What’s Wrong With Our Society, 2.7

In last week’s episode of MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” tensions boil over … in the most confusing manner possible. The careful viewer (who also reads this blog’s on-going academic analysis of “Jersey Shore”) ought to be reminded of the confusing arguments about justice in Book One of Plato’s Republic.

Here’s what happens:

Vinny calls out Angelina for starting trouble by calling out J-WOWW for talking about Pauly D. The end result, strangely, is that Ronnie pushes Vinny to the ground and Sammi punches J-WOWW in the face.

Ronnie and Vinny later discuss their differences and sort things out; Angelina and Vinny do not; instead, they do a lot of shouting at one another. Sammi and J-WOWW also do not discuss their differences or sort anything out. Of course, it’s important to remember that in days past, J-WOWW went out of her way to try to help Sammi (who was being unknowingly embarrassed by Ronnie’s behavior with other women at the club).

Of course, as well know, in Plato’s Republic, Socrates tells Polemarchus that justice is better defined as doing good to friends and harm to no one than his own definition, “Do good to friends and harm to enemies.”

The reason, of course, is that one cannot possibly improve an unjust person by treating him unjustly. But, he tells us, we might also question the first part of the definition, about doing good to our friends.

The trouble, as Socrates points out, is that we might judge incorrectly about those who are and those who are not our friends. If “Jersey Shore” teaches us anything this week, it’s that we are often wrong about our friends:

J-WOWW says that she wrote the anonymous letter to help her friend Sammi, but then she pulls out Sammi’s hair extensions and Sammi punches her in the face. On the other hand, Vinny and Angelina are clearly not friends; they spend the first half of the episode shouting the most horrible things at one another … right until the moment when they end up kissing in the cab on the way home from the club.

Socrates was not kidding around.