Journal #5
“Moderation is the theme of Socrates guide for producing virtuous men. “”Everything in moderation”” is a commonly heard saying. This idea of moderation is that you should never go to extremes of overdoing a certain activity. Don’t get too much exercise our your mind will soften, don’t exercise too little or your body will become soft and useless.
People in our society that hold to strong moral convictions and reject changes in society are often rejected for not blindly following whatever fads come along. Those people often also fall into the idea that they must thoroughly reject everything and everybody that is part of their modern world.”
“This attitude can often lead to people withdrawing from the world and making themselves completely unable to function among people. This is one extreme.
Socrates presents the idea that Guardians as children should b protected from all sorts of offending material that could corrupt their souls, they would not be exposed to many kinds of music, literature, and other entertainment. Why would Socrates advocate an extreme like this one? Does he not say that moderation in all experiences is the key to becoming a balanced man?
I have to admire those people with such strong convictions that they can pull their children out of the world and away from society’s undoubtedly corrupting influence. At the same time many of them fall into the extreme of shutting the children off from the world that they will some day be forced to enter and live in. These children do not receive the training that they should in the social norms of our world.
Certainly, avoiding extremes of immoral activities such as lasciviousness and drunkenness is necessary to produce a person of virtue. But at what cost? We seek to hide from that which we know has the ability to entice and corrupt, rightly so. Yet, in certain circumstances it seems that Socrates notion of well-rounded experiences with proper teaching will be a more effective tool to producing virtuous men.
Far too often you see people that have been locked away from the world by their parents finally get away on their own and fall into a fascination with that which they have been sheltered throughout their life. Whether is be simply becoming entranced by television, or becoming a heavy drinker. There are countless ways for the completely sheltered child to be snared by the world if they are unaware and unprepared.”