue for three days of focused discussion and workshops with an invited group of around 30, aimed at defining research agendas that address that question and beginning work on them. See: Welcome to the Economic Manhattan Project

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Let's keep the issue of economy alive here and the struggle between facets of our society that might develop perspective about a counter culture that exists. This was a inherent struggle diagnosed in Robert Pirsig and John Nash to show, that the ability of any society can become fraught with the struggle to be, always assertively saying who are are by name.

So to continue from the factual explorations science had undertaken, too the story of Angel and Daemons is to realize the struggle society can manifest with itself in an open dialogue with respect to position. It is about being aware first, then knowing that an emotive struggle is to be realized as the ever emotive charge seals memory to its place.

One cannot imagine the full scope with which might respond to criticism about a particular position and point of view. The lesson about Fear is an important one. This distinction needed to be seen in relation to what was being said and could have been mistakenly seen as so.

Yet, it should be noted that while not speaking directly to the fear or that it could it have been thought enduring too, by comment, it was never my intention. That such an action taken by scientist is an example in my books where science is working outside the box to help us see if they can add or change conceptual frameworks that are stuck in the current economic reality.

Learning about Pirsig's use in literary style about rhetoric and oration was a lesson in itself about what and who is speaking. It was about not being stagnant in view of, but taking on the challenge to bring new hope to a current treadmill that mice are running, or "busy bees" are working.

There is a distinction that I had come across in terms of Pessimism and Optimism. It seemingly shows the negative on the one hand, requires one to take stock of, while on the other half of the partnership, is to see that optimism is eventually reached.

One should know that if they take the proper steps in accounting, they can indeed see a brighter future. This in no way should be seen as "fear mongering," but of a responsibility to self and others to check the current situation and to act accordingly.

Of course, you might have seen some of my own pithy attempts at addition? These are listed under the label of Economics. They take to heart that seeing above the dilemma, is to see applicability that would not normally have been entertained.


Emotive Struggle

Is not something we can underscore without realizing the impact such emotions may have on a society as a whole. To see that the ideology of the struggle to become better persons, is to unshackle ourselves from those things which hold and bind us to our current, and existing state of mind. That such brief moments of the real you are the respite with which we seek to advance who we are, is to remind ourselves of the person by name we had become.

Are we then not in appearance locked in the battle to become "another person" amongst the struggles of dualism that perpetuate our continuing to run that wheel of life? It would seem then such "a Daemon" that would appear to exist as a counter culture to advancement, would keep us and forever keep us locked in that dualism. You see?

Seeing the images of emotively charge packets are but the process with which to forever remain in that cyclical universe. Is to realize that going "outside the box" is to shock the system and slap it into recognition of moving away from it's "normal attributive" position. If one were to imagine this cloud gathering itself around anyone, then it would have to appear that it always appeared at one spot continually, while the idea is to shift this perspective and shake it from what it has always known.

The Elixir of the Bee Community

You should know that that the names of the Bee people have their names protected, to protect the community at large. Some larger human species, like to use the benefits of this society, without recognizing the constructive efforts that goes into this elixir Production.

Marc D. Hauser:

We know that that kind of information is encoded in the signal because people in Denmark have created a robotic honey bee that you can plop in the middle of a colony, programmed to dance in a certain way, and the hive members will actually follow the information precisely to that location. Researchers have been able to understand the information processing system to this level, and consequently, can actually transmit it through the robot to other members of the hive.

See Bumblebee Wing Rotations and Dancing

Many times people have used Ant world to illustrate their ideas, but the time has come, that the relationship to perspective dynamics at that level should think about the vast literature of Bee people.

The second of five Lagrangian equilbrium points, approximately 1.5 million kilometers beyond Earth, where the gravitational forces of Earth and Sun balance to keep a satellite at a nearly fixed position relative to Earth.

See Second of Five Lagrangian Equilibrium Points

One should not think these people have been disassociated from reality, and that it has only been our ignorance of the economics and flight patterns, that we failed to see the dynamical community that bee propagation goes through, in order to continue it's rich development. The elixir production is coming out of that community.

There are two reasons that having mapped E8 is so important. The practical one is that E8 has major applications: mathematical analysis of the most recent versions of string theory and supergravity theories all keep revealing structure based on E8. E8 seems to be part of the structure of our universe.

The other reason is just that the complete mapping of E8 is the largest mathematical structure ever mapped out in full detail by human beings. It takes 60 gigabytes to store the map of E8. If you were to write it out on paper in 6-point print (that's really small print), you'd need a piece of paper bigger than the island of Manhattan. This thing is huge.

See Solidification of Geometrical Presence

Flower pollination is a interesting thing having considered the world that the Bee people live in. After all, the dynamics and travel used, one could not help being enamoured with the naturalness with which one may try to reproduce in human mechanistic movement, that the Bee people live and breathe.

Humanistic intelligences is a larger format, to what they do in that Bee community?

Cell construction provides for the further propagation of the community, but no where do the Bee people give the particulates of the cell construction? Humanistic intelligences only see the community with regards to the Bee movements :)The Bee people have a greater depth to what is seen.

Observing the community at large, the Bee people have much more to present then thinking just in the way they work. Who is Navier Stokes of the humanistic intelligences to think only he could reveal anomalistic perception in the nature of viscosity, not to think there is relativistic conditions that the Bee people bring to reductionism views in physics?

Worker bees perform a host of tasks from cleaning the hive cells to looking after the larvae

The workers have a variety of tasks to perform – some collect nectar from flowers, others pollen, some are engaged in constructing new combs, or looking after the developing larvae, some perform the duty of cleaning the cells or feeding the larvae on special secretion that they regurgitate from their mouth parts. In these insects the exact task of any individual depends largely on its age, although there is a certain flexibility, depending on the requirements of the hive.

So I've taken a different tack here. If it is so hard for the community at large to comprehend that extra dimensional thinking then there has to be some way in which we as lay people can envision the acrobatics of a busy bee and their flight plans? What the community is all about. Who is doing what?

How many dimensions are there?

Consider ants crawling on a tabletop. In their daily experience, they can explore only 2 dimensions, those of the table surface. They may see a bee up flying, or occasionally landing on the table top, but that 3rd dimension is something they can only see or imagine, not experience. Perhaps we are in an analogous situation. Instead of a tabletop, we live in a 3-dimensional space called 3-brane (a name generalizing 2-brane, i.e., membrane). For some reason, we (i.e., atoms, molecules, photons etc.) are stuck in this 3-brane, even though there are 6 additional dimensions out there. Gravity, like the bee, can go everywhere. We call this the brane world, a rather natural phenomenon in superstring theory. At the moment, physicists are working hard to understand this scenario better and to find ways to experimentally test this idea.

The Bee people had graduated from the world of the ant people, jsut by their evolutionary timeline. They were "much more visionary" then the ant people. Because they could leave their three dimensional world of the table top, and pop into ant world's frame of reference. Ant people were never the wiser. Just that, Bee people existed.

Providing a rigorous theoretical framework that incorporates both recent developments such as Aubrey-Mather theory and established fundamentals like Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser theory, this book represents an indispensable resource for graduate students and researchers in the disciplines concerned as well as practitioners in fields such as aerospace engineering.

See Wolf-Rayet star

Brane theory development needed a boost from the Bee people. Not only now do we understand the "dynamical thinking that goes with the Bee's flight patterns," we are now thinking, hey, "can these things apply" to the current solutions the humanistic intelligences persevere to unfold in their space travels?

Not just "our waist lines" as some might think in regards to "lensing" and the circles we apply in "computerize efforts." The range of territory of the Bee's community is well considered?