Akratēs Revisited

So I want to "circle back," in the current expression, on akratēs. Remember that in Laws III, the Athenian described this as the great destroyer of states. 

I think Plato might be doubly wrong here. I think he might be wrong to have decided that this is a sort of ignorance, and I think he is definitely wrong to think it is the worst kind. Rather, what is going on here is that a person knows what is right and chooses to do the wrong thing anyway because it is more pleasurable. This is a regular feature of country music songs about men who ought to be home being good fathers, but are instead out honky-tonking and drinking up their paycheck. (Roger Miller's "Dang Me," for example.)  It may well be ruinous behavior, but they aren't doing it out of ignorance. They know it is wrong, and are doing it anyway.

What strikes me as a worse kind of ignorance -- and properly a kind of ignorance -- is to have come to the conclusion that the base is actually noble, the bad actually good. It seems to me that the great destroyer of our nation is not the country music song case, where people are failing in what they nevertheless recognize are their duties. The great destroyer is that people have embraced a host of things that are wrong, but that they have learned and taught each other to uphold as right. Arson in our cities and riots that result in great damage to public buildings and the common peace, for example, are celebrated as the pursuit of justice. Abortion is said to be health care.

These people are often college educated, so they are not ignorant in the sense of having never been educated. They are nevertheless possessed of a towering sort of blind ignorance, which can no longer discern good from bad, but instead names the bad as good and navigates as if that were the case. 

[Example, and photo, removed]

Today the FBI arrested a guy for posting memes on social media... in 2016. They doubtless take themselves to be doing the right thing. They're trampling on our whole tradition of free speech, especially political speech, including satire; but what he said wasn't strictly true, you see. And he was on the wrong side.

D29 points out that Homeland Security is now in the business of policing wrongthink on the election. They think what they're doing is good, too.

They're also taking it on themselves to decide when your 'false narrative' beliefs might qualify as incitement to domestic terrorism. They're starting with a friendly case -- belief in lizard people, re: the Nashville bomber -- but the principle is supremely dangerous. 

So, the guy in the country music song is really wrong. He knows he's wrong; he accepts that he's sinning, and that sinning is wrong. He accepts his duties, and admits his failure in fulfilling them. He's putting pleasure in front of virtue. He plans on making some kind of account for it with God later. He may blow up his marriage; he may blow out his liver.

But how much happier would you be with America if he was the worst kind of problem we had to face? This 'country music problem' of akratēs is a serious philosophical puzzle, but my guess is that it's actually not nearly the great destroyer of states that Plato makes it out to be. If Cal Smith is your worst problem, maybe you as a nation can mind your business and let him do his thing. Even if there are a lot of Cal Smiths, they're ordered to the moral structure that undergirds society. 

We are in a much worse case.

UPDATE:

This doesn't even make sense in terms of making trans-men more comfortable. Half the toilets in the men's room require you to stand up. If all of us non-trans-men insist on sitting down to make trans-men feel "included," trans-men who need to sit down will have to wait a lot longer to go. What's less comfortable than that?

But again, here as elsewhere, the nature of human beings is to be rejected as a source of moral wisdom; the principle of diversity and inclusion is to guide us, even where it guides us to a greater misery for all.