The Wattree Chronicle: Socrates: The Hood Rat of Antiquity

Thursday, May 09, 2013

Socrates: The Hood Rat of Antiquity

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Socrates: The Hood Rat of Antiquity

Socrates was indeed the hood rat of antiquity. He had absolutely no stature in society, and he never wrote a thing for posterity. To modernize his own words, his sentiments were essentially, "My thing is simply hangin' out on the block and discussing reality." So we wouldn't have even known who he was if it weren't for "youngsters" like Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon, who spoke of him in their writings.

So when I think of Socrates, it brings to mind some of the older brothers in the neighborhood that I grew up in, and who were very much responsible for the awaking my own mind. They used to sit around for hours on end pontificating on everything from political science to the origin of the universe. While they held absolutely no formal "credentials" to validate their knowledge, their legitimacy was girded firmly in place by their wisdom, insight, and tremendous intellect alone. These were the Eulipians:

THE EULIPIANS
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Some of the greatest minds I've ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lot of ghetto liquor stores. At their feet I embraced the love of knowledge, and through their tutelage defined self-worth In my own terms.
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These were the "Eulipians" - writers, poets, musicians, painters, and uncommon drunks - those shade-tree philosophers who contemplate the fungus between the toes society; Who dance with reckless abandon, unfettered by formal inhibition through the presumptuous speculation of the ages; and who live in county jails, cardboard boxes, alley ways, and luxury Apartments - insignificant here in Great Bruteland, but of ultimate significance in the eyes of God.
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While these obscure intellectuals stand well outside the mainstream of academy, I’ve watch with astonished delight as they sang, scat, and scribed their various philosophies into the mainstream of human knowledge.
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Miles, Bird, Trane, Langston Hughes, Eulipians all. I’m a Eulipian. We’re easy to spot, because we all sing but one song - "Knowledge is free, thus, will transcend all attempts to be contained through barriers of caste and privilege, leaving man's innate thirst for knowledge free to someday overwhelm his passionate lust for stupidity."

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OSCAR BROWN, JR. - EULIPIAN