Plato at the Googleplex

by Rebecca Goldstein

  You mentioned mathematics, Marcus, Plato said. I would be prepared to defend the position that beneath the perfect bite, as beneath all perfection and beauty, there is the formal exactitude of mathematics. Beauty in a human face—as is true, certainly, of all bodily beauty—is a matter of the proportions of parts to parts. Any compound, whatever it be, that does not by some means or other exhibit measure and proportion is the ruin both of its ingredients and first and foremost of itself. What you are bound to get in such cases is no real mixture into a whole, but only immiscible parts to parts (Philebus 64e).

  And you know, Marcus, it only gets worse with time, I added. That overbite is going to stick out more and more, parts to parts.

  So an expert, such as Dr. Kolodny, Plato said, taking up the reins once again, could look at a bite that is presently giving a person no problem, functionally speaking, and, projecting into the future, be able to predict problems which do not yet exist, so to speak. He can see not only the present bite but also the entailed future bite.

  Exactly, I agreed. Though in the case of some people it wouldn’t take too much expertise to predict problems down the road. They’re kind of staring you right in the face.

  But perhaps not in the face of the person whose bite it is, Plato said, which for a person with manners like his was hitting pretty hard. Bad alignment must be one of his major obsessions.

  Sometimes that is the very person who is least able to grasp the problem, Plato continued.

  Well, it stands to reason, I said. They don’t have to look at themselves.

  So in the case of a perfect bite, Plato continued, which even I was beginning to think might be belaboring the point, the proper person to consult is not the person whose bite it is, but rather the expert in bites, Dr. Kolodny.

  Yes, he’s an excellent orthodontist. I can highly recommend him, I said, thinking that this would end the matter once and for all. But I was wrong.

  So we have now established, Plato continued, that there is a difference between a good bite and a bad, and the person who can best judge the bite is not the person whose bite it is, no matter how right the bite might feel, but rather the expert in bites, Dr. Kolodny. Now tell me, have you ever wondered whether, just as there is a difference between good bites and bad, there is likewise a difference between good actions and bad, or even, more broadly speaking, between a life well-lived and lives which are not well-lived?

  Yes, I said. Of course, I’ve considered that. It would be hard not to consider that, being in the profession that I’m in. You’d be surprised by how many of my celebrity authors, who people imagine are living these fabulously perfect existences, what with infinite amounts of money and fame and people groveling at their feet night and day, are screwing up at almost a Charlie Sheen level of ass-dumbness. I mean, I’m not mentioning any names here, since I consider it kind of like doctor-patient privilege, except, of course, you, Rhonda, she said, since I know that whatever I tell you isn’t going any farther. Cheryl has said this to me dozens of times, and I’m not sure whether she means it as a compliment to my personal integrity or as a comment on my meager social life.

  And have you not further considered that the person who can best judge this difference, when it comes to actions and to lives, Cheryl went on, assuming her Plato style, is not the person whose actions and life these are, no matter how right they might feel to him or her, but rather the expert in such matters, the so-to-speak Dr. Kolodny of actions and of lives?

  Well, I don’t know that I’d go that far, I answered Plato. I don’t know that the two sorts of knowledge are all that comparable. Dr. Kolodny has special technical knowledge. He went to dentistry school for something like four years, and we’re talking after college, and then he had to go and study orthodontics on top of that for, I don’t know, maybe two or three additional years. So we’re probably talking something like ten or eleven years of higher education.

  And the reason Dr. Kolodny’s extensive training was required, Plato continued, must be that the subject of teeth alignment—of what constitutes the perfect alignment and the many ways that that perfection can fail and what must be done to correct that failure—is complicated. This is why this knowledge requires such an expert as Dr. Kolodny, who must have mastered many years of technical study.

  Well, yeah, I agreed.

  But isn’t the knowledge of what distinguishes between good actions and bad, not to speak of the knowledge of lives that are supremely worth the living and those that are not, at least as complicated as knowledge of the proper alignment of teeth? Plato asked me in his soft but pressing way. It’s sort of like getting attacked by a pillow, Rhonda. If the knowledge of the difference between good and bad bites requires such extensive expertise, demanding many years of study, why doesn’t the knowledge of which I speak also require many years of study? You asked me why I harp on philosophers, and this is my answer to you. Philosophers are those who spend at least as much time mastering a complicated subject as Dr. Kolodny did, only their subject is not what makes for a good bite but rather it is what makes for a good life.

  By this time, I was beginning to get an inkling of what Plato might be driving at, and I was getting a sort of creepy feeling about it, too, despite his downy-pillow tactics. Plato, it sounded like to me, was an elitist of the most extreme sort. It even began to dawn on me that his implying that back where he comes from people don’t think of the word “tyrant” as necessarily negative might be saying more about him than about Greece. Maybe Plato, for all his soft voice and good manners, was some sort of would-be tyrant. And for some reason, instead of dancing around him, the way I usually do with my authors, letting them go to town with their VOOMs, I decided to just call it as I saw it.

  Who are these philosophers to tell people how to live? I asked him in no uncertain terms. Who are they to tell me how to live? It’s my life, and I think I know what makes it supremely worth the living, to use your phrase, better than any expert in philosophy does.

  But now, said Plato, raising his eyebrows a little, you sound like our friend Marcus, who tells us that he knows perfectly well that his bite is good without Dr. Kolodny telling him any differently. Just as you yourself pointed out that the bad biter is the last person to know his bite is bad, could it not be true that the person who is living his or her life badly is the last person to know that it is bad? Not, he rushed on to assure me, that I am saying that you are in any way such a person. I am simply making the point that how a life seems to someone who is living that life may not be accurate. Seeing a life from a vantage that is, so to speak, within that life may not provide the proper perspective for judging whether that life is indeed worth living. So an expert who, by definition, has assumed a different perspective by reason of his or her knowledge is in a better position to judge than the person whose life it actually is.

  Well, I really have to beg to differ with you here, I told him, again in no uncertain terms, because the two situations, a bad bite and a bad life, aren’t at all alike. How to get the most out of your life isn’t something you study in a textbook, like Dr. Kolodny studied how to fix alignments in a textbook, taking all those years to memorize diagrams of teeth and bones and nerves and who knows what all else. There isn’t any textbook filled with that kind of specific information that would tell you what the difference is between a good life and a bad. The two situations couldn’t be more different from each other.

  And yet it is your belief, he said in that soft-spoken way of his, which frankly was beginning to remind me less of a pillow and more of a tiger or something creeping up on you right before it makes its leap for your throat, that some people know how to live and some people do not. Am I right?

  Yes, I said. Like I said before, I know some people whose names will go unmentioned who don’t know what to do with all the incredible advantages they’ve been given, all their fame and money and getting anything they want. They may know how to get the world to do their bidding, but as far as I’m concerned they don’t know the fi
rst thing about how to live their lives.

  Is it your belief, he asked me, that those people who do know how to live well, such as you yourself, are born with that knowledge, so that it just comes naturally to them, like the fear of falling or the desire for warmth and human contact, or is their knowledge of how they ought best to live knowledge that had to be acquired during their lives?

  No, I don’t think anyone is just born knowing how to live, I answered him. If they were, it would be a lot easier to be a parent. But I don’t think it’s philosophy that teaches us how to live. It’s common sense and common decency.27 I mean, look at me. I didn’t take any philosophy in college. I shopped it a few times but it never grabbed me. I remember one professor spent her whole first lecture talking about valid and invalid arguments, and I don’t think I’ve ever been more bored in my life. Are you going to tell me that I needed to know the difference between valid and invalid arguments in order to teach Jason and Valerie what they should and shouldn’t do? If you went to a philosophy department, I bet you wouldn’t find that everybody there was some kind of saint, rushing out after their classes to perform acts of mercy and charity. You’d probably find the same percentage of jerks there as you’d find anywhere else. For all I know, even more.

  But perhaps they are not true philosophers, then? Plato asked softly.

  Now you’re just playing with words, Plato, I said. They’re drawing paychecks from their universities to teach philosophy, aren’t they?

  And to you that signifies that they are philosophers?

  Well, what else, then? I said. They’re not orthodontists! They’re no Dr. Kolodny who knows how to straighten teeth! They’re philosophers who know how to make philosophical arguments and be able to tell people which are valid and which aren’t, in case anybody was interested in asking them, which I don’t see people lining up to do. I don’t see how that particular skill has to do with anything that people actually care about, or something that people need to know in making any decisions, much less knowing how to live lives supremely worth the living.28 I don’t expect orthodontists to necessarily have the most beautiful smiles in the world, and I don’t expect philosophers to be better behaved than other people either. It’s just one more subject to take in college—or not. I mean I don’t want to be rude, or to undermine your confidence right at the beginning of your book tour, but really what you’re saying is pretty out there, and, more importantly, I don’t think it’s going to go down well with most of your audiences. Maybe that’s good, since controversy sells books and all, but you also don’t want to offend the people who are potential buyers. I mean, I don’t blame you ivory-tower types for overestimating the importance of being smart. After all, that’s what you’ve got going for you, that you’re smart, at least a certain kind of smart. So you naturally think that that’s what everything comes down to, and that anybody who isn’t your kind of smart is really out of luck since not only is he or she not going to go to a fancy eastern elitist school that opens all sorts of exclusive opportunities, but even the door to living a good and decent life is slammed shut in their faces, too. That’s what you’re implying, isn’t it? That if a guy or gal doesn’t have the sort of smarts that you have, then they don’t have a hope in hell of living a life worth living? That is not going to go down well with your audiences, Plato. Hasn’t your publisher warned you about that? You know, I’ve escorted runway models who have written their memoirs, and from their perspective they can wonder how people who aren’t drop-dead gorgeous can live lives that are worth living since that’s what made their lives so supremely worth living. Ditto football players who can’t imagine for the life of them how people who aren’t huge masses of flesh and muscle who can ram into people and knock them unconscious can possibly live lives worth living. I don’t see how being your kind of smart is any different. I mean, in your line of work—and I gather from what Marcus said that you’re a mathematician, too, and not just a philosopher, which I’m sure is very impressive, I’m not saying it isn’t—but in your line of work you obviously have to be super-smart to succeed, and maybe that’s why you’re being misled into thinking that a person has to be super-smart in order to know how to live her own life. You have to be super-smart to live your life as a philosopher well and a supermodel has to be super-gorgeous to live her life as a supermodel well, but you don’t have to be super-gorgeous and she doesn’t have to be super-smart. Think how unfair it would be otherwise. It’s like you’re saying that someone who doesn’t have a higher-than-average IQ can’t live a worthwhile life. Well, that sucks big-time for them, doesn’t it! Or maybe you think that the philosopher-kings should just dictate to them how to live? Is that the idea here? That everybody in the big swell of the IQ curve should just hand their lives over to the philosopher-kings the same way Marcus here should hand his teeth over to Dr. Kolodny?

  Frankly, I don’t know what got into me, Rhonda, Cheryl said, at the same time summoning the waiter and ordering another Long Island Iced Tea. I never argue with my authors. I usually never even notice what they’re saying. It’s all in one ear and out the other and onto the next VOOM. But I guess Plato had struck a nerve. I mean, here he was suggesting that, because I’d never taken a philosophy course, I didn’t know how to live my own life. He didn’t come right out and say it, but that was the implication. I didn’t need any philosopher droning on and on about valid and invalid arguments to tell me that that was the implication. And I wondered whether his friend Socrates used to go around spouting similar ideas, and if it ticked people off so much that they ended up convicting him on trumped-up charges, especially since, from the little Plato had told me about his friend’s trial, it sounded like he went out of his way to keep implying that only someone superior like him knew what life was all about right up to and even after his conviction. I mean, I’m not excusing anybody here for putting a man to death for being such a royal pain in the ass. I’m just saying that the story might be a little more complicated than Plato presented it.

  Anyway, I noticed that when I’d finished my little diatribe, Marcus was grinning at me, and not at all snidely for once. Somehow I seemed to have gained a lot of points with him by lashing out against the whole idea of there being experts who could tell you how to live your life. I wasn’t altogether sure, though, how kindly my author would take my little outburst, but he seemed okay with it, in fact strangely impressed, because he said to me, well, if all that you say is correct, and you can prove to me that anybody with common sense and common decency knows the answers to these questions, then I think that it is you who ought to be giving the talk at Authors@Google and not me. We should switch places, and I will assume the role of your media escort.

  You know, it’s funny that you should say that, I told him, even though I knew he was teasing, as if the whole idea of our switching places was simply ridiculous, but screw him, I thought. I often have the same thought when I’m listening to a lot of my authors, I told him. The only thing is, I haven’t written any books, so I’m not, technically speaking, an author.

  As you say, a mere technicality, he said, raising his eyebrows, which probably meant he was messing with me. I myself have always written with the greatest of misgivings, he said, far preferring the give-and-take of conversations such as this one in which we are now engaged, in which real progress of understanding can be made. In an ideal world, in which we are freed from the bias against authors who have authored no books, and it is, therefore, you who are to speak at the Googleplex, tell me what you would say on this question of how a person ought to live his life.

  How a person ought to live his or her life, I corrected Plato, since he’d specifically asked me to help him avoid saying anything that came off sounding sexist.

  Thank you, he said with a smile. You agree that there are ways that a person ought to live a life, and ways that a person ought not to live?

  Of course, I said.

  And it is not just a matter of different personal preferences concerning, for example, whethe
r one prefers to live within the city walls or rather out in the countryside, or whether one prefers a life which exposes one to the thrill of many risks or a life of relative safety.

  You mean like different strokes for different folks?

  That is nicely put, said Plato.

  I can’t take credit for it, I told him. But you know, about some things it is just a matter of different strokes for different folks. I mean, I don’t make any judgments about your wearing a toga, for instance. As far as I’m concerned, that’s your business. And I take it you’re not married either?

  No, he said.29

  And never have been? I asked.

  He shook his head no.

  Well, I don’t make any judgments about that sort of thing either, I told him. We’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, after all. I’m not asking you about what went on between you and your friend Socrates or between you and your friend Dion, staying up all night and watching the sunrise together. That’s none of my business, though I notice it’s only men you talk about, never any women. But I’m not making any moral judgments here. If that’s your orientation or stroke or whatever you want to call it, then who am I to say differently?

  But about some things you would want to say differently, or so I suspect, he said softly. For example, if I were to decide that you were so fine a media escort that I needed to make you my personal attendant at all times, and so decided to kidnap you, you would probably not respond to my decision by saying “different strokes for different folks.”

  Are you talking about making me your slave? I asked him.

  My slave, yes, he answered. My unremunerated personal escort for all times. I’m assuming that you would voice some objection.

  Well, yeah, I said.