The myth of Gyges remains timeless because it reveals not only humanity’s relationship with power, but also its darker relationship with itself. The invisibility granted by the ring symbolizes nothing less than the removal of fear and punishment. At the very moment social control disappears, the deepest face of the human being emerges — either as creator or predator.
Perhaps, in the end, freedom is not the absence of rules, but the ability to impose limits upon oneself without coercion. And perhaps true morality is born neither from laws nor religions, but from the awareness of a shared human destiny.
Plato’s “Republic” (2.359d–2.360d), through the words of Glaucon, borrows — if he did not himself invent it — a truly powerful allegorical myth:
A shepherd of the King of Lydia, named Gyges, while tending his flock, accidentally discovers a magical golden ring inside a cavernous underground opening. As soon as he emerges and examines it more carefully, he realizes that his finding possesses an unbelievable power. Whenever he turned the stone of the ring toward the inside of his palm, he became invisible.
The moment he understood what kind of power he held in his hands, this “honest,” kind-hearted, and humble shepherd — who until then would not have harmed even an ant — seemed to experience an earthquake within himself. His mind and behavior changed instantly; he transformed into an invisible human “monster.” He went to the king’s palace, seduced the queen, murdered the king, and seized the throne for himself.
An individual’s obedience to the law is not conscious obedience nor a freely willed acceptance of commands. Quite the opposite.
It is submission, while rules function as restrictive tools, barriers that define and limit one’s choices and actions. Gyges, in Plato’s myth above, during the period when he appeared to be a law-abiding subject, had certainly “slept” countless times in his fantasies with the beautiful shepherd girls of the village. Likewise, the queen herself singled him out, fell in love with him, and together they decided to murder the king so that her beloved could ascend the throne.
In his dreams — when the id (the subconscious) defeated the superego (rules of every kind) and found an outlet — the obedient shepherd ultimately became what he had always been: an abuser and a murderer.
The great question that cannot yet be answered is this:
Did there ever exist a linear “age of innocence” for humanity at the dawn of its appearance on Earth, as we often prefer to assume for the sake of our philosophical inquiries? Or has humanity always been a “mixture” of behaviors, shaped according to the demands of instinct and the chemical composition of emotions triggered by each passing moment?
We may learn the answer only if one day the archive of the immense cosmic data containing the “history” of humankind through the ages is opened — the “images” and impressions that are never lost and perhaps continue drifting infinitely through order or chaos.
Theories do not constitute proof. In any science.
If theories offer anything beyond the interpretation of the researcher’s object of study, then, in the worst case, they merely satisfy vanity, arrogance, and intellectual pretension. They may approach a truth, but they may also stand miles away from reality.
Nevertheless, even with this reservation, two “theories” may come very close to certainty through simple observation alone:
1. NATURAL MORALITY CANNOT AND DOES NOT RELATE TO THE ARTIFICIAL, INVENTED CONCEPTS OF “GOOD” AND “EVIL” CREATED BY PRIESTHOODS AND POWER STRUCTURES.
2. GENUINE FREE WILL DOES NOT EXIST. OBEDIENCE TO RULES SHAPED THROUGH THE AGES IS ANYTHING BUT A CONSCIOUS AND FREE CHOICE.