Plato would have loved Kenny G

Recent archaeological evidence suggests that guilty pleasure music has existed for as long as western civilzation.

What do you call the opposite of a clickbait title? Clickrepellent? Clickmurder? Whatever it is, I’m sure I’ve found it with this post. But I couldn’t resist writing about cultural critic and distinguished mustache-wearer

Ted Gioia

’s recent piece that reveals the hypocrisy of Plato’s and Socrates’s final moments.

A 2000-Year-Old Argument Over the Flute Is the Most Important Thing in Our Culture Right Now

The gist: according to new scientific analysis of a charred papyrus fragment that survived the fabled eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., Plato spent his dying days listening to a slave play the flute.

Plato spent his last hours listening to a female Thracian slave play the flute. And he complained that she wasn’t playing well. He was especially displeased by her poor sense of rhythm.

Gioia notes that this is an amazing discovery, not just because Plato apparently made a very annoying audience member. (Or maybe the girl truly stunk at flute.)

Plato had previously written with great hostility about music generally, and flute music played by female slaves specifically. He proclaimed that men who enjoyed flute-girls lacked education. He even banned musicians from his ideal Republic.¹ Yet incredibly, in his final moments he chose the company of flute music rather than loved ones.

(Also incredible: that paper fragment's fortitude! It survived a catastrophic volcano! Perhaps the finest showing we’ve seen from an inanimate object since carbon rod.)

What’s more, Plato’s deathbed reversal mirrors the last days of his mentor, Socrates.

Socrates even claimed in [his] final moments that he should have been a musician himself. “In the course of my life,” he explained, “I have often had intimations in dreams ‘that I should make music.’”

There’s a lot to unpack here, and Gioia’s whole piece is fascinating. It seems that the powerful men of antiquity were just as contradictory and self-serving as they are today. Music is a much lighter topic than, say, an anti-choice politician who pays for abortions or an (allegedly) closeted homophobe who pushes hateful rhetoric. But the disingenuousness of Plato’s opinion on music is surprisingly similar!

Setting that aside, however, it’s actually comforting to know that Plato secretly enjoyed the flute. I mean, we now have legitimate archaeological evidence that guilty pleasure music has existed for thousands of years! Behind closed doors, the greatest minds in human history listened to their era’s equivalent of I’m blue da-ba-dee-da-ba-die!

This is huge. None of us should ever feel bad about listening to shitty music again, because Socrates and Plato did it first.

Crank up the Journey! Pop on some Spice Girls! Who cares that the Monkees were made for TV! We all know “Mmmbop” is a banger! Smash Mouth had three hits and we can put them on loop! Lou Bega should start working on “Mambo Number 6!” Michael Bolton and Kenny G reunion tour! LET’S ALL LISTEN TO HAMILTON AGAIN!!!

In truth, the idea of a guilty pleasure is something that we should be leaving in the dust anyway. There are very few things in this world that inspire as much joy as a song that hits just right, so it makes no sense to judge the ones that do.

Alas, that’s unrealistic. People will never stop judging each other or themselves. Making fun of Nickelback is part of the human condition. Just remember that you might hear them on your deathbed!

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More Music from Chortle

Question for the Comments

What musical guilty pleasures should we admit into the halls of popular acceptance?

I’ll start. Enya rocks.

1. Perhaps the ideal Republic had similar rules as a subway station.