In Plato’s Republic, he details a man who is the perfect ruler. The philosopher king, a man who holds the wisdom of a philosopher, with the grit and influence of a king.
I like this subject because this gets into the whole ‘nerd and the jock’ dichotomy.
I remember overhearing this guy on the phone, I don’t know what the other person said but the guy responded:
“Yeah but that’s for guys who read books all day. I’m just a regular guy who’s into sports”
And I thought to myself, who says you got to be one or the other? I watch highlights in between my studies. I go outside or to the gym and train for whatever I’m into. Nobody’s struck me down for doing both of those.
The nerd-jock thing is kinda real, but I think we take it too literal like it’s impossible to have the best of both worlds.
The nerd is intellectually brilliant, but is lacking in everything else. No social skills, physically weak, and in a lot of cases mentally weak too, he’s easy to manipulate.
The jock is physically strong with decent social skills, but intellectually, I’m not gonna go to the extreme and say he’s a dumb brute, but he may not be the brightest in mental fields.
In that parallel, the philosopher is the nerd. He holds wisdom and intellectual aptitude, but his physical and social ineptness hinders him from applying this wisdom. It never materializes, so it’s nothing more than an empty opinion.
The king is the jock but he’s actually superior in this sense. A jock just plays sports, the king has military experience. I like this because it shows he’s no stranger to violence and conflict, and he’s good at managing risk, which is extremely important in a leader. His only bad side is he may underestimate the importance of looking deeper into things and dealing with the abstract. Like if he’s heading the making of a policy and you try to advise him to look at the human, metaphysical, or spiritual side of things, he might roll his eyes and dismiss you. Running a war and running a society aren’t the same exact thing. They may overlap in some ways but you’re not deploying soldiers to neutralize other humans, you’re creating and maintaining a way of life. And this is not at all saying that nerds are the most morally upright people, so it ain’t just about that.
We need to be both, especially us men. Get out of that high school mindset. Reading books don’t make you a dork and moving your body and learning how to influence people doesn’t make you a dumb jock. The perfect man is the one who can do both, and only he can be the best leader of our free world
Past the king himself, Plato also details his idea of a perfect city-state. It has a 3-class hierarchy. Rulers, the politicians, ideally the most competent people available. Protectors, basically security, military, law enforcement and legal officials. And producers, the citizens, the working class who keeps society running.
One major factor of this concept is the protocol for the rulers. They’re not allowed to own private property or any luxury goods. I like this because it would weed out a lot bad actors and theoretically minimize corruption
This is extremely idealistic. There are too many variables to cut and paste this into the modern era. But I still believe we should be trying to make some semblance of this
Grant Abraham 