{"id":4159,"date":"2020-07-29T15:35:36","date_gmt":"2020-07-29T15:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/?p=4159"},"modified":"2020-07-29T15:35:36","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T15:35:36","slug":"sybarites-scholars-and-the-buffoon-who-got-himself-taken-seriously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/2020\/07\/29\/sybarites-scholars-and-the-buffoon-who-got-himself-taken-seriously\/","title":{"rendered":"Sybarites, Scholars, and the Buffoon Who Got Himself Taken Seriously"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/header>\n
\n

[Taken from here<\/a>]<\/p>\n

If you behave like the youths of today,
\nYour chest will be narrow, your skin will be grey,
\nYour shoulders will shrink, and your tongues will extend,
\nAnd your public harangues never come to an end:
\nAt last you\u2019ll believe that black is white,
\nThat right is wrong, and wrong is right.<\/p>\n

Aristophanes,\u00a0The Clouds<\/em>\u00a0(423 B.C.)<\/p>\n

Some of you have no doubt read Sir John Glubb\u2019s trenchant and thought-provoking pamphlet,\u00a0The Fate of Empires<\/em>.\u00a0 If you haven\u2019t, a free copy can be downloaded from several sites.\u00a0 Glubb published this pamphlet in the 1970s, when the unfolding cultural revolution seems to have crystalized his lifetime of historical research into an exceedingly clear and alarming understanding of the deep meaning of contemporary events.\u00a0 The world, or at least his world, had come to its end.<\/span><\/p>\n

Glubb saw that every empire does, indeed, have a\u00a0fate<\/em>, and that this fate is to burst out from an unlikely quarter, to rise to a high-noon of glory, and finally to decay and await its\u00a0coup de gr\u00e2ce<\/em>.\u00a0 Moreover, he discovered that, through all changes of technology and philosophy, every empire has taken about 250 years to traverse this arc from birth to death.<\/p>\n

Glubb\u2019s thesis is, of course, similar to the cyclical theories of Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee.\u00a0 As Spengler wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe great Cultures accomplish their majestic wave-cycles.\u00a0 They appear suddenly, swell in splendid lines, flatten again and vanish, and the face of the waters is once more a sleeping waste\u201d (Decline of the West<\/em>, vol. 1 [1918]).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Spengler\u2019s worldview was essentially Hegalian, so he saw the mechanism driving this majestic wave cycle as the working out of an\u00a0idea<\/em>.\u00a0 Hegel himself described the \u201cswelling\u201d phase this way:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThe Spirit of a people . . . erects itself into an objective world\u201d (Philosophy of History<\/em>\u00a0[1822-1830]).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But when this idea has reached its limit, and has been either fully realized or insuperably arrested in its realization, the culture dies.\u00a0 Thus Spengler says:<\/p>\n

\u201cA culture\u00a0 . . . . dies when this soul has actualized the full sum of its possibilities . .\u00a0.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>(Decline of the West<\/em>, vol. 1 [1918]).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Death is not synonymous with disappearance, however, only with the end of\u00a0life<\/em>.\u00a0 The fully realized culture has\u00a0nowhere to go<\/em>.\u00a0 It may linger for a spell, like an impressive old man who is really a dotard, but only until some hearty barbarians show up to deliver the\u00a0coup de gr\u00e2ce<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe aim once attained\u2014the idea . . . fulfilled and made externally actual\u2014the Culture suddenly hardens . . . and it becomes Civilization\u201d (The Decline of the West<\/em>, vol. 1 [1918])<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Glubb\u2019s model is compatible with Spengler\u2019s, but he follows the classical authors who explained the rise and fall of empires as a consequence of\u00a0character<\/em>.\u00a0 To build an empire takes men of a special\u00a0character<\/em>: men who are bold and brave, and who believe they have a right to rule.\u00a0 But once an empire is built,\u00a0it remorselessly destroys this character<\/em>.\u00a0 As Herodotus put it, it takes hard men to make an empire, but the empire makes the sons of these hard men\u00a0soft<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Lucan described imperial Rome in just these terms:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cTheir fathers\u2019 frugal tables stand abhorr\u2019d,
\nAnd Asia now and Africa are explor\u2019d
\nFor high-priced dainties, and the citron board.
\nIn silken robes the minion men appear,
\nWhich maids and youthful brides should blush to wear.
\nThat Age by honest poverty adorn\u2019d,
\nWhich brought\u00a0the manly Roman\u00a0<\/em>forth, is scorn\u2019d;
\nWhereever ought pernicious does abound,
\nFor luxury\u00a0all lands are ransacked\u00a0<\/em>round,
\nAnd dear-bought debts the sinking state confound
\n. . . .
\nHence debt unthrifty, careless to repay,
\nAnd usury still watching for its day:
\nHence perjuries in ev\u2019ry wrangling court
\nAnd war, the needy bankrupt\u2019s last resort<\/p>\n

(Pharsalia<\/em>, book 1 [A.D. 61-65]).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The manly Roman gives way to minion men in silken robes\u2014\u201cpajama boys,\u201d if you like; and the fabulous parties of these epicene gourmands are increasingly paid for by war and debt.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a crazy idea, I know; but people really used to worry about this sort of thing.\u00a0 Here\u2019s Edward Gibbon:<\/p>\n

\u201cA secret poison had been introduced by long peace and lethargic inactivity into the very bowels of the empire.\u00a0 Military spirit no longer existed. . . and the commanding genius of Rome forsook the polluted habitations of\u00a0a luxurious and effeminate people<\/em>.\u00a0 The improvement of arts, whilst it refined, had gradually\u00a0enervated the country<\/em>; the splendor of the cities served only to allure the impending rapacity of a hearty race of barbarians.\u201d (History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire<\/em>\u00a0[1789]).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here\u2019s Francis Bacon:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen warlike states grow soft and effeminate, they may be sure of a war; for commonly such states grow rich in the time of their degenerating, and so the prey inviteth, and their decay in valor encourageth a war\u201d\u00a0 (Francis Bacon, \u201cOf Viscissitude of Things,\u201d [1625]).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Glubb agrees that an empire falls because there is a\u00a0fatal change in the character of its people<\/em>.\u00a0 The military spirit of the founders is extinguished by the riches that reward their conquests, and the race of hearty empire builders\u00a0inevitably<\/em>\u00a0degenerates into \u201ca luxurious and effeminate people.\u201d\u00a0 However impressive the fa\u00e7ade of their civilization may appear, in it\u00a0must\u00a0<\/em>become a dotard awaiting its\u00a0coup de gr\u00e2ce.<\/em><\/p>\n

As Glubb describes it, an empire is born with the appearance of a conquering people:<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain and again in history we find a small nation, treated as insignificant by its contemporaries, suddenly emerging from its homeland and overrunning large areas of the world . . . . These sudden outbursts are usually characterized by an extraordinary display of energy and courage\u201d\u00a0The Fate of Empires<\/em>\u00a0[1976]).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But the trophies of their conquest are wealth and dominions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe conquests resulted in the acquisition of vast territories under one government, thereby automatically giving rise to commercial prosperity\u201d (The Fate of Empires<\/em>\u00a0[1976]).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And thus it is that the sons of the conquerors turn to commerce, and the sons of the merchants turn to play.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere does not appear to be any doubt that money is the agent which causes the decline of this strong, brave and self-confident people\u201d (The Fate of Empires<\/em>\u00a0[1976]).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But not all of these playboys are sybarites: some are scholars.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe merchant princes of the Age of Commerce seek fame and praise, not only by endowing works of art or patronizing music and literature. They also found and endow colleges and universities. It is remarkable with what regularity this phase follows on that of wealth, in empire after empire, divided by many centuries . . . . Every period of decline is characterized by this expansion of intellectual activity\u201d (The Fate of Empires<\/em>\u00a0[1976]).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

II<\/p>\n

Glubb\u2019s discussion of intellectualism is, to my mind, the most stimulating part of his\u00a0Fate of Empires<\/em>, and the part most germane to anyone seeking to discern\u00a0our<\/em>\u00a0fate.\u00a0 Much of what he calls intellectualism is simply the scramble for intellectual status symbols by individuals who could not dream of academic laurels under more austere conditions.\u00a0 I have myself participated in this scramble in these fat days at the end of America, and I routinely talk to young people who hanker after a Ph.D. in much the same way as they hanker after a Mercedes Benz.\u00a0 Like any\u00a0luxury<\/em>, learning can be a very pleasant thing to possess\u2014I have gotten much pleasure out of mine, such as it is.\u00a0 But this does not exempt the luxury of learning from the general rule that\u00a0luxury is the kiss of death<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Widespread learning is both a symptom and a cause of decadence.\u00a0 Glubb points to two pernicious effects.\u00a0 The first is that it spreads discord in the body politic.\u00a0 The second is that it distorts, and ultimately destroys, the understanding of human character and the human condition.<\/p>\n

With respect to discord, Glubb observes that increasing education causes people to become increasingly dialectical and disputatious.\u00a0 An educated man demands to hear the\u00a0reasons<\/em>\u00a0he should believe or do anything, and thus becomes all but incapable of believing anything on authority, or of doing anything under command.\u00a0 This same man will be emboldened to publish\u00a0his own reasons<\/em>\u00a0why other people should believe what he believes, or should do what he wishes to see done.\u00a0 And as his reasons seldom have the persuasive power he believes they ought to have, the educated man grows frustrated and feels the need to raise his voice.<\/p>\n

A dialectical society is consequently a disputatious society.<\/p>\n

This is why Glubb follows Nietzsche and considers \u201cdialectic a symptom of decadence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the world over, where authority still belongs to good usage, where one does not \u2018demonstrate\u2019 but commands, the dialectician is a sort of buffoon; he is laughed at, he is not taken seriously . . . . We choose dialectics only when we have no other means . . . . We know it does not carry much conviction.\u00a0 Nothing is easier wiped away than the effect of a dialectician:\u00a0 that is proved by the experience of every assembly where speeches are made\u201d (Twilight of the Idols<\/em>\u00a0[1889]).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Likewise Glubb:<\/p>\n

\u201cIntellectualism leads to discussion, debate and argument, such as is typical of the Western nations today. Debates in elected assemblies or local committees, in articles in the Press or in interviews on television\u2014endless and incessant talking\u201d (The Fate of Empires<\/em>\u00a0[1976]).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The great irony of intellectualism is that this failure to effect \u201cconviction,\u201d this \u201cendless and incessant talking,\u201d suggest the futility of dialectics to almost no one.\u00a0 Every assembly where speeches are made testifies that making speeches accomplishes almost nothing, and yet no man in the grip of intellectualism will surrender his belief in the magical power of speeches (or articles, or books, or arguments).\u00a0 As Carlyle rhetorically asked:<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it the nature of National Assemblies generally to do, with endless labor and clangor,\u00a0Nothing . . .<\/em>\u00a0[to] with motion and counter-motion, with jargon and hubbub,\u00a0cancel\u00a0<\/em>one another . . . and produce for net result,\u00a0zero?<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 (Thomas Carlyle,\u00a0The French Revolution<\/em>, vol. 1 [1837]).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed it is their nature, as it is the nature of every institution in a decadent society overgrown with dialectics, like ivy on the ruins of a dead culture with nowhere to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica too will find that . . . stump oratory and speeches to Bunkum will\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0carry men to the immortal gods . . . . Not without heroic labor, and effort quite other than that of the Stump-Orator and Revival Preacher . . .\u201d (Thomas Carlyle,\u00a0Later Day Pamphlets<\/em>\u00a0[1850]).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Can anyone honestly say, all these years later, that this is something America has not found?<\/p>\n

Nor will the man in the grip of intellectualism (Oakshott called him a Rationalist) surrender his belief in the magical power of intelligence, for as Glubb tells us, he has an unshakable belief in the sufficiency of right opinion, or what he calls science, independent of all other aspects of character.\u00a0 Let us only be\u00a0intelligent,<\/em>\u00a0he says, and it matters not if we are cowards, traitors, pickpockets or whores.\u00a0 He thus falls under the ludicrous delusion that, by itself, \u201cthe human brain can solve the problems of the world,\u201d and that his people will flourish if only they can get the science right.<\/p>\n

To this absurd conceit, Glubb mordantly replies\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe impression that the situation can be saved by mental cleverness, without unselfishness or human self-dedication, can only lead to collapse\u201d (The Fate of Empires<\/em>\u00a0[1976]).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

III<\/p>\n

Aristophanes appears to have had a similarly low opinion of men who try to live on nothing but their wit and their words, and wrote\u00a0The Clouds\u00a0<\/em>(423 B. C.) to show what happens to those who do.\u00a0 This is the story of Strepsiades, a \u201ccountry bumpkin\u201d who has gone into debt to keep his wastrel son Phidippides in luxury.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe curls and scents his hair, and rides and drives his tandems, and at night he dreams of horses\u2014while I groan and watch the moon bring near the day of reckoning.\u00a0 For interest does not grow less with time.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To weasel out of his debts, Strepsiades decides to enroll his son in \u201cthe Thinking-School of philosophic minds,\u201d where \u201cthey can teach us, if we pay a fee, to win our suits, just and unjust alike.\u201d\u00a0 Phidippides at first rejects his father\u2019s plan, not because of a moral scruple, but because the Thinking School is\u00a0d\u00e9class\u00e9<\/em>.\u00a0 The dashing young buck sees that the philosophers are nothing but \u201cpale-faced, barefoot wind-bags, taught and led by Socrates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most commentators reprove Aristophanes for lumping Socrates in with the other Sophists of Athens, but Nietzsche thought Aristophanes was right.\u00a0 He tells is that the Socratic method was \u201cindicative of decadence,\u201d and that superior men have\u00a0always scorned dialectics<\/em>. \u201cDialectic manners were avoided in good society\u2014they were regarded as bad manners.\u201d\u00a0 They were, in fact, regarded as the oily pleading of weaklings, \u201cthe last defense of those who have no other weapons.\u201d\u00a0 As for Socrates himself, he was for Nietzsche nothing more than<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThe buffoon who\u00a0got himself taken seriously<\/em>\u201d (Twilight of the Idols<\/em>\u00a0[1889]).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And not only by the country bumpkin Strepsiades.<\/p>\n

Rebuffed by his son, Strepsiades decides to enroll himself in the Thinking School, and there to master the \u201chair-splitting arguments\u201d by which to defraud his creditors.\u00a0 As he is shown round the school by one of Socrates pupils, Aristophanes show us that this Thinking School is dangerously detached from reality.\u00a0 The heads of the philosophers are, as we say, \u201cin the clouds\u201d (if Aristophanes did not invent this idiom, he was almost certainly alluding to it).*<\/p>\n

When the pupil shows Strepsiades \u201ca map of the whole world,\u201d for instance, the country bumpkin ingenuously complains that it does not show his own home\u2014the place where his\u00a0real interests\u00a0<\/em>lie.\u00a0 He ingenuously complains that it shows only the spatial relation of Attica to one of its troublesome neighbors\u2014not the political relation that\u00a0really matters<\/em>.\u00a0 And he complains that one cannot use this map to do something\u00a0really useful<\/em>, such as moving Sparta, the great enemy of Athens, to a more remote position.<\/p>\n

In other words, this country bumpkin unwittingly shows us that this map, and philosophy generally, is of very little practical value.\u00a0 They are, at best, toys for \u201ccloud people.\u201d**<\/p>\n

When Strepsiades is introduced to Socrates, the great philosopher teaches him that the Gods are a myth and that philosophers instead \u201cconverse with the holy Clouds.\u201d\u00a0 He means they worship nothing but their own notions, their own wit.\u00a0 Moreover, Socrates says, it is from these Clouds that his \u201cidle sect\u201d obtains its power of \u201cjudgment, logic, wit and intellect\u201d\u2014not to mention (as he tells the audience in an aside) \u201cperaphrasis [circumlocution] and humbug, power to overawe and cheat.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the Clouds themselves, who form the Chorus of the play, their name for Socrates is \u201chigh priest of subtlest nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, Aristophanes tells us that the doctrine of Socrates and the Thinking School is essentially nihilistic and manipulative.\u00a0 It teaches men that they are under no transcendent authority, that there is\u00a0no commanding power above the dialectic<\/em>.\u00a0 They are not bound by any divine, or even any natural,\u00a0logos.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>There are just human notions\u2014clouds<\/em>\u2014that men put in circulation, sometimes artfully and sometimes not.<\/p>\n

This putting into circulation of human notions \u2014clouds<\/em>\u2014 is what the Thinking Schools of today call\u00a0discourse<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As Socrates tells Strepsiades:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must have no other gods than those we worship here, Chaos yonder, and the Cloud-banks, and the glib Tongue, just these three.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And these are precisely the gods Strepsiades had hoped for, since his only aim is \u201cto deceive the court and leave my creditors behind.\u201d\u00a0 But, alas, Strepsiades proves a poor pupil, and so must finally force his son Phidippides to enroll in the Thinking School and learn the arguments that will release him, Strepsiades, from the demands of justice.<\/p>\n

Phidippides proves himself an apt student, and quickly masters the art of the \u201cUnjust Argument.\u201d\u00a0 This is sophistry calculated to overturn conventional wisdom and the established truths of the Attic\u00a0nomos<\/em>.\u00a0 The stratagems of the Unjust Argument will be familiar to anyone who has wrangled with a \u201ccritical thinker\u201d of today.<\/p>\n

1)<\/strong>\u00a0The Unjust Argument is contradictory, and denies the premises of conventional wisdom. \u00a0Contradiction works especially well against conventional wisdom, or what are generally supposed to be self-evident truths, since very few people are prepared to argue\u00a0for<\/em>\u00a0beliefs that are not normally called into question.\u00a0 These beliefs are the grounds normal people argue\u00a0from.<\/em>\u00a0And as Plato would later admit, a great many of these basic beliefs are right opinions that cannot be fully demonstrated to critical rationality, but are rather at least partly\u00a0intuited by right reason<\/em>.\u00a0 The Sophist exploits this by\u00a0affecting moral cretinism and demanding reasons where reasons are not wanted.<\/em><\/p>\n

Aristophanes illustrates this in a debate whether warm public baths should be allowed.\u00a0 The Just argument is that they should not, since young men would flock to this comfortable place, and their lounge, gossip and wrangle, leaving the gymnasium empty. \u00a0The Unjust Argument answers this right opinion with a demand to know \u201cthe principle\u201d on which it is founded.\u00a0 And that\u2019s just the problem, since the principle lies no deeper than the intuition that warm baths \u201care immoral and play havoc with a lad.\u201d\u00a0 There are\u00a0no further reasons<\/em>\u00a0you can give a man who cannot see the truth of this, so\u00a0his demand for dialectic is out of place<\/em>.<\/p>\n

2)<\/strong>\u00a0The Unjust Argument quibbles and carps.\u00a0 This means that it offers trivial or irrelevant reasons to remain skeptical of the conventional wisdom.\u00a0 It will, for instance, make a tremendous fuss over words, engaging in an interminable logomachy of literalism, equivocation, and belligerent semantics. It will also unload fusillades of spurious data, such as that cold baths cannot be conducive to hardiness and heroism, since there is no cold bath named for Hercules, the heartiest hero of them all.\u00a0 Such quibbling and carping is, once again, a disease of dialectics characterized by a\u00a0proliferation of \u201creasons\u201d that are not really reasons.<\/em><\/p>\n

3)<\/strong>\u00a0The Unjust Argument denounces conventional wisdom simply because it is conventional, not because it is not wisdom.\u00a0 Since a great many truths have been known for a very long time, and are consequently \u201cold fashioned,\u201d the Unjust Argument finds it easy to scoff at those truths as \u201cold fashioned,\u201d without troubling to show that they are untrue.\u00a0 It also finds it easy to shame a diffident man out of a conventional belief by saying he is, when he professes this old bromide, exposing himself as \u201ca dull young blockhead\u201d and \u201cMamma\u2019s pet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Delighted by his son\u2019s success in the Thinking School, Strepsiades gives him a dinner party, and there calls upon Phidippides to sing a song, preferably an old one.\u00a0 The ungrateful Phidippides at first refuses, and then accedes to sing a bawdy ditty \u201cabout the wrong that some brute did to his sister.\u201d\u00a0 When his father objects, Phidippides beats him, and when his father objects to\u00a0that<\/em>, Phidippides uses his \u201cNew Philosophy\u201d to cast doubt on the self-evident truth that it is wrong for a son to beat his father.\u00a0 Indeed, he contrives a clever argument to show that a son ought to beat his father, and his mother too.<\/p>\n

And thus it was that Strepsiades came to rue the day he fell in with Socrates, \u201cthe buffoon who got himself taken seriously.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

IV<\/p>\n

Phidippides was a sybarite who became a scholar, but his scholarship was nothing but a means to a more expansive sybaritism.\u00a0 He made himself a master of discourse, grew a long tongue, persuaded himself that black is white, and proposed to live on his wit and his words.\u00a0 He proposed to live in discourse and dialectics\u2014in other words,\u00a0in the<\/em>\u00a0clouds<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But he was, even as he triumphantly beat his father, a dotard waiting for a hearty barbarian to come and deliver the\u00a0coup de gr\u00e2ce.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>And as Glubb told us to expect, this hearty barbarian burst out from an unexpected quarter.\u00a0 It was none other than his father, Strepsiades, the \u201ccountry bumpkin\u201d who has repented of his flirtation with the \u201cvortex of philosophy\u201d and resolved to destroy the Thinking School.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been mad.\u00a0 It was an evil day when I drove out the gods for Socrates.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What Strepsiades now understands is that he drove out the gods\u00a0for personal advantage<\/em>. \u00a0It was\u00a0convenient<\/em>\u00a0for him to overturn the authority of the\u00a0nomos\u00a0<\/em>that said that promises should be kept and debts should be paid.\u00a0 His madness was failing to see that, in releasing himself from the authority of the gods and their\u00a0nomos<\/em>, he had released Phidippides as well.\u00a0 If he, Strepsiades, was not bound to honor his promises to his creditors, then Phidippides was not bound to honor Strepsiades.<\/p>\n

What\u00a0we<\/em>\u00a0should now understand is that, while reason and dialectic have authority, they do not have\u00a0sufficient authority<\/em>\u00a0to adequately govern human conduct without other sources of authority. \u00a0But they do have authority sufficient\u00a0to destroy those other sources<\/em>.\u00a0 This is what Nietzsche meant when he said that Socrates was \u201cthe buffoon who got himself taken seriously.\u201d\u00a0 He was the buffoon who said that he could fill the shoes of the king and the throne of Zeus.\u00a0 But when men like Strepsiades took this buffoon seriously and committed both deicide and regicide, they discovered that those shoes were larger, and that throne higher, than the buffoon had led them to believe.<\/p>\n

But by then it was too late, since authority cannot be manufactured. \u00a0A dead civilization can of course simulate authority, and this simulation fools no one.<\/p>\n

If you behave like the youths of today,
\nYour chest will be narrow, your skin will be grey,
\nYour shoulders will shrink, and your tongues will extend,
\nAnd your public harangues never come to an end:
\nAt last you\u2019ll believe that black is white,
\nThat right is wrong, and wrong is right.<\/p>\n

Aristophanes,\u00a0The Clouds<\/em>\u00a0(423 B.C.)<\/p>\n

______________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*) This of course calls to mind the flying island of Laputa in\u00a0Gulliver\u2019s Travels<\/em>, which like the Thinking School spread the pestilence of philosophy to the lands below.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertain persons went up to Laputa . . . and after five months\u2019 continuance, came back with a very little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that airy region . . . . These persons upon their return began to dislike the management of everything below, and fell into schemes of putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics upon a new foot.\u00a0 To this end they procured a royal patent for erecting an academy of projectors at Lagado; and the humor prevailed so strongly among the people, that there is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom without such an academy.\u00a0 In these colleges the professors contrive new rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments and tools for all trades and manufacturers . . . . The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in the meantime, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes.\u00a0 By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes . . .\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**) To the best of my knowledge, the happy phrase \u201ccloud people\u201d was coined by the blogger known as Zman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Taken from here] If you behave like the youths of today, Your chest will be narrow, your skin will be grey, Your shoulders will shrink, and your tongues will extend, And your public harangues never come to an end: At last you\u2019ll believe that black is white, That right is wrong, and wrong is right. … Sigue leyendo Sybarites, Scholars, and the Buffoon Who Got Himself Taken Seriously<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sin-categoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4160,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4159\/revisions\/4160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}