A Chair Is a Movable Raised L-Shape For Supporting Your Bum and Back. What?

From Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe. This and youtube and Carl Sagan and Natalie Haynes are how I know history. And books.

 Hot on the heels of Carl Sagan's take-down of Plato, Natalie Haynes Stands Up For The Classics has a wonderful episode on Western Philosphy's first poet, inventor of Atlantis, founder of an Academy that lasted nine-hundred years, and preserver of the Socratic dialogues, here just for balance. Being less familiar with the Socratic dialogues than the show's contributors I have maybe a happier and certainly a more ignorant take on the old guy's hair-splitting. "That's just like your opinion, man" can be a valid contribution I think. Socrates doesn't seem like a nihilist to me, more like Lebowski. And I was never attracted to "Fatso"'s idea of abstract perfection, but listening to this I realise how priviliged that makes me: When the talk turned to advertising I immediately thought, no that's not right, there's no Platonic subtext in advertising, ads aren't selling an idea of perfection, if anything - like politics - they're selling us an identity. But then I suddenly remembered the perfect Mitchell and Webb sketch below (I think written by Joel Morris and Jason Hazeley) and recalled that advertising treats men very differently to women.

 Men are spared the Platonic ideal. There's toxic masulinity and machismo, sure, but there are so many other options too. We still get to be the default. The fact a priviliged layabout like me can find Platonism - the idea that reality's just an imperfect imitation  - so alien a concept perhaps gives ammunition to Sagan's argument that it was always an inherently oppression-friendly philosophy. And I adore Edith Hall's theory it all came from Plato just being very short-sighted.