What Are Friends For?

While Socrates was in his jail cell, during the day friends and family would come to see him and while away the hours with their normal discussions about virtue, justice, good and evil and whatnot. Given that Socrates now had unlimited scholia, or leisure time , to converse, his more well-to-do friends were more than happy to spend their days in the presence of their dear friend. However, to what extent were they friends, or were they more interested in being in the presence of Socrates for their own benefit is somewhat put into question with the odd, yet powerful, little dialogue known as the Crito, whose subtitle is Or, on Duty; Ethical.

Crito, the man, appears to have been in on the very inner circle of Socrates’ friends and acquaintances according to the dialogue, which bears his name. Moreover, the fact that Crito is the one to be bringing the message that he has to give to Socrates suggests that the others in this circle must have felt that he had a certain persuasion over Socrates or he wouldn’t have been chosen to confront him with the proposition that his they had been concocting.

What begins as Crito’s attempt to convince Socrates of this plan rather ends like Hopper’s demonstration to his fellow grasshopper’s when they try to convince him to stay on vacation rather than go back to Ant Island in Pixar’s A Bug’s Life. Socrates is “quite the motivational speaker” as well in the Crito in an uncharacteristic monologue on the nature of duty to one’s country when one decides to stay in that country with respect to obeying the laws.

However, in addition to the blatant message of the importance of Duty to one’s country (with the provision that one has freely chosen to remain in that country and/or city, as Socrates did with Athens), there is a rather subtle subtext of the question of what is a true friend. Crito has been there all along as we are to infer from the dialogue, yet in the final moments of Socrates’ life, this loyalty as “a friend” is squarely put into question.

Crito has come to see Socrates to tell him that there has been a report that the ship with the envoy to/from Delos is returning, which in turn means that Socrates will be executed the following day as per the law. The delay of the ship had caused the month-long stay of execution for Socrates, allowing his associates to come up with a plan to break him out of jail that night as a result.

Crito had been watching Socrates sleep and when he awakes, tells him that he wished that he could be as peaceful as him in such a time of sorrow and pain. Crito says that he had always thought Socrates to be eudaimonisa (normally translated as “happy,” but I feel strongly that it is more literally such as “well-spirited,” with an emphasis on the “spirit” aspect, referring specifically to Socrates’ frequent mention of his personal daimon) to which Socrates answers that he would be a fool to just now be afraid to die after all of the discussions they had had on the nature of the soul.

Crito continues to plead that it will be embarrassing to him and the others if people started to spread rumors that Crito and the gang had not tried their best to get their friend of out jail, especially when they had the financial resources to do so. What a public shame it would be for them if public opinion were to judge them as friends who did not help a “friend in need.”

That is about all that Socrates needs to hear, then, as to what “public opinion” has to say about their actions. Socrates asks for an agreement from Crito, however, before he launches into his full answer. He sets up the condition that one must never do wrong to another, especially if one has been wronged. To requite wrong with wrong is as bad, or perhaps worse than the original wrong done. Before Socrates will agree to continue, he asks if Crito thinks that this is to be agreed upon, for the majority of people would not go so far as to say this. However, for Socrates, if two people do not agree with this condition, then “toutois ouk esti koine boule,” (there is no common desire/wish between them) and that they would be in opposition. Basically what Socrates was saying is that if Crito did not agree to acknowledge what Socrates held to be his deepest philosophical conviction, then all of their decades of friendship would be for nought.

Yet, does that mean that Socrates was asking to agree with him? Not necessarily. Socrates makes it clear  that Crito is in no danger of being executed the following day, so he should be able to make informed, rational decisions, beyond emotional prejudices. In other words, Socrates asking Crito to agree with him, but rather if what he is saying is actually right or not. For, if it is not right, then everything that Socrates believed in and in which he had rooted his life’s philosophy would be in vain.

A true friend then, for Socrates, is not merely someone who agrees with him or not, but rather, if that person is willing to become his enemy by disagreeing with him if he does not think that what Socrates is saying is right or not. Not right by Socrates, but based on what that person knows in his or her soul in relation to be what is right according to one’s prakteos, or duty in life. In Sanskrit philosophy, this is known as Dharma, and is the highest form of action that one can perform in life. Socrates was not asking Crito to agree with Socrates, but rather at the risk of losing their friendship, to follow what he knew was his duty.

How many, indeed, are willing in the face of losing a lifelong friend to contradict him or her when faced with assessing whether that friend be right or not, but based upon whether it is in line with one’s prakteos or dharma to agree or disagree?

Sweet Surrender

When Socrates was waiting for his sentence to be carried out, which had been delayed by the Delian envoy, he did a curious thing, one that has ironically spilt quite a bit of its own ink over the years. He supposedly wrote something down, more precisely, he composed music.

This in itself would not be significant, nor even noteworthy, except for the fact that, as far as we know, Socrates never wrote anything during his lifetime, or at least nothing that ever came down through the ages. All of the words of Socrates, as with Jesus and the Buddha, were written by disciples, students, chroniclers, or scholars. These three men, however, did not put pen to paper, so to speak, and write down their thoughts, ideas or teachings. They spoke, using the oral transmission wisdom as their only instrument of instruction.

However, when Socrates was in his jail cell in Athens, this may have changed. In the prologue of the Phaedo, which is Plato's chronicle of the final day of Socrates' life, Echecrates asks the eponymous Phaedo if he knows the story of the final days of Socrates and if he could relate it. Phaedo answers that he was actually there in person and the bulk of the dialogue is the fictional "memory" of Phaedo's account of the conversation in the jail cell.

When asked if he would relate the story, for Echechrates says that "sweetly" he would like to hear it, Phaedo answers that he will do his best, and the motif of bittersweet becomes rather prominent. Phaedo felt a mixture of pleasure and pain that final day with Socrates in that he was happy to have been there and to have known him, but deeply sad in that it was in fact the last day on the planet. He relates the conceit of Aesop that pleasure and pain are really one entity and that "a very curious mixture of pleasure and pain was present" while Socrates and his friends were discussing the nature of the Soul, sometimes laughing, sometimes weeping, in short, a very human affair.

When Phaedo begins his re-telling of the story, he describes what Socrates was doing. Apparently, during the final month of his life, while waiting in his jail cell and after the daily visits were over, Socrates' daimon had spoken quite distinctly to him, yet in a manner even more distinct in its aberration from the norm, than in its message. For the first time, his daimon had told him to do something, rather than the accustomed message of dissuading him from doing something. His daimon had told him to "make music."

For seventy years, Socrates had not composed anything, yet upon his imminent death, his inner voice, his daimon, or his hotline to the divinity, asked him to compose hymns to Apollo, the God who figures so prominently in Socrates' life-long quest to "Know Thyself."

Socrates obliges, and since he does not know how to compose his own, he choses to set some of the words and fables of Aesop to music as his paean to the God. For all his life, he listened to this voice tell him not to act, until Time was truly of the essence. The final directive, his soul's will and testament, was to compose hymns of praise to God.

He obeyed, and in his final act, he showed gratitude to this God and he composed. He made music. He acted. He was grateful.

The Waiting Game

I have always been a bit of a half-breed, at least when it comes to my metaphysical make-up. Basically since day one, literally, I have been a bit of at times been the odd man out, being born in the Indian (Native American) hospital in Alburquerque. Needless to say, there was no fear of a baby swapping incident happening. However, I feel that a part of New Mexico was indelibly infused into my soul here.

Sitting on a deck overlooking an unspoiled portion of the Sangre de Christo range of the Rocky Mountains, I do understand the oft-maligned metaphor of “sitting on a mountaintop,” whether physically or metaphysically to really re-charge one’s inner core, to find one's self. Sure, there are mockeries, satires, and spoofs of sitting on mountains for “enlightenment,” something that I have heard people scoff at, but I believe in it, to the very life-essence of my soul.

My friends and their kids, and my daughter, all just left to go down to the “village” below, while I am sitting up here alone, with the hummingbirds, grouse, mountain jays, ravens, crows, and unseen, but ever-present eagles. The chipmunks, (or ground squirrels), rabbits, bear, deer, wild turkeys, elk, and invisible mountain lions are around, chatting, foraging, sleeping, prowling, in short, living. But, one thing they don’t do is to wait for something, even if they are waiting.

That, I believe, is an unbreachable gap between us and the other animals on the planet, we wait for the future, but usually quite impatiently. Instead of allowing it to happen, we force it, press it, shape it, contemplate it, visualize it, and so on and are often bitter or surprised when it is not what we had imagined, and then usually seek some reason for why it was for better or for worse.


Krishnamurti, one of my metaphysical gurus, for lack of a better term, though for me, it is a perfect term, would often ask the question to his listeners, “Are you able to just sit somewhere and be alone?” Not meaning, without another person with you, but alone, truly alone? For him, the main blockage of that for people is K’s old stand-by of “fear.” We live with so much fear each day. Not fear of falling down the stairs, or getting lost somewhere, or losing our keys, but fear of being alone, completely and utterly alone, with just ourselves.

With the advances, if you wish to call them such, of technologies, it is nearly impossible to be physically disconnected from others in contemporary America for sure. Cell phones and iPads with 3G capacity allow us to be on the Internet, even on top of our mountains. To be able to call others, check Facebook, Twitter, or write blogs upon blogs upon blogs.

It makes being alone a challenge, a true effort. As it does for waiting. Often when we are waiting, we are checking our emails, surfing the Internet, posting on Facebook, writing blogs upon blogs upon blogs. Yadda, Yadda, blah, blah, blah, dribble, dribble, dribble. Same old shit we’ve been doing for years, right?

What is it that we are so afraid of when we think about the possibility of being alone then?

Something that I have contemplated quite a bit, and has been part of my academic work is the relationship between memory and death. My cousin was talking about a book she was reading the other day about an African concept of death and memory and that there are different levels of death. The truly dead are the ones that are forgotten. For as long as someone remembers you, you are not dead. This concept was also prevalent in Ancient Greece, as is seen in Homer and is played out in the trial and death of Socrates. You can die twice as a result, once physically, the other time when the last person alive on Earth has forgotten you.

When Socrates was on trial and was musing about the options of his imminent conviction, as it was clear that he was not gunning for an acquittal, he asks the court why he should be afraid of Death? Either it is nothing at all, but like a great sleep, or it is where he will be able to commune with the dead, and in his own words, to badger them with questions like he did while living on the streets of Athens. Why should he do anything different in death than he had in life? Indeed.

Many people have a “bucket list” now in America, made popular by the eponymous movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, two actors indeed showing their physical mortality. What is the impetus for a bucket list if not that one believes, that Time will soon be up. Hurry Up, It’s Time! cries the barkeep in Eliot’s Waste Land.

We are always worried about Time being Up. Done. Over.

Or, we worry about the future, because we feel that we are “waiting” for the future, waiting for Godot, waiting for someone new, waiting for something new, waiting for something old to be done, waiting for something new to begin, waiting.

 When are we going? When do we get there? What are we doing tonight? What are we doing next year for vacation? What’s for dinner? What do you want to do now?

But, it is never really, “What do you want to do NOW?” By no means do I think I am the first to make this observation, but I think that it is important enough to repeat, and ask the question, borrowing from Morrissey and The Smiths, “How Soon is Now?” Are we even in the Here and Now as Ram Dass suggested? Can we be?

“Now” is either too soon or too late, seldom, if ever, just right. Supposedly, and it is cornerstone in Joycean folklore, when James Joyce and W. B. Yeats met for the first and only time, when the former was not-yet known and the latter was at his zenith of repute, Joyce, being  cocksure and portentous, remarked to the elder Poet, “We have met too late; you are too old to be influenced by me.” As Kelso would say, “Buuurnnn.”

We are always meeting ourselves too late as well, seeing ourselves coming and going in our own lives, too old to be educated by life’s lessons. As my young daughter says if I point out something, she retorts, “I know that” (which she usually does).

We often feel that our lives are interminably plagued by the great “if” of the phrases such as, “what if?” or “if only...” or “if I had known...” and so on.

We are really only waiting for one thing, to die. That is not fatalistic, but as the saying goes, only Death and Taxes are certain. For the rest, we are waiting for an imagined future, a fabrication of desires and wants, but not reality. Some of those may become a reality, but, by and large, they will never exist, only be approximations, a calculus of disappointments or successes and/or exceeded/failed expectations, but rarely what we had convinced ourselves of what we were waiting for. And then, we blame fate, or chance, or "bad karma", but in reality, we have no one else to blame but ourselves for being uncomfortable with waiting.

When Socrates was condemned to death, in normal circumstances, the sentence would have been carried out the following day.

Instead, there was a religious holiday involving the envoy of a ship to and from the island of Delos, to propitiate the god Apollo, the one whose oracle had set Socrates on his quest of self-knowledge and making an infamous reputation for himself by becoming the Athenian gadfly. The boat’s return to Athens was delayed by bad weather, and Socrates was given a reprieve of about a month’s time to “wait” for his punishment to be carried out.

He literally then, was waiting to die.

What he did in that time is what I find to be most remarkable and to be the blood and marrow of the Curse of Socrates.