(November 21, 2019 at 7:21 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: In some circles, this is known as 'Never let the mark know you've taken his money'.
Boru
Perhaps this is true among people you know.
There are less cynical reasons for choosing one's students carefully, and not putting things down in writing that are bound to be misunderstood.
Quote:Socrates: Yes, because there’s something odd about writing,
Phaedrus, which makes it exactly like painting. The offspring
of painting stand there as if alive, but if you ask them
a question they maintain an aloof silence. It’s the same with
written words: you might think they were speaking as if they
had some intelligence, but if you want an explanation of any
of the things they’re saying and you ask them about it, they
just go on and on for ever giving the same single piece of
information. Once any account has been written down, you
e find it all over the place, hobnobbing with completely
inappropriate people no less than with those who understand
it, and completely failing to know who it should and
shouldn’t talk to. And faced with rudeness and unfair abuse
it always needs its father to come to its assistance, since it is
incapable of defending or helping itself.
Phaedrus: Again, you’re quite right.
Socrates: Well, is there any other way of using words? Does
the written word have a legitimate brother? Can we see how
it is born, and how much better and stronger it grows than
its brother?
Phaedrus: What is this way of using words? How is it born,
do you think?
Socrates: It is the kind that is written along with knowledge
in the soul of a student. It is capable of defending itself, and
it knows how to speak to those it should and keep silent in
the company of those to whom it shouldn’t speak.
Phaedrus: You’re talking about the living, ensouled speech
of a man of knowledge. We’d be right to describe the written
word as a mere image of this.
Socrates: Absolutely. So here’s another question for you.
Consider a sensible farmer who cares for his seeds and
wants to see them come to fruition. Do you think he’d
happily spend time and effort planting them in the summer
in gardens of Adonis, and watch them grow up in eight
days, or would he do this, if at all, as a diversion and for the
sake of a festival? Don’t you think that for seeds he was
serious about he’d draw on his skill as a farmer, sow them in
the appropriate soil, and be content if what he sowed
reached maturity in the eighth month?
Phaedrus: Yes, that’s what he’d do, Socrates. He’d take care
of the one lot of seeds and treat the others differently, just as
you said.
Socrates: So are we to say that someone who knows about
right and fine and good activities is less sensible than our
farmer where his own seeds are concerned?
Phaedrus: Of course not.
Socrates: Then he won’t spend time and effort writing what
he knows in water–– in black water [ink]––and sowing them with
his pen by means of words which can neither speak in their
own defence nor come up with a satisfactory explanation of
the truth.
Phaedrus: No, it’s hardly likely that he will.
Socrates: No. He’ll probably sow and write his gardens d
of letters for amusement, if at all, as a way of storing up
things to jog his own memory when ‘he reaches the age of
forgetfulness’, and also the memory of anyone else who is
pursuing the same course as him. He’ll happily watch these
delicate gardens growing, and he’ll presumably spend his
time diverting himself with them rather than the symposia
and so on with which other people amuse themselves.
Phaedrus: What a wonderful kind of diversion you’re
describing, Socrates––that of a person who can amuse himself
with words, as he tells stories about justice and the other
things you mentioned––compared with the trivial pastimes
of others!
Socrates: Yes, that’s right, my dear Phaedrus. But it’s far
better, in my opinion, to treat justice and so on seriously,
which is what happens when an expert dialectician takes
hold of a suitable soul and uses his knowledge to plant and
sow the kinds of words which are capable of defending both
themselves and the one who planted them. So far from
being barren, these words bear a seed from which other
words grow in other environments. This makes them capable
of giving everlasting life to the original seed, and of
making the man who has them as happy as it is possible for a
mortal man to be.
Phaedrus: Yes, this is certainly far better.
Since the text is inert on its own, and can't argue back when some idiot interprets it wrongly, Socrates advocates choosing his students carefully, planting the seed of the idea with them, and nurturing it like a skilled gardener.
This is in contrast to the famous parable in the NT, where Jesus talks about scattering seeds far and wide, knowing that most will fail to root, or will get eaten by birds.
