Plato’s Paradox
by Ryan Kinney

What if Plato was right?
And there are eternal truths
Ethereal knowledge that exists independent of humans
Just waiting for us to grasp

What if all knowledge was the not the product of human ingenuity?
But just our ability to latch onto these truths.
We can reach and hold them,
But never with our hands
Feel them,
But never touch them

What if he was right?
But off by a few millennia
Maybe it was a prophetic vision
Just waiting for technology to catch up
Some access code or binary formula
That taps us into ultimate knowledge

What if you could instantly know anything you wished?
And substitute lifetimes of training
For a momentary flash
Bach and Bruce Lee
Socrates and Einstein
Lennon and Nietzsche
All their skill, yours with ease

What if you knew everything?
Nothing would be out of your reach
Would you become a god among men?
Or covertly use your power to reign?
Would you be a benevolent benefactor?
And teach instead?
Would you share your knowledge?
Would you share your power?

Or would it drive you insane?
Madness that only a genius could know.
With no questions left to answer.
Would, why I exist?
Haunt your existence.

Would life lose its flavor?
Would you spend your life bored?
Obsessed with trying to locate something you don’t know
Only to realize it’s all been done

Would your heart be left twisted and wrung dry?
As your mind grew.
Would you scar yourself?
Or stand in the freezing rain.
Just to remember what it was like to feel.
Would you allow knowledge to make you cold and bitter?

Would you allow it to make you a monster?
An immoral beast who did only because he couldn’t be stopped?
If absolute knowledge corrupts,
Would you lose your humanity?
At the very moment you understood what it meant to be human?

What if you could know anything you ever wanted?
What’s stopping you?