I've been teaching Plato's Republic for nearly 25 years. It somehow retains its ability to grip my attention. There are so many layers to it, so many topics discussed, and such remarkable formal skill in composition that I find something new in it each time I teach it. I find Plato's descriptions of the democratic and tyrcannical souls so insightful as to be troubled anew each time I read his criticisms of these psychic formations. Reading early modern and contemporary philosophy back into Plato's discussion makes it even more powerful.

In response to the linked article.

1: The rampant use of ChatGPT is due in part to a society-wide failure to value education for its own sake. By treating a pure means to an end - wealth - as a final end, we have ethically crippled a generation.

nymag.com/intelligencer/… We treat education purely in terms of its "value proposition." High school is just a means to get into college and college just a means to get a fancy job,

Children are raised from birth not to find wonder in the world. We teach them to look only for tools for future wealth.

My experience w/in institutional American Judaism is that we *unsee* Palestinian suffering. We're trained not to look at, but instead to look at ourselves: our fears and our pasts.

And so we simply act as if reports like this do not exist. We read them and instantly forget them. The essential tool for training American Jews is the regular incantation of charges of American anti-Semitism, uttered ritually and regularly more than the Shema, so that acknowledgment of anti-Semitism becomes the central Jewish prayer. Faith in anti-semitism is our faith.

I'm Jewish. So I'm disposed to love fellow Jews in Israel - esp. my family & friends there - and to love the family/friends of people who're part of my Jewish community here.

Then I see these poll results about Israeli attitudes towards the suffering of Gazans & I am disgusted: Even the Jewish Left in Israel is split!

47% of the Jewish "Left" says not to take the suffering of Palestinians into consideration when planning the war.

The inhumanity of this position!! Babies are starving and nearly 50% of the LEFT thinks this doesn't merit consideration.

Schumer's interview with the NYT reveals the fundamental failure of American Zionists to reckon how far to the right Israeli politics has gone.

Schumer, a consummate NYC Jewish politician, couldn't get elected dogcatcher in most Israeli cities and towns. nytimes.com/2024/03/19/us/… It's hilarious that Schumer thinks that an endorsement by Ehud Olmert shows a significant number of thoughtful Israelis support him.

Olmert was convicted of bribery! He is not popular at all. It's like Bibi flashing a letter from Rod Blagojevich and saying, "Americans love me!"

Some thoughts on the "Kidnapped posters".

1. Copying and putting up the posters was a public, performative expression of grief and fear after the initial attacks. Totally makes sense: public rituals are often essential for managing powerful, painful emotions...

https://twitter.com/melnickjeffrey1/status/1752894435564695829

2. The posters also served as effective material aids in (i) focusing our attention on Israeli suffering, (ii) setting up a Manichean battle between good (Israel) and evil (Hamas).

They were, in short, not mere expressions of mourning but also tools for propaganda.

The sentiment here is not, I think, widely held.

Almost everyone on the contemporary left recognizes some form of peoplehood as being morally significant, and so peoples, conceived of in some way, as having some sort of moral status.

https://twitter.com/mka_ultra/status/1722998801789542558

People often talk about theft from other cultures, such that there is something wrong over and above individual injury about, eg, a community losing its land to settlers.

People also talk about the moral cost (as opposed to the aesthetic cost) of the loss of cultural heritage.