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So I just read my first Socratic dialogue (watch for the next five books of 2007!) and now I understand why so many people I respect say they want to be like Socrates and Jesus.
Now, as a believer myself, trying to be like Jesus should be my number-one goal, but it's tough because he's, you know, God. Socrates, however, just a man. So maybe I can emulate him first, as a stepping stone.
Socrates was all about doing the right thing no matter what. He, like Jesus, fully expected to be executed some day because he would never say pleasing things just so people would like him.
It reminds me of something I read earlier this week about someone who threatened to drop out of Mormondom if President Packer became the prophet. That's a pretty good policy, as I'm sure God the Father is easily cowtowed and now he will pick whoever you want. It certainly worked in oldentimes. Don't like Jeremiah? Not pleasing enough for you? Here, take a fake of your choice.
Anyway, off subject. Socrates!
So I can easily agree that it is better to suffer wrong than to commit wrong. So far I totally agree. And I agree that it is better to be punished than to continue to sin your way all the way to hell.
But I don't agree that cooking can't be an art.
Suck on that, Socrates.
I'm sorry. And you just take it without fighting back.
I hate you.
But I also really really respect you a lot.
I better go now.....
Which dialog was that, wherein he said cooking isn't an art? And was that his final point or just one of the many he made along the way?
ReplyDeleteIn defense of said threatening person, who may or may not be me or a very close friend of mine, I don't think it's so much an attempt to kowtow God as a final acknowledgement that the Church isn't where said person wants to be.
ReplyDeleteNot, of course, that it's a good idea. Just that it's maybe not quite as silly as you're making it sound.
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ReplyDeleteOh, I make everything sound silly.
And it is kowtow? I thought so, but in checking a couldn't find a definition that struck me as just so.
Grogias. And it was a peripheral point.
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ReplyDeleteSee, cooking is just pandering, because anything done solely for pleasure and not to improve either body or soul is pandering and unworthy of the righteous person's efforts. Or, at least, not worthy of claims to be an art.
The problem for me, of course, is where does this put fiction?
As for writing in general and blogging specifically, one thing that maybe should be understood about me is that I never know what I have written till I've read what I've wrote, and last night there was a salad with my name on it that someone else was eating. So I never read this blog--still haven't in fact--so I don't really know what it said or whether everything fit together or even whether it was really worthy of the name svithe. But right now I have homework. Maybe after that I'll actually read this WWSD? thing and see what I was likely speaking of. If, in fact, meaning is still possible to uncover. Otherwise, it will be a great mystery.
Spinning mysteries: art or pander? Discuss.
Making everything sound silly is definitely not something Socrates would approve though....
One week a disciple and already a failure!