The Id of America

Plato developed the concept of the soul. He said that justice takes place when the three parts of the soul control their respective parts. The three parts of the soul are reason, spirit, and the appetites. Freud would later call these the superego, the ego, and the id. For Plato, reason was the highest form of being. By reason he meant logical evaluation of data by formal or informal means. In this state the human being applies reason to all things. He or she lives by reasoning out their lives. By Spirit, Plato meant the emotional part of life. Honor, pride, love, and hate would all be part of the soul that would be called the spirit of the soul- the feelings that drive us to do what we do. According to Plato reason must control feeling, otherwise you have feeling controlling reason. This is a state of consciousness where the soul trying to justify its emotions with what we call excuses. For Freud, this is neurosis, the patient is having trouble dealing with reality because they are emotionally responding to it or responding to it with inappropriate emotions ("inappropriate means without reason). Therapy attemps to bring reason back into control, by reasoning out your emotions. Finally, we arrive at the most base part or the human soul, the appetites. This is our appetite for food, sex, comfort, power (pursuit of power is not a rational activity), money, and dominance (getting what we want, when we want it). In short, our basic instincts. In order to have a just society the spirit, under control of reason, must control the appetities. In a democracy, the three classes can be accounted for in the same way. The upper class is upper because they live their lives by reason, they analyize situations and come up with the best rational solution they can and then act on the situation in a rational way. The middle class is middle because they live their lives based on how they feel about certain situations, their actions are determined by how they feel, regardless of the reasonable. In TV dramas where the son is about to shoot the murderer of his father, the detectives urge him to think about what he is doing, i. e. the time they will spend in jail. If reason pervades then the avenger puts his gun down and lets the police arrest the killer. If reason does not win over, the avenger shoots the murderer but then is handcuffed and goes to jail and looses any social status. The lower class acts according to their basic needs and uses reason to that end (here reason is in the control of the appetities). And so it is in America today. The people opposing the health care reform bill with a public option are, without reason, in fact against all reason, since reason would say that since they are the most in need of inexpensive health insurance that they should support it, a rational person always supports or acts in a way that is in support of his or her efforts to improve their lives or improves the lives of others. So, America has unleased its beast. With a weak middle class (spirit) unable to control the lower class (appetites) we now have in America an unjust society. An America where a president trying to help the poor is admonished and ridiculed for trying to do so by the poor his is trying to help. It is left to be seen whether reason through an imaginary and dwindling middle class can over come the tea baggers, the birthers, and the hate Obamaers.