Plato's Republic, Book V: The Three Waves: Naked Gym Class, Rigged Baby Lotteries, Philosopher Kings

This week on Whine with Some Cheese, we get ambushed by Plato’s Republic (Book V… and then some): the part where Socrates warns Glaucon about “three waves” of controversy and then proceeds to surf directly into the most unhinged policy proposal meeting in human history.Wave One: Women as guardians.Equality? Love that. But Plato’s version includes mandatory naked gym training with the men, plus the charming reassurance that it’ll look “ridiculous,” especially for older women. Thank you, Plato, for the unsolicited body commentary.Wave Two: The community of wives and children.Romance is out, administration is in. Plato proposes communal parenting, separating babies from mothers, outsourcing childcare to wet nurses, and running reproduction like a breeding program, complete with rigged lotteries that pair the “best” with the “best” while everyone else blames “luck.” There are age cutoffs for reproduction, euphemisms about “unholy” children if you miss the window, and even a “check with the Oracle” moment that somehow makes the whole thing feel more normal to him.Wave Three: Philosopher kings.Socrates claims the city won’t be saved until philosophers rule (or rulers become philosophers), because only they love “the vision of truth.” Everyone else is dismissed as a “lover of sights and sounds”, festival-goers with metaphorical ears flapping, because enjoying music, color, and beauty isn’t Real Knowledge™. (Let us live.)And because Plato can’t stop once he starts, we also get a bonus descent into knowledge vs opinion, being vs becoming, the famous distinction between loving beautiful things and grasping Beauty itself. It’s a whole epistemology lecture that somehow feels designed to justify why the “special” people should be in charge.Along the way: children being taken to war on horses (???), a bizarre rewards program for brave soldiers that includes extra meat and unlimited kissing privileges (hello, consent), and a war policy that treats Greeks one way and “barbarians” another… which is exactly as charming as it sounds.So yes: this episode contains naked gym class trauma, ancient Greek eugenics vibes, communal baby logistics, and elitist gatekeeping about who counts as enlightened, all while we are, somehow, still hungry and still waiting for the cheese.Pour something sweeter than this dialogue, and join us for the Three Waves: where Plato replaces wine-and-cheese vibes with administrative dystopia, then calls us childish for objecting.