Dear Jane,
Recently you started your first blog with your friend Ellen! Well done . . . no nine year old could make her Daddy more proud of her.
You made an interesting argument about Plato that gave me some ideas for my blog! First, I love your dialog format where Calvin and Hobbes chat with each other about issues.
You say (thinking about Plato and the many sculptures of him):
. . . who would in the right mind would just sit there and wait for a long time and have a friend use a rock!? not plato!! so he went walking to the sculpture maker and thought hmmmm…….. i don’t want to wait for some guy to make my face in a rock!!! i will make a child toy!!! not for children 3 and younger!………………… and so thats why plato made playdough! Well…… says Hobbes if you say so but still…….. Calvin interrupts and says anyway thats that. and that ends the tale of plato and his toy playdough.
I am still waiting for you to explain the relationship between Mickey’s dog and our favorite family philosopher. (Remember: we name dogs “Aristotle” . . . but never use Plato’s name in vain!)
If I took your post very seriously, you make an error in logic.
Let’s have some fun and notice that grups seems to make the same error you do . . . only they are not writing a fun blog post! They mean it!
Your argument seems to be two fold:
First, you assume that the names “Plato” and “playdough” sound alike so they must be (or might be) related. I am not persuaded by this at all. The word “demon” and the first part of the word “democrat” sound alike, but it would not be nice to call our fellow citizens “demon-crats.” We should also avoid elaborate etymologies that suggest a link without powerful evidence.
Of course, I know that you know that name calling is wrong. You would never be like Rev. Sharpton in trying to win an argument against a good man by name calling. You mean to praise Plato by connecting him to a favorite crafty toy! However, false praise is just as bad as unfair criticism. It teaches people that they are good when they are not.
You will notice this a lot when people talk about “helping the poor.” Some really nice chums at Daddy’s college are trying to get the school to back the One Campaign. Their web site says:
The ONE Campaign derives its name from the belief that allocating an additional one percent of the U.S. budget toward providing basic needs like health, education, clean water and food would transform the futures and hopes of an entire generation in the world’s poorest countries.
Remember when we saved money for poor children over Lent? Our church sent it to them and they are getting food! The nice chums at college believe that if we took tax money from America and sent it to other countries that it would be the same thing . . . only there would more money to feed poor people. This sounds good, and sounds like what we did at Lent, so it must be good!
It turns out that the government giving money away does not work as well as churches or people doing it. The United States gives away billions of dollars every year, but it may harm them and not help them!
A thing that works well small might change when it gets really large. For one thing many countries are not poor because they don’t have food, money, or resources, but because (like the folk who killed Anastasia!) they set up systems that don’t work. Giving them more money or food just keeps the problem going.
But look at the problem with Daddy trying to discuss this! We want to help the poor . . . but in a way really works. If you oppose their idea (which would give a lot of money to government workers right away), then people can say, “You Scrooge! You hate the poor!”
We all have to be careful not to be confused by sound-alike ideas. Plato is not playdough and government foreign aid may not aid anything but foreign governments (not kids)!
Finally, you suggest (in fun!) that Plato was so smart that he can be given credit for thinking through everything . . . including a way to shorten the wait for getting a statue made. But here is a warning, dear Jane: smart people often don’t see obvious things like that. I fear Plato would have been too busy thinking about Big Ideas to think about such a clever small idea.
Being intellectually smart does not mean you have “practical wisdom.” We should have both and perhaps Plato did, but we cannot know unless we know more about his life than we do. He was one of the greatest thinkers ever, but did he make a good worker and household manager? We don’t know.
That is a good reminder to me! I should not just try to solve the problems of the world . . . but also solve my problems . . . and our family ones. Sometimes we want to help all the hungry people in the rest of the world by big slogans and campaigns, but we are not helping our next door neighbor!
Silly me.
Mommy is right that your post is funnier, shorter, and more interesting than mine . . . but maybe some other people can learn from our chat!
What do you think?
With a ton of love,
Daddy