This Is a Book - Demetri Martin [9]
As it turned out, Athens was fast becoming a hotbed of thinking, and the timing could not have been better for the aging philosopher-handyman.
It had all started a few months earlier when notions began flooding into Greece from Phoenicia, by of the merchant brooding class. When some of the more obsessive Greeks got hold of these notions, they turned them into full-fledged thoughts. Soon people began thinking in groups, and these thinking groups became “schools of thought.” And that’s when things really started to pick up.
First came the Sophists, a group of thinkers who used the tools of rhetoric to teach virtue. Then came the Rationalists. They specialized in using reason to uncover fundamental truths. Shortly after that, a third group emerged, who would prove to be more influential, and considerably more irritating, than any other group in Athens. They called themselves the Publicists.
The Publicists were, by far, the least thoughtful of all the new Athenian schools. They thought much less about Truth or Reason and much more about themselves. Still, the Publicists quickly became the most talked about school in all of Greece. This was due, in no small part, to their practice of talking about themselves even more than they thought about themselves.
While the Sophists sought arete (virtuous excellence), the Publicists sought me-rete (shameless self-promotion). And where the Rationalists employed logic, the Publicists used gossip, which was becoming even more popular than democracy among Greece’s new “it” crowd.
The Publicists, realizing that they had very little thinking of their own to contribute, had cultivated a rhetorical method that enabled them to simply attach themselves to other thinkers. They practiced what scholars call “irrational indispensability.” It is a means by which one person places himself into another person’s business, and then convinces that person or “client” that he needs to pay him for it.
One day, while he was having lunch with his agent, Socrates met one of the Publicists. This Publicist, whose name is not known to history—though some scholars believe she was called “Jackie”—had become one of the most powerful Publicists in all of Athens.
Jackie approached Socrates as he was pondering his kebab. She told him that she was a “big fan.” Socrates, still chewing, was flattered.
“Why don’t we do lunch?” said Jackie.
“ ‘Do lunch’?” replied Socrates. “But a person can only ‘eat’ lunch, no?”
“Well, only if that person is not in show business,” Jackie responded.
At this Socrates and his agent smiled and nodded.
And before he could fully comprehend, or finish his kebab, Socrates had made an appointment to do lunch with Jackie.
Unlike Socrates, Jackie had already become a star in her field. She was already known for being one of the shallowest thinkers in all of Greece. And now she was so busy she could hardly get through a conversation without being interrupted by one of the many messengers she constantly had coming and going. In fact, Jackie was one of the first people to use “messenger waiting,” which enabled her to have several messengers going at the same time. (This was a practice many Publicists employed in order to make themselves seem more important to prospective clients.)
A week later Socrates met Jackie for lunch. As they spoke she told him several times that she thought he was “amazing!” In fact, after just about anything Socrates said, Jackie responded with “amazing!” sometimes changing the inflection to “uh-mayzing!”
Socrates was charmed.
Jackie went on and on about how much she admired Socrates and his “unique perspective” and told him how she loved his “whole question thing.”
To this Socrates replied, “What do you mean?”