Breakfast with Socrates

Breakfast with Socrates

Scene: The old man is alone on his back porch sipping his coffee. The sun comes up. He holds the cup in his two hands as if he is cradling a fledgling bird. He gazes out over the cup at nothing in particular. It is June and the sky is blue the trees green. There is the sound of birds singing. It is a beautiful new day.

The Old Man: [Talking to himself] Okay, we have all heard it a million times, ‘Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is insanity.’ 

Well, if that is the definition of insanity, I am all for it. Take Old Tom Edison for example, how many times did he tinker with the light bulb before getting it to light up. And all the while his wife was whispering in his ear, ‘Just give up. This is crazy. Tom, I need my sleep, blow out the candle and go to bed.’

This is the way I see it: there are all kinds of crazy including crazy in love, but that one, unlike the others, passes.

Crazy, how about paying five bucks for a bottle of water? Ask Tom Edison and his wife about that one. And this year this planet is going to buy over 30 billion bottles of it. That’s crazy, but who’s to argue.

Crazy, after all, is just a matter of opinion. You are crazy to wear an orange shirt with blue shoes. Well, Vincent Van Gogh liked orange and blue, and what did that get him? Hey, did you know that Van Gogh’s painting of a bunch of sunflowers raked in a cool 39 million dollars? And his arrangement of irises that he painted while in the nut house at St, Remy got 53 million. Turns out, back then, that everyone but Van Gogh was crazy.

Socrates says insanity is something like a divine release of the soul from custom and convention. No, actually he didn’t say that. I heard it in a play on Broadway. But he should have said that. No, he stuck to the party line that madness is something the gods give you for pissing them off. And what did Socrates get for his opinions, a complaining wife and a cup of hemlock.

Reality

The question has been around forever - "Does reality exist?" In other words, is there a world outside of our own thoughts?

Here today, gone tomorrow, but what happens to the world when we are gone? Does the merry earth continue to turn, the sun to rise, and the comedy and drama of life itself go on? To the self-absorbed, it doesn't matter. As for the old man, he hopes so.

Rene Descartes' simple declaration, "I think therefore I am," got enlightened philosphers asking the question anew. (Over 2,000 years ago, Socrates raised the question several times.) Descartes' original phrase was in French, "Je pense, donc je suis.", and appeared in his Discourse on the Method (1637). The phrase translated into Latin, becoming the familiar, "Cogito ergo sum."

The brevity of the Latin phrase has made the idea popular in W3estern Civilization classes in university campuses across the country. Of course, what Descartes meant by the five French words and the lesser three Latin ones, is what makes for a college course on philosophy.

So, if we take Descartes at face value, I exist because I am a thoughtful (and hopefully kind and caring) human being. But, what of the negative logical complement?

"I no think, no am I." I don't exist without thought. Of course, logicians would argue that Descartes only speaks to the individual, that the world goes on because there are other thoughtful individuals out there carrying on. And they might be right. But Descartes observed correctly that one can not vouch for others, only himself. Logicians themselves are illusions of rationality in an irrational reality.

The French were of course not the only ones to raise the question. Anyone of sane mind in any culture wonders from time to time whether this crazy world is real.

Across the English Channel, George Berkeley (1685 – 1753, titled Bishop Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne), advanced the theory he called "immaterialism", denying the existence of matter and suggesting that familiar objects like tables and chairs are only ideas, and cannot exist without being perceived. As all graduates of western civilization classes know, Berkley was plagarizing in toto this idea from Socrates. Today, Berkley would be kicked out of university.

I have always loved Samuel Johnson's response to Bishop Berkley's suggestion. The reply is reported by Boswell in The Life of Johnson (1791). The argument is short and I reproduce it in its entirety:

"After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."

Woody Allen made a joke of the question, “I hate reality but it's still the best place to get a good steak.”

All of this leaves the old man observing that some questions exist simply for the sake of argument (and college credit). Reality is a tough nut to crack. As with the day the World Trade Center was attacked by Al Qaeda, one wishes it all a dream. The same holding true for all natural calamities, epidemics, disease, personal difficulties, and death.

Reality

“Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.” Lily Tomlin

From time to time, the old man waxes philosophic, wondering, "What is reality?"

Megaloceros, an ancient deer, Lascaux from Wikipedia.

The Lascaux caves in France hint that man has been puzzling over this question since homo sapiens first climbed down from the trees and out of the forest. The intricate paintings these early homo sapiens left over 17,000 years ago suggest that man has been searching for intelligence in the universe from the very beginning of recorded thought and before that.

Almost 17,000 years later, the ancient Greek philosophers put the question to stylus and sheepskin parchment.

"What exists is what matters," Thales of Miletus (c.624-548 B.C.) suggested. Then again, Pythagoras of Samos (c.580-507 B.C.) found the nature of things not as important as their mathematical relationships. Others, including Socrates (c.469-399 B.C.) and his pupil Plato (c.427-347 B.C.), instead argued that it is "mind over matter," reality is in the "essence" of things, which brings one back to the punch line from a joke attributed to Satchel Paige (1906-1982). When asked by a reporter how old the old pitcher was, he responded, "Age is mind over matter, if you don't mind, it don't matter." Back to Lily Tomlin, who muses that answers don't really matter, for everyone has their point of view. What matters in life is to find someone who will listen.

Comedians seem to have a better grasp on the realities of life.