The sophist owns the thinking of society.
His song seems right, as if sung by angels.
His effect is the sword of war and the murder of millions.
But who can cut through the sophistry that rules?
A lot of people on the plane were not at all pleased to have us on board, much less being proud to have us there. A couple of young airmen that overheard Steve and I talking about the SDI cancellation in conjunction with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings started to call us traitors and something worse. Their reaction supported Steve's prediction that the bulk of humanity would help the fondi's empire to realize its world-engulfing goals, the goals of doom.
"There you have a real life example of sophistry," said Steve to me in response to their slandering us. "It's only a mild form of it," he added.
Since the air had become too 'thick' for us in the front of the plane where everyone had congregated, Steve suggested that we should go for a walk. This meant going to the back of the plane.
"A sophist rarely knows that he is a sophist," said Steve once we got settled in the back, in the second last row in the almost empty cabin.
"Our task," he said seriously, "is to create an honest unity among people. This can only be achieved on the basis of truth. The truth is that we are all human beings. In this we are united laterally and naturally right across the world. In contrast, all top-down vertical relationships are forced and artificial. Every vertical structure is artificial, and every imperial structure is vertically oriented. The top-down structured vertical system has no principle. It exists only on a platform of seduction or force. The seduction is achieved by sophistry, a process that destroys a person's humanity with lies of countless types. The lateral relationship, in contrast, where mankind stands side by side with one-another as human beings unfolds a structure of truth. That's what sophistry is designed to bury. The lies of sophistry then become the underlying issue that separates empires with all the human misery that they create from universal love and freedom. Everything apart from that is secondary."
Steve suggested that sophistry is a type politically driven philosophy designed to dehumanize thinking and hide the truth behind a blanket of mythologies. "It actually proclaims that there is no such thing as truth," said Steve. "In sophistry, opinion is truth. Lies are truth. The division and isolation of humanity is regarded as the truth in the minds darkened by sophistry. That's what Hobbes represented. We have to cut through this blanket of lies that has been built up through the ages, layer by layer. We must recreate the natural basis for unity that has not been acknowledged on this planet for three thousand years. We need to establish a unity that unfolds a community of principle reflecting the truth about our humanity as human beings."
"That won't be easy," said Ushi. "This is what sophistry stands in opposition to. If sophistry is a philosophy that denies the very existence of truth, then it a mode of thinking that tells people that there is nothing in the universe that can be recognized, understood, and be verified as a truth reflecting universal principle. All the wars based on lies are therefore cited as proof that there is no truth in anything."
"Isn't that what Palmerston said to me?" I interjected. "He told me in my face that we are absolutely helpless against the fondi's power. He said that we were amateurs, little people that aren't anywhere near his league. He said that nothing in the world can stop his empire, the great Fondi Empire, especially not us. He said as proof that the fondi are simply invincible. In essence he said it was so, because he said so. That's a trained sophist speaking."
"He's a slick liar out of Aristotle's school," said Steve and laughed. "The secret of the fondi's seeming invincibility is their craft in making you look small in your sight. Aristotle represents this smallness in human thinking, the narrow horizon. He resurrected the debased image of man that stood behind the Peloponnesian War and its focus on slavery. Rome became Aristotle's product as it were. Rome advanced it. Rome created an image of the human being that is hopelessly limited - that is as helpless as a worm in the sight of power. That ugly smallness in thinking created thirteen centuries of dark ages that were broken only by the power of the Renaissance. The darkness of impotence crept into everything. It pervaded even the sciences. Aristotle said in essence, what you see is what you get - don't talk about seeing with the mind's eye and discovering universal principles that contradict the senses and their narrow world. What you see is what get. There is nothing else. There is no complex domain of universal principles that can be proven and thus to contradict the simple world of the small. Out of the smallness of Aristotelian thinking emerged the dark ages of sophistry, and they really haven't ended."
