Socrates walked the streets of Athens in the fifth century before Christ, a stonemason with bare feet and endless questions. He wrote nothing down. He simply asked people what they truly knew, and showed them how little anyone knows.
Athens sentenced him to death for corrupting the youth and questioning the gods. He drank the hemlock calmly, teaching his friends about the immortal soul to the very end.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Plato, Apology 38a (translation by Dan Dillman)
“Wonder is the feeling of the lover of wisdom, and philosophy begins in wonder.”
Plato, Theaetetus 155d (translation by Dan Dillman)
Socrates taught that wisdom begins with admitting what we do not know. He spoke of an inner voice, a guiding spirit that warned him when he was about to go wrong. Question everything, listen within, and never stop seeking.
Reflect: What belief have you never questioned?
What do you think about this? On January 20, 1996, three young women in Varginha, Brazil, saw a four foot creature with oily skin and red eyes crouched by a wall. The army was in town that morning. A policeman said to have handled it died a month later. Cover story, or Brazil’s Roswell?
What do you think about this? In 1800 settlers at Conneaut, Ohio, opened a four acre burial ground in rows and reported skeletons over seven feet, jaws that fit over a man’s face, double rows of teeth. The graves were plowed under within a generation. Tall tale, or a people buried twice?
What do you think about this? The Iron Pillar of Delhi is six tons of forged iron from around 400 AD. It has stood outside through 1,600 years of monsoons and never rusted, thanks to a protective film from phosphorus rich iron nobody made again. Lucky recipe, or knowledge lost on purpose?
What do you think about this? North Sea trawlers pull up mammoth teeth, flint tools and a carved harpoon from 120 feet deep. Until 8,000 years ago that seabed was Doggerland, a forested land the size of Britain, drowned by rising seas and a tsunami. The lost land of every old story?
What do you think about this? In 1974 a Florida family found a polished 22 pound steel ball in burned brush. It hummed when a guitar played, rolled across rooms on its own and changed direction. Navy X rays showed objects inside, origin unknown. Valve ball, or something that landed?
What do you think about this? The Whaley House in San Diego was built in 1857 where a man was slowly hanged five years earlier. A baby and a daughter later died inside. Visitors report footsteps in empty rooms and a pressure on the throat where the gallows stood. Old house, or long memory?
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