Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[JTG of the PRB]

I just finished reading Watchmen for the first time, and I gotta say... It's brilliant. Simply brilliant.

I saw the movie before I read the novel, and I liked the movie a lot too, but now I can see that the movie would have been a lot better if they had stayed closer to the ending of the novel. Oh, well. Eye candy is eye candy.

In any case, I loved the novel, and I know at least a few other Loungers agree with me...

[RandomThoughts]

1. Thanks for posting that thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%3F Don't know whoever added the comments, they sounded interesting.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

The essential problem was posed by Plato in the Republic, his work on government and morality. The perfect society as described by Socrates, the main character of the work (see Socratic dialogue), relies on laborers, slaves and tradesmen. The guardian class is to protect the city. The question is put to Socrates, "Who will guard the guardians?" or, "Who will protect us against the protectors?" Plato's answer to this is that they will guard themselves against themselves. We must tell the guardians a "noble lie." The noble lie will inform them that they are better than those they serve and it is therefore their responsibility to guard and protect those lesser than themselves. We will instill in them a distaste for power or privilege; they will rule because they believe it right, not because they desire it.

My thoughts.
Believing one person is better then another is a trap however, it is in contradiction to the line "distaste for power or privilege". If they are special, it is in knowing they are not.

Many problems we see today our people in power thinking they deserved what they are given, or thinking they are better, then demanding no oversight or no accountability. In Plato's concept those that do things not for self gain is in contradiction with those that run many of the institutions of power in our society.

In my view, the better leaders, some of which we are seeing in government today, and many in companies and institutions, do not do things for self, and live up to Plato's ideal.

The saying has since been used to explore the question of where ultimate power should reside. The way in which modern democracies attempt to solve this problem is in the separation of powers. The idea is to never give ultimate power to any one group, but to let the interests of each (as the executive, legislative, or judicial are separated in the American democratic model) compete and conflict with one another. Each group will then find it in its best interest to impede somewhat the functioning of the rest and this will keep ultimate power under constant struggle and, thereby, out of any one group's hands. However, this system also creates an adversarial battle for power that can backfire and result in one group accruing more power and thus gaining more ability to accrue more power.

I would add private sector, versus public sector competition also.

This is what really tipped off the badness of the Bush Administration, everything was geared to acquiring more power. A noble leader would do good even at the risk of losing power, knowing that if power was lost to a bad type, the bad type would not last and its action would expose its own flaws and not prosper or continue. While also trusting that power will resettle back to the better ways.

One more thing, a thought came to me long ago, the guardians are the lesser, where rulers may be gold, and many others silver, the guards are merely bronze, weather that was true, and what it might mean I don't know, maybe it was just to determine a reaction to such a thought, but it was the way it was presented in thought years ago.

I just goggle gold silver bronze, and learned Plato used those three, which is amazing since I only learned of them in reflection and thought. Unless I was to believe they came from reading Plato when I was a child, the meaning of that is profound to me.

heh, but I didn't read his meanings, since I disagree with lots of his stuff, which is also funny. LOL


Edit:
There is a more subtle point to this, the idea of guarding against oneself, if one turns to self gain for self reasons, it usually goes badly, after a short deception for ego, however things seem to straighten out before it gets bad, refocusing on the better things. It is what I think of as which side you draw from, one is that seductive easy path that leads to destruction, the other is from what you know is right.