The inequality and poverty which doomed the rural cottager to a life of toil and ignorance is sadly meditated upon by Thomas Gray in his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. It ought to move our hearts to see that our own children are given the best we can afford and that we ourselves seek knowledge and understanding wherever we can find them.
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
But knowledge to their eyes the ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Equality of opportunity does not exist where the rich and the powerful can buy schooling for their children. If Plato considered education to be essential for the continued existence of his state then perhaps we may take a leaf out of his book and decide on a proper system based on those forms of knowledge which every person needs as well as giving opportunity to develop the talents common to that person alone. How we do that is beyond the scope of this work though it would seem to be essential or our world is likely to dissolve itself in violence and in vice.
If loss of self-control and the despising of virtue be the corrupting influences in the state, according to Plato, then we may take at least this warning and agree that they are too the corrupting influences of all states. Violence breeds violence breeds more violence and where self-control is lost then anarchy is not far away. Nor may these things be imposed.
Of what value is law if it is enforced by armed police and spies in every household? Of what use is virtue if every transgression is punished with the utmost severity and men live virtuous lives only out of fear of what might happen if they transgress? In these situations once the guardians of the laws relax their vigilance then anarchy breaks out and rioting leads to the barricades and to civil strife the most ruinous of all wars.
Since the main characteristic of our dissolving civilisation is the love of pleasure and of entertainment, there is little hope that we are capable of achieving a willingness to act responsibly and to value virtue overnight. There is certainly no evidence that the political classes, even if the people achieved virtue, would be willing to relinquish power to the demos. Nor is it at all desirable that power should be taken away from those who misuse it by violence since what is born in violence inevitably continues by means of it.
There is however a lot of evidence that social and political changes for the better often come about by a sort of process of political and social osmosis from the lower to the upper classes. The various reform acts in the nineteenth century came about because the people were ready to be enfranchised. They came about because of a moral change in the thinking of the nation whereby the rulers realised that control by a minority of landed aristocracy and mega-rich business families was an injustice.
It is probably also true that corruption starts more often from the top than from the bottom of the social pyramid. It then works its way down until, often after several generations it reaches the lower level of society.
A change of heart, a revival of thinking, and a vision of better things often becomes the motivation for many from among the lower orders to educate themselves and to enlighten their fellows. While this goes on, increasingly the moral change among the workers affects and effects some change of heart among those who had traditionally exercised power and control.
Though Sartre, in Nausea, mocks the "autodidact", such people are heroes and heroines and not the parody presented by Sartre. They are not to be despised by those who by birth and not by talent have opened up to them the paths of power, of prestige and of preferment. Nor are they to be slighted for they are the hope for a better future by a society jaded by mass entertainment and "dumbed down" by cheap pleasures where the final bill is to be paid by a society where ignorance and vice make for inefficiency and idleness.
Walter Lipmann makes the point that every society and every culture needs a "public philosophy". This must consist of a set of standards of virtue agreed upon by the majority of the population. One might add that such a value system cannot be promulgated by the government, nor can it even be taught in the schools, nor is it to be made up by any one class for its own ends. It has to be what governs the thinking of the whole of the society because that society agrees that it is good and just and right.
Such a philosophy may seem impossible to conceive of or to implement. Such a philosophy will be resented by vested interests but will lead to equality of opportunity where all humanity is valued and where all education is of the first rate with the well-being of the individual in view. Such a philosophy is, as was described to one of old who wrote. “A new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you. And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you. And ye shall keep my judgments and do them.” (Ezekiel 36:25-27.)
The laws of a just society are to be agreed upon by all. They should be part of the very moral nature of all the people, written as it were on their hearts and their minds, and based upon an absolute set of moral values, where that vision of the good is open to all and not restricted to an elite.
Plato has much to teach us but we should beware of many of his ideas for they lure the ship of state into dangerous waters where shoals and treacherous currents make navigation perilous. Working class traditions, whatever the supporters of Platonic elites might think, in Britain and the USA, have been the real cradle of democracy and of all that is and has been good in those societies.
