Genesis

by Bernard Beckett

Although the trial undoubtedly failed, I do not think it was because The Republic’s plan was a bad one. In fact, given the situation facing them—falling public support, an increasing laxness in rule and procedure, the smell of revolution in the air—I believe they took the very best course of action. Sometimes, however, even the very best course of action fails. The problem facing the Council of Philosophers was inevitable. In its beginnings, The Republic had planted the seeds of its own destruction. Plato’s first dictum, which opens The Republican Charter, reads as follows: It is only in the State that the People may find their full expression. For the People are the State, and the State is the People. The founders of The Republic sought to deny the individual, and in doing so they ignored a simple truth. The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate, and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them. The founders believed that by removing the child from the family, and the partners from each other, they could break down the usual loyalties, and replace them with loyalty towards the state. But there were many unintended effects. The people were forced to live in large single sex communes. They ate, played, slept and worked together; and they talked to one another. The Republic had established an incubator for new ideas. Although The Republic could control the information pumped into the communes, it could not control the way inform...