The Republic of Plato

An honest take on the great philosopher's totalitarian utopia.

Hey, my name is Plato and I'm about to lay down some truths for you right now. So, there's basically three types of people in the world: people with souls made of shit, people with souls made of bile, and the best of all, people with souls literally made of Zeus's magic seed. Of course a just and good society will be ordered according to the nature of each type just as I'm about to describe.


First off, the shit-souls are all dull-witted, gormless, vulgar, insipid mudbugs with flimsy, flabby bodies, blank bug-eyes, and a total inability to govern themselves or think themselves out of a paper bag. If left to their own devices they would invariably dissolve into the same stinking shit-pools out of which they were born. Their natural role in a just society is therefore to maintain it's stinking underbelly, that is, clean the streets, empty the shit-buckets, and farm dirt. This class of human beings comprises roughly 90 percent of the population.


The second class of citizens are those with souls of hot, bitter bile. They are big, dumb, and mean-spirited, but are less pathetic than the shit-souls in that they at least have the stupid animal vigor to lash out impulsively when threatened. Without careful management they would invariably tear each other apart, but in an ideal society they are trained and leashed like dogs and their innate idiot rage can be strategically channeled towards the state's enemies. The bile-souls form about 9 percent of the population.


The remaining 1 percent are the natural elites, those who were blessed at conception with a spark of Zeus's divine man-juice. Being the only class of human being that is capable of standing upright and thinking a thought, they are naturally suited to telling the other 99 percent of humanity what to do. Their distinguishing trait is the intellectual ability to grasp "the good", which is what I call any idea that I personally like and agree with. Because their thoughts are too complicated for anyone else to understand, they have to communicate their ideas to the shit-souls and bile-souls through simple fairy tales like what you'd tell a stupid child to stop him from accidentally hurting himself. If successful, they can whip the rest of humanity into actually doing something useful, and an ideal state is born.


In conclusion, the only way for humanity to ascend beyond the level of wormy dumb animals is for people to think like I think, and do like I tell them to do. Until this happens they can only roll around on their bellies in caves and lick grubs off the ground. This also means they can't ever be exposed to any kind of dangerous otherthink, and so budding poets and artists must always be stoned to death.