With God as My Witness
Why do we do what we do?
Some people operate on autopilot, coasting through life without a second thought.
But what about the rest of us? What about the people who decide to take matters into their own hands. Whose hands are we really in, once we make this choice?
Who better to answer this question than the great philosopher Socrates?
Socrates lived in Athens in the 5th century B.C.—not exactly the most enlightened of eras, in terms of free thought. At the time, Greece was still polytheistic, and dissent from the ‘mainstream’ belief was punishable by death.
Nevertheless, Socrates’ instinct was to question, and he taught others to do the same. He taught others to live free, autonomous lives, and to ask their own questions about topics such as justice and ethics.
Of course, this did not make him popular with the Athenian government. He was dangerous to them. Thus, Socrates was sentenced to death on such charges as disloyalty to the church and ‘corrupting the youth.’
Before his execution, Socrates was offered a chance to flee Athens. He did not take it. Before drinking the poison that would eventually kill him, he was given the choice to renounce his beliefs and stay alive. He did not renounce them.
Why did he do this?
Socrates claimed to have a guiding voice inside his head. He called it the daiminion (or simply the daimon), and considered it to be of spiritual origin. He relied upon this voice absolutely—it did not tell him what to do, but it always told him what not to do.
Socrates decided to put all of his faith in this guide. If he was planning on making a choice, and the daimon told him not to make it, he would alter course. He did this every time; he never defied the voice. Thus, he was always confident in his decisions. If a decision did not elicit a reaction from the daimon, he could rest assured that it was the correct choice. If a decision did elicit a reaction, then he would do the opposite, and be equally sure that it was right.
When Socrates was given the opportunity to flee Athens, it was his daimon that told him not to. When he decided to face death in full support of his beliefs, he did this with the daimon’s blessing.
There is power in martyrdom. It is one thing to preach beliefs—it is another to die for them. Socrates’ final act of faith changed the course of history. He and the philosophers that came after him (notably Plato and Aristotle) sparked the rise of democracy.
What force was Socrates listening to? Did he have some special sense, some power that no one else had? What is the daimon, anyway?
Have you ever wish you had ‘listened to your gut’? That was the daimon calling you to action.
Everyone has this guiding force—it’s just that most people do not know how to listen for it, and have, after years of conforming and suppressing their instincts, become accustomed to ignroing it. Some people might call it God. Some might call it intuition. It’s all semantics—no one definition is more correct than any other.
Try to listen to your daimon for a while. Follow your gut, your intuition. Hell, why not even call it God? Give it the reverence it deserves. See what happens.
"it did not tell him what to do, but it always told him what not to do."
This reminds of the dichotomy between the Golden Rule and the Silver Rule. The former is an important guide. But the latter is the only thing upon which political laws can be based. We cannot tell people exactly how nice they should be or how much money they ought to give to charity. But we can tell them what they must NOT do.