From Trance to Transcendence: Reflections on Saving a Dying Republic

As previously explored, rhetoric, propaganda, and the “magical” qualities of language have been used to shape mass opinion for thousands of years. Plato in his time observed this phenomenon throughout the socio-politico-cultural matrix of Ancient Athens. Book X of The Republic paid particularly close attention to the role of dramatic and epic poets, the chief “image-makers” of Ancient Greece.

Notably, Plato pointed to the poet’s ability to induce catharsis in mass audiences using intensely gripping images and scenes that captured the imagination. In modern behavioral science and Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) terms, these wordsmiths created psychological “anchors” i.e., images that anchored the mind to specific states of affectation, in turn associating them with a particular idea or “felt-thought.” These said “anchors” could then be recalled by simply invoking earlier passages, images, or related “cues,” therefore eliciting the original emotional state or memory under new conditio…