Common Sense

Socrates strolled down the sidewalks of his city, his flowing scarlet robes and eagle’s nest of gray hair an irresistible magnet for the youth of Harlem. Everyone knew him, but not everyone loved him. While his learned way of discourse was known to snap a ruffian out of delinquency or a depressive out self-denigrating slumber, there were those who saw him as a fraud, a charlatan, a poseur. In fact, very few people could grok what he was saying as he spoke in riddles and metaphors and cited obscure facts that were hard to believe. Many tuned him out. Those who stayed the course with him were said to have found new freedom in their personal lives. Being a law student at Columbia who had been tethered to formal education for most of my life, I felt I was lacking something, but didn’t know what that something was.

I had read about Socrates in the New York Post. It was a story done by a staff reporter who arrived first at the scene after a car had severed a fire hydrant from its mounts and uncapped a geyser that entertained the neighborhood kids for a weekend before city workers shut it off. Since then the hydrant was a source of daily amusement, even when it started to get cool. The reporter had met Socrates and wrote that he was never the same again. He began to cover weightier stories and write books.

I took the subway up to the 116th street station across from Columbia University and walked back to Morningside Park across from the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Socrates sat on a park bench eating a Fuji apple watching children play in the water.

“You must be Socrates,” I said boldly.

“And you have arrived.” He knew it was me and had been watching me approach from West 113th street. Not that a white guy dressed like a law student in a Black neighborhood would be hard to spot. His manner was cordial, professional, and I immediately felt at ease. He stood and towered over me, his long elegant hand extended in camaraderie. His grip was warm and impressive.

“Let’s walk,” he said, adjusting his robes like one might a hanging drapery. His woven leather sandals slapped the pavement to establish the rhythm of our encounter. We walked past the kids playing tag and filling up water balloons on our right as sirens foreshadowed an ambulance delivering a patient to the ER at Mt. Sinai Hospital on our left.

“Did you know that over 900 nurses and doctors from Mt. Sinai Hospital served in World War II?” I sent an intellectual foray to test the acumen of the one bold enough to walk the planet using the name of the seminal Western sage.

“That’s very interesting,” Socrates replied. “But did you know Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg has the longest single-word name of any location in the United States?”

“I did not. Who could ever remember that?” I asked, wondering if my time with this so-called sage was being wasted with his nonsense.

“Right. Because it’s located near Webster, Massachusetts, most people just call it Webster Lake.”

“That makes sense,” I said, thinking maybe the essence of this man’s teaching was to quash obfuscation. I offered a quote from Lao-Tzu: “Simplicity is the result of profound thought.”

“Excellent!” Socrates replied. “How then is man’s character formed amid the complexities in the world?”

“We are a product of our genetics, environment and experiences. ‘As the twig is bent the tree shall grow’ kind of thing.”

Socrates laughed. “I see you have affinity for aphorisms. How about ‘the twisted tree lives a long life, the straight tree gets made into a board.’”

“That’s a good one,” I laughed, and we shared a glance of mutual respect and joy. Or maybe not. He might have been playing with me.

We walked past the hallowed buildings of Columbia Law school where students hustled between classes with backpacks and laptops.

“Speaking of law, have you heard of Hammurabi?” Socrates asked, noticing the shift in my attention.

“Yes. An ancient ruler of what… Mesopotamia?” I couldn’t remember where Mesopotamia was, but it was the first thing that popped into my head and I didn’t want to appear ignorant.

“He was the sixth king of the First Babylonian dynasty of the Amorite tribe, reigning from c. 1792 BC to c. 1750 BC.”

“Okay.” I wondered how that related to Columbia law. As if he could read my mind he answered.

“Back in those days societies were just beginning to form from tribes of hunter gatherers. Many of these tribes wandered into Babylon, each with its own culture, its shared attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviors. As you can imagine there was a lot of trouble. These were crude barbarians used to living off the land outdoors. They fought and killed for a living. There were no common laws or societal rules. Babylon was a mess.”

“I bet.”

“To establish order, King Hammurabi had his Code of Laws carved into a seven-foot-tall stone obelisk and set in the center of the city. The disparate tribespeople were instructed to read these laws and obey them, or they would be liable for the consequences also inscribed in the stone.”

“But did they do it? Obey the laws?”

“They learned to after lots of stumbles. Hammurabi’s laws were very harsh for noncompliance. For example, if one were to fight and blind another person in his eye, then the eye of the aggressor would also be blinded.”

“An eye for an eye.”

“Yes, a barbaric type of justice later reflected in the laws of Draco, the first legislator of Athens in the 7th century BC. Draco wrote the first constitution of Athens that served as the basis for its laws that were unforgivingly harsh. The death penalty was punishment for most crimes, even minor ones. Copying Hammurabi, these Draconian laws were also displayed in public so everyone could see. Hence the aphorism ‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse.’”

“So the phrase often used in business ‘it’s not set in stone,’ refers back to the stone of Hammurabi.”

“Precisely. People growing up today think the society they live in was just invented. Rather it is the mountain top of past societies which serve as its foundation.”

As we walked along, I was beginning to feel more connected to the world than ever before. It was like the stories he was telling me were bridges between isolated islands of knowledge in my mind that tied everything together and gave me a wholeness of comprehension about life. I looked over at a street sign. It read George Carlin Way.

“I knew Carlin,” Socrates said, noticing my drift in attention.

“Great comedian.”

“He grew up in this neighborhood in an Irish section over near 121st street he used to call White Harlem. Not only was he a great storyteller and social satirist, he was an activist. One of his comedy routines was about the seven words broadcasters were not allowed to say on the air as they were considered profane.”

“I remember that one. The words were – ”

“The routine spoke to the 1978 United States Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, where a 5–4 decision gave the government power to censor and fine broadcasters and their media stations for using those words.”

“Carlin was great and performed until near the end of his life,” I added, recalling the times I saw him on the Johnny Carson Show and later his unfiltered performances online because You Tube was not considered public broadcasting.

“He died in Los Angeles from heart trouble, one week after his last performance in Las Vegas. He was cremated and it was decreed in his will his ashes were to be scattered in front of night clubs in New York City where he had performed.”

“That’s incredible. No wonder they named a road after him.”

“You do something noteworthy, and you get a road, a school, a bridge, a public building. Do you know who has the most schools named after him?”

“George Washington,” I guessed.

“Close. Abraham Lincoln has 607, followed by Thomas Jefferson with 350, then Washington with 322.”

“How do you remember all that stuff?”

“I am interested in everything. It just happens.”

We approached the end of Morningside Park at 123rd Street and Socrates decided to cut through the park and use the rest room. I waited for him outside. It was a cool fall morning and the trees were shedding leaves that floated to the ground like multicolored butterflies. I sat on a rail bench and watched a pair of lovers walking slowly holding hands. A young black boy was playing speed chess with an old white man as several onlookers whispered about the strategy exhibited on the board. A group of pigeons spotted me sitting there and waddled over hoping I would be good for a peanut or a cracker, then left dismayed. I was studying the gray hexagonal pavers that comprised the walkway, noticing how neatly they fit together…

“Did you know that the hexagon is the geometrical shape most found in nature,” Socrates startled me from my reverie. “Beehives are hexagonal in their cavities. Basalt domes crack into tall hexagonal pillars like Devil’s Postpile in the Sierras. Buckminster Fuller devised his geodesic domes using only hexagons and pentagons.”

“Why is that?” I was beginning to realize the love and appreciation Socrates had for every corner of earthly existence.

“Because of its 120-degree angles, the hexagon shape most efficiently fills a plane with equal size units without wasting space. Though beehives are formed in circles, when the wax hardens the shape becomes hexagonal.”

“So Fuller took his inspiration for the dome from beehives?” I asked to keep up my end of the conversation.

“Something else happened…” Socrates began to walk, his head down and thinking as if to pull up a file from deep inside his mental hard drive. I fell in beside him and waited.

“Bucky’s daughter, Alexandra, passed on and he fell despondent. He lost his job, began drinking and contemplated suicide by drowning himself in Lake Michigan so his family could have the life insurance money. Then, Bucky experienced himself floating inside a sphere of white light where an ethereal voice spoke to him. It told him he was a thinker of the truth and he belonged not to himself but to the universe and that he had no right to destroy himself as he had a higher purpose to serve mankind. That he should apply himself to fulfilling that role and not to worry.”

“So he did. And created the geodesic dome.”

“Among other things. His ideas about utilizing natural laws to create human advancement in the material realm were reminiscent of the great Greek mathematicians Archimedes and Pythagoras. Then later Galileo and Da Vinci.”

“It’s amazing how nature can be used by man to make artificial things,” I said.

“Man is natural, just as the bee who makes the hive, the beaver who builds the dam, the eagle who crafts the nest. If man is natural, then what man makes is natural. There is no artificial.”

“Ahh…” I stand corrected,” I said with humility.

“It is a humble road man walks to knowledge,” Socrates winked, as if to recognize in me one of his former selves.

We walked in silence for a while coming back down the other side of the park. It was like I was enveloped in the same kind of magical bubble Fuller had been when he received his enlightenment. I felt my mind was linked to the mind of Socrates and we shared ideas without the need to speak. I was aware of something going on inside me. It was like all my tangled thoughts were being combed into order, like sediment in a pond settled, leaving the water clear.

I looked across Morningside Avenue. My eyes were drawn to a sign on a building that read “Church of the Master.” A leaf drifted into my eye. I reached up and pulled it away. It was ocher with red splotches on top. I turned it over and could see the veins and the branch structure on the underside. The leaf was still pliable but brittle.

“The colors are due to the chemical degradation of the biology,” Socrates spoke kindly. “The tree knows winter is coming and to survive it must conserve its energy and water. Losing leaves also decreases strain on the branches which will soon have to bear the weight of snow.”

I had to laugh at this man’s composite knowledge. “Who taught the tree how to do this?”

“What is the saying… ‘How silly is man; he creates gods by the score but not the greatest among them can create so much as a leaf.’”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

Socrates stopped then, faced me and held out his hand. “It’s been a pleasure.”

I took his hand but did not want to let go of the remarkable experience I had just shared. “Thank you.”

He winked again and for the first time I could see that his left eye was cloudy and white. “You know, Odin in Norse mythology, was a tall man with a flowing beard who sacrificed one of his eyes so he could drink from the spring of knowledge. And he became the wisest of them all.”

Socrates smiled. “Yes, and with that blind eye he could look inward and see his true self.”

“That’s extraordinary.”

“Not really,” Socrates said. “Everything you want to know is there inside. All you have to do is perceive it. In the grand scheme of things, it is all just common sense.”

Socrates moved away like a cloud and disappeared in the park. I never saw him again. But what I learned that day changed the course of my life.

Today I am waiting at the edge of the Battery at the end of Manhattan. I watch as ferries shuttle people back and forth to the Statue of Liberty. I am eating a Gala apple. My hair has grown long and I gave up my suit and tie for a long cotton robe like monks wear. People walk by without noticing me.

“Plato?” There is hesitation in his voice. The same voice I heard over the phone.

“You have arrived, Edward.” I stand and offer my hand. Edward accepts it eagerly. In his eyes I see fear, anticipation and hope. “Walk with me.”

“I wasn’t sure that –”

I interrupt his hesitation and redirect his thinking. “Did you know that when Bartholdi decided to place a tabula ansata in the Statue’s left hand to signify the concept of law, he engraved JULY IV MDCCLXXVI to honor the date of the Declaration of Independence.”

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