Ancient Greek thinkers like Socrates and Plato hated democratic elections.
They saw democracy as part of an endless cycle of regimes — destined to slip into mob rule.
But Polybius knew how to break the cycle... (thread) 🧵
Socrates likened the state to a ship. The uneducated voting in elections is like a ship taken over by a crew with no knowledge of sailing.
When selecting a captain, the crew is easily swayed by whoever is best at persuasion — not navigation.
Voting, thought Socrates, is a skill to be learned.
In Plato's 5 forms of government, democracy ranks only above tyranny, which it will inevitably become.
Why?
Systems that maximize freedom and equality lead us to pursue selfish pleasures, not the common good.
When votes are cast based not on what is good, but what is desired by the masses, demagogues emerge.
Like the ship, he with the best rhetoric wins by playing on selfish interests and emotions, not reason.
Once in charge, he creates a system of dependancy: "He is always stirring up some war so that the people may be in need of a leader..."
So, Plato thought the ideal system was aristocracy.
Voting should be a profession like any other, and only those with expertise should participate. Those with knowledge of "good" (the philosophers) should rule.
But Plato admitted this too is doomed to fail. When aristocratic rulers are no longer motivated purely by reason, but prioritize public approval, things fall apart again.
200 years later, a man named Polybius proposed a brilliant solution...
Polybius argued that regimes were in an endless cycle, and the three basic forms of government are destined to degenerate into their lower forms — and lead back to anarchy.
But there's a way to fix it...
To break the cycle, you need to combine elements of each system. Polybius admired this in the Roman Republic:
Consuls (monarch-like leaders), Senate (aristocratic body), and Assemblies (democratic element).
This idea of separation of powers was developed by Montesquieu, and led ultimately to the American system devised by the Founding Fathers:
The Presidency (monarch-like), the Senate (aristocratic) and the House (democratic) — plus the Judiciary to add balance.
There isn't a true aristocratic element (by birth or wealth), but Senators are in some sense.
They have longer terms than representatives, represent states not populations, and were originally chosen by state legislatures, not the public (until 1913).
Going back to Socrates, his concern was that democracies are unsafe in the hands of ordinary people.
But instead of a privileged voting class, he wanted everyone to think rationally enough to become worthy of participating.
Democracy, he thought, is only as good as the education system surrounding it — and Jefferson had much the same concern:
"If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be".
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Most people don't realize how mysterious the Pyramids truly are.
They're so old that Cleopatra lived closer to us than to their construction — yet Khufu's Pyramid is so precise it aligns north within 1/20th of a degree.
Some more mind-blowing facts about them… 🧵
They're not just incredibly old, but impossibly precise.
The Great Pyramid (attributed to Khufu, c.2550 BC) is 3.4 arcminutes off perfect alignment with true north. That's precision of ~1 millimeter per meter of the length of its base.
Executing such accuracy on something with a 13 acre footprint is astounding — how did they do it?
Possibly with the help of the sun on the equinox, which on that day rises exactly in the east (and sets perfectly in the west)...
This 2,700-year-old tablet is the oldest map of the world.
It reveals just how differently the ancients understood the world — but one detail is particularly strange.
It sheds light on a VERY ancient story… (thread) 🧵
The "Imago Mundi" is the oldest map of the world — as it was known to the Babylonians around 700 BC.
It's carved into a small piece of clay, with annotations explaining it, and the creation myth of the world.
The central parts of the map are easy to read:
The Euphrates river runs north to south, straddled by the city of Babylon (modern-day Iraq), and surrounded by cities and regions marked by small circles.
We often hear about the 7 Wonders of the World, both ancient and modern.
But what about wonders of the Medieval Age?
Here are seven — and what happened to them... 🧵
There's no "official" list of wonders built in the Middle Ages like for antiquity. The 7 ancient wonders list was proposed by Ancient Greeks, and endured to today.
So here are suggestions — sadly, most are long lost to time...
1. Old London Bridge
By all measures considered a world wonder by medieval Europeans. "Living bridges" were common in the Middle Ages and London's was the greatest — people even flocked to it for religious pilgrimage.