Milton Keynes

So old, it’s battered, the cover like something left out in the rain. And the pages; they smell of age, are falling out like bad teeth. Nevertheless, through the wrinkles there is wisdom. Though perhaps not all its pages should be returned to those ancient covers…. 

The city, indeed, is not a collection of individuals, but forms a real unity, a spiritual organism, and by that fact there is established an analogy between its constitution and structure and that of man. The analogy makes of the former a real macranthropos and of the latter a veritable micropolis. Thus, because the analogy rests upon a mutual interdependence, it is impossible to study man without at the same time studying the city of which he forms a part. The psychological structure of the individual and the social structure of the city fit together perfectly, or, in modern terms, social psychology and individual psychology are mutually interdependent. (Discovering Plato)

Alexandre Koyré. The Schloss, writing about Ray’s The Lonely Wife, has this to say:

…in the public arena it is useful to believe in illusions. In private the hard facts of reality demand to be heard.

Two corners of a boxing ring. Who to deliver the knock out blow? Needless to say that I believe myself a cert for the Lonsdale belt? Ha! Ha! I proclaim my victory on the Town Hall steps, trumpet my truth from the Colosseum’s terraces.… Oh dear, my metaphor is sliding down the halls of time. But what the hell! So confident, I set this challenge before you: in this gladiatorial contest, what chance the Platonists? Dreaming of muscles is not to train them on street and in gymnasia.

What! You want me to knock the old fellow down? A literalist, I see. Like a bit of bloodsport, yes? A nasty piece of work….

Get out your slippers and pipe, put that thinking cap on, and I’m sure you will quickly see that individual and City are not just different, but are distinct species; individuality lost amongst crowds, it surrenders to political rituals, vanishes under a hailstorm of bureaucratic memoranda. The polis? A great monster! Sacrificing blood and living tissue to the idea of itself. In a political community we define ourselves not through our own being but by how we belong; it is to give the self up to collective belief and group action.

If we refuse to join these groups…. Socrates tells the story.

We can go deep into the City’s swimming pool, but even the most fanatical cannot submerge themselves completely under its water; or at least not for long. All attempts to dissolve the ego into a collective identity end up pathological and deadly, both to one’s own humanity and to the humanity of others, who are dismissed as barbarians, heretics, scum. Culture, too, suffers a terrible evisceration; what with Plato’s acolytes lining the poets up against the wall. Bang! Bang! Bang! 

You don’t want to drown? Afraid to be shot….

Good! Recognise the differences, concentrate on that vast gap between polis and citizen, and already we’re on the road to an informed politics. Wisdom and civility awaits you; but not moral purity, this abstract ideal suitable for the study and seminar room but not a council chamber. On the way to your destination there’ll be a station stop - a revelation -: to be a citizen is as much about protecting the self against the polis as participating in it; the goal in life to maintain our independence, though not at the cost of good manners and intelligence.

The City and the individual are in constant tension, which over the lifespan of a civilisation cities are apt to win; the collective weight of its economic power, its educational zeal and moral fastidiousness, wear most human animals down. It’s why Plato has gained so much traction. In the idea of the City the human particular fuses with an abstract noun, and we cannot think ourselves distinct from it.1 I go further. Body and mind are at one with the City’s rituals and thoughts. For we are largely created by the polis, which also gives us the tools to transcend both self and City, through craft, religion, art and thought. Cities create culture. Alas, they also destroy culture when it gets in the way of the City’s growth. Every civilisation to have its mad iconoclastic moments.2

The City is the religion of all progressives, and many of the best thinkers down the ages.  Not just because they fixate on the benefits - the central heating and plumbing - or salivate over those transcendental possibilities. Progressives, just like philosophers, are such able propagandists because the idea of the City is built into their very thinking: they think in concepts and through reason (reasons the roads between the conceptual roundabouts). Life coterminous with the idea. For a knowledge merchant only when members of a polis are a saleable commodity; that is, only when they are defined, understood, analysed, do they exist. The barbarian particular remains forever outside the gates of a general and universalist understanding. 

You smile. You’ve spotted the joke: Professor Parch believes in fictions. Yes, you giggle, and I’ll leave you giggling on. But laugh on this…. What happens when leaders believe such fictions true? Ah, you look at me slyly. Truth, as you know, has its own compulsion. So when those leaders feel compelled to impose Truth onto you and me? Are you following my drift? How feel if you are treated as an abstract noun? Hey? Hey? Think on this: an entire life emptied out on the page, one’s being defined by a single word. Christian. Jew. Nazi. Scumbag. That question mark, a fishbone to choke on.

___________

1. Descartes makes the same argument about God. The Philosophical Writings, Volumes I and II.

2.  The great novel that elucidates this paragraph: Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars.