The Noble Lie Experiment, Part I

47 min readApr 3, 2023

“Make the LIE Big, Make the LIE Simple, Keep Repeating it.” Adolf Hitler

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Josef Goebbels

“Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear.” Hannah Arendt

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” John F. Kennedy

Have you ever wondered how we come to live a lifelong ‘cradle to grave’ business plan? Can that ideology go back over 2,400 years to when Plato (born 428/427 BC, died 348/347), the founding figure of intellectual foundations of Western civilization, wrote The Republic?

The ancient Greek philosopher featured his mentor Socrates in various dialogues on structuring society, politics, and the educational system for the “ideal just society.” His student Aristotle taught Alexander the Great. In 529 AD, Emperor Justinian I closed the Academy Plato founded for being pagan. But during the Italian Renaissance — as Louis XI began experimenting with founding France as a nation-state model — Plato’s Academy was revived.

According to CUNY Academic Commons:

“Pretty much all western philosophy, occult philosophy being no exception, stems from Plato and Aristotle. Neoplatonism, the foundation for much of later occult philosophy, naturally stemmed from Platonism starting with (as it is generally considered) Plotinus and developed further by Porphry, Iamblicus, and Proclus in the first few centuries CE.”

In my last article, I explore how two fairly recent European inventions — the state and the corporation — have systemically enabled the philosophical foundations of western culture to go global, riding on Plato’s Thirty Tyrants’ paradigm.

A corporation is a “social invention of the state.” Richard Robbins

“The historical purpose of big corporations is to organize markets. In a sense, that is all corporations are — organized markets. Professor Edward S. Mason of Harvard says: “As a firm grows, transactions that could conceivably be organized through the market price mechanism are transferred to the administrative organization of the firm … And these corporations, by ‘owning’ part of the market, can dominate much more of it.” David T. Bazelon in late 1962

“A corporation is an externalizing machine in the same way that a shark is a killing machine. Each one is designed in a very particular way to accomplish certain objectives. In the achievement of those objectives, there isn’t any question of malevolence or will. The enterprise has within it, and the shark has within it, those characteristics that enable it do that for which it was designed.” Robert Monks, Corporate Governance

Mathias Hein Jessen on The Corporate State:

“… the state and the corporation are structurally similar or at least share some ‘family resemblance’. As Barkan points out in Corporate Sovereignty — Law and Government under Capitalism, the state and the corporation are both ‘collective entities composed of individuals united into a single body’ (corpus coming from the Latin ‘body’), they are both created or instituted through an ‘animating act of incorporation that establishes their legal existence’ (be it a charter with regards to a corporation or a constitution in regards to the state) and they are both collective entities or corporate bodies established ‘to achieve ends of government’. The legal historian Frederick W. Maitland also noted that while allowing that the state is a ‘highly peculiar group unit’, there seems to be ‘a genus of which State and Corporation are species’ …

There is no doubt that the state has acquired a privileged place in our political understanding as the embodiment of political sovereignty. In that sense, the state has become the universal corporation, whose government seeks the general or common good of a given political community. However, precisely because the state is itself a kind of corporation or corporate body, in seeking political sovereignty it needed to constitute all other corporations and corporate bodies as subordinate to and dependent upon its power, thereby constituting itself as the sole legitimate claimant to political authority and allegiance.

In medieval and early modern Europe, the legal structure of the corporation was not much used for commercial purposes, but rather for a wide variety of government ends, especially the Church, towns, cities and municipalities. A corporation was a legal and political institution that allowed groups of people to be united into a single body and consequently to own property, to sue and be sued, to have rights, especially to own property, and to have certain privileges, first and foremost to exist as a body independently of its members and thereby to exist in perpetuity.”

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “something invented” as

(1) : a device, contrivance, or process originated after study and experiment

(2) : a product of the imagination especially : a false conception

The idea of the corporation as a legal fiction distinct from the individuals who compose it has an ancient history stretching back to the Romans, and possibly even earlier to the Greeks … “it was applied to the old brotherhoods of priests and of artisans; then, by way of abstraction, to the State, which, under the name offiscuts, was treated as a person and placed within the jurisdiction of the court. Finally, to subjects of a purely ideal nature, such as gods and temples.” (Samuel Williston, History of the Law of Business Corporations before 1800)

In Theory of Fictions, Jeremy Bentham famously defines a legal fiction as “an assumed fact notoriously false, upon which one reasons as if it were true.”

“Bentham held that law is not rooted in a “natural law” but is simply a command expressing the will of the sovereign … Bentham’s criticisms here are rooted in his understanding of the nature of law. Rights are created by the law, and law is simply a command of the sovereign. The existence of law and rights, therefore, requires government …

According to Bentham, then, the term “natural right” is a “perversion of language.” It is “ambiguous,” “sentimental” and “figurative” and it has anarchical consequences. At best, such a “right” may tell us what we ought to do; it cannot serve as a legal restriction on what we can or cannot do … “natural right” … suggests that there are general rights — that is, rights over no specific object — so that one would have a claim on whatever one chooses. The effect of exercising such a universal, natural “right” would be to extinguish the right altogether, since “what is every man’s right is no man’s right.” No legal system could function with such a broad conception of rights …

Bentham concludes, therefore, that the term “natural rights” is “simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, — nonsense upon stilts.” Rights — what Bentham calls “real” rights — are fundamentally legal rights. All rights must be legal and specific (that is, having both a specific object and subject). They ought to be made because of their conduciveness to “the general mass of felicity,” and correlatively, when their abolition would be to the advantage of society, rights ought to be abolished. So far as rights exist in law, they are protected; outside of law, they are at best “reasons for wishing there were such things as rights.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

In The Corporation, Noam Chomsky opines:

“You have to impose on people what’s called a philosophy of futility. You have to focus them on the insignificant things of life, like fashionable consumption. The ideal is to have individuals who are totally disassociated from one another. Whose conception of themselves, the sense of value, is just how many created wants can I satisfy?”

“Corporations were given the rights of mortal persons, but then special kinds of persons, persons who have no moral conscience. … These are [a] special kind of persons which are designed by law to be concerned only for their stockholders, and what are sometimes called their stakeholders, the community or the workforce or whatever.”

Let’s explore whether the roots for living the first TRULY GLOBAL EXPERIMENT were laid over 2,400 years ago … I’ve only scratched the surface so please do your own research.

“We all heard of Sparta and the Spartans. The powerful city state in ancient Greece. The best warriors of the ancient world. The Spartans were brave, strong and skillful. They fought with spears and shields, wore leather underwear and had the best abs. But do you know that there were others who lived among the Spartans? A nation of slaves whose only purpose was to serve their masters? They were the helots, the subjugated and conquered people, the slaves of Sparta … it is tricky to keep a massive population of slaves living right next to you, and so the Spartans were always distrustful of helots. This distrust went as far as regular mass murders. Every year, the Crypteia, young men who just completed their training, would declare “war” on helots population. They would be allowed to kill as many slaves as they could, especially the strongest and fittest. This helped with keeping helots numbers at check and make sure they could not rebel … When the Spartans dominance eroded and Greece fell to Rome, helots still did not get their freedom. Instead of being slaves in Sparta, they became slaves in Rome. Their history interwove with those of the Romans slaves and soon enough their fate was forgotten and their existence faded into obscurity.” Paul Cathill

”They assign to the Helots every shameful task leading to disgrace. For they ordained that each one of them must wear a dogskin cap (κυνῆ /kunễ) and wrap himself in skins (διφθέρα / diphthéra) and receive a stipulated number of beatings every year regardless of any wrongdoing, so that they would never forget they were slaves. Moreover, if any exceeded the vigor proper to a slave’s condition, they made death the penalty; and they allotted a punishment to those controlling them if they failed … helots who became too Fat were put to death, with their masters fined for letting them get fat …” Myron of Priene in the 3rd century BC

When the 30-years Peloponnesian War started, Plato was a mere toddler and when it ended, the author of The Republic was in his twenties.

After Athens’ defeat by totalitarian Sparta, Plato experienced eight-months of pro-Spartan oligarchy rule, led by his second cousin. Critias has been described by Philostratus as “the most evil … of all men” (Lives of the Sophists 1.16) while Xenophon, a contemporary of Plato and a fellow student of Socrates, characterizes Critias “as a ruthless, amoral tyrant, whose crimes would eventually be the cause of Socrates’ death”:

“The reign of terror unleashed by the Thirty saw summary executions, property confiscations, and the exile of thousands of Athenian sycophants, democrats, and metics. Even Theramenes, one of the founding members of the Thirty, was executed without a trial after he dared to openly oppose Critias.

Another apparent victim of the Thirty was the still-exiled Alcibiades, who remained in his fortified estates in Thrace. According to the report of Alcibiades’ later biographers-Cornelius Nepos (Alcibiades 10) and Plutarch (Alcibiades 38.5)-it was his old supporter and fellow Socratic companion Critias who gave the assassination order in 403 BC.

There are indications that Critias had some degree of personal control over the Athenian cavalry class and over the Eleven, who acted as executioners (Xenophon, Hellenica 2.4.8). Critias also appears to have been the guiding force behind the more extreme elements of the Thirty as well as their unquestioned leader after the execution of Theramenes in 403 BC. He also appears to have been one of the chief law-givers of the oligarchy (Xenophon, Hellenica 2.3.49).” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

However, in four dialogues (Lysis, Charmides, Critias, and Timaeus), Plato portrays him “as a refined and well-educated member of one of Athens’ oldest and most distinguished aristocratic families and as a regular participant in Athenian philosophical culture.”

Did Plato’s elitist background condition him to believe the Spartans are the superior class? Since war was probably all he had known growing up, did his formative years also obsessed him with wanting control and to fear change?

To paraphrase Dr Bessell van der Kolk, when trauma occurs at an early age, the scars remain as it affects one’s development. The problems that arise are primarily related to attention. Coping mechanisms include an inability to stand up for self and burying one’s insecurities — either as a dependent and compliant people pleaser, fearful of the potential hurt, or becoming aggressive, arrogant, and distant.

(Fawning is a trauma response often developed in childhood where the abuser is a parent or a significant authority figure. To avoid abuse, children ignore their personal feelings and desires and do whatever is required to appease the abuser. Over time, individuals carry this pattern of behavior into adulthood and can be targeted by toxic people with a desire to control and manipulate).

“Totalitarian ideology is able to blackmail man through his inner cowardice. It threatens him into surrendering his innermost convictions in exchange for glamour and acceptance …” Joost A.M. Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing

According to History.com:

“Eugenics literally means “good creation … Plato may have been the first person to promote the idea … (as) he wrote about creating a superior society by procreating high-class people together and discouraging coupling between the lower classes. He also suggested a variety of mating rules to help create an optimal society.”

Was that why last century, both Abraham Maslow and B.F. Skinner had been supported to advocate that “a biological elite” or “an intellectual elite” be given power?

For Plato, the most important question in political philosophy is “Who should rule?” He had envisaged the ideal political leader to be a philosopher-king i.e. the wisest.

Did he write The Republic and start the Academy because he craved attention and wanted people to put him in charge to usher in an unnatural way of life dictated by the few?

For someone purportedly “the wisest,” the philosopher-king wanna-be seems oblivious to the complex nature of power and the role of leaders in shaping history. Or how power eventually corrupts, and absolute power absolutely corrupts.

Could The Republic have shaped our way of life from the top-down — often positioned as being in the best interest of society — as well as inspired plenty of nonsense in the centuries since?

For instance, “there is one source and one alone for the Atlantis story, and that is Plato’s text (pp. 1–2).” Christopher Gill, Plato’s Atlantis Story

According to Barack Obama: “The ideals that helped shape and develop the American democratic republic after 1776 owe a debt to the ancient civilization of Greece … Plato was an important influence, as he wrote about the importance of mixed government, an idea that is fundamental to both the development of the separation of powers and the US Constitution. Aristotle also wrote about the separation of powers as a crucial element in a republic.

Furthermore, the Ancient Greek principle deriving from the great philosophers that man is the measure of all things was the groundwork for humanism. And the ideals of freedom, equality and justice stem from humanism and the notion that man is capable of many things and his life does not depend on the whims of the gods.”

In The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization, Arthur Herman writes: “This is neither a history of philosophy nor a history of Western civilization. It is an account of the interaction of both, and “how everything we say, do, and see has been shaped in one way or another by two classical Greek thinkers, Plato and Aristotle. . . . And at the center of their influence has been a two-thousand-year struggle for the soul of Western Civilization, which today extends to all civilizations” (loc. 25).”

But consider that before Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press circa 1440, any ancient writer’s original works would have been handwritten.

Over the centuries, could Plato’s original works in ancient Greek have been drastically altered?

From the initial copying process to being translated into Latin/English/ whatever other languages by different people from different backgrounds, time periods, cultures, countries, and vested interests. So, even if a translator were to understand ancient Greek today, will he/she really be able to capture Plato’s original essence/intention?

Around 1462, Cosimo de’ Medici, founder of a main line of the Medici family that ruled Florence from 1434 to 1537, decided to re-found Plato’s Academy in Florence.

About then, financial difficulties had compelled Marsilio Ficino, scholar, astrologer and Catholic priest, to move to Bologna. On a visit to his father, a physician raised in the Medici Court under Cosimo’s patronage, Ficino met Cosimo who decided to make him his protégé, house him in a villa close to his in the Florentine countryside, and let him lead his new informal Academy.

Cosimo provided Ficino with a Greek version of Plato’s works, supposedly secured from Georgius Gemistus Pletho, an adviser to the Greek delegation at the Council of Ferrara-Florence. A Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, scholar, and senator from Constantinople who had written extensively on Plato and the Alexandrian mystics, Pletho also influenced Cosimo’s establishment of the Platonic Academy. He planted the seeds that would mature into the Platonic movement in Renaissance Italy.

As Ficino’s teacher and mentor in Platonic ideology, John Argyropoulos also imparted late pagan philosophy. Ficino published the first Latin translation of Plato’s Republic in 1484, and was in many ways, “the father of modern Hermeticism.”

How much of The Republic has been lost by copying, by translation and/or by design?

The thing about translation by people from a different era/culture:

‘Republic’ is the Latin term used to translate the original Greek word πολιτεία (‘politeia’) which means something like ‘the things of a polis’ (e.g., structures and processes for governing, customs and traditions — laws, rights and responsibilities of citizens and non-citizens, etc.), and this Greek word

πόλις (‘polis’) means something like ‘independently organized community’ — a sovereign country that is the size of a small town (maximum population: 50,000) in which the people (some citizens, some not) set up a community council, not a king.

For ancient Latin speakers, the closest thing they could think of in their experience and knowledge to the Greek experience was the res publica, which means ‘the public thing’ (Rome was a republic for 400+ years before Augustus Caesar transformed it into an empire in 27 BCE). So, ‘republic’ has been the accepted translation of ‘politeia’ ever since the Roman statesman Cicero (who considered himself a philosopher) wrote his dialogue De re publica between 54 and 51 BCE, inspired by Plato’s work. Plato’s dialogue Politeia (Republic) is titled that way because of a thought experiment.” Eduardo Hope Jr

“ … the true antecedents of this “thought reform” are the mind-control techniques developed by Lenin and Stalin after the Bolshevik Revolution, then adopted by Hitler and the Nationalist government in China before being honed to demoniacal perfection by Mao. A broader perspective might have illuminated the deeper reasons why 21st-century China is becoming a place where no one, not even the philosopher, can speak truth to power.” Martha Bayles, ‘Plato Goes to China’ Review: When Ancients Serve Ideologues

The Grandstanding Myth

“Oligarchies date back to the 600s BCE when the Greek city-states of Sparta and Athens were ruled by an elite group of educated aristocrats. During the 14th century, the city-state of Venice was controlled by rich nobles called ‘patricians’.” Robert Longley

In The Republic, Plato presents the concept of the Noble Lie — how for ideal societies to function, there needs to be a grandstanding myth to unite them all.

In The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic, author Malcolm Schofield calls that:

“The Politics of Lying

Socrates’ introduction of the Republic’s notorious “noble lie” comes near the end of Book 3 (414b-c). “We want one single, grand lie,” he says, “which will be believed by everybody — including the rulers, ideally, but failing that the rest of the city.” Grand lie? Noble lie? G. R. F. Ferrari has a good note on the issue: “The lie is grand or noble (gennaios) by virtue of its civic purpose, but the Greek word can also be used colloquially, giving the meaning ‘a true-blue lie,’ i.e. a massive, no-doubt-about-it lie (compare the term ‘grand larceny’).” This is not the only point on which there might be argument about the translation. Some prefer to “lie” the more neutral “falsehood” (which need not imply deliberate deception), others “fiction ” (perhaps trying to prescind from questions of truth and falsehood altogether). Cornford had “bold flight of invention.” I think “lie” is exactly right. But the argument for that will emerge later, in section II.

The noble lie is to serve as charter myth for Plato’s good city: a myth of national or civic identity — or rather, two related myths, one grounding that identity in the natural brotherhood of the entire indigenous population (they are all autochthonous, literally born from the earth), the other making the city’s differentiated class structure a matter of divine dispensation (the god who molds them puts different metals in their souls). If people can be made to believe it, they will be strongly motivated to care for the city and for each other.”

Is the Noble Lie how an entrenched elite — the real rulers in the political realm — justify using deception to retain their status quo of control through fear?

Our Innate ‘Cradle to Grave’ (Lifelong) Roles?

“The ancient Greek city state of Sparta had a social hierarchy that was different from many of its neighbors. The top of the social pyramid was occupied by the two kings, whose powers were checked by a ‘council of elders’. These elders were chosen from the next class, the Spartiates. Below this aristocratic class was a middle class which was called the Perioeci. The lowest class, which was also the largest, in Spartan society was held a group known as the Helots … the descendants of the Messenians who were enslaved by the Spartans during the First Messenian War in the 8th century BC … the system collapsed in the 4th century BC. In 371 BC, the Spartans suffered a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Leuctra.” Wu Mingren

In 371 BC, Plato was almost sixty when the Battle of Leuctra ended the long dominance of Sparta.

Jacob Bell, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom, describes the “Noble Lie”:

“Imagine this … You are born into a political and social structure which has three classes. The class you are born into depends upon your lineage and will determine the career you have for your entire life. This structure is upheld by a noble lie which is embedded into each citizen of the city-state.

The lie claims that each citizen, being a creation god, has within him or her one of three metals. Those endowed with gold during creation are part of the ruling class. Those with silver are part of the warrior class. Those with bronze are part of the craftsmen and farming class.

Now, it is possible for someone of the gold demarcation to beget a child of silver or bronze status, and it is also possible, but rare, for someone of the lower classes to beget a child of higher status. It is also possible, but difficult, for someone to move up the classes during their lifetime.

Men and women receive the same education, and both are capable of ascending to the highest class, because in this society, the soul is more important than the structure of one’s body.

A plan of eugenics is established, and a careful strategy which seeks to breed the best with the best is enforced. Children are raised collectively and according to political and social dictation.

The silver and gold classes are not allowed to marry or have a private family. They are also not allowed to obtain private property or wealth. They are sustained on what is necessary and nothing more.

The bronze class is allowed more in way of material goods. They receive the biggest portion of their work as farmers and craftsmen, but they have no say in how the city is run. Rules and law come from the top down.

Education is rigid and includes both academic studies and athletics. What one is allowed to read is dictated by the ruling class; mass censorship is put into practice. They will tell you which poetry you can read, and they will destroy the rest. They will rewrite the works of great poets, allowing only the poetry that encourages moral behavior. The so-called immoral and amoral works are destroyed.

Say goodbye to much of Homer…

The city-state is closed off to immigration, and travel is discouraged. Everything must be closed off if this delicate and fragile political structure is to exist. Once so-called real knowledge is established, it must be permanent and unchanging. Once the myths are in place, they must be permanent and unquestionable. Questioning the structure of this society and attempting to enact change are both viewed with contempt.”

I couldn’t find how the metals in each of the three castes were determined but Plato appeared to believe people from aristocratic families should be rulers while the rest of us serve them, whether as guards or as producers.

Above all else, Plato rejected change and demanded adherence to protecting the guardians at all costs, children to be separated from parents at birth and raised in a communitarian setting, and all mimetic arts censured. Viewing change as the biggest threat to peace and stability, he tried to show that the unchanging nature of the State is what allows for political philosophy.

Because as long as the Guardian line (those who rule and oversee the Republic) is kept pure, the laws will never change. If human roles and the Platonic forms never change, won’t The Republic be able to claim to be the formula for successfully unlocking the key to constructing the perfectly ideal “just” society?

The Initial Legal Building Blocks?

“ … the legal code of capital does not follow the rules of competition; instead, it operates according to the logic of power and privilege.” Katherine Pistor, The Code of Capital

In the fourth century, with momentum built up from the sixth century:

“Plato makes an essential part of his whole scheme a system of rewards and punishments after death which would redress the injustices of this world. He was not the first to put forward such a scheme, nor the last, and his ideas were in due course to make their contribution to the Christian notion of Hell.” Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra, The Greek Experience

“After the collapse of the western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE, Europe suffered from frequent warring for nearly 500 years. Eventually, a group of nation-states emerged, and a number of supranational sets of rules were developed to govern interstate relations, including canon law, the law merchant (which governed trade), and various codes of maritime law …

In the 15th century the arrival of Greek scholars in Europe from the collapsing Byzantine Empire and the introduction of the printing press spurred the development of scientific, humanistic, and individualist thought, while the expansion of ocean navigation by European explorers spread European norms throughout the world and broadened the intellectual and geographic horizons of western Europe. The subsequent consolidation of European states with increasing wealth and ambitions, coupled with the growth in trade, necessitated the establishment of a set of rules to regulate their relations.

In the 16th century the concept of sovereignty provided a basis for the entrenchment of power in the person of the king and was later transformed into a principle of collective sovereignty as the divine right of kings gave way constitutionally to parliamentary or representative forms of government. Sovereignty also acquired an external meaning, referring to independence within a system of competing nation-states.” Britannica

In The Truth About Corporations, Jeremy Rifkin shares:

“We can really begin to take a look at the emergence of the modern age with the enclosure movements of the great European Commons in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. Medieval life was a collectively lived life … People belonged to the land. The land did not belong to people and in this European world, people farmed the land in a collective way because they saw it as a Commons. It belonged to God and that was administered by the church, the aristocracy, and then the local manors as stewards of God’s creation.

Beginning with Tudor England, we began to see a phenomenon emerge and that is the enclosure of the great Commons by parliamentary acts in England and then in Europe. First we began to take the great land masses of the world which were common and shared, and we reduced those to private property. Then we went after the oceans. The great oceanic Commons, and we created laws and regulations that would allow countries to claim a certain amount of water outside their coastal limits for exploitation. In this century, we went after the air and we divided it two air corridors that could be bought and sold for commercial traffic for airplanes and then of course, the rest is history.”

But experiments to legally create and control money/natural resources via nation-states, corporate raiders, central banking, manufacturing consent, etc. took place before that and the first Industrial Revolution.

Excerpts from The First Truly GLOBAL Experiment? Part II:

“Led by Simon IV de Montfort, a French nobleman who had made a name for himself during the Fourth Crusade between 1202 and 1204, it pitted the nobility of northern France against those in the south, and eventually involved King Louis VIII of France who established his authority over the south.

“Simon de Montfort became leader of those who wanted to reassert the Magna Carta and force the king to surrender more power to the baronial council. In 1258, initiating the move toward reform, seven leading barons forced Henry to agree to the Provisions of Oxford, which effectively abolished the absolutist

Anglo-Norman monarchy, giving power to a council of twenty-four barons to deal with the business of government, and providing for a great council in the form of a parliament every three years, to monitor their performance. Henry was forced to take part in the swearing of a collective oath to uphold the Provisions.” Wikipedia …

Two years before the Magna Carta, did King John and the Pope agree in the secret Treaty of 1213 that all the lands and seas become properties of the Church of Rome in perpetuity?

1215: On June 10th, nobles (wealthy landowners) forced King John to sign the Magna Carta (originally called the Articles of the Barons) at Runnymede so he would govern by old English laws from before the Normans came. Content of the 37 English laws, some copied, some recollected, some old and some new, was drafted by Archbishop Stephen Langton and the most powerful Barons of England.

The Magna Carta demonstrated how the power of the king could be limited by a written grant and allowed for the formation of a powerful parliament. The barons renewed the Oath of Fealty to King John on June 15th. The Magna Carta became the basis for English rights down to the freeman but not for the serfs.

The royal chancery produced a formal royal grant and copies were distributed to bishops, sheriffs and other important people throughout England.

The first English Parliament was convened to establish the rights of barons to serve as consultants to the king on governmental matters in his Great Council. The barons were selected and appointed by the King. From this, all sovereignty of the British Crown under Christendom shifted to the Templar Crown Temple in the Chancery …

12th and early 13th centuries: The clergy primarily taught law in the City of London. In 1218, a Papal Bull prohibited them from practicing in the secular courts (where the English common law system operated, as opposed to the Roman civil law functioning in the Church’s ecclesiastical courts).

Law began to be practiced and taught by laymen. To protect their schools from competition, first Henry II (r. 1154–1189) and later Henry III (r. 1216–1272) issued proclamations prohibiting the teaching of the civil law within the City of London. The common-law lawyers worked in guilds of law, modelled on trade guilds, which in time became the Inns of Court.

“The Inns of Court are ancient, unincorporated bodies of lawyers. For five centuries and more, the Inns have had the power to call to the Bar those of their members who have duly qualified for the rank of Barrister-at-Law. With the power of call goes the power to disbar and punish for misconduct, a power which has had to be exercised only infrequently. In modern times, education for call to the Bar and discipline are largely the business of joint bodies, but the four Inns of Court — Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, the Inner Temple, and the Middle Temple — remain distinct, as friendly rivals, each with its own property, duties, and functions.” Sir Robert Edgar Megarry, An Introduction To Lincoln’s Inn”

On the background of judges and lawyers into the sixteenth century making the cases, Pistor, the Columbia Law professor, shares: “The lawyers are often second or third born sons of wealthy families that didn’t get the property and then became service providers, doctors or lawyers and the people who went into court or similar. So they typically come from literate gentrified elites … The legal institutions have not changed much over the last four or five hundred years. We’re talking about contract law, property law, collateral law, corporate law, trusts law and bankruptcy law.”

According to Jordan Maxwell:

“By the mid-18th century, as almost every aspect of daily life was transformed for the development of trade and business, Britain became the world’s leading commercial nation, controlling a global trading empire … around 1868, there was a company incorporated and in that particular company, the founders of that company referred to it as the United States Corporation and they stipulated that anybody who would be a member of that corporation or work for their corporation would be called not an employee but a citizen … (this) means you are an employee of a foreign corporation operating on the international maritime law. So today, the president of the United States is the president of a privately owned company.

The company is called United States and the word president is always a word that is used in corporate law. Banks have presidents …”

All Perfectly Legal

“The mainstream media are part of a closely integrated corporate and political system, and they consistently serve as a propaganda arm of the state on foreign policy issues.” Edward S. Herman

In Why leaders lie: The truth about lying in international politics, John Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, observes:

“When I began this study, I expected to find abundant evidence of statesmen and diplomats lying to each other. But that initial assumption turned out to be wrong. Instead, I had to work hard to find the cases of international lying … Leaders do lie to other countries on occasion, but much less often than one might think … [They are] more likely to lie to their own people about foreign policy issues than to other countries. That certainly seems to be true for democracies that pursue ambitious foreign policies and are inclined to initiate wars of choice, i.e., when there is not a clear and imminent danger to a country’s vital interests that can only be dealt with by force.”

Is that because most of us are oblivious to how international law and international treaties work or what Walter Wriston, chairman and CEO of Citicorp/Citibank, let on in an interview on why Citibank got involved in credit cards: “Well, the world was partitioned …”

For example:

To divide up the world market among themselves, three European news agencies, Havas, Wolff and Reuters — all subsidized by their respective governments — controlled information markets in Europe by signing a treaty:

“The French Havas Agency (ancestor of AFP) was founded in 1835, the German agency Wolff in 1849 and the British Reuters in 1851. The US agency, Associated Press (AP) was established in 1848, but only the three European agencies began as international ones; not until the turn of the century did an American agency move in this direction. From the start, Reuters made commercial and financial information its specialty, while Havas was to combine information and advertising …

The resulting association of agencies (ultimately to include about 30 members), became known variously as the League of Allied Agencies (les Agences Alliees), as the World League of Press Associations, as the National Agencies Alliances, and as the Grand Alliance of Agencies. More commonly, it was referred to simply as the ‘Ring Combination’ (Desmond, 1978). In the view of some it was a ‘cartel’, and its influence on world opinion was used by governments to suit their own purposes (Boyd-Barrett, 1980; Mattelart, 1994).

The basic contract, drawn up in 1870, set ‘reserved territories’ for the three agencies. Each agency made its own separate contracts with national agencies or other subscribers within its own territory. Provision was made for a few ‘shared’ territories, in which two, sometimes all three agencies had equal rights. In practice, Reuters, whose idea it was, tended to dominate the Ring Combination. Its influence was greatest because its reserved territories were larger or of greater news importance than most others … ‘The major European agencies were based in imperial capitals. Their expansion outside Europe was intimately associated with the territorial colonialism of the late nineteenth century’ (Boyd-Barrett, 1980: 23).

After the First World War, although Wolff ceased to be a world agency, the cartel continued to dominate international news distribution.” Fakhar Naveed, The Era of News Agencies

The year before the world’s first longest, deepest and most widespread depression, Edward Bernays, the ‘father of public relations,’ published Propaganda. Through ‘the engineering of consent,’ Sigmund Freud’s nephew provided leaders with the means to “control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it.”

Instead of appealing to the rational mind, he had targeted the unconscious. Hired by corporations and governments to use emotions against humans, Bernays believed:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of … It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.”

“International law” as defined by the Legal-Dictionary:

The body of law that governs the legal relations between or among states or nations.

To qualify as a subject under the traditional definition of international law, a state had to be sovereign: It needed a territory, a population, a government, and the ability to engage in diplomatic or foreign relations.

States within the United States, provinces, and cantons were not considered subjects of international law, because they lacked the legal authority to engage in foreign relations. In addition, individuals did not fall within the definition of subjects that enjoyed rights and obligations under international law.

A more contemporary definition expands the traditional notions of international law to confer rights and obligations on intergovernmental international organizations and even on individuals. The United Nations, for example, is an international organization that has the capacity to engage in treaty relations governed by and binding under international law with states and other international organizations.

Individual responsibility under international law is particularly significant in the context of prosecuting war criminals and the development of international Human Rights.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) was established in 1945 as the successor to the Permanent

International Court of Justice (PICJ), which was created in 1920 under the supervision of the League of Nations (the precursor to the United Nations) …”

“International treaties” as defined by the Legal-Dictionary:

“A compact made between two or more independent nations with a view to the public welfare.

A treaty is an agreement in written form between nation-states (or international agencies, such as the United Nations, that have been given treaty- making capacity by the states that created them) that is intended to establish a relationship governed by International Law.

It may be contained in a single instrument or in two or more related instruments such as an exchange of diplomatic notes. Various terms have been used for such an agreement, including treaty, convention, protocol, declaration, charter, Covenant, pact, act, statute, exchange of notes, agreement, modus vivendi (“manner of living” or practical compromise), and understanding. The particular designation does not affect the agreement’s legal character …”

If international laws govern international treaties, why are there still wars between nations? Why is there even “Just war”?

“War: a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each other.” Paul Valéry

“Today, everything serves war. There is not one discovery which the military does not study with the aim of applying it to warfare, not one invention which they do not attempt to turn to military use.” Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov, What Was Man Created For? The Philosophy of the Common Task

Does a layperson have any real say in how we live a ‘cradle to grave’ role?

Perhaps it’s time to ponder over George Orwell’s Second Thoughts on James Burnham, author of The Managerial Revolution and The Machiavellians:

“What Burnham is mainly concerned to show is that a democratic society has never existed and so far as we can see, never will exist. Society is of its nature oligarchical, and the power of the oligarchy always rests upon force and fraud. Burnham does not deny that ‘good’ motives may operate in private life, but he maintains that politics consists of the struggle for power, and nothing else. All historical changes finally boil down to the replacement of one ruling class by another. All talk about democracy, liberty, equality, fraternity, all revolutionary movements, all visions of Utopia, or ‘the classless society’, or ‘the Kingdom of Heaven on earth’, are humbug (not necessarily conscious humbug) covering the ambitions of some new class which is elbowing its way into power. The English Puritans, the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks, were in each case simply power seekers using the hopes of the masses in order to win a privileged position for themselves.

Power can sometimes be won or maintained without violence, but never without fraud, because it is necessary to make use of the masses, and the masses would not co-operate if they knew that they were simply serving the purposes of a minority. In each great revolutionary struggle the masses are led on by vague dreams of human brotherhood, and then, when the new ruling class is well established in power, they are thrust back into servitude. This is practically the whole of political history, as Burnham sees it.”

In A Fairy Tale BAU Model?, I explore how alchemy is the (legal-tender) process of transforming one form of substance into another:

Like how you willingly exchange what’s real and natural (e.g. your blood, sweat and tears in the form of time, ideas, skills, knowledge, experience, energy, passion, rights, assets, etc.) for fiat, often to an artificial person legally modeled on the original corporate raiders to have no greater god than greed.

Was that made systemically possible by the creation of the Federal Reserve, after many financial panics in 19th century America?

“This Act (the Federal Reserve Act, Dec. 23rd 1913) establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs this bill, the invisible government by the Monetary Power will be legalized … The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking bill … The financial system … has been turned over to … the Federal Reserve Board. The board administers the finance system by authority of … a purely profiteering group. The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people’s money … From now on, depressions will be scientifically created.” US Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh

“Consider this: What are our financial sector’s two biggest cash cows? Answer: the housing market and pensions. Both are markets in which many of us are deeply invested.” Rutger Bregman

Then with the Nixon shock in August 1971:

“Sovereign money went from being backed by gold to being made legal tender (a fiat system — “currency that is not backed by a physical commodity, such as gold or silver, but rather by the government that issued it.” James Chen, Fiat Money

Hasn’t this legal tool finally enabled Central Banks to AIM For BOOM BUST Cycles? To scientifically create man-made depressions?

“The main dominant problem of the 20th century has been concentration of power in the hands of the few and the more you do that, the more you’ll get … once we get the next banking crisis, they will do all the wrong things because after each crisis, the regulators get more powers. That’s the wrong way. Then we get more crises. We have regulatory moral hazard and each crisis makes them more powerful. They have an incentive to have another crisis. They get even more powerful.

The measure of success of the central bank is whether we have boom bust cycles and ultimately, that can be much more painful and costly if you have big boom bust cycles. Big unemployment. Big dislocation. Great depression.” Richard Werner

“The rise of corporate power since the 1970s, and neoliberalism more generally, can therefore be seen as the privileging of one particular subject: the for-profit, publicly traded corporation. Whereas in the Keynesian welfare state, the primary political and wealth-creating subject was the individual worker, in neoliberalism it is the corporation. The corporation is the primary creator of wealth and growth in a neoliberal world and is its ideal subject — perfectly economically rational and free to move in pursuit of profit. This is why the corporation is granted privileges and exemptions from regulations and laws, and is privileged through favourable tax regimes, international mobility and special economic zones.” Mathias Hein Jessen

With top-down self-interests legally nudging our (predecessors’) participation in experiments to uphold Frederick Winslow Taylor’s “the system must be first” vision, has The Republic’s system of rewards and punishments self-organized how we create and grow the power of legal entities — willingly if unwittingly turning whatever’s real and ours — into a derivative with fiat?

“… a derivative is not an investment in anything real. Rather, a derivative is a legal bet on the future value or performance of something else. Just as one can bet on the horse, or the outcome of a sports game, financiers in London and New York make multi-billion dollar bets on how interest rates, foreign exchange rates, and share prices will perform in the future; or on what credit instruments are likely to default.” Sam Parker and Joe Mhlanga

For 2020 context, check out All of the World’s Money and Markets in One Visualization. Under the Derivatives section, note:

“Gross Market Value: $11.6T

Notional Value: $558.5T (Low end estimate)

Examples of derivatives

Futures contracts, Forward contracts, Options, Warrants, Swaps

Collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps are two derivative types that are now infamous for their roles in the 2008 financial crisis.”

“The notional value and market value both describe the value of a security. Notional value speaks to how much total value a security theoretically controls — for instance through derivatives contracts or debt obligations. Market value, on the other hand, is the price of a security right now that can be bought or sold on an exchange or through a broker.

Market value is also used to refer to the market capitalization of a publicly traded company and is determined by multiplying the number of outstanding shares by the current share price.” Investopedia

According to the Bank of the International Settlements, the 2023 Black Swan is a Derivatives Time Bomb.

Legally Molding Greater Fools?

“Education should aim at destroying free will so that pupils thus schooled, will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. . . . Influences of the home are obstructive; and in order to condition students, verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective … It is for a future scientist to make these maxims precise and to discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.” Bertrand Russell

Since every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets, hasn’t Plato’s system of rewards and punishments self-organized us to consistently grow the bottom line of artificial persons/legal fictions, increasingly with everything we own as they have no greater god than greed?

Excerpt from Why do we do what we do? aka the world we collectively create to live

Twenty-three years after the Bretton Woods Conference (officially known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference), John Kenneth Galbraith published The New Industrial State to share how capitalism had shifted from a market society to a hierarchical “industrial system” owned by a cartel of corporations he called the “technostructure.”

More than half a century ago, Galbraith had observed that instead of being market-driven, ground-up, our economy was organization-driven, top-down. Dominated by large industrial firms controlling around two-thirds of output in key sectors of the economy then, he saw how a global elite was usurping markets, fixing prices and controlling demand for long-term production planning. Today, the United States is a structured state controlled by the largest companies.

A predictive model for self organizing systems was a 1960 proposal by two cyberneticians (Heinz von Foerster was a key member of the Macy conferences) pitching how in “social interaction experiments,” “players are human subjects who interact with one another, (albeit) restricted by certain constraints … and in particular by a limited supply of a commodity (called ‘money’), which players must use in order to ‘purchase’ the channels of communication … as ‘trading with’ one another …

An essential feature is for the (electronic) connection system to be of two different kinds:

[the] ‘monetary connection system’ will be stationary and symmetric during one experimental run, although its structure can be changed from run to run.

The other kind will be called the ‘signal connection system’ and will constantly change as a consequence of the activity of the players.”

Within the system, money will then correspond “to raw material (or unutilized energy) in the real world. The kind of raw material does not matter … In general these individuals or corporations will organize the raw material into potentially saleable merchandise …” where “accumulated money” becomes “the wealth of the player” even as “the structure is continually changing. It depends upon, and comes into existence as a result of the trading activity of the players” … “We make the assumption that the players in the game of trading wish to maximize their average wealth … and it is arranged that each player in the game is at least aware of his own wealth at each instance. In reality we may have to motivate the players by converting their average wealth into a currency — such as real money — which is useable in the real world.”

For more, read The Whole World in Debt: Cui Bono?

Divide to Conquer?

“The invisible hand is a metaphor for the unseen forces that move the free market economy. Through individual self-interest and freedom of production and consumption, the best interest of society, as a whole, are fulfilled. The constant interplay of individual pressures on market supply and demand causes the natural movement of prices and the flow of trade.” Investopedia

Through boom-and-bust cycles, especially post the Nixon shock, hasn’t the fiat currency system become a casino the “invisible hand” orchestrates to have Greater fools ultimately surrender whatever’s theirs to it?”

Regardless of the tools used, when a legal fiction writes the rules, won’t it have every incentive to rig the game in its favor?

Born into this lifelong game, is that how top-down rules are set while gamification enables legal fictions to use motivating factors to get us to do whatever they want us to do?

For instance, the tactics e-commerce websites use to convince you to buy what’s in your shopping cart before you exit their platforms.

The difference between a game and a gamified economy:

“A game has the economy in service of the gameplay and game design. In a game, the focus is to build a project where the monetization is not the priority, it is the result. In building a game, the need is to have sustainable and balanced gameplay to grow a community.

The economy is experienced through the community that comes for Play.” Rafael Brown

“Game theory is concerned with decision-making in an interactive world such that the best decision of every decision-maker depends on what decisions others make. As a result, everyone in this interactive world, for advancing one’s self interests, will need to predict decisions of others.” Partha Gangopadhyay

In We, Robots: Staying Human in the Age of Big Data, Curtis White observes what’s hidden in plain sight:

“The ruling order has no moral right to rule because it makes its daily purpose the defeat of the future. The accountant’s logic that concludes that our “interest” is in “profit” assures a future defined by cruelty, but in the long run it will be understood as self-defeat.

National self-interest is thus indistinguishable from global legalized violence aimed at humans, the natural world, and ultimately being itself, before which our captains of the state stand with all the wonder of a gourmand before a steak. They’re going to eat it up.”

In Origins of the Game Theory of Law and the Limits of Harmony in Plato’s Laws, Arthur J. Jacobson explains the Plato angle:

“In his last dialogue, the Laws, Plato presents what we today can recognize as a game theory of law (with) citizens in the polis as players in a game … Political preparation of the game of the city is itself a game, because it is never possible to escape strategic interaction.

It is, however, a second-order game whose play paves the way for the first-order game of lawful strategic interaction. The second-order, political game at once completes the analysis of rationality and lays the groundwork for rationality to operate. The politics of the Laws is a game, but one whose actions and players differ from the actions and players of the first-order game. The action of the political game is lawgiving. The players are the gods and god-like men who serve as lawgivers.

The second-order, political game also has its own distinct rationality, linked to a payoff that is qualitatively different from the utilitarian payoffs of the first-order game. The Athenian calls the rationality of the second-order game “intelligence.” He calls the payoff associated with it “joy,” as distinct from the “benefits” associated with utilitarian rationality. The players in the second-order game seek to maximize joy, not benefit. Joy is the experience of play. The payoff of players in the second-order game is the game itself, not a benefit collateral to playing it. The second-order game is a “true” game, one that the players enter in order to play, not to get utilitarian payoffs.”

Second-order design: “Games are rules and structures that guide the player, but the experience only happens through player activity with the game.”

“The greater fool is actually an economic term. It’s a patsy. For the rest of us to profit, we need a greater fool — someone who will buy long and sell short. Most people spend their life trying not to be the greater fool; we toss him the hot potato, we dive for his seat when the music stops. The greater fool is someone with the perfect blend of self-delusion and ego to think that he can succeed where others have failed. This whole country was made by greater fools.” Aaron Sorkin

Our entire debt-based system is based on future returns where we trade with whatever we have to live/get ahead to artificial persons with no greater god than greed. In a game run by people who get a thrill out of seeing us taken off the board by each other, has the fear-based ‘cradle to grave’ business plan we live turned us into Cogs in A Rent-Seeking War Machine?

“Hobbes’s Leviathan is often regarded as the founding work in modern political philosophy … The best situation for all people is one in which each is free to do as s/he pleases … such free people will wish to cooperate with one another in order to carry out projects that would be impossible for an individual acting alone. But if there are any immoral or amoral agents around, they will notice that their interests might at least sometimes be best served by getting the benefits from cooperation and not returning them … Once a small wedge of doubt enters any one mind, the incentive induced by fear of the consequences of being preempted — hit before hitting first — quickly becomes overwhelming on both sides. If either of us has any resources of our own that the other might want, this murderous logic can take hold long before we are so silly as to imagine that we could ever actually get as far as making deals to help one another build houses in the first place. Left to their own devices, agents who are at least sometimes narrowly self-interested can repeatedly fail to derive the benefits of cooperation, and instead be trapped in a state of ‘war of all against all’, in Hobbes’s words. In these circumstances, human life, as he vividly and famously put it, will be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

Hobbes’s proposed solution to this problem was tyranny. The people can hire an agent — a government — whose job is to punish anyone who breaks any promise. So long as the threatened punishment is sufficiently dire then the cost of reneging on promises will exceed the cost of keeping them. The logic here is identical to that used by an army when it threatens to shoot deserters. If all people know that these incentives hold for most others, then cooperation will not only be possible, but can be the expected norm, so that the war of all against all becomes a general peace.

Hobbes pushes the logic of this argument to a very strong conclusion, arguing that it implies not only a government with the right and the power to enforce cooperation, but an ‘undivided’ government in which the arbitrary will of a single ruler must impose absolute obligation on all … Notice that Hobbes has not argued that tyranny is a desirable thing in itself. The structure of his argument is that the logic of strategic interaction leaves only two general political outcomes possible: tyranny and anarchy. Sensible agents then choose tyranny as the lesser of two evils.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

In the language of game theory, Charles Marshall observes: “Communists and noncommunists are like opponents playing different games by different rules on the same board.”

Hegelian Dialectics

“Never expect someone to understand change when their livelihood depends on not understanding it.” Upton Sinclair

Before 19th Century German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel came along with “dialectics,” Plato had presented philosophical arguments as:

“a back-and-forth dialogue or debate, generally between the character of Socrates, on one side, and some person or group of people to whom Socrates was talking (his interlocutors), on the other … Socrates’ interlocutors change or refine their views in response to Socrates’ challenges and come to adopt more sophisticated views. The back-and-forth dialectic between Socrates and his interlocutors thus becomes Plato’s way of arguing against the earlier, less sophisticated views or positions and for the more sophisticated ones later.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Brendan, an online book reviewer, “translates” the above into more layman’s terms:

“Let me explain why I’d recommend this book to everyone: Plato is stupid. Seriously. And it’s important that you all understand that Western society is based on the fallacy-ridden ramblings of an idiot. Read this, understand that he is not joking, and understand that Plato is well and truly fucked in the head. Every single one of his works goes like this:

SOCRATES: “Hello, I will now prove this theory!”

STRAWMAN: “Surely you are wrong!”

SOCRATES: “Nonsense. Listen, Strawman: can we agree to the following wildly presumptive statement that is at the core of my argument?” {Insert wildly presumptive statement here — this time, it’s “There is such a thing as Perfect Justice” and “There is such a thing as Perfect Beauty”, among others.}

STRAWMAN: “Yes, of course, that is obvious.”

SOCRATES: “Good! Now that we have conveniently skipped over all of the logically-necessary debate, because my off-the-wall crazy ideas surely wouldn’t stand up to any real scrutiny, let me tell you an intolerably long hypothetical story.” {Insert intolerably long hypothetical story.}

STRAWMAN: “My God, Socrates! You have completely won me over! That is brilliant! Your woefully simplistic theories should become the basis for future Western civilization! That would be great!”

SOCRATES: “Ha ha! My simple rhetorical device has duped them all! I will now go celebrate by drinking hemlock and scoring a cameo in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure!”

The moral of the story is: Plato is stupid.”

Perhaps Plato was more a product of his upbringing and times than stupid. Most scholars also trace the Liar Paradox to his contemporary, Eubulides.

Richard McDonough argues:

“Plato builds something very like the Liar Paradox into the very structure of his dialogues with significant consequences for understanding his views. After a preliminary exposition of the liar paradox it is argued that Plato builds this paradox into the formulation of many of his central doctrines, including the “Divided Line” and the “Allegory of the Cave” (both in the Republic) and the “Ladder of Love” (in the Symposium).

Thus, Plato may have been the first to formulate the view that Graham Priest calls dialetheism, roughly, the view that some contradictions are, in an illuminating way, inescapable and true. The paper argues that Plato builds this Liar paradox into the formulation of his signature views because he holds that the attempt by finite human beings to theorize about transcendent realities results in the simultaneous necessity, and impossibility, of transgressing the limits of language-leading to the paradoxes (contradictions). Finally, it is argued that the existence of these paradoxes in these Platonic doctrines is the direct result of an intrinsic hermeneutical circle in Plato’s aforementioned signature views.”

Is that a red herring tactic to distract from the Noble Lie?

Normalizing Plato’s Thirty Tyrants’ paradigm?

But amid the centuries-old shift to establishing legal top-down control by the few (e.g. via council/parliament/legal fiction), did royal marriages and successions (i.e. bloodlines) bury/normalize how humanity blindly creates Plato’s Thirty Tyrants’ paradigm to live?

Using the dialectical formula, was this how ancient conflicts were handled?

1) Call a meeting (e.g. a Catholic council),

2) Have attendees vote for some pre-determined outcomes based on their self-interests,

3) Work that into early Private Public Partnership treaties/agreements and/or churn out an edict?

As the above evolved to become an integral part of our lives, names, labels, forms and players have changed but never the direction of asserting greater control to extract our value.

Pawns early on in the BAU game had included popes, royalty and/or nobility even as experiments to create the state and the corporation (e.g. banks and the East India Companies) were underway:

“By the thirteenth century, the Roman Curia (bureaucracy) was a robust and efficient institution, and the papacy was at the height of its influence. Powerful popes such as Innocent III and IV operated much like kings of powerful nations. The Church maintained its power amid the growing strength of Europe’s monarchies. People were Christians first, before they were French, English, or Saxon, and therefore, still answered to the Church’s authority. While most kings compromised as necessary in their dealings with the papacy, those who did not “were likely to find that the spiritual power of the pope was accompanied by earthly power asserted with force of arms.” Norman F. Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages

Still Stuck In Plato’s Ideology?

“Although the term communism did not come into use until the 1840s — it is derived from the Latin communis, meaning “shared” or “common” — visions of a society that may be considered communist appeared as long ago as the 4th century BCE. In the ideal state described in Plato’s Republic, the governing class of guardians devotes itself to serving the interests of the whole community. Because private ownership of goods would corrupt their owners by encouraging selfishness, Plato argued, the guardians must live as a large family that shares common ownership not only of material goods but also of spouses and children.” Britannica

According to Niki Raapana and Nordica Friedrich:

“In 1847 the London Communist League (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels) used Hegel’s theory of the dialectic to back up their economic theory of communism. Now, in the 21st century, Hegelian-Marxist thinking affects our entire social and political structure. The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding our thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead us to a predetermined solution. If we do not understand how the Hegelian dialectic shapes our perceptions of the world, then we do not know how we are helping to implement the vision. When we remain locked into dialectical thinking, we cannot see out of the box.

Hegel’s dialectic is the tool which manipulates us into a frenzied circular pattern of thought and action.

Every time we fight for or defend against an ideology we are playing a necessary role in Marx and Engels’ grand design to advance humanity into a dictatorship of the proletariat. The synthetic Hegelian solution to all these conflicts can’t be introduced unless we all take a side that will advance the agenda. The Marxist’s global agenda is moving along at breakneck speed. The only way to completely stop the privacy invasions, expanding domestic police powers, land grabs, insane wars against inanimate objects (and transient verbs), covert actions, and outright assaults on individual liberty, is to step outside the dialectic. This releases us from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.

The Hegelian dialectical formula: A (thesis) versus B (anti-thesis) equals C (synthesis).

For example: If (A) my idea of freedom conflicts with (B) your idea of freedom then © neither of us can be free until everyone agrees to be a slave.

The Soviet Union was based on the Hegelian dialectic, as is all Marxist writing. The Soviets didn’t give up their Hegelian reasoning when they supposedly stopped being a communist country. They merely changed the dialectical language to fit into the modern version of Marxist thinking called communitarianism. American author Steve Montgomery explores Moscow’s adept use of the Hegelian dialectic in Glasnost-Perestroika: A Model Potemkin Village.

If the ideas, interpretations of experiences, and the sources are all wrong, can a conclusion based on all these wrong premises be sound? The answer is no. Two false premises do not make a sound conclusion even if the argument follows the formula. Three, four, five, or six false premises do not all combine to make a conclusion sound. You must have at least one sound premise to reach a sound conclusion.

Logical mathematical formulas are only the basis for deductive reasoning. Equally important is knowledge of semantics, or considering the meanings of the words used in the argument. Just because an argument fits the formula, it does not necessarily make the conclusion sound. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel knew this when he designed his dialectic.

Hegel is an imperialist con artist who established the principles of dialectical “no-reason.” Hegel’s dialectic has allowed globalists to lead simple, capable, freeborn men and women back into the superstitious, racist and unreasonable age of imperial global dominance. National governments represent people who are free from imperial controls over private property, trade and production. National governments protect their workers from imperial slavery by protecting the worker’s markets. But if you use Hegel’s logical Marxism, the only way to protect people from slavery is to become the slave trader, just for a while.

Twisted logic is why cons are so successful, and Hegel twisted it in such a way as to be “impenetrable.” Like Hegel and Marx, the best street con knows his spiel has to use logic to bend and distort the story, and good cons weave their lies on logical mathematical progression. The fallacy is in the language, not in the math.”

In 2010, Klaus Schwab called for the “communitarian spirit” to form the basis of the stakeholder principle — “not just within the narrow confines of companies, but at a national and global level.”

Excerpt from Self-organized to perpetuate Nonsense?

Have you observed or even experienced such Hegelian dialectic theatrics?

A problem is created using fear, panic and hysteria. Two polar opposites (good cop vs bad cop) surface, one opposing the other to create division (divide and conquer) so you (the masses) will clamor for a predetermined solution.

Over time, is that how the global elites have been able to turn money into a public utility for a global payment system — governed exclusively by Big Business — powered by us surviving for ourselves?

In this dangerous world, only they are our saviors because they NEVER see Business-as-usual (BAU) as the key fundamental root cause — it is always us, the people.”

Have Hegelian dialectic theatrics blinded us to the Noble Lie so we are locked into an over 2,400 years old experiment that has us co-creating the tyrannical BAU model of control to live?

The Emperor’s New Clothes?

In the Emperor’s New Clothes, two swindlers sold an emperor a magic suit of clothes, saying that only fools could not see it. Not wanting to appear stupid, everyone lied and praised the new clothes until a little boy pointed out the obvious. Only then did everybody admit the emperor was naked.

Is that how the “Politics of Lying” has worked over the centuries?

“Plato famously argued in The Republic that a tyrant, however powerful, ultimately suffers in the end by corrupting his own soul. You make a similar argument about assholes — that they might win at life but still fail as human beings.” Sean Illing

According to Greek mythology, Elysium was to some extent, a paradise, a resting place for pure souls albeit a paradise reserved only for heroes, or for those chosen by the Gods for their righteousness.

Elysium is also the title of a 2013 American dystopian science fiction action film set in 2154 where the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the masses reside on a ruined Earth.

Is Plato’s Thirty’s tyranny ahead?

When I started researching this, I was not aware of how much Plato’s Republic has infiltrated our lives. If this resonates, please share so more people can embark on their own voyage of self-discoveries.

For Part II and other “Hacking Mindsets” articles, please subscribe to Medium and/or Substack. Do your own research and if there are any boo-boos, please let me know at crowdpowers@gmail.com

P.S. I’ve decided to KIV articles on the earlier centuries. Partly from info overload and partly because I am almost a year and a half behind working on my next project.