Bardan Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 Concerning Socrates...I once heard a story about children who were driving their Mum and Dad crazy leading up to Christmas. The children would rattle and peek at the gifts under the tree and before that snoop and spy to see what they were getting.Finally, a few days before Christmas, the parents were sick of this and offered to simply cancel the waiting the children were so unwilling to do and hand over the gifts. The children were delighted and said yes. So it was done.On Christmas day the children awoke and rushed to the tree as usual to open their gifts as a family. It was then that it occurred to them the gravity of what they had done. Christmas really was cancelled, replaced by a simple wealth transfer to satisfy an impulse that had long passed by now. It was now that they felt the full weight of the disappointment in this arrangement that their parents had seen all along and finally surrendered to. Somehow the children believed Christmas was going to happen just the same, that their parents would never let this happen and simply buy even more gifts that were just as good. Probably based on past experience of how easy it was to get their ma and pa to cave...Speaking of caves, Socrates' death at the hands of the Athenian State reminds me of this story. In the past I wrote it off as him being a state-worshiping boot-licker. But on the other hand, if he had rabbited on his death penalty, Western Civilisation would never have been the same. We are the children of the story and he is the Christmas that did not come twice but died and stayed dead to demonstrate the lesson of what it is to kill. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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