It was another travel weekend, this time heading up to a remote village north of Goris, about 2 hours from Kapan. Something like 15 Peace Corps Volunteers agreed to meet up, from a variety of different sites in southern Armenia, for a night of 'Capture the Flag' and sleeping in ancient caves. Capture the Flag didn't actually happen, but we did get to prepare a khorovats (MEAT ON SWORDS!) dance at a site of ancient ruins thanks to Steve Jobs and Ipod technology, and sleep in caves.
These caves were occupied by families as recently as the mid-80's, before the Soviets ran people out. They aren't so much caves, per se, as they are rooms carved into stone mountainsides. The whole situation made me think of myself, and how I might have fared in ancient times. Despite my North Face jacket and my sub-zero sleeping bag, I couldn't help but wonder if I would have had the wherewithal to make it in this place 2000 years ago.
So...to that end...am I smarter than Socrates?
Well, there's no historical bias in the standard IQ test. All of the questions asked are logical in nature, such as this one:
TRUE OR FALSE: A pie can be cut into more than seven pieces by making four diameter cuts.
I went to a website to take the entire test, then I finished and it demanded ten bucks for test results. I hope the creators of that site die in a fire. Anyway, I didn't see any questions on the test that would trip up Socrates just because he grew up in ancient Greece. There was nothing like, "How many iPods would Jack have if he gave three iPods to Bobby and an Acela train left the station at…" That would make the old man's head explode.
I read some essay by Malcolm Gladwell that said that the entire population, on average, gets smarter with every generation. And I believe it, because I believe everything I read because I'm a sheep. I also like the idea that I'm super smart. So you could argue that Socrates may have been brilliant for his time, but that he was brilliant in a society filled with warring, protein starved, toga-wearing clowns. I also don't see anything that says Socrates went to college, or even a semi-elite public university, AND I TOTALLY DID. For all we know, the man couldn't even read. And I think we ALL remember how vulnerable he is to Kansas lyrics. (If you didn't watch Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, ignore that joke)
What a sucker. According to this website for kids (I get all my education from child texts):
When Socrates was in his forties or so, he began to feel an urge to think about the world around him, and try to answer some difficult questions. He asked, "What is wisdom?" and "What is beauty?" and "What is the right thing to do?" He knew that these questions were hard to answer, and he thought it would be better to have a lot of people discuss the answers together, so that they might come up with more ideas.
So he began to go around Athens asking people he met these questions, "What is wisdom?" , "What is piety?", and so forth. Then Socrates would try to teach them to think better by asking them more questions which showed them the problems in their logic. Often this made people angry. Sometimes they even tried to beat him up.
I can see why. He sounds incredibly annoying, like a walking Book of Questions. And it doesn't sound like he bothered to answer any of his own annoying inquiries. I say we're all smarter than Socrates now. I guarantee it.
In the end, the caves above Goris are awesome, khorovats are delicious, and I am probably smarter than Socrates.*
*This is not true. I live in a city of 35,000 people, with 3 other Americans, and I'm clearly the 3rd smartest. Maybe I'm funnier than Socrates, but only because I don't see the humor in Jonathan Swift
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