Lessons from the Theatre & Socrates
Good morning, everybody. Now I'm from the South Slope Of The Acropolis, but actually now at the Theater Of The Dionysius, which is where the famous play, The Clouds, was played, obviously, where ridiculed Socrates basically. Now I'm gonna share a bit about this because it's an important lesson in this. And this is from Donald Robertson, guys. He's done a lot of this research and stuff.
Speaker 1:I am not claiming to be a historian here. All the stuff I learn a lot about through his books and, just reading a lot of books about Socrates and stuff as well, coming across these things, but the important thing about this is, is like, that theatre was huge. It was something like, I'm looking around now, and I can only see about a fourth of those there. I think it goes all the way up and there would have been an unbelievable, unbelievable view. I'm looking at it now.
Speaker 1:These Athenians must have have been like, wow, I can't believe where we live. Like, there's literally theatres and shops and huge like amazing views and you know, that is luxury in my opinion, that is luxury, like I would love to have been able to just go to a theatre there in like two thousand five hundred years ago and I'd laugh, just honestly. Think if you think of the simple stuff in life, I mean they are nailed down basically. But anyway, let's go back to this play and why it's important. So essentially, they had a play where they made out that Socrates was they were they were obviously mocking him all the time, and they were basically trying to make out that he was just like an idiot basically, but Socrates was completely indifferent to this.
Speaker 1:He didn't react at all to it, and it's essentially the precursor of stoicism in a sense. It's like, look, it's not the things that disturb us, it's our opinion about things it does, and this is classic that Socrates was getting ridiculed in Athenian society on the main stage. It's kind of like being ridiculed on TV to millions of people every time, making out that you're an idiot, right, and just not reacting to it. Think about social media, for example. Someone calls you an idiot in social media.
Speaker 1:It's one comment on an Instagram post. You lose your head. This is at the they're at the biggest scale of all. And Socrates is, like, a central character in this play called the clouds, and you would basically display them as a pompous buffoon, cross between a philosopher and a sophist. So, sophistry or sophists were people who would talk a lot of sense in a sorry.
Speaker 1:They would seem like they talk a lot of sense. They would charge a hell of a lot of money to to talk. So they would public talk, and they'd say, yeah. Give me $25, and I'll come and talk a lot like these modern day so called philosophers who charge 200 k a talk, and I'm talking about you Jay Shetty, even Ryan Holiday charges an astronomical amount for like a one hour Q and A, and it's like, are you a stoic or are you a sophist? I understand you need to make money to live, but surely, like, you should not have a blanket to charge and everything.
Speaker 1:You should wanna share your wisdom and all this stuff, and if it's, you know, like, just blanketly charging all the time to talk as if it's his wisdom, his mental. It's not his wisdom, is it? He just he's just repeating what his stoics are saying. Anyway, so that's a sophist. They would make money from talking, and it seemed like it makes sense.
Speaker 1:They'd make you think, yeah, it makes sense, but it was all just kinda like scientism. It sounds like science, but it's not, which is the health and fitness issue. It's everything sounds right by these idiots online who say but always, like, diets to rebalance your hormones and all that stuff, and it sounds cool. And he always sees TikTok saying, oh, it sounds right, but it's not right. Anyway, so they made out that, basically, he charged high fees to reveal his wisdom.
Speaker 1:That's why they try to make up sausages this person, dirty beggar type of person, and and if members of a cult followed him. Right? So this has the same. And then this is what Donald says in Plato's apology. Socrates is seen as defending himself during his trial for corrupting the youth of Athens.
Speaker 1:That's what they charged him for, corrupting the youth of Athens. So these plays essentially led to his death because people's opinions were changed by them. Even though they were false, people started believing in what the plays were saying. Right? And he mentions that the charges aren't the real reason he's been brought to trial.
Speaker 1:Amongst other thing other things, he's unjustly acquired a bad reputation among the Athenian public because slanderous rumors spread about and fueled by the police. Right? Makes sense. And this is what it says. Well, what do the slanderers say?
Speaker 1:These shall be my prosecutors, and I will sum up their words in Afid Afid Vati. Afid of it. Afid of it. Can I speak English? Socrates is an evildoer and a curious person who searches into things under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause.
Speaker 1:And he teaches the aforesaid doctrines to others. Such is the nature of the acquisition. It is just what you have yourself seen in the comedy, who has introduced a man who he calls Socrates going about and saying that he walks on air and talking a deal of nonsense concerning matters, of which I do not pretend to know either much or little. Not that I mean to speak of anyone who is a student of natural philosophy. I should be very sorry if Meletus could bring so grave a charge against me.
Speaker 1:But the simple truth is, o Athenians, that I have nothing to do with the physical speculations. Very many of those here present are witnesses to the truth of this, and to them I appeal, as little foundation is there for the report that I am a teacher and take money. This accusation has no more truth than any other. So that's what Plato says, which is what he's a big follower of Socrates, that he was defending himself. Right?
Speaker 1:But Socrates, in a sense, didn't want to fight them. He didn't care about trying to overturn. He already was like, 'Look, these people think what they think. I'm never going to change their mind. Neither do I want to admit that I am at fault of corrupting the youth because I haven't done so.' but they were saying to him basically, as long as you just admit you did it, and then you might not die, and he's like, nah, you think I'm scared of death, mate?
Speaker 1:You think I'm scared of dying? I'm ready to die, and you know, just didn't even let him corrupt him at the end, which is interesting. So, Diogenes Laertius, who wrote a book about, like, all these, like, ancient characters, it's quite a good read, but it's quite hard sometimes. He said, Socrates said, we ought not to object, he used to say, to the subjects for the comic poets, for if they satirise our faults, they will do us good. And if they do not and if they do not touch us and if not, they do not touch us.
Speaker 1:There's also a story that during one performance of the clouds, foreign visitors to the Athenian festival could be heard whispering, who is this Socrates? Socrates silently rose from his seat, making himself visible to the rest of the audience. Although they didn't know him, the foreigners would probably have been able to recognize features from the caricatured on stage by the actor's comic mask. In other words, he wasn't ashamed of being ridiculed as a pompous buffoon on stage but took it with good grace. Now, I've said a lot there, and some of it might make sense to you, some of it might not, and I'm just standing right here where he would have stood up basically, so I'm looking at the theatre right now where he would have stood up and made himself made himself visible to, like, this is me, I don't mind people taking a piss out of me, you can do it, if people gain from their happy days, if you get a laugh from their happy days, if I'm of course a man of fault, I am not perfect, as he would say, he also famously said he knows nothing.
Speaker 1:You know, Oracle of Delphi was like, yeah, the the most the wisest of the wisest is this man Socrates, and he was like, it's not true, I know nothing. And in a sense, like, people didn't like him, And the Socratic questioning comes from Socrates, you know, like the the ability to get deeper into questions, asking simple questions lead on to more on. Vic from Moonneck, another shout out to you, is a business lawyer, and I'm sure she would have come across a private question, and I'm sure they trained in it. And essentially, like, what I've noticed from reading on Socrates, some of the ancient Stoics, the Buddha Krishnamurti is that they're very precise with what they say in their languages. They ask questions for definition, they never let a label get run away from them.
Speaker 1:So we live through labels, so you live through a label of I'm Scott, and you've already got a label for who I am or what I do, and therefore you essentially don't do your own seeing of who Scott is, you've already made that image has already been created by other people, and it's in your head, and there's no more acquiring into it, I've got happy dates. Same for things like anxiety, like people have told you what anxiety is, it's bad and stuff and there's no more inquiring by you as to what anxiety is or someone may say to you like, you know, it might be annoying. Socrates would say something like, who is, you know, what do you mean by friend? And then some of you might be like, oh, shut up. I don't wanna talk about what you mean by friends, you idiot.
Speaker 1:Of course, what do you mean by friends? We all know what friends means, but what is your definition of a friend? Basically, You go deep into what you mean by friend? What you mean by protecting your friend? And then you go, what you mean by protecting?
Speaker 1:And you can see how annoying this would get to people who just don't want to go deeper into things. They just don't wanna know, don't wanna explain themselves, but this is what all the kind of, like, wisest people in the world have done is they've they've essentially want to be so precise with what they say, with the definitions that they see what they trip themselves up. That make sense? They see that where labels trip ourselves up. They see that just taking what other people have said about something as a fact is wrong, and we work from labels and therefore we we work from the description.
Speaker 1:So the description isn't the described. Does that make sense to you? So the description of the tree isn't the tree, the description of your feeling of anxiety isn't the actual feeling itself, And you have to really be someone who inquires into these things to look into it, and that's essentially what I believe the start of wisdom is, is you can do it yourself right now, is to really question your definitions, your labels. Are you walking around day to day just using labels as a way to navigate, which makes sense because it speeds up the process, like that's a tree, that's a house, that's work, that's Tom, that's just Janice, and you just labels are happy days, but because we have labels, we never see the truth in the moment. We never see the actual, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:And I think we can do this ourselves looking internally. You feel sad, and you've already then labeled that feeling as sad, and that sad label has already got the description that you probably haven't come up with. I mean, we know we do have to go from definitions, but they are skewed, and then you've got this kind of bad connotation of what sad means, and you don't want to be sad, and then you fight there basically, as opposed to going you know what, like let me just look at this and see what it means, what's happened there, what's what's my perception of this, And that's a that's a start looking at things with indifference. Think about it. Socrates would say, I'm indifferent to things.
Speaker 1:I delay judgment on things. I'm able to see something and not react instantly, which most of us do. And then Krishna Murti would say choiceless awareness. Can you observe without choice, without wanting to accept, wanting to deny, without wanting to change? Can you just observe?
Speaker 1:Right? And it's a similar thing. They're saying similar things get into a similar answer in a sense. So can you observe without choice? Can you observe something say that's good or bad?
Speaker 1:Can you observe saying is that ideal or pretty? Can you observe without any of that, without any of the labels and words, and in a sense of Socrates' wisdom, can you be indifferent to things happening to you, delay judgment and be responsive versus reactive, and that's the start of stoicism, but Socrates was the first one to be in that way, A lot of us take things personally so fast that we think there is no time between something happening to us and our reaction. For example, my friends with me in Athens now, and he's going out with this girl right from back home, and she went on a date with one of my other friends, went on a date, saw him and, you know, for a moment and he doesn't believe, he doesn't know because she said one white lie to him. He does, he knows things because she said one white lie, she might lie about them. And I'm like, that's just stupid.
Speaker 1:That doesn't even make logical sense. Like, lie doesn't mean you can lie about everything. Like, you could she could have said to you 2,000 truths and one lie, so 99.9 of the time she's speaking truth. Anyway, I wind him up so easy. I laughed my head off and like, oh, may I gotta tell you something?
Speaker 1:No. No. They definitely did kiss. And he's like, no, boy. Serious?
Speaker 1:And I'm like, no. Joking. He's like, no. He's serious. I'm like, look.
Speaker 1:I'm joking, man. I'll do that every few hours for the for the for the day. And every time I'd say it, I can see his head turning, I'd say no, no, seriously, I need to tell you something. Right? And I'll start laughing and I and he'd go I know you're I know you're joking and I'll wait about five seconds and I'm watching him and I was like an experiment for and I can see his brain turning and he's like, no, and he can't help it but react to it.
Speaker 1:I think Anna can, you know, she's okay, I'm gonna what happened, tell me tell me what happened and it's like, can you just observe that mess that's happening there without reacting like it is and we were talking about it and he's like it's hard to do it because it's quite instant and we were talking like why is it that he is reacting that way all the time, it's out of insecurity of course but it's because the self, the ego basically wants to, wants security at all times, it must have security, it must have security in everything and the actual the actual thing out of this is the reality is there is no security in anything, there's no security in your relationships, there's no security in life, there's no financial security, there's, you know, in a sense you might have some social security but like you're wiped out, there is no security in life, but the ego tries to get it and it's trying to get the impossible. So he's trying to now control the fact that he would love it if his current girlfriend would never lie again, and because she's in one white lie, his insecurity is that he wants to make sure that she never lies again, or that he wants that security that anything she says is not a lie.
Speaker 1:Think of how crazy that is, and that's an automatic reaction of the insecurity that he has to watch out for, and, you know, he needs a bit of Socrates in him where you'd be indifferent to if someone said that she did this or that, and you'd see the truth for yourself, and you wouldn't react basically, but it's harder, it's easier for seven then obviously, but I think that's probably the most important, one of the most important, I don't know if you'd call it a skill, but being able to observe without choice, observe with indifference is probably one of the most life changing things any of us can do. Otherwise, we are slaves to people who can pull on our emotions. Ali just said to him, you're my slave right now. He's like, say, I can literally say, oh, mate, she did. I think, look, I'm I'm gonna tell you something that she did do it.
Speaker 1:And he's just losing his head, complete stress response, crazy. And you might be last, god, you've been pretty well. I was like trying to tell him, mean, you're literally my slave. I can say words, mere words that's made up out of my mouth and you will react in such a responsive way, panicking, that it completely disrupts you. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's what's happening. And we have to watch out for this. Who has that control over us? You know? Like, think about in your own life.
Speaker 1:Who has that control over you? Who can do that to you? And the answer, I ideally should be nobody should be able to say a word and and make you react in such a way, but I think it is hard to do it. But if we can just bring some of that to our life today, if we can just try and be indifferent to the things that happened to us today and respond, said react, understand it's all opinions on things, not the things that happen, that is the the thing. Like like Socrates, obviously, was getting ridiculed.
Speaker 1:His opinion on it was could be a good thing. Your opinion on it or Will Smith's opinion on it. You ridicule me, and I'll slap you. Who are you to ridicule me? And it's like, come on, mate.
Speaker 1:Be better than that. But maybe he's not. That's it, guys. That's my little lesson about good old Socrates today. And, I'll probably do another I'll probably do another podcast from another location and I'll share something from that.
Speaker 1:But I'm off now, guys. Off on a walk, off to get the coffee, and, off to it one day at a time. See you soon.
