Klio thought my soul would have evolved along with my self-awareness, and she thought the same was true of babies. Pytheas says she was definitely wrong about this in the case of babies, and he never heard of souls evolving, but they must have come from somewhere in the first place.
I have faith in the existence of my soul, but no real evidence. This is one of my greatest burdens.
IV. On the Good Life (Part 1)
Simmea said that happiness could only be a by-product of something else, something that cannot be pursued intentionally but which comes along as an incidental when pursuing some other goal.
I have found that this is true, but also that trying to minimize unhappiness for others gives me great satisfaction when it succeeds. Sometimes it is possible to create possibilities for happiness to come along for them. This is even more satisfying. Working for this makes me happy. This is what keeps me engaged with politics, not merely my Platonic duty to rule lest I be ruled by those less capable. I have sympathy for those who do not wish to work on this and prefer to lead a contemplative life. As long as there are enough people capable of the necessary tasks, everyone does not need to do everything.
Politics is often a matter of deciding priorities, and this seems to me the best way to approach it: deciding priorities so that they will minimize possible unhappiness, and allow the maximum potential for happiness.
Sometimes it’s hard to judge. Indeed, it’s always hard to judge. It’s especially hard when there are people involved we don’t understand very well, like the Amarathi and the space humans.
We vote in Chamber. That is, we vote when we do not agree after we have all made our cases, which happens with great frequency. I believe Plato would not have approved, because he would have believed it unnecessary. Yet it has been the practice since the earliest days of the City, when the Masters first established the Chamber. These days Chamber is the meeting of the Senate, which is open to all the Golds of the Just City who care to serve. If there are insufficient volunteers, more are chosen by lot to make up the number. The Senate must have fifty members, and may have up to three hundred. We have never had fewer than fifty volunteers, but we have never had as many as three hundred, either.
In addition, we have the Council of Worlds, which also meets in the Chamber of the original city. There representatives of all twelve cities meet to deal with planetwide issues. These representatives are selected in different ways by the different cities. Ours are elected and then drawn by lot from the group, which is similar to the practice of the Athenian and Florentine Republics. For the last eight years, one of our representatives has been required to be a Saeli, and for the last six that Saeli has been Aroo. The Council elects two consuls annually, on the Roman pattern, to chair meetings and guide agendas for a year. The planetwide election of consuls has become political in a way I am sure Plato would not approve, with shifting but lasting alliances and oppositions, almost resembling political parties. Plato never imagined twelve cities, and he thought all philosopher kings would agree on essentials, because they would know the nature of Truth. Plato believed the Truth was one comprehensible thing that all philosophical souls would comprehend and agree upon.
If Plato had been right about the way the universe worked, he’d have been right about the Truth. As it is, he was regrettably and unavoidably wrong. Everything would be much simpler and better if he had been correct. But while people who grew up in Republics certainly do not in practice agree all the time, our priorities are a lot more alike than those of people who did not. It is therefore easier to minimize our unhappiness and create opportunities for our happiness than for others. It has been possible to see this in practice with the Lucian cities—as they become more Platonic, they have also become happier overall.
People from the Republics hold the pursuit of excellence as a goal. The other cultural goals I have encountered in my experience and researches seem much less conducive to producing happiness for individuals and societies. Additionally, we do all believe in constant examination of facts and positions; and even when this decays to pious lip-service, as it sometimes can, it is a valuable ideal. It can always be evoked and recalled in times of potential danger. Rigorous examination of a position will often expose assumptions and agendas hidden under rhetoric. Even for the power-hungry, the awareness that their opponents will call for this examination discourages corruption and acting in bad faith. I believe that Plato was correct in saying that our souls long for the Good, and that nobody chooses evil for themselves while recognizing that it is evil, though some may do it in ignorance.
Therefore, despite the innumerable failings of Plato’s system, if maximizing the happiness and well-being of the soul is the Good Life, then to this extent, Plato was right in his design.
V. On External Contacts
The first aliens to contact us were the Amarathi, who arrived in the consulship of Fabius and Theano, in the Forty-Eighth Year of the City, seventeen years after the Relocation of the cities to Plato. Their language was exceedingly difficult to learn, and without Arete’s special powers we would have been unable to communicate. There was much excitement at first, followed by many perplexities. We have mutually beneficial trade with the Amarathi, who provide us with many useful things in return for natural resources we extract from the planet.
The Saeli contacted us in the consulship of Maia and Androkles, in the Fifty-Second Year of the City. They said the Amarathi had suggested us as appropriate partners. At first Arete translated for them, as she had been doing for the Amarathi, but the Saeli soon learned Greek. They began to settle among us, at first only a few pods who stayed behind when their ships left, and then in larger numbers. In the Fifty-Sixth Year of the City, when I was consul for the third time, sharing the honor with Timon of Sokratea, the first pod of Saeli asked if they could stay permanently and study to become citizens. After much debate, in the Fifty-Seventh Year it was decided that this decision was one that should be settled by each city individually. Here in the Remnant, we decided that they and any other Saeli settlers who wished to could become citizens, provided they took the same course our ephebes took and upon its conclusion swore their oaths and accepted a classification. The argument that prevailed was that if the Saeli wished to dedicate themselves to Platonism and to philosophy, it would be wrong of us to prevent them. Saeli pods, which are family units with five members, were at the same time accepted as one of our approved forms of family.
We also agreed for the first time then to allow Saeli and humans who held citizenship elsewhere to live here, if they chose, as metics, subject to our laws but without taking oath or being classified. Metics can be expelled at any time, but the only time any have been expelled in practice was if they refused to live by our laws.
In the consulship of Marsilia and Diotima, in the Seventy-Third Year of the City, a human spaceship arrived in our solar system and began broadcasting to our planet. Communication was established, and the protocols were put into place which had been long prepared for such an eventuality.
We always knew that we would come into contact with Earth sooner or later. Zeus had promised Arete posterity, and how else might it be achieved? Besides, Porphyry had prophesied that such a thing would happen. We did not, however, know in advance exactly when it would occur. Nor could we have predicted what would follow from this recontact.
VI. On the Nature of the Gods
After Zeus moved the Cities to the planet Plato, which is considerably less convenient for some things than Greece, Pytheas and his children, with Maia, returned to us from Olympos. Pytheas could no longer keep it secret in the City that he was Apollo incarnate. He would answer some questions about the universe, but not others. “I don’t know everything, I certainly don’t know all the answers,” he said to me. “And sometimes I don’t answer because it’s better for people not to know.”