Goldtent TA Paradise

Amathia — clear description of our world, and those around us

1. pedro_deleon says:

   December 13, 2025 - 9:57 am at 9:57 am

   not the associated text, but a parallel restatement from the same source

   In classical Athens, the philosophers spoke of amathia.
   This was not ignorance in the ordinary sense, but a deeper condition of the soul.
   Amathia was known to Socrates as the failure to see clearly, even among those trained to think.
   It was not the absence of intelligence, but its misapplication.
   A corruption of reason by pride, certainty, and desire.
   In Plato’s dialogues, Socrates often encounters this condition, most notably in Alcibiades, a brilliant statesman whose ambition outpaced his self-knowledge.
   Gifted with rhetoric and political charm, Alcibiades could sway the crowd, but remained estranged from wisdom.
   Socrates saw in him not stupidity, but blindness: a soul that could not turn inward.
   He called this the most dangerous ignorance. Not knowing that one does not know.
   Centuries later, Roman Stoics would speak of pseudodoxia and disknowledge.
   The soul misled by plausible but false impressions.
   And in the 20th century, thinkers like Karl Popper and Hannah Arendt examined the ways ideology, bureaucracy, and self-deception produce intelligent error on a vast scale.
   In all of these traditions, the warning remains the same…
   The mind can reason brilliantly, even as the soul forgets how to see.
   Amathia is not cured by more learning, but by humility. The turning of the intellect toward itself.
   The discipline of questioning, not merely outwardly, but inwardly.
   This, the ancients believed, was the beginning of philosophy.

   I wonder if its simpler than that.
   Where financial self interest and motivation twists one’s reasoning into rationalization (of falsehoods).

   As well as the point he makes where those who invest in their public persona tend to become increasingly unwilling to back track on their positions, to avoid appearing weak.

2. Kewl2 says:

   December 13, 2025 - 10:22 am at 10:22 am

   Interesting that this condition was identified so long ago …. a plague that mankind has had to deal with for millenia!

   • Fullgoldcrown says:

     December 13, 2025 - 3:37 pm at 3:37 pm

     PLUS 1