Plato's "Cratylus'

Recently I received Plato's dialogue "The Cratylus" as a gift.
This allowed me to renew my memory of one of my favorite passages in Plato, which I will now paraphrase:

Pluto has a bad reputation. But, he can't be as bad as people think.

Why do people stay in the underworld? If they stay there, finally, it's got to be due to desire, not compulsion or necessity.

Desire is stronger than necessity or compulsion.

Nothing is a stronger force for a living creature than the thought that by associating with someone else this will make us better.

That's my very rough paraphrase. This is a version of the famous doctrine that "all desire is for the good", and that everything we do is done with the thought that it will make us better.

There is a bit of autobiography that is relevant here... I am sorry to say that I've not defended this thought when I might have, when I worked in high schools in Slovakia.

I was astonished to see the extent to which high school managers rely upon force and compulsion, threats. In fact it made me sick to see it.

I regret that I did not object to it more loudly.....