{"id":1035,"date":"2020-07-16T17:36:03","date_gmt":"2020-07-16T17:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/?p=1035"},"modified":"2020-07-16T20:19:17","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T20:19:17","slug":"spirit-in-the-bible-and-the-republic-the-boy-bridger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/spirit-in-the-bible-and-the-republic-the-boy-bridger\/","title":{"rendered":"Spirit in the Bible and The Republic; The Boy Bridger"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nFrom Teaching Plato. <\/a><\/p>\n

We were in Book IV today, discussing spiritedness, Thymos. I hate it how confusing “y” is in Greek, as in Physics, Phoosis and Toomos. If anyone has any thoughts on what to do about it, let me know. This instant, I have decided to rebel. In transcribing Greek to English, I will use a phonetic transcription, rather than transcribing from Greek letters to pseudo-Roman letters that then require the reader to transcribe again in his head to genuine Roman letters. If you want to be pedantic, give me real Greek letters, not imitations made for people who don’t know Greek but want to act like they do. <\/p>\n

Anyway, in the Bible, Spirit is a big word, both in the Old and New Testaments, Hebrew and Greek. There, it refers to wind, breath, life, soul, and the Holy Spirit, Noomos. In Plato, it is spiritedness, Toomos. That is a profound difference in emphasis. <\/p>\n

A big theme in The Republic<\/em> is the need to get young men to have enough Toomos but not Toomuch Toomos. It is, Socrates says, like a dog that you want to unleash against injustice but rein in again when justice has been achieved. Which reminds me of this week’s big example. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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\nFrom Twitter<\/em>: <\/a><\/p>\n

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\nHey, all. Please, share my nephew\u2019s story so that it gets as much exposure as it can. We know that our little hero would love some words of encouragement from his favorite heroes.
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\nOn July 9th, my six year old nephew Bridger saved his little sister\u2019s life by standing between her and a charging dog. After getting bit several times on the face and head, he grabbed his sister\u2019s hand and ran with her to keep her safe. He later said, \u201cIf someone
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\nhad to die, I thought it should be me.\u201d After receiving 90 stitches (give or take) from a skilled plastic surgeon, he\u2019s finally resting at home. We love our brave boy and want all the other superheroes to know about this latest hero who joined their ranks.
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\n I just finished visiting with Bridger at his home. His wounds are looking so much better! He\u2019s in great spirits, and his awesome personality is intact.
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\nHe can\u2019t smile too widely yet, but he was grinning as I read some of your comments to him. I\u2019d also like to mention here that the dog\u2019s owners are really great people who have been nothing but kind to Bridger and his family.
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\nWe feel no resentment toward them at all, and\u2014if anything\u2014there\u2019s only been an increase of love between our families as a result of this incident. EDIT 2: Once again we\u2019re blown away by the amazing comments and messages that Bridger\u2019s receiving. I\u2019ve had lots of
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\ninquiries about a GoFundMe. Bridger\u2019s family has asked that any one wishing to help out financially can, instead, donate to
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\n@mission_22
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\n or
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\n@wwp
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\n Bridger is also a huge fan of Science, especially Geology. So I\u2019m going to start a post where people can share with
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\nhim pictures of cool rocks that they see.
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\n Once again, everyone\u2019s kindness has meant so much to us. I\u2019m trying to get to all of the messages that I can, but it may take some time.
\n .
\nFor those who have inquired about sending Bridger some rocks, here\u2019s the address to use:
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\nBridger Walker
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\nP.O. Box 22141
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\nCheyenne, WY 82003\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We want young men to be like Bridger Walker. But we don’t want them to be like the young dog that attacked Bridger’s little sister. The great goal of education is to build up Spirit but stop it before it goes too far. In America, we’re so far from building it up that we don’t really need to worry about it going too far, as it did, for example, sometimes in samurai Japan or with the SS in Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n

I realized yesterday something striking that I think is related: I can’t think of a single family I have ever met where I thought family discipline was too strict, though I can think of many, including my own upbringing and the way I have raised my five children, where it is too lax. Before you object, though, let me give a caveat. I admit I have known of families where the discipline was abusive, in dramatic or nondramatic ways— but in those families, the discipline was not strict. Rather, parents were self-indulgent and lashed out at their children because of their own feelings, not because the children necessarily needed punishment then, and those same parents were on average too lax, since the parents’ self-indulgence led them to be too lazy to inflict discipline when they didn’t feel like it. I also exclude families which have too many rules (I’ve known some of those in my life) but are generally lax and let the kids get away with lots of misbehavior so long as they obey a few arbitrary rules. Ask yourself the same question I did: do you know any families where discipline is too strict, as opposed to occasionally being abusive or legalistic but generally being too lax? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. From Teaching Plato. We were in Book IV today, discussing spiritedness, Thymos. I hate it how confusing “y” is in Greek, as in Physics, Phoosis and Toomos. If anyone has any thoughts on what to do about it, let me know. This instant, I have decided to rebel. In transcribing Greek to English, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1035"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1049,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035\/revisions\/1049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}