A couple years ago I was driving my daughters to school early in the morning as the sun rose. We had just finished listening to the song Down with the Shine by the Avett Brothers when my oldest daughter posed a question:
Dad, were the Avett Brothers there when Socrates speeched his speech?
A beautiful question I’ll never forget… she was six or seven at the time! Soooo, clearly there’s a backstory. A week or so before we had been listening to that same song and she was trying to understand what it meant.
Down with the shine, the perfect shine
That poisons the well, and ruins my mind
I get took for a ride, every time
Down with the glistening shine
As we (my two daughters and I) talked about it I shared that the song centered on a truth that Socrates expressed a very long time ago in Plato’s Gorgias (462b-466b); that life presents to us those things which are good for us (that enhance our health, growth, development, and thriving), but that those good things have parallel counterfeit flatteries (various counterfeits of the good which “give the appearance of health and not the reality”). So, we discussed how a flattery operates by creating an experience of delight or gratification, and in that way distracts us from that which really is the highest good.
As you might imagine, an example was needed for my daughters to understand (or begin to understand). Fortunately, Plato provided us with one especially helpful for children. I shared that the main example Socrates used was a distinction between food that is healthy for a person’s body (or actual food) and that which is prepared only for pleasure (such as candy, cakes, other sweets and/or processed foods for example).
I then asked my daughters “what would you rather have to eat? Spinach salad or chocolate cake?”
Both smiled broadly and expressed “CAKE!”
So I then followed up, “but which is good for your body to grow healthy and strong?”
… And then they understood. I told my daughters how Socrates made this exact point, that we tend to judge a thing as good/bad by our immediate and temporal experience of it (whether it is gratifying to our senses or not), rather than what is actually good and healthy (but tastes like salad).
So we talked about how this is what the Avett Brother’s are singing about in Down with the Shine. That the Shine reflects those counterfeits, the flatteries which distract us and lead us away from “the good” that is for us. And then something remarkable happened! My oldest daughter made the connection (all by herself!) to advertisements at the grocery store, which get us to spend more money on macaroni and cheese that comes in a flashy colorful box rather than the same product in a plain box for less money. She got it!
So now we have a running joke in the family… when I ask our girls what their favorite desert is, they respond enthusiastically with “SPINACH!” I love it… Then I give them some cake. For the record, we do have a special love for spinach in our family.
Lastly, the answer to her question was no, the Avett Brothers were not there when Socrates speeched his speech. But they probably read about it.
*Accompanying music for this post is obviously Down with the Shine, by the Avett Brothers. Find it in the top right portion of the blog to listen.
The Avett Brothers, Down with the Shine, The Carpenter
Life Existante 