Plato’s Fight Against Apollo’s Temple of Delphi and the Cult of Democracy (Cynthia Chung lecture)

We are too often drawn into the bad habit of thinking of ancient Greek thinkers like Plato and his teacher Socrates as ivory tower philosophers lost in the abstract realm of “ideas” and utopian ideals detached of all reality and human struggle on earth. In this lecture, Rising Tide Foundation president Cynthia Chung shatters that fantasy to pieces by introducing the geopolitical dynamic that both Socrates, Plato and a network of bright thinkers lived in and fought to transform for the better on a multitude of levels: military, cultural, scientific, and political. How did Plato establish a vast international web of allies which were coordinated increasingly through his Academy? How did the Cult of Marduk of Babylon use Persian forces to attempt to subjugate the entire known world and how did this Cult transplant itself to Greece with the creation of the Cult of Apollo at Delphi? How did these cults control imperial grand strategy, finance, religion and even military strategy for countless generat