Welcome back to the 1st Law Newsletter - Friday Edition.

In this email:

• Thoughts on improving the political system

• Notes on what I'm reading

• Quote about meditation, mindfulness, and life... from a Samura

Politics as a Career

I was talking to my roommate about this and he had some great points. First, being a politician should not be a career. You should not be able to be a politician for 40 years. That just screams 'power hungry' and increases the odds of corruption exponentially. Ideally, politics should be something you can enter for 5-8 years or so once you have established yourself in another field. For example, you could be a senior engineer who spent the last 25 years adding value to your company and society from a technical background and now you can enter politics at the tail end of your career to add value to society. Or you could have been a doctor, or a professor, or a librarian, or a policeman or firefighter... In fact, I almost think that if you want to be a politician, you shouldn't be allowed to be one. It should be a position that people ask you to do. "A great man doesn't seek to lead. He's called to it. And he answers." That's a quote from a movie but I think its very applicable. Further, being a politician should pay very well - comparable salary to an executive at a large company (500k+/yr). This is just to minimize the chances of corruption from bribes to pass certain laws and regulations. And lastly, just my thoughts but I think it would be interesting if all politicians had to do mushrooms (like shrooms) before entering service. How many of them would still even want to be politicians?! Haha.

The Death of Socrates

For the past few weeks, I've been reading some ancient Greek philosophical texts about Socrates. Namely: Euthyphro, Apologia, Crito, and Phaedo. These depict the final months before Socrates' death (to which he was sentenced to by the Athenian court) and the events leading up to it. He was accused of corrupting the youth and not respecting the Greek gods. He defended himself and lost a close vote to be found guilty. I think the fact that he was accused of corrupting the youth is super interesting because how can you even prove this? In fact, Socrates was only encouraging the youth to think critically and question what they are told - to seek truth and not follow orders blindly. However, having the adolescent male population questioning everything and being autonomous is a huge threat to the system, and the court reacted as such. I think parallels can be drawn to certain popular influencers today.

A few interesting points of the story include:

• Socrates was offered exile as a punishment, but he loved Athens too much to leave, and said leaving Athens was akin to death and thus chose to be executed.

• He again had the opportunity to escape from prison prior to his execution, but he believed a citizens obligation to his state was too great to break the state's laws for his own wellbeing.

• Socrates was not afraid or sad to die, it was his time and he was OK with his soul moving on. In fact, he believes any philosopher should gladly welcome death as they have spent their whole life contemplating it and preparing for it - it would be foolish to be sad and scared when the time finally comes.

• By silencing a critic rather than listening to him, you harm yourself more than you harm the critic.

Quote I Want To Share

Would you have slept in today if it was your last day alive? Would you have gotten fucked up or would you stay sober? How would your actions differ?

Thanks for reading!

Lucas