Governments in the ancient world could be oppressive -- Herodotus talks about some awful tortures and slaughters, for example -- but they weren't capable of monitoring your every move, nor trying to control it. Saying that the government ideally should try to guide you in all areas of life wasn't a commitment to anything like the kind of levels of control that a government could exercise today.
It is also an approach that was very widely endorsed in the Middle Ages. Christian writers believed that the function of the government was to shape the morals of the population as well as protecting whatever rights people enjoyed ex officio to their social class and standing. Raymond Llull, for example, argued in his writings on chivalry that the knighthood existed to defend innocents, but also to serve as a guiding hand by restraining evil impulses.
In the Catholic world, the Church's own power and authority was strong enough that this did not lead to a total power in the secular state, but rather an alliance between the "Lords Temporal and Spiritual." The Church was jealous of its own privileges, but in return for having its privileges respected, it was willing to endorse the idea that God himself had sent the king to rule and guide royal subjects in a just and moral order.
In Islam, the total power did devolve upon a state that was both temporal and spiritual. The Caliph was meant to guide his people to lead upright and moral lives in all matters. Avicenna gives a discourse on jihad in which he says that it is a kind of double blessing, because it both improves the soul's position with God by doing God's work, and also the material body's position by providing extra wealth and slaves to serve us in this world. Similarly, the Caliph was meant to lead his society in such a way as to encourage both material and spiritual flourishing.
So what the Athenian is suggesting here has probably been the ordinary understanding of most of humanity for most of recorded history. This is especially true insofar as the Athenian recommends what we might call The Rule of Law:
"I call the rulers servants or ministers of the law... not for the sake of novelty, but because I certainly believe that upon such service or ministry depends the well- or ill-being of the state. For that state in which the law is subject and has no authority, I perceive to be on the highway to ruin; but I see that the state in which the law is above the rulers, and the rulers are the inferiors of the law, has salvation, and every blessing which the Gods can confer.... Now God ought to be to us the measure of all things, and not man, as men commonly say (Protagoras): the words are far more true of him. And he who would be dear to God must, as far as is possible, be like him and such as he is. Wherefore the temperate man is the friend of God, for he is like him; and the intemperate man is unlike him, and different from him, and unjust."
So too the Church and the Islamic world believed that there was a law that was above kings, and which no legislature nor king could justly void. Aquinas gives an account of how natural law follows from divine law, and is prior to and has priority over any laws made by kings or parliaments. God is to be the measure of whether or not the society is just or unjust, right or wrong; the laws are to follow from what can be understood about the divine; and the divine shall thus stand in the position of the ruler of the ruler, just as the ruler is the ruler of men.
In this way, something like the shepherd/herd metaphor is to be attained. We can't be ruled by gods, but only by other men; but we can at least find a way, the Athenian believes as many others have also believed, to ensure that those men trusted to be the rulers are acting in a way that is in accord with what God would want for us.
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"For that state in which the law is subject and has no authority, I perceive to be on the highway to ruin; but I see that the state in which the law is above the rulers, and the rulers are the inferiors of the law, has salvation, and every blessing which the Gods can confer..."
That right there.
If the law is subject to the state then the legislature can set the value of Pi to be exactly 3.2. The party can order that stars are mere sparks of light affixed to the dark shell of the sky, a few miles overhead, which we could reach if we wanted to. The powers of the state can define marriage, or expand or limit the number of sexes. The state sets, or allows favored subjects to set, the value of 2+2. Science is not a process of discovering the Laws of Nature and Nature's God; it is a result of consensus among those attending multi-national congresses who trade their opinions for status; and use their status to create policy. And the state attempts to cull the herd and breed a master race; to force feed the population fluoride or ban it from consuming alcohol and cyclamates.
So we see. Reality is socially constructed, and a consequence of privileged factions imposing their preferences upon the rest of us. And if the present prevailing paradigm offends us, then those momentarily privileged must be violently disempowered and replaced.
So.
Violence, then. Violence provides the means to all ends.
Yes, that's the kind of thing Plato's not interested in doing. It's an important point, because it would be ordinary to assume that he did mean to do it -- that's just where our contemporaries would be when they propose a totalizing government control of all aspects of life.
In the Catholic world, the Church's own power and authority was strong enough that this did not lead to a total power in the secular state, but rather an alliance between the "Lords Temporal and Spiritual." The Church was jealous of its own privileges, but in return for having its privileges respected, it was willing to endorse the idea that God himself had sent the king to rule and guide royal subjects in a just and moral order.
A kind of quasi state religion, which is exactly the kind of problematic state of affairs that got the apostles, prophets, even Yeshua chased down and jailed or murder attempts on them. I say attempts, since it seemed a lot of it failed, even a crucifixion.
Yeshua's glorification was over stated by his followers, mostly because the ywere trying to start a messianic religion around their mentor and father figure. If Yeshua intended to do so, he should have taken over the power of the state or at least written something personally.
The resurrection is fundamentally no different than the "near death" experiences of various individuals in the recent past who also reported "spontaneous remission or regeneration of wounds".
This would displace the onus on a "Return of the King" to a "return of the christed ones", meaning God's anointed, plura, the Christ conscious or Legion of Angels, Guard of Heavens (The Guardians) plural, rather than one person that will polarize things (Trump, Messiah, Hussein).
So too the Church and the Islamic world believed that there was a law that was above kings, and which no legislature nor king could justly void. Aquinas gives an account of how natural law follows from divine law, and is prior to and has priority over any laws made by kings or parliaments.
The problem is that Satan or the devil is called the God of this world. Thus whatever divine decree these states may accrue, comes from Satan's divinity. And Satan's divinity, plural, comes from then the God source godhead people imagine.
Generally there is disconnect between Man and God. There's a grapevine effect, where humans say there is a Divine law, but who administers and writes and interprets these laws? Humans, not angels or demons. It was their version of a Dominion voting machine. People think the Land Air Water LAWS came from God, but in reality they are only interfacing with the human upstarts. Then there's the identity theft issue where gods pretend to be each other, even as the dark pretends to be the light.
God is to be the measure of whether or not the society is just or unjust, right or wrong; the laws are to follow from what can be understood about the divine; and the divine shall thus stand in the position of the ruler of the ruler, just as the ruler is the ruler of men.
In this way, something like the shepherd/herd metaphor is to be attained. We can't be ruled by gods, but only by other men; but we can at least find a way, the Athenian believes as many others have also believed, to ensure that those men trusted to be the rulers are acting in a way that is in accord with what God would want for us.
This is a Catch 22. As humans do not meet with and communicate with their or a god specifically, not even the satans, how exactly would they know what this God desires?
Even amongst humans here, Grim, you have noted that people cannot read the minds and hearts of each other, and we are speaking, presumably, directly using the users of these account avatars. How exactly is it logical to assume any of these self proclaimed powers derive their authority from god when satan is just as easily available and in fact closer, being the God ofThis World. (the administrator of this Dark Matrix, an AI Skynet).
This would be better described as a mafia system. Satan at the near top.
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