The Truth Will Not Set You Free

In a period of human history known as classical antiquity, a righteous man stood trial for allegedly corrupting the people against the status quo.

Despite a robust defense, he was found guilty and put to death. He was no messiah, and did not rise from the dead three days later, but his philosophies and methods live on to this day. His name was Socrates.

He gave us the Socratic method, a form of discussion in which a topic is questioned and answers are refuted in pursuit of the truth.

This is not to be confused with modern forms of discussion.

Those as seen on modern cable news programs in which one does not pursue the truth, but rather an agenda and a win against, or an own of a perceived opponent. The Socratic method requires good faith, and the only agenda is that of drawing out the best ideas and challenging underlying agendas and presuppositions.

But such discussions do not make for good entertainment on television, radio, podcasts, social media, or internet video platforms.

These discussions take far more time than the average human attention span of 8.25 seconds. So we break them down into increasingly smaller chunks called “sound bites” or 144-character internet postings, and feed them to our citizens in “short form”…