Plato's republic

Plato’s Republic was actually a decent read once I got past all of the “Socrates is god and I agree with everything he says” dialogue. I liked the fact that he started out really simple when he was building his city because it definitely caught my interest and made me focus more. Right away, I was a little turned off with how much he wanted to control the people in his city. It seemed like right from the start; the only freedom they had was in their choice of clothing. I didn’t like the idea that the epics are basically going to be destroyed because Plato thinks that it would be in the best interest of the people living in his city if all of the violent scenes are taken out of the stories so that his people do not learn about anything bad. Next I hated the idea that people had no choice in their occupations and could not do anything about it if they wanted to change it. Human beings are natural learners and if they only learn one thing then they will never be able to grow. People can be taught right from wrong but what path they choose should be up to them which is why I didn’t agree with this idea. I found that when I was reading this my first instinct was to look for contradictions and flaws in how Plato planned to run his city. He had a lot of support for most of his plans, so I was a little upset that I didn’t get to debate him on much. But someone made the argument in the last class to the idea that Plato is essentially raising these people like infants, but if he plans to have the people fight to defend their land, they have never been exposed to anything bad, so how are they going to be able to defend themselves?  Finally I don’t agree with the idea that wealth and poverty make a man worse at his craft. If anything I would say that wealth could motivate a worker to work more because he is being rewarded with money, not become lazy.