Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

The Term "Golden"

Plato had this philosophy of a four-tiered society. There were the golden citizens, the silver citizens, the bronze citizens and everybody else. Everybody else was a catchall for serf or slaves. These divisions were predicated on an assumption that most people are unfit to lead and need “big brother” to show and tell them what to do.

Now in this ideal state the Goldens were to be the smartest and most qualified to determine BEST. By placing them in charge society would have those individuals most qualified to decide what’s best for everyone else. In addition the Goldens would have the authority to make them do it.

The Dream of this ideology was to have a Philosopher King, someone with the smarts to know best and the power to get people to act upon it. This class would be constrained by no laws, (moral or common), and be guided only by the law of wisdom, the ability to know best, for which they would be the semi-divine spokesperson. To qualify for this class a person had to be someone from a lower category that demonstrated wisdom and leadership. Someone who was smart and had the ability to persuade or compel the people to follow.

A major problem with this idea was that the Philosophers were not the ones in power. In those times and still today, “Might is Right.” It is not the acuity of a person’s mind that is the deciding factor but rather the size of a bicep. It is common for the person in charge to possess a low cunning, and through terror and intimidation acquire the reins of social leadership. As a consequence the best the intellectuals could hope for was a Philosopher king. Knowing they would never acquire the reins of social leadership they decided that second best was to be in a position to educate the youth, find the talent early and train them in their idealistic, failed and unworkable doctrines.

Then as today, many intellectual elitists, custodians of knowledge, teachers of our youth feel they are most qualified to know what BEST is. They often disparage GOD and feel that through diminishing the role of the sprit, they can gain a market advantage from the priests who advocate a presence that is unprovable by the exercise of reason.

Then there were the silver citizens who were striving for upward mobility and naturally felt they belonged in the gold category. Below Silver were the bronzes who were the merchants and craftsmen. These were people that actually worked and not parasites who had imposed themselves upon the system. Finally the unwashed occupied the bottom tier. There was supposed to be some upward mobility in this system but somewhere along the line that never got realized.

This philosophy provided an “Intellectual” underpinning used to justify and explain the feudal system that evolved during the dark ages.. The rulers definitely had the power and supposedly the wisdom to know best. The nobles had power in their jurisdictions and acted upon the general directions of the rulers and supposedly dispensed that power in the best interests of the people. (That was a joke) It was one of the darkest and least productive times in the social development of mankind. It was a huge step backward from the bar set by the Greeks and still way below that set by the Romans.

The idea was that the ruling class would be the wisest and thus know where to lead. They believed GOD chose them for this role. Where this led was they began thinking they were god, not bound by any sort of law and held their position based upon birthright. Demonstrated “wisdom” or ability has never really entered into the equation.