"But when personal sorrow comes to one of us, you are aware that, on the contrary, we pride ourselves if we are able to keep quiet and bear up, taking this to be the part of a man and what we then praised to be that of a woman."
I was thinking about this quote and realized that it is still so true today. When we see men crying we think that they are clearly weak and cannot handle a situation. Often I don't want to see a man crying. A woman or child crying encourages sympathy but a man crying encourages mockery. It really makes me wonder why? He says all this in conjunction with his want to rid the city of poets and it seems to me any excess emotion. What would a society look like without emotion? Because without the "bad" emotion of sorrow where can the true joy and love come from. If we all walked around always smiling, smiling would be normal and boring not something that brightens our day. We would be living in a boring world with nothing to hope for or laugh about.
I am commenting on Regis' blog.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I believe that there is room in this world of ours for both logic and emotion. I'll never understand why people constantly try and debate which one is better or worse. To me, it's all about balancing between the two. There are times where planning ahead and thinking critically are very useful, but there are times where you just got follow your gut and hope for the best.
ReplyDeleteI like when men cry, it makes them seem more real. They're just as much a human as women are, so being macho-macho all the time, makes me think they are prideful, and don't want to be seen as "weak" even though that's not the way I perceive it. I feel like when a man comes to the point where he's okay to cry, he's more of a man, because he's okay to be seen as vulnerable, and not a perfect, tough, warrior manly man.
ReplyDeleteMy dad's a musician, so he's kind of a softy; I may be biased.
I don't like the part of the republic because Socrates seems smart as he always does but I feel that many of his points should be argued. Like you I feel that trying to create a world with out emotion would be awful. Instead Socrates should allow the guardians to use poetry as they do music as a way to balance out the warrior.
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