Inverting the Philosopher King Theory

According to Plato’s Theory of the Philosopher King, human beings are divided into three categories, the gold, the silver and the bronze categories. Plato refers to the gold category as people with most knowledge but less materialistic and to the silver category as spirited or courageous people and to the bronze as the appetitive class.

According to him, the gold category of people should always be the kings by virtue of their vast knowledge and little appetite for material or worldly things while the silver category should be the soldiers and the bronze or appetitive class the servants.

But the political drama unfolding in Sierra Leone over the years tend to debunk Plato’ theory; we seem to have inverted Plato’s theory as the country has been having a succession of very voracious, money-hungry and narrow-minded people mostly at the helm of things. The highly knowledgeable and less materialistic people seem to have been relegated to the corner or relegated themselves to the corner.

This is evident in the notorious fact that almost every blessed day, Sierra Leoneans are embarrassed by reports that this or that top government official has been dragged to the court or the Anti-Corruption Commission for embezzling a huge quantum of state money. It is no longer a secret that most of our leaders are engaged in massive looting of state funds to satisfy their gargantuan appetite for more money; do such leaders not fall under the bronze category of people who, according to Plato, are supposed to be the servants, not the leaders as it has been happening in our own political situation? Have we not been inverting the Philosopher King Theory? The answer is obviously in the positive, especially when many of these voracious leaders are suffering woefully from academic bankruptcy and narrow-mindedness.

In Sierra Leone nowadays, we do not select leaders for what they are but for what they have, in other words, we look more for the material wealth than for the integrity of people when choosing national leader. Such pattern of voting could be the main reason why we are now being governed mostly by the bronze category of people whose diabolical and fraudulent activities have brought our nation to the perigee of the UN index.

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