Topic: Plato's five regimes (Read 274 times)

Still, whether you like government, authority or not, these systems, more so on authority was put in place because there were desires for more safe, less criminal envoirments. If these figures with a role of authority completely lose their grip on the power they currently possess then we would be in a state of anarchy, considering all the violent crimes, wars and other nasty things that go on in this world a likely assumption is that these criminal groups or individuals only gain more power because of the absence of a central authority or power. Thus a tyran could rise with absolute power in the midst of chaos promising justice and what not to its fearfull people. I think that the present state of the world has little to do with whether Plato is right or not, it is simply a deduction of how a state of government passes from one phase to the other and the psychological effect of its citizens with each phase.

Same as why he's right on democracy that it is a degenerative form of previous governmental systems. People are more individually focussed on their own desires and pleasures, profit means everything today to the point that we ignore ecological consequences of short sighted gains and interests.

AI is great I agree but we are far from replacing jobs with AI on a mass scale. Plus the transitioning will require a lot of adapting from societies around the world, even if AI would go really fast, humans are likely incapable of switching just as fast.

We are currently living at such time when old system of values has collapsed but new one has not been formed yet.
If we are heading towards Tyranny or towards period of emancipation depends purely on the framework in which human society continues to operate.

It looks like that Internet-based informal Economy that can not be controlled by any national government will become ever only more prevalent which can gradually lead to extinction of all overreaching authorities denying tools necessary to implement effective Tyranny.

If Anarchy would be the final outcome than world would be nothing as we could currently imagine or as Plato ever could. Assuming Humanity would be granted 100 percent unemployment through support of AI based robots there is really no reason to fear such outcome.

Bump

In the eye of this section being pre-dominantly focussed on chewed out philosophical debates such as money and happiness or the definition of relationships and virtue's such as luck. I thought it would be interesting to delve into a gem of greek philosophy which are plato's 5 forms of regimes. Which not only address certain types of government but also strike a finer point still revelent today as seen in the second form of regime of plato which is timocracy. Now in the ideal regime of aristocracy plato divides the population into categories based on the purity of their soul. Golden souls are the selfless types, the ones who have turned the mind into an effective tool of reason and logic and understand that money, power and other degenerative pleasures like that are a fool's pleasure. A person with a golden soul can be seen as a King philosopher, the ultimate governer who acts out of selfless interests and with purity of the heart. Making balanced decisions that may truely benefit all. Then there are the silver souls who can be regarded as a nations soldiers and enforce the rules set by the philosophers on the population with bronze or iron souls. Bronze and Iron souls are allowed to have property whereas silver and gold are not so in order to ensure these pure men do not become corrupted by false pleasures. The Iron and Bronze souls in return for their merit to sustain themselves, own land, produce goods have to support their ruling class.
A good example of a man with a golden soul who's accomplished in philosophy would be King Solomon.

Where am I going with this you might ask? Plato set the five regimes as inherently connected to eachother. Each following regime is a degenerative of the pervious one, democracy is the 4th regime and after democracy the regime would degenerate into Tyranny. Plato asumed democracy where freedom is the main good is also its slavery. As the poor classes become larger and larger a state very similar to anarchy starts to reign as people start breaking laws. The democratic man as stated by Plato is consumed by uncessary desire (sound familiar?)
The democratic man takes great interest in his money and all the things it can buy and does whatever he wants, whenever he wants aslong as money stretches his needs. There is no order and no priority. The degeneration of morals and ethics.

Now you starting to see why Plato's five regimes are still very relevant today. Where in democracy there is a rat race for riches and to be ''excused'' from wordly obligations to pursue pleasures and desire. Democracy then soon degenerates into Tyranny.

And in Tyranny chaos reigns, there is no discipline. Democracy was taken over by the longing of freedom. In Tyranny stability trough power must be maintained and along comes a champion that experiences absolute power, the champion soon transforms in a tyrant and comes closest to be fully lawless. Murdering and plundering at will. Such a man is consumed by beastly desires, whether rich or poor, his lawless actions ensure his claim of power and he becomes absorbed by paranoia in fear of reteliation for the many unlawfull acts he has commited. Eventually he becomes secluded, trapped within an envoirment like his house, trapped in his own fearfull mind.

How close do you think we are to this tyrannic event? We have already seen a democracy such as Turkey degenerate into tyranny led by Erdogan who has no problem accusing innocent of consipiring against him and is slowly turning into this tyrant as prophesized by Plato.

Blockchain technology and financial freedom to do whatever and where ever we want is clearly illustrated by Plato to be one of the urges for freedom which ironically is also our own slavery. Plato provides no solution and sees this as a natural effect where the uneducated masses driven by their wordly desires and urges for quick pleasure take over. The 5 regimes starting with the only one that could ever really work a selflessman who is wise and educated in philosophy aka the philosopher king slowly degenerates into illusionary governing models where the unwise and uneducated become imprisoned by their own actions and desires.

Is Plato wrong? Or are we indeed kidding ourselves? Is it to late to prevent a tyrannical event from happening? Where society slowly dissolves into Chaos? Are there better types of governing? Is this all natural order and such as the philospher king who is detached from wordly outcomes and emotions, who can remain rational and logical at all times should we do the same and watch as the world slowly burns itself around us?

We can see very clearly that democratized countries such as India where rapes are occuring astounding figures. In countries like the US where mass shootings, race violence and other events are a day to day reality. Where in Europe the spree of shootings and terrorist attacks seem to increase every day. Is this not the democratic anarachy like state that plato predicted any democratic state or country would end up with. Resulting in a need of order and the rise of a tyran?

Has plato predicted our doom? Democracy as most can agree isn't the best form of governing but it is better than most, is it? The second regime of Plato which is timocracy can be defined by the bronze souls overthrowing the philosopher kings, where now as opposed to the aristocracy the ruling classes are able to act upon individual pleasures and desires.
Which is a direct degenartive of the 1st regime where the ruling classes are supported by the plebs and cannot pursue individual interests and desires.
If we would stop democracy now we would most likely end up with a timocracy or a medieval kingdom fueled by feudalistic models.
If we don't stop democracy will we see tyranny reign? Will the world be nothing more than a race of arms, never ending desire for power, money and murder?