SPEECH

The speaker expresses the idea of wanting life and purpose in machines and creatures, and believes they can create something better for the world. They discuss the curse of knowledge and how it can be used for good or evil. Wisdom can become unhealthy when used to impose opinions on others, leading to conflict and suffering. The speaker mentions Socrates using knowledge to teach and help others. They question the importance of wisdom and suggest that all people may hold answers, not just one person. They emphasize the need for self-trust and being of service to others. The speaker summarizes Socrates' defense and his belief that his wisdom comes from a higher power. Despite being hated, he continues to challenge and persuade others. The speaker concludes by saying that uncertainty in life can be given meaning through the legacy we leave behind. I thank you for inviting me here today, Toho. You know, I think we're similar in many ways. In that we both wish for life and purpose in our machines and our creatures, when no one wants anything to do with it. But we know the sham. We know the truth. And I think that we can both do many things together and create something better, something more for this world. And that finally we can show the world everything that's needed, everything that we want. Maybe we can even change it. How? Well, I'll tell you. With my application, my essay. This is going to be one for Plato's Apology, made by Plato. It's going to be good as an example. Let's begin. Knowledge is a curse rather than a gift. It's a message rather than a privilege. It changes people. It can be used for good or for evil. What you know doesn't define you, but what you will do with that curse that can make it a gift. Or maybe it could stay as it always was. It could break people. It could shift them. It could kill them. It could turn them into something they may not want to be. Socrates, however, used knowledge in order to teach people, spread the message, and help the world. Something many cannot do. The question is, what will you do with your examined perspective of the world that many cannot possibly share? Would you leave them unexamined or make them see a larger truth that has the possibility of helping them but damaging and hurting them? Wisdom could be a good thing, but believing it so strongly, so deeply, is unhealthy. It becomes a bad thing when you use that wisdom to shove opinions down others' throats. When you challenge one's view, their beliefs, their purpose, it causes fights. It causes war. It causes genocide. Look at the world around you, and think about so many of the tragedies from the past, but also from the present. So many of these things come from one's view or belief of how they examined their world. Wisdom becomes a bad thing when you use that talent, when you use that knowledge to fulfill your path and use it for your choices. However, with what this poem brings, what if it's better to leave the world unexamined? You could question these concepts, these ideologies, but what if it's changed our views of our lives so much that we lose a piece of ourselves? What if we fight so much with each other that there are two wrongs in the process? What if this all didn't matter? What if human wisdom means nothing to what the higher power found for us? What if we're just using the bases and seeds of our lives in a completely wrong direction? What if wisdom means little to nothing? Possibly we'll go for some sort of higher power, a member of the peaks of the hierarchy, someone who is known for their knowledge, someone who people will go to seek out answers and seek out for help. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was destiny. But what if their view could be wrong? What if there's not just one person who knows all the answers, but all of us? A unified effort. We are all on the same boat. We all question the world and its challenges, and we all test the cosmos and the secrets of life and death, just to itch to a little bunk in our brain that begs for an answer. What if wisdom doesn't exist? Finding cosmic answers to things that really don't matter, finding answers with death, with pain, with suffering, thinking that it will satisfy you, but only makes blood stay in your hands and your life entirely, letting your knowledge drive you makes a life full of regret. What's the point of possibly wanting more if innocence dies because of it? You only become more uncertain, which makes you feel like you could have done more, just an endless cycle of wishing and then regretting. Socrates, however, is on his own path, and he uses it to be of service. Socrates begins his testament with the fact that he's seen as just a troublemaker who goes in affairs where he has no business and teaches people things that makes himself worse. He talks about the people that make fun of him. In one of their comedies, they make him say, He speaks to the Athenians, claiming he is innocent and that he's never been involved or mixed with that kind of thing. He calls to the people who've heard him talk about such things, and he gets voices of agreement. So they get to tell people, they get to tell the judges, they get to tell everyone whether the accusations they make against him is true or not. But Socrates, what's wrong with you? Where did your charges come from? Surely none of this talk of publicity about you would have arisen if you behaved like everyone else. But the most powerful moments of this excerpt to me is that they believe he's joking, but they can be sure that he'll tell nothing but the truth, the whole truth. Despite how much it seems the world has tested him, how much he's behaved to be this evil person, how much he's believed to be this evil person, in that matter, he never stops trusting himself. He's like everyone else, he's unique, and he's willing to tell us how if it don't stimulate the situation besides just a retelling of his charges. He lets the audience know about his reputation and wisdom, and he goes on for the next few paragraphs. These paragraphs and further, he explains his story in which it starts with the fact that one of the people who talked to Delphi asked an oracle. The oracle stated that there was no one wiser than Socrates. This came off as strange to him. He thought, whatever does this god mean? What is this riddle all about? I'm not aware of being wise, not a lot, and not a little. So what does he mean by calling me the wisest? He can't be telling a lie, that wouldn't be right. That was when his quest began. He went to a person with their own reputation of being wise. Thinking that while there, he proved the oracle wrong, but after conversing and speaking with him, he just felt that he was too egotistical with his wisdom, and he wasn't fit at all with being better. He thinks he knows what beauty and goodness actually is, but he does not. However, when voicing his own opinion, having many of those with him went against Socrates. He continued to go with numerous other people, all with the same result. They were fathomless lives and he became odious to them, becoming an object of hatred. He was quite sad with it, but his main point of strategy is that he felt it was necessary to make the god's work his highest priority, but it cost him. He became poverty-stricken due to his service, but he stayed on his own ground, being of service even if not appreciated, facing adversity in his eyes. He did it for the greater good and not for an evil. He did it for them to always be thinking, to always be aroused, and for them to make an impact and change a part of their lives in which they've been on their hands this whole time. He uses this strategy as a fact, that no matter how he's perceived, he has changed him in some way that has clearly affected him to the point to where he's here now, in court and in trial. Despite this, this came with a realization. The fact that people who were portrayed as a higher power and had the finest reputation were seen as the most lacking in said wisdom, in which the lower-rated people, people who were portrayed as nobodies and are seen as those beneath us, were more sensible. During his investigation, he made a bunch of enemies, which they're portrayed as evil and sinister, spreading lies, slandering his name, being called the wise man. He's seen as a threat to the youth and is spreading incantations of hate, but that's not true. Truthfully, no matter what someone calls themselves, God is the only wise one and the Oracle's response to human wisdom becomes little to nothing. It's essential to his understanding, because truly, we're all trying to learn something completely incomprehensible. But those who claim to know all the answers are the most lacking and can't comprehend such concepts. And so they're used in their own ways, and everyone paints different pictures to their people. It only causes them to lose themselves. They go to his sessions to try to imitate him and question others, but they're no little to nothing. Because it doesn't become hateful to claim that Socrates is an abomination to man and nature, saying old clichés but awful things about him. The fact he's making a difference and that their visions have been changed with a new one makes them so angry that they have attacked Socrates from different parts of politics. Despite how much he's hated for it, he will never stop rousing them because he knows it's the right thing. He then proceeds to go on with his own defense, for their sake, not his, and so his curse made into a gift won't be condemned but still shared, so you won't turn your back against God. They won't find someone like him, or at least it would be hard to. God gives his own wisdom to help people learn and figure out a part of themselves, to find meaning, find identity, but they stayed away from it so much he compares himself to a gadfly, the city being the horse, to where the gadfly stings the horse and rouses it, persuading and speaking to them, in which he says, I never stop rousing and persuading and chiding every one of you. He won't stop. This is why he's central as a philosopher. It's because he knows what he is and doesn't constantly question himself or what he's doing. He uses his talent and what he knows to question, to take it to heart, not to damage them or break them, but to be the best version of yourself, to change history and the world itself for the greater good. Sometimes life is too uncertain for regrets, but the legacy you bring to life gives that uncertainty meaning. It gives the meaning to become certain, to be better, to shape your identity, to truly make living a gift, to not waste a second of it. Despite it all, despite his defense, he's given the death penalty. Why? They give some reason to make it all make sense, give a right combination of words to make everything fit into place, but it's not possible. To be hypocritical, those who want to abuse and cause pain and suffering onto the city will give the people who voted him bad and voted him dead a bad name. The people who voted him for death wasn't convicted because of a lack of understanding or a lack of argument, but a lack of ruthlessness, shamelessness, and willingness to what they would most want to hear. They didn't want to listen to the truth, but would rather wish for him to admit that he's a bad guy, that he's selfish, that he's arrogant, cruel, unjust, and evil to the world, that he shouldn't exist. But that wasn't what he did. They wanted him to grieve, groan, and be in pain as the chains limit him and restrain him, torturing him. But no matter how much they could break him, he would still remain. He never had the option of just leaving, keeping quiet and leaving things as they are, because it can't be that way. Not just because he'd be disobeying the God, but because then the world would never change. For the longest time, we've been trying to do things someone else's way, someone else's design of how they see the world and how they see it, using their own vision of privileges and power to bring it to the knees. But in truth, there should always be a democracy to allow the people the unified effort to change the world as well, this time they could be different. And on allowing the world to change, keeping going under the same order, allowing it to constantly change, allows only one order, to be a slave to the rules wrought and silence yourself for what you think. But even in small ways, we all make a difference. To the people we love, to our friends, to our school, to nature, to everything. Everything you do is a path, and our paths are the future to our world. It's up to us however how it changes, good or not. Socrates doesn't scream, kick, or fight, but rather accepts his death. He portrays it as being hard, or not being hard to escape death, but being hard to escape wickedness. There are many ways to avoid it, death, but he can't avoid wickedness. It's been found as a vessel of evil and injustice, but that's alright to him. He makes a prophecy, however, to the ones who voted to condemn him, as they'll be punished after death. Those who wished to abuse the city, who demanded to count from them, Socrates held them back. But without him, this brings chaos and an order to a cause. To add insult to injury, they'll be harder on them, as they'll be younger, which will make the voters angrier. Killing someone as an escape to avoid living and not living as you should, is inhonorable, it's pathetic, and it becomes blood on everyone's hands. You have to be better than those who have been, and to be the best version of yourself. He thinks death has something different when speaking to those who wanted him acquitted. He thinks that it's a change, a migration of his soul. Having no consciousness, it's sleeping through nights without dreaming. And then comparing it to life here, asking himself how many days and nights have been more pleasant than this. There's so many other poets, philosophers, those who have been vexed and woken up, there's so many men and women, that it's indescribable happiness. He feels he's at peace, and that he'd be happier there. Not to convince the people that death is ultimately a good thing, but it's a place from how rotten the world is and could be, it's a place away from him, to help them not feel bad for seeing a man dead. He then speaks to his judges, take a view of his life, reflect on the fact that nothing evil can befall a good person in life nor death. God won't neglect their fate. His case didn't play, but chanced. But that's better for him to die here than to leave the trial, because then he'd be asleep again. He'd finally be free from all his troubles. He asks him to punish his sons by being in their faces like he has them, to make them wake like he has done. The treatment then becomes fair. He asks one more question. He asks him, he asks one more question. Which one is hided, or which one is headed for a better destiny? Them or him? No one knowing, but God. He's done all he can here and has found peace. There's no true time for death. There's not a plan, but when awoken, when you've done something the best that you can, which is what all of us can do, you get true peace of yourself. God may not exist, there may not be true justice, but that doesn't matter. It matters on to perspective, how you view the world, how you choose to tempt it. We are seen as disposable, or as we are the gods pretending to seek someone else. Sometimes we try to play him, sometimes we try to cheat it. Surely we don't know the fullness of our examined world we were gifted many years ago. But I don't think it should be examined, not yet at least, not until the right time and right measures. No matter what you believe, however, don't be a follower to everything you hear. Choose your own path. That's what Socrates did, and he died for it, yes, but he changed early in the courtroom and he impacted the world. That's what all of us can do. And that's it. Truly, I just think that we are the difference. They say that we find meaning and purpose in life, but I believe that we find meaning in both life and death. We are so fragile, but we are the perfect creations. This is meant for us.