I had a nightmare where I was in a dim stone basement with …
I had a nightmare where I was in a dim stone basement with no windows and no way to go other than a spiral staircase going down even lower. As I descended into complete darkness, a narrator's voice said, "he found himself in a green field and all his strength had returned."
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I learned recently that the original definition of philosopher was not simply a lover of truth but one who did not or could not believe that social institutions were consecrated by the gods. Thus the original philosopher was not just a proto-scientist but a kind of atheist too.
The earliest political philosophy that has survived is about replacing traditional beliefs with stories invented by the philosopher in order to amass political power for himself and his kind.
Thus, the philosopher is not simply a lover of truth, but a manipulator of those who do not love truth the same way he does. People who accept conventional delusions are capable of being exploited and the earliest sociology was concerned with understanding how this is to be accomplished.
Later on, Austrian economics has explained why amassing political power causes instability, thus proving once and for all that most philosophers are degenerates.