There is a passage in Plato, when Crito is trying to convince Socrates to flee Athens, when suddenly the Laws of State become personified and argue why Socrates ought to stay and suffer his sentence of death. The Laws of State argue simply and truly that were he to flee, the Laws elsewhere would receive him as an enemy, “for they will know that you have done your best to destroy us.” It is a strong argument that the laws make, and Socrates hoves to it and nobly goes to his immortal death.
I cannot help but reflect on the cynicism and disenchantment in which Americans currently live; the rhetoric runs high, and spirited citizens run contrary to one another. The Laws of State live, and they will thrive no matter what people do to try to circumvent them. This is true for the simple reason that laws – all laws – are qualia.
The laws – of state, of physics, of perspective and of sense – are all qualia, and the matter of the world is attracted to them, moves toward them, and fit itself around them. People move toward democracy, freedom, equality and tolerance just as a freezing water molecules move toward the six-sided pattern of a snowflake.
There is something which is right about the Laws of State, perhaps only to be realized in the long run, beyond what seems to serve the State in the moment. We know it to be true and right even though we can’t really sense it, no more than we can visualize the theory of relativity. Yet once the equation is out there we immediately elect to hove to it, just like Socrates, because we have integrity.
When matter meets qualia, that is when life comes into being, and when Socrates chose death he ensured his immortality. When matter meets qualia, even inanimate matter comes to life – fragile snowflakes in hexagons pile up and endure, creating frozen environments on Earth and even in the voids between the Sun and the planets. When matter meets qualia, ideas come alive too – democracy endures as a living experiment.
Ideas come to us in our minds, we live them, and suddenly they are the environment which surround us. Then we adapt to the new environment. This is how we evolve, with integrity, in a never-ending series of qualiadelic relationships.
Plato, quite understandably, distrusted democracy and articulated all of its flaws, because it was responsible for the death of his teacher, Socrates, but he didn’t take into account that when the laws evolve, then we evolve, then the laws evolve, and we evolve again. For all of democracy’s flaws, it is a star-spangled ritual with the long-view always and eternally drawing us toward the ideal.
So it goes with matter and qualia, and people and politics, and organisms and physics.