Socrates' Paradox

[child_of_the_air]

Something I've thought about a bit, and wish I had more useful things to write about, is what I've come to calling "Socrates' paradox". He supposedly asked people to define "piety" and they gave the expected answer of "that which is pleasing to the gods", pointed out that the gods feud and often openly fight, so what is pleasing to one of them will probably be offensive to another.

My vague sense of an answer, which I haven't entirely put into words, comes from my sense that the gods map in some way to ideals / causes / etc. And so one should see piety the same way one sees loyalty to a principle or cause.

You necessarily have to choose what moral principles, or causes, or so forth align with who you are. Likewise, devote yourself to gods who embody what you want the world to be. If you are self-consistent in your selection, there will not be unreconcilable differences between them...if there are, you need to try to understand where your own inconsistency or error or hypocrisy lies.

That being said, I should note that I'm not very good at implementing this reasoning myself.  For example, my faith in order and my conviction that the universe is a massive, malicious conspiracy are really not self-consistent...