Flattery
What is flattery?
FLATTERY: to willfully abandon, impersonate, obstruct or conceal by any method of persuasion or oratory including but not limited to, by mask, by illusion, or by hypnosis, provable universal principles of understanding and a pursuit of the good, for the sake of momentary, immediate or instant gratification, without ever considering the wider consequences or an act or series of actions.
Socrates on flattery
All flatterers can be identified by their dogmatic rejection of the following 3 principles of Ideal Judgement.
The universe is lawful.
The forms we observe are reflections of that lawfulness with a tendency toward it.
All lawful change must reflect a tendency toward the forms which themselves reflect universal lawfulness.
If these three premises stand, no flatterer could ever make themselves King by the power of their oratory, the prejudice of the people or any combination of the two.
Generally, flattery is best defined in opposition to philosophy. Just as every form has a lawfully identifiable tendency, so does Flattery.
Philosophy versus Flattery
Power
For the philosopher is understanding, of form, of lawful change, and of the necessity of having a tendency toward that lawfulness.
For the flatterer is deception, illusions and hypnosis, prejudice and ignorance
The Standard
For the philosopher is the eternal ideal
For the flatterer is impossible to reach or define (So in the words of Aristotle "we must choose the lesser between two evils")
Measurement
For the philosopher is your understanding of lawful change measured against an ideal
For the flatterer is arbitrary change measured against an arbitrary ideal (Conclusion: Morality is Arbitrary)
Tendency
For the philosopher is toward the good
For the flatterer is toward a never ending struggle between compelled order and total chaos
Magnitude
Wisdom brings abundance
Flattery brings excess
Up Against
For the philosopher the energy and dedication require to acquire understand, mass ignorance, mass prejudice, the flatterer
For the flatterer the time required to maintain illusions, the lawfulness of the universe, the lawfulness of change, that the enemy of your enemy becomes your friend
Faith in
For the philosopher it is the form and lawfulness of the "unhypothesized" highest good
For the flatterer it is his own ability to proposed the prevailing view
Value
For the philosopher it is the future
For the flatterer it is the moment
Judgment
The philosopher uses understanding to name things lawfully
The flatterer uses prejudice to label things arbitrarily