History Repeats Itself

Learnings from Plato's RepublicArt, Education, Power of Mind

History repeats itself and Plato about Arts

History repeats itself. And people forget about history. There is no easy fix. It is easy to think that wars are in the past, that society has changed and it will never happen again. As memory fades, Gaia’s events from the past can become events of the present. The more things change, the more they stay the same. What we are seeing is that ‘digital’ acts as a magnifier, and accelerator. The problem is still the same. The isolation of East and West, North and South. Wealth inequality is a social and civic conversations that is not new but that has been catalysed through digital media.

Manuscript from the 300 AC, containing fragments of Plato's Republic.

Plato in the Republic rejects any form of illusionism in art. He calls it mimesis or ‘imitation’. This has also created a question what is the Greek word “mimesis”? And why does this matter?

What we have not full knowledge of, we cannot reproduce. Presumably this is the reason why all the monotheistic religions (Protestant Christianity, Islam, Judaism) had an explicit problem with art and artists trying to imitate the knowledge of god, its image, his son, soul, Universe, etc. The imitation occurs in many instances, when an artist uses a portrait of a dead person to recreate his-own interpretation of the person. But Plato goes beyond it.

Art and Manipulation

Only through the direct observation one can exercise an ability to learn, observing the reality through the eyes of others, through movies, cartoons, or even just through reading books can become dangerous and manipulated.

Title page of the oldest manuscript: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, 1807

God Thoth and Ancient Egyptian Tutankhamun

Learning from Ahmed Osman and JeShu as TuT-aNX-aMuNArt, Education, Symbols and Signs

Writing and Ancient Egyptian Tut-aNX-aMuN

god Thoth (Θώθ) or Djehuti ḏḥwtj 

By Nataša Pantović

Writing was believed to have been given to humanity by the Egyptian god Thoth Thōth (Θώθ). Thoth, lord of ritual and of words, is an Egyptian god who gave us writing. Plato mentions Thoth in his dialogue Phaedrus. He says writing is a wonderful substitute for memory, yet it will cause that the future generations will hear much without being properly taught, and will appear wise but not be so. Thoth gave us the ancient Egyptian symbols wisdom of the frequency of the 22 letters and sounds, possibly through the mystical learnings passed through the centuries through the Tarot cards and Kabbala’s Tree of Life.

Museum Louvre Paris France Obélisque de Manishtusu Akkadin Babylon 2370 BC

Another Thoth, the Ancient Egyptian King Tut-ankh-amun and his carved letters, left a deep cultural and scientific impact on the history of European / Arabic writing. His carved letters / books are today known as Amarna Letters and speak of writing as a skill much before 1,400 BC.

Plato's cosmology and theory of the human body, and the story of Atlantis; courtesy of a phantastic audio version featuring David Rintoul as Socrates, David Timson as Timaeus, and Peter Kenny as Critias.  Philosophical and scientific enquiry redolent with the joy of the intellectual exercsie for its own sake -- that alone makes it a joy to tag along (however much Plato might be distressed to learn that his theories on the human body have at long last, after some two millennia. been proved wrong after all -- and despite his warnings about the falliability of the human mind, even by scientific experiment).

(Task: Read a book about philosophy or a philosopher, or a how-to book about changing your life in a significant way or suggesting a particular lifestyle (Hygge, Marie Kobo, etc.).