This book was written for the common John and Joan who is at least 20 years of
age. Different people in different epochs wrote down most of the stuff that is
in this book. However, a good idea here and there will show you nothing, as a
touch of a painter here and there will not give you an understanding about the
entire picture. Only when this painter systematizes his touches and put them in
order, only then you will have the total picture.
The purpose of the 1st book is to explain to you the chain of notions
that links the social sciences with the science of the movements of the planets
and the formation of the elementary particles that bind the evolution of man to
Mother-Nature or Father-God. The social evolution is shown through the
examination of the ever-evolving moral values of the upper, middle, and lower
classes. Here I try to clarify to you your long-run interests in this ambivalent
world.
If we wish to
comprehend the universe, we must understand matter – its forms, organization,
movement, and transformation. There is no evidence that thought exists
independently of matter. However, extreme idealists questioned whether the
material world has any objective reality. Bishop Berkeley, one of the best
Platonists, suggested that the physical universe is nothing but a constant
perception in God’s mind.
What we observe in the universe, is usually reflects and precipitates as our
notion of matter. If you attempt to stop the falling apple, you will feel the
action of what we call a force. Yet, there is no apparent physical connection
between Earth and its part (the apple), because both of them are in the mutual
electromagnetic field. We say that there is an attractive (magnetic or
gravitational) force acting upon them in an electromagnetic field. The word ‘field’
suggests that there is something that permeates these two entities.
Electromagnetic fields have become a common place in our description of nature.
Some physicists talk of matter as being the manifestation of fields.
Matter, as a common expression, comes in the form of four bodies: solid, liquid,
gaseous, and plasmic. Gaseous bodies are the simplest for understanding. We live
in a gaseous body, called atmosphere, which is a mixture of gases, which called
air. We usually become aware of the air by seeing clouds or smoke, so do
the scientists. They usually start from something that appeals to their senses
and then proceed through the cycle of experiments and hypotheses to build a
model that explains the properties of whatever system they are interested in.
The more they know about their subject, the more sophisticated their model
(paradigm) becomes. However, no matter how sophisticated their models are, the
models are no more than an approximation or simplification of reality. We often
lose sight of this fact and confuse our models with reality itself. If our model
of our neighbors would largely ignore their negative characteristics, in other
words, we would refuse to consider and take into consideration their follies,
then, we would have our model as bias as it possible; if our model ignores their
positive characteristics, then, we are prejudicial. In either case, we are not
scientific.
The tendency to forget the simplicity of our models is not unusual in physical
science. Its history has been a continual revolution -- physical laws continue
to be discovered, and old models of the universe give way to new theories.
Sometimes it seems that there is no more room for improvement but this
appearance is, as always, somewhat deceptive. Thus, prejudice and bias start
crippling our ability to think and to understand the real world, starting a new
cycle of improvements in our models.
One of the oldest models is that which was compiled to explain the behavior of
gases. The key to the understanding of gases was the discovery and construction
of the microscope, which allows us to see the microscopic motion of tiny bits of
matter – molecules. Some people thought that we could infinitely divide a drop
of water without changing its quality. However, there comes a stage when the
splitting transforms water into gases. The smallest entity that still has the
quality of water is a molecule of water. There are nearly 2´1023 molecules in a
cubic centimeter of water. This number is so large that the whole solar system
has nearly the same weight in milligrams. You probably know that a water
molecule is expressed using the formula H2O, which is a way of saying that each water molecule
consists of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen (later we will consider
atoms)
The smallest bit of oxygen that we can still breathe is the oxygen molecule,
which consists of two married oxygen atoms (O2). If we split an
oxygen molecule in the middle, we would get two atoms of oxygen whose
biochemical and physical properties are dissimilar to those of the oxygen
molecule, as Mistress would become somewhat different when she becomes Miss
again and her rights and responsibilities would be diminished. On the other
hand, ozone (chemical formula O3) can be conceived as
a notorious love triangle with its bitter and passionate qualities.
We use gases to breathe, to make our drinks, to cook, to wage war with animals
and even other people. Each gas is chemically unique, but what is common
to all of them is the movement of their molecules.
In 1650, Otto Von Guericke invented the air pump and showed that light (but not
sound) could travel through space without air. Then Boyle showed that air was
necessary for life (mice died in a glass vessel under decompression) and for
combustion (fires extinguished). In an experiment Boyle trapped a volume of air
in a glass tube and varied the pressure on it. While pressure increases and the
air volume decreases, we must push harder to keep the pump handle in its place.
It looks like we are straggling to compress a steel spring. Boyle recorded the
pressure and the volume of the air in his pump during the experiment. He found
out that doubling the pressure leads to the volume halved. If the pressure
tripled, the volume shrinks to a third. The temperature in his lab was almost
constant and he concluded that for a sample of gas at constant temperature the
pressure multiplied by the volume of a sample was constant (p´v = const). However, this
model works well only under normal, earthly circumstances. If we compress a gas
so that its molecules would be so close to each other that they would have the
new, tenser and denser alliances, this would change their qualities to the
qualities of molecules of a liquid. Then we can double the pressure but the
volume would be almost unchanged. Thus, our models are always relative to the
circumstances in which they were invented.
Molecules in liquid water are about 2´103 times denser than in air. Two vital facts
revealed by Boyle’s experiments: that molecules in a gas are in constant motion;
and that the average speed of a molecule in a gas increased with temperature.
Even in a motionless steel cylinder with carbon dioxide, the gas molecules are
in motion, and not only because the earth is moving together with the cylinder,
but because they have inner centers of gravity and repulsion. There is no such
thing as a motionless molecule or any material body (whatever name we may give
it: galaxy, star, planet, atom, quark, or neutrino). The concepts of
temperature, heat, and energy have a deep connection with molecular and atomic
motion.
How fast do molecules move in a gas? As I mentioned earlier, it depends on the
weight of the molecules and the temperature of their surrounding. (We will
define weight later, but for now, you should believe that weight is
inversely proportional to speed.) Any molecule, from our point of accounting, is
frequently changing its trajectory and speed. From our point of view, it may
take a fraction of a second, but if creatures lived in that molecule, in that
atom, and on that electron, it may very well take millions of their years.
However, we can experimentally measure the average speed of molecules in a gas.
For instance, the approximate average speed of a molecule of helium is 4500
km/hour, of oxygen –1660 km/hour, of carbon dioxide – 1340 km/hour, and the
average speed of Boeing 747—950 km/hour.
If we will raise the temperature of oxygen from 0° C to 30° C, the average speed of the molecules would rise by about
5%. Solar radiation, more correctly, solar light or repulsive energy heats the
earth and the molecules of air get faster. By the way, nobody actually saw the
atoms or even molecules because our instruments use light, but those particles
are moving at almost the speed of light, thus deflecting the external light,
giving us only blotted pictures. On the average, a molecule of oxygen in our
atmosphere is changing trajectory about 6´109 times per second, but an electron completes
about 5´1011
revolutions per second around its nucleus in an atom. It means that about 84 of
their years usually pass before the electron creatures sense the change
of the trajectory of their "solar" system. Calculation shows that in six months
the average horizontal distance traveled by a perfume molecule in a close room
is about 3 meters. Nevertheless, the total trajectory measures about 5.6´1010 m. A bullet is
about 1023 times heavier than a molecule of oxygen, nitrogen, or
carbon dioxide, and therefore, would be unlikely to deviate from its path
sharply. However, it slows by air resistance (that is the cumulative effect a
host of molecular repulsive energies). You can sense a similar resistance if you
try to run through a wheat field.
Newton proposed that the particles (molecules) of air were motionless in
absolute space and held apart by repulsive forces between them; he
analogized the attempt to reduce the volume of a sample of gas with the
compression of springs. He assumed that the repulsive force was inversely
proportional to the distance between the particles (the force would be halving
if the distance would be double). Remember the Boyle's model (p´ v = const).
Based on his
simplistic assumptions Newton showed that a collection of static
particles in a room would behave precisely as Boyle had found. However, Newton’s
model does not explain or predict the other properties of molecules and atoms
because he was very consistent on the assumptions of absolute space and time. He
reasoned that the universe could be analogized with a room filled with stuffed
air, molecules of which are static. Although the earth circles around the sun,
the solar system is immovable, and other suns (stars) are immovable too.
Therefore, he thought that God was something like a frill around the universe,
was something like the room around the stuffed air. Nevertheless, the ultimate
test of any theory concluded in a dilemma whether on its basis, certain
experimental facts, like the moving stars, could be explained and predicted.
Theories have risen and worked out; some of them survive and some -- not. Why
you should believe anything that is said or written, when you know that "seeing
means believing"? How skeptical should you be about something that you cannot
perceive?
The traders were probably the first known skeptics about the earth. They had
seen too much to believe too much. The general inclination of merchants to these
days to label men as either fools or scoundrels led them to question every creed
and every deed. Thus, mathematics gradually grew up with the complexity of
exchange and astronomy with the increased daring of navigation to find out the
new and more exciting sources of pleasure. The growth of wealth brought the
leisure that is the prerequisite of mental speculation and research. Men now
dare to quest stars not only for guidance on the high seas but also for answers
to the other riddles of their cosmos. Men grew bold enough to attempt reasonable
explanations of processes and events before attributing them to the magical and
super natural forces. Thus, science got into the driver seat. At the beginning,
it was physical; scientists were interested in what was the final and
irreducible state of material things, which were outside of man. From this line
of questioning grew up the materialistic school of thought of Democritus
(460-370 BC), who was probably the first saying that "in reality there is
nothing but atoms and space".
Then came
those who looked at man more closely, looked rather inside the man than outside
of him; they were the traveling teachers of wisdom, the Sophists, who rather
searched the world of thought than the world of things. They asked questions
about every political and religious taboo and boldly subpoenaed every
institution and faith that appeared before their reason. They divided in two
political schools: romantics and classics. The romantics (and Rousseau would be
one of them) argued that nature is good and urban culture – bad, that the noble
savage is better than the civilized man and that by nature all men are created
equal and with a clean mind. Men become unequal only because some of them get
organized into parties and factions, and concoct the laws and institutions to
chain and rule the weak.
The classics
(and Nietzsche would be among them) argued that nature is beyond good and evil.
They asserted that by nature men are created unequal and with an inculcated
mind, and that morality and laws are invented by the weak to curb and limit the
strong. Moreover, they also stated that power is the supreme virtue and the most
intense desire of man, and that the hero or superman must rule the world.
However, both schools agreed that of all forms of government, the wisest and
most "natural" is the aristocratic republic.
Such attacks on democracy reflected the rise of a wealthy minority at ancient
Athens. They called themselves the Minority Party, and denounced democracy as
the shameful incompetence that promoted and bred mediocrity. At that time Athens
had 4´ 105
inhabitants, 2.5´
105 were slaves and 1.5´ 105 – citizens. The General Assembly, where
the policies of the State were discussed and determined, was the supreme power
that consisted of all citizens who had the time and courage to gather and carry
out their duties as citizens. The highest judicial body, the Supreme Court,
consisted of over a thousand members, selected by alphabetical rote from the
roll of all citizens. To bribe such a massive court was difficult even for
Cress. Less than 150 citizens had own representative in the judicial and
executive branches of the government, and one of every four citizens was a
representative in the legislative branch. Although the lower class of serfs and
slaves was deprived all rights neither before nor after has humanity achieved
such a remarkable representation of the members of a society in its own
bureaucracy. Nevertheless, the Minority Party of aristocrats asserted that those
democratic institutions of the Athenian State were absurd because they were
inefficient in war and peace.
However, there
were people, who stood on the middle ground. There were such reformists as Plato
and Alcibiades. They not only furnished the satirical analyses of the extreme
democracy but also tried to straighten the wild aristocracies. There was every
school of social thought -- socialists like Antisthenes, who tried to make a
religion of careless poverty; anarchists like Aristippus, who longed for a world
without masters and slaves; and even people, who would like to be worry-free, as
Socrates. Why did the pupils of Socrates revere him so much? It was not only
because he lovingly sought wisdom and truth, but also because he was a great
citizen and friend – with great risk he saved the life of Alcibiades in a
battle. Moreover, he could drink in moderation, without fear and without excess.
Most important, he was a very modest person. His starting point was humble –
"one thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing". However, we know that
when a fool thinks that he is a fool, he is already not a fool. Thus, when
Socrates thought that he knew nothing he already knew something; then, only
modesty prevented him from acknowledging that. Plato said that the oracle at
Delhi had announced Socrates the wisest of the Greeks probably for his modesty
and moderation, but he interpreted this as an approval of his ‘Socratic method’
that starts from knowing nothing, nada, zip, or zero.
Wisdom seekers like Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Empedocles had started from
physics (the nature of external things, the laws and particles of the
measurable world). Socrates said, that is OK; but there is a more important
subject for consideration than all those stones, trees, and stars; there is the
mind of man. What is man, and what would he become when he is dead?
Thus, he strolled, nosing about the human soul, uncovering assumptions and
questioning dogmas. If men often mentioned such abstract words like justice,
truth, honor, morality, virtue, or patriotism,
he asked them placidly – what is it? What do you mean by those words with which
you so easily settle the problems of life and death? Socrates loved to deal with
such moral and psychological questions, although men, who were pricked by his
method, his demand for accurate definitions, clear thinking, and precise
analysis, objected to his asking more than he could answer, thus leaving their
minds in greater confusion than ever before. However, that was precisely his
method – if you were really, really stung to the bones by his questions, then,
you would find the road to home. If they did not touch you, if you were not
interested in them, then, you would probably go astray.
Although Socrates asked more questions than he could give answers to, he
positively defined two of our most difficult problems: what is the meaning of
virtue, and what is the best State? These issues are always anew for a new
generation.
The romantics and classics had destroyed the faith of the Athenian youths in the
old moral and customs. There was no more reason for them to study hard, what had
been accumulated by previous generations. Why should not the youths do as they
please, as long as they remain within the frame of law? Such attitude leads to
formal acceptance of laws and customs, but the essence or soul of these laws and
customs is gone. They are no longer their own laws and customs, but are
something that is brought by outsiders, even if those outsiders are their own
ancestors. Furthermore, it leads to a fierce, extreme, and disintegrating
individualism. That is what happened with the Athenian State which had been
weakened by its disintegrating citizens, and left as an easy prey to the
extremely well integrated, communistic Spartans.
What could have been more ridiculous than this passionate, mob-led democracy,
this society constantly debating over its government, these tradesmen and
farmers, who would lead the Supreme Court and the professional generals by
alphabetical rotation? The replies to these questions gave Socrates immortality.
He would not be put on the death row if he tried to restore the polytheistic
faith of the old generations. However, he felt it would be a suicidal policy, a
progress backward, into and not "over the tombs". Now he had his own religion
(ideology), believing in one God and hoping, in his modest way, that death would
not quite destroy him. However, does one's faith carry the lead or can both
ideologies share the common ground in a harmonious chorus? Alternatively, isn't
that more probable that "the divided home cannot stand"? "We cannot know,"
Socrates would say. Nevertheless, he guessed that if he could build a system of
morality (his ideology) that would be independent of religion (the
ideology that is accepted by the majority) and it would be as valid for the
atheist as for the believer. Then, theologies would come and go without
loosening the moral cement that unites the individuals of different interests
into the peaceful citizens of a State.
He always tried to evade extremes, but in this case, he plunged into a gulf of
absolutism, because there is nothing absolute in the world, including the world
itself. Although the world is infinite, infinity is not absolute -- we just
cannot define it. Therefore, there is nothing in the universe that would be
absolutely independent from the rest of the universe. All connects to all;
and we can only speak about degrees of dependency.
Every religion (from Latin, religion means ‘gather together’), every
ideology mixes universal principles with local peculiarities. Principles, if
clear, speak to what is generically human in us all. Peculiarities, rich
combinations of rites and legends, are not easy for outsiders to comprehend. It
is one of the illusions of the extreme rationalism that the universal principles
of religious ideology (which are the social conscious) are more important than
the rites and rituals (which are the social subconscious). Usually the latter
feed the former, and sometimes the process is reversed. To argue that one part
is more important than the other is like asserting that the leaves of a tree are
more important than its roots. The roots would die without leaves, as well as
leaves without roots.
Once a witty person told a story of a man, who climbed to the top of a mountain
and, standing on tiptoe, seized hold of the Truth. Satan, suspecting mischief
from the start, had directed a few of his underlings to tail the man. When the
dickens fearfully reported that despite their efforts the man had seized and was
holding the Truth, Satan yawned and told his servants: "don’t worry, I’ll tempt
him to institutionalize it".
Practical realization of the ideological (theological and metaphysical) truths
always works through institutions, which are constituted by the people and from
the people with their different interests. The interests of the majority are
usually institutionalized as virtues, and their minor interests become
vices. When the interests of the members of the different social classes
would collide and if the quantity and quality of those collisions could be
analyzed, the result can be horrifying. As some witty minds suggested, the
biggest trouble that the proponents of the state religion (the majority's
ideology) should expect, emerges then when their religion (ideology) interferes
with the interests of the different social classes. What should supposedly unite
people could be the bloodiest trench among them. Historically, those ideologies
that were not established and institutionalized by the social classes, remained
disembodied insights of a handful of hermits, which only sporadically boosted
the birth of a new religion. When any religion sifted for its truths, it
appeared as the worldly wisdom. As Thomas Eliot said: "Where is the knowledge
that is lost in information? Where is the wisdom that is lost in knowledge?"
Any ideology confronts the individual with the most precious of everything that
life can present. It calls the soul to undertake the brightest adventure across
the jungles and deserts of our spirit. It calls the individual to confront
reality, to master the self. ‘Know thyself,’ said the oracle of
Delphi to Socrates, and he honestly followed this advice. Wisdom begins when one
learns to doubt his own beliefs and axioms and builds his own ideological
system. If it converges with the common one, then – good for him; if not and it
is more precise, then – even better, because he is at the pinnacle of progress.
Living experience gave you the useful and useless information; thus you became
informed or an erudite. When you have learned how to doubt and handle
this information, then you have knowledge; thus, you became intelligent or
literate. When you applied that knowledge to build your system of the world
and more importantly to live according to it, then you have wisdom; thus, you
became a genius or a scientist.
Translating the notions of "erudite, intelligent, and genius" into a plain
English, you will have "kaka-many smart, street smart, and just smart,"
respectively. A kaka-many smart man knows everything about nothing, a street
smart man knows something about something, and a smart man knows nothing about
everything, except the notion that everything is One. Based on this premise the
smart man can build his own system of the world from scratch.
To build my own system of the world, I need a tool – a method. The scientific
method usually includes inductive and deductive reasoning. I am starting from
the inductive method – gathering a pile of relevant facts and then combining
them into a theory by formulating definitions and explicitly stating the
assumptions. From the summit of my theory I will go with the deductive method,
trying to dissect and disprove my theory. Thus, my system will be crystallized.
So to be, and help me God.
The cradle of science, as we know it, was the Mesopotamian region with its
Sumerian population, from who derived contemporary Iraqis and Syrians. The
simple counting was developed under the pressure of practical needs. The
Sumerians, probably as all ancient men, had started counting from the use of the
fingers and toes to check their goods. The word digit means not only the
numbers 1, 2, 3... but also a finger or toe. Such use of fingers and toes had
developed the decimal system of counting (counting in tens, tens of tens, tens
of tens of tens, etc.). The position of a digit in the number determines the
value it represents, and this value is a multiple of 10, of the square of 10 (10´10, or 102), of the
cube of 10 (10´10´10, or 103), and so
on, depending on the position of the digit. The Babylonians introduced 60 as the
base value; the Europeans used this system until the 16th century
when the Arabs taught them the decimal system developed by the Hindus. The base
sixty system still survives in the division of angles and hours. Computer
science prefers the base eight system as the best for computer languages.
It is not necessary to use 10 as a base. The Maya used to use the base twenty
system, probably combining the fingers and toes of a human being. In fact, it
can be any whole number. If people would have eight fingers on their hands, then
we would probably have the base eight system that need just eight symbols: 1, 2,
3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 0. To indicate the quantity eight we would write 10, where
the 1 now means 1 times eight, just as the 1 in the 10 means 1 times ten. Nine
in the base eight would be 11. Ten would be 12. Sixteen would be 20. Seventeen
would be 21. Sixty-four would be 100 or 1 times (8 times 8)+0 times 8+0 units.
The relevant addition and multiplication tables would change too. Thus, 7 plus 5
would be 14, and 5 times 6 would be 36.
The number zero is required to take advantage of the place value principle,
because there has to be a way to distinguish 708 from 78. The Babylonians used a
special symbol to separate the 7 and 8 in the 708, but did not recognize that
the symbol could be treated as a number. They did not realize that zero
indicates quantity and could be added and subtracted. They did not realize that
zero is not just nothing. If the Yankees have not played with the Marlins, then
the score was nothing. However, if they had played and failed miserably,
then the score was zero.
The ancient Babylonians realized that quality is different from quantity, that
two apples, two boats, and two oxen have common quantity – two. This
development of the idea of quantity as separate from the idea of quality (abstraction)
was the third major invention in the history of humankind after the fireplace
and wheel. Each individual goes through a similar schooling intellectual process
of mentally breaking numbers from their physical objects. You can imagine how
difficult this process has become that even today some nomadic people, while
selling several animals, will not take a lump sum for the herd but must be paid
for each animal separately. They would definitely suspect such a whole-buyer in
cheating.
The Sumerians also invented the four elementary operations with numbers:
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. In the earliest records of
the Babylonians and Egyptians are already well-developed number systems, some
algebra, and simple geometry. It is probably that the idea of angle came from
observations of the elbows and knees. In many languages, the word for the sides
of an angle is the word for legs. In English, we speak of the legs of a
right triangle, thus bringing into mathematics not only the anatomy but
also the moral. Thus, science became political and politics became scientific.
The Greek word ‘geometry’ means ‘earth measure’ and the
word ‘hypotenuse’ means ‘stretched against,’ apparently against
the two legs of the right angle. For the ancient peoples a plane was just a
surface of a piece of flat land. They were practical people and despite the low
level of their technology, it is amazing how close to ours they came in their
measurements. For instance, the Egyptians knew how to measure the volume of
granaries and they counted the area of a circle as 3.16 times the radius
squared. However, the Egyptians did not develop convenient methods of working
with numbers, particularly fractions. They would reduce a fraction to a sum of
fractions in each of which the numerator was unity. Thus, they would write 7/16
as 1/4 plus 1/8 plus 1/16 before the computation. Consequently, they were not as
good in algebra as the Babylonians. However, they were excellent geometers,
probably because the welfare of the ruling class had been severely dependent on
the just proportion in taxing the constantly changing the land on the banks of
the Nile. Each Egyptian peasant was receiving a rectangle of the land of the
same size and with appropriate taxation. If he would lose some of it due to the
annual overflow of the river, then he should report to his priest who would send
the clerks to measure the loss and make a new apportioning of the peasant’s tax.
On the other hand, the Babylonians were highly skilled irrigators who had dug
canals between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, making to support the thriving
populous cities in that hot and dry climate. Their clay tablets show letters of
credit, promissory notes, deferred payments, mortgages, and the apportioning of
the business profits. They were less politically integrated than the Egyptians
were and consequently relied more on their canals as the means of communication
and on their commercial ties with neighbors comparatively with the Egyptian
reliance on the priesthood and state bureaucracy. The Babylonian ruling classes
had produced not only high quality engineers but also the builders of the
States. Their systems of laws (the code of Ham-Mu-rabi, for instance) were
published nearly seven centuries before Moses "received" his Ten Commandments.
Moses made only some minor adjustments in the code of Ham-Mu-rabi, to
accommodate it to the needs of his semi-nomadic people.
Ham-Mu-rabi emphasized the laws against perjurers as the most severe
transgression against the law and society itself. This system of the laws gives
the prevalence to the rights of society over the rights of individual. From this
system of the laws, the contemporary inquisitorial system of criminal
procedures was derived. Moses only reemphasized the prevalence of the rights of
the society over the rights of the individual. However, he reflected the shift
of interests and he gave the prevalence to the interests of the upper class,
which rather preferred to protect life and property than to say the truth.
Shortly, Ham-Mu-rabi emphasized the ‘don’t lie’ over the ‘don’t kill and don’t
steal’. Moses, on the contrary, emphasized the ‘don’t kill and don’t steal’ over
the ‘don’t lie’. Only the Greeks and Romans, who achieved marvelous success in
building the middle-class, came up with a really new system of laws, from which
derived the contemporary adversarial system of criminal procedures that
gives the prevalence to the rights of individual over the rights of society.
Before the
Babylonian and Jewish (inquisitorial) systems of the laws, there was the
system of private family vengeance (vendettas) in a tribe, in which the victim
of a crime acquired and executed a remedy privately, either personally or
through a family member. Thus, the inquisitorial system of criminal justice was
the direct and extreme response to the system of private vengeance. The
right to initiate legal action against a criminal has been extended to all
members of society (represented by the public prosecutor). The police had been
exclusively bestowed with the pretrial investigative functions on behalf
of society (including the victim and suspect). This exclusive power of the
executive (particularly, military) branch of a government in the extreme
aristocracy tends to turn into the absolute monarchy (like in France under Louis
the XIV). In the case of the extreme democracy, the domination of the
military bureaucracy tends to turn into the totalitarian communistic or
fascistic regimes (like the communism in Russia and China under Stalin and Mao
or like the fascism in Italy and Germany under Mussolini and Hitler).
Under the inquisitorial system, the prosecutor has the additional duty, besides
the duty to investigative on behalf of society and victim. This additional duty
consists not only in gathering evidence against the defendant, but also evidence
that could prove his innocence. The European inquisitorial system explicitly
prescribes that both sides have full pretrial discovery of the evidence in their
possession. It also mandates that the judge takes an active role not only in the
procedural part of the trial, but also in the fact-finding part. This
concentration of the procedural and fact-finding powers in one hand often leads
to the abuse of power.
On the contrary, the Greco-Roman system of the laws, which bolsters the American
adversarial system of criminal justice, although gives the police the
pretrial investigative functions on behalf of the society, still leaves the
defendant and the private accuser to conduct their own pretrial investigation.
Although the trial could be viewed as a forensic duel between two adversaries,
there is a presiding judge who, at the start, does not know the investigative
details of the case but has plenty of knowledge of the procedural laws, and
there is a jury who are the real fact-finders. Such division of the work of the
court is designed to counterbalance the possible abuse of the judicial power.
The inquisitorial system emphasizes the fact-finding. This system operates on
the premise that in a criminal action the crucial factor is the body of facts,
not the legal rules. It misses the simple anthropological fact that an observer
changes the behavior of the system that is being studied by his own presence in
the system. The social experience shows that the body of facts and the legal
rules has equal importance for social justice and happiness of population.
Historically, the inquisitorial system develops from the system of private
vengeance; and they both complete in the adversarial system of justice. On the
first glance, the adversarial system seems as a backward step in the development
of the social justice system; on the second glance; however, this step was in
the right direction to the Golden Mean Rule, leaving behind the two extremes
of the earlier systems.
I tried to show some implications of the Egyptian and Babylonian science,
because it would be a mistake to look at the practical implications of science
and leave out of sight its ideological implications. Those people who believe
that science has only utilitarian value often neglect or degrade the value of
art, philosophy, and religion. That kind of people thinks that if science was
applied to irrigation, navigation, or calendar creation, then the creation of
science itself was motivated only by the practical (short-sighted) problems.
"After it means because of it," is the type of fallacy they usually make.
By centuries, men (usually from the ruling class who had free time, from making
a living, and could afford to be obsessed with the mysteries of Mother Nature or
Father God) patiently observed the movement of the sun, moon, and stars. These
men gradually overcame the lack of instruments to distill from their
observations the patterns of the heavenly bodies described. These Egyptians and
Babylonians learned that the solar year (the year of the repetitive seasons)
consists of about 365 days. They also observed that the star Sirius appeared at
dawn on the day when the annual flood of the Nile reached Cairo. It probably
took millennia to chart the Sirius’ path in order to predict the next flood,
because their calendar of 365 days was a quarter of a day short of the correct
solar year. After several years, their calendar would no longer predict when
Sirius would appear at dawn. Their calendar would agree with the position of
Sirius again only after 4´365=1460 years; and this Sothic cycle of 1460 years was known to the
Egyptians. Such millennia-long regularities had to be recognized before they
could be practically applied. Once the regularities learned, the people would
live according to them – they would be fishing, hunting, sowing, reaping, and
dancing as the heavens dictated. Moreover, the particular constellations would
get their names according to the activities they forecasted: Sagittarius – the
hunter, Pisces – the fish, Cornucopia – the horn of plenty.
Predictions of the Nile flood or a holiday even a few days in advance required
an accurate knowledge of the movements of the heavenly bodies. The ruling class
of priests, knowing the importance of the calendar for the regulation of daily
life, capitalized on this knowledge to secure their power over the illiterate
masses. The priests probably knew that the real solar year has 365 and 1/4 days
in duration but made secret out of it for the rest of the public. The commoners
would think that the priests had the power over the powers of nature if they
could predict when the commoners should temporarily remove their homes,
equipment, and cattle from the area that would be flooded. The priests would set
it up with the rites and the commoners had to pay for it in the form of tax.
Science and knowledge were, are, and will be the power. From extra-terrestrial
point of view, there is no difference, who has been cashing on the science. The
Egyptian priests capitalized on the knowledge of macro-cosmos; the contemporary
computer wizards and tycoons (the Bill Gates type) are capitalizing on the
knowledge of micro-cosmos. However, from the terrestrial point of view of a
member of a human society, the lack of knowledge breeds the ideological
mysticism in the ruling class, spiritual poverty in the middle class, and
political slavery in the lower class.
It is a common sense to associate the position of the sun, moon, planets, and
stars with human affairs. Our common sense perceives that the crops, mating, and
menstrual periods depend on or are controlled by those heavenly bodies. Thus,
the lack of more precise knowledge leads the proud and cunning priests not to
confess in ignorance but to construct immeasurable and unverifiable theories.
For the Egyptian mystics, their theoretical prescriptions were essential for the
future life of the dead and they accordingly constructed their pyramids and
temples. For instance, the temple of the sun god at Karnak faces directly the
setting sun at the summer solstice. On that day, the sun illuminates the rear
wall of the temple and it is the perfect moment for the priests to display their
power over the natural forces to the simpletons.
The Babylonian mystics were intrigued by the properties of numbers
(particularly, three, six, and seven). They assumed that the universe was
constructed in seven days. That is how we have our week. Their cabala
illustrates how far the mystics were willing to go to explain the cosmic mystery
in terms of numbers. The idea was that each letter of the alphabet should be
associated with a number. Each word was associated with the number that was the
sum of the numbers attached to the letters spelling the word. If two words have
the same number, then they related. This theory was used to make predictions
about someone’s death. If the man’s name coincided with the name of his newly
undertaken enterprise, then, his death could be prophesied.
Because the Egyptians and Babylonians had scanty means of communication, the
ruling class could easily monopolize the sciences in order to make the commoners
revere, worship, and pay them. The ruling class is the state and corporate
bureaucracy. A bureaucracy is always the bureaucracy first, and then, more or
less the monarchical or republican bureaucracy. The restrictions on the means of
transmitting knowledge are the only way to monopolize science that nobody would
be able to challenge the power of bureaucrats. Thus, the Egyptian bureaucrats
had been "destined" to be replaced not by the insider-revolutionaries, but by
the outsider-Greeks who developed the better means of communication (alphabet,
for instance) and science in general. That is why the ruling class is ruling,
because it was able to better organize itself and communicate with each other
(inside and outside of a nation). It is a class because it has an interest
distinctive from the rest of the public – to keep the majority of a nation in
their own disposal.
Sociologists, in general, accepted two basic divisions of humans – by race
and by ethnicity. From physiologists came the notion that human evolution
depends primarily on the physical environment. Therefore, they use a variety of
measuring techniques in their observations, as in archaeology and anthropology,
by examining differences in human physical characteristics. Those sociologists
who draw human evolution primarily from culture and intellect (as the cultural
anthropologists do), emphasize social aspects of human life (such as language,
behavior, and beliefs). Trying to understand human beings and their
organizations, the physical anthropologists classify people according to race –
by visible physical characteristics, such as color of skin, shape of nose, eyes,
ears, and hair. On the other hand, the cultural anthropologists group people
into smaller units, which they call ‘ethnic groups’. The word ‘ethnicity’ is
derived from the Greek word ethnos that literally means ‘nation’.
Therefore, I define the ‘ethnic groups’ as the ex-nationals. The ethnic
groups are the groups of individuals whose ex-nation ceased to exist or it has
no jurisdiction over the territory and people among whom these individuals live
in present. Add to this definition of the ethnic groups my definition of a
nation as a class society, and you have a few starting instruments to work
out your salvation with.
Sociologists include a number of ethnic groups into each racial group. However,
those sociologists are mainly in the service of the upper class; therefore, both
of their distinctions (racial and ethnic) deal with relatively minor differences
among humans. Biologically, all peoples belong to a single species (Homo
sapiens). It is most likely that humans originated in one narrow geographic
area and in a particular distant period. Then, over a very long period, the
earliest people migrated over the Earth taking advantage of land bridges,
climatic changes, and other geologic events. As land areas moved and weather
changed, people in different parts of the world became relatively isolated. A
process of selection gradually caused each group to develop protective physical
characteristics and social organization suitable to the survival of a group in
its particular environment. And the leaders of these "ethnic" groups usually use
those minor physical variations of the members of the different groups as the
basic mean to discern "own" from "strange", "alien", "foreign". Thus, they used
to use to divide people and to instigate hatred between them. ‘Divide and
conquer’ was, is, and will be their motto. Therefore, you, commoners, better be
knowledgeable about their main weapon and be preparing to stand your own ground
if you do not wish to be the "innocent" dupes and the ‘cannon fodder’ in their
schemes.
Too much has been said about the profundity of the ancient peoples and their
marvelous temples and pyramids. However, most scholars agreed that the Egyptian
and Babylonian scientists had one major defect, namely – their conclusions were
based on the purely inductive method. For instance, if an Egyptian clerk was
ordered to divide an area of a land into 100 square meter parcels, shaped in
rectangles, and with the cost of fencing as low as possible, then what would be
his modus operandi? He would probably lay out a rectangle with 100 square meters
of area by using such dimensions as 50 by 2 with 104 meters in perimeter, then
25 by 4 with 58 meters in perimeter, then 10 by 10 with 40 meters in perimeter.
He needed to find out the smallest perimeter. Since the possibilities were
infinite, he could never try them all; so, he could not determine the best
choice. The clerk could suspect that the square 10 by 10 meters has the smallest
perimeter, however, he would not be sure that it is so. His trial-and-error
method with proceeding from one experiment to another and gathering facts that
would lead him to a likely conclusion that of all rectangles with 100 square
meters of area the 10 by 10 meters square has the least perimeter. His
experience with rectangular areas would support his conclusion, and he would
probably pass it down to posterity as a veritable, reliable, scientific
fact. But what about rectangles with area of 50, 175, 320, 1410, and so forth,
square meters? Would he do the experiments repeatedly? This method of proving
something is very, very time-consuming. Actually, such a method stimulates our
patience, not our genius.
Essentially, the inductive method consists in proceeding from a simple idea to
the complex one or in concluding that something is always true based on a
limited number of experiments. Suppose a person has had bad experiences with
dentists, and he concludes that all dentists are horrible people. So, his
conclusions, obtained by inductive reasoning, appear based on facts; however,
they are not established beyond reasonable doubt because there is always a
possibility to find the fine, decent, and skillful dentist. There are some
limitations to inductive reasoning. For example, living in New York, we cannot
inductively conclude what the effect might be of a nuclear bomb being detonated
on top of us. We also cannot inductively conclude what effect it may have on the
entire society if our legislators adopt an untried law.
Inductive reasoning can follow many routes, and the common one is by analogy.
For instance, the Egyptians believed in immortality, but they did not conceive
the soul as something that might be separated from the body. Thus, they reasoned
by analogy that if a living person needed food, drinks, clothes, and tools, so
did a dead one. Therefore, they accordingly stuffed their tombs with those
things. Reasoning by analogy is useful, but it is long way from observing squids
to the construction of rockets. Reasoning inductively or by analogy might be
based on the facts of experience and might be entirely correct; however, the
obtained conclusion is not certain or beyond reasonable doubt. If the certainty
is indispensable (as it is in the case when we would like to know beyond
reasonable doubt if an airplane with 500 passengers on board would fly or fall
to earth), then the inductive methods have little practical merits.
Nevertheless, there is a method of reasoning, in which the Greeks made a solid
deposit and, with which today, we can be sure beyond reasonable doubt in our
conclusions. And this type of reasoning is usually known as 'deduction'.
The scientists that lived before the Greeks used the inductive method in their
reasoning. Most of the early Greek scientists were immigrants from Asia Minor,
which is situated between Mesopotamia and Egypt, and thus acquired and
transmitted their culture and science farther. The Greeks produced a radically
different culture and science because of their severe reaction against the
Babylonian and Egyptian influence. A millennium-long experience is no doubt a
good teacher, as it is in medical practice or in breeding, but it is not a
brilliant one. The method of trial-and-error can be useful because it is a
time-consuming one. Sometimes it can be even disastrous (as it was with the
Persian naval armada that was crushed by a storm, thus preventing an invasion
into Greece, causing the angry king Cirus to order his troops to flog the sea,
thus admitting the inferiority of his knowledge of ruling).
Let us proceed with the Greeks. They reasoned that if an individual accepts the
obvious facts of life, for instance, the facts that all food decays and
that an apple before him is a food, then, he must conclude that the apple
will someday be rotten. He might also argue deductively that if he had premises
that all sages are intelligent and that no intelligent person would mock
knowledge, then his inevitable conclusion would be that no sage mocked the
science. In this stage of reasoning it makes no difference weather we agree with
the premises (axioms) or not, what matters is that if you accept the axioms, you
must accept the conclusion. Because if you start questioning your axioms (does
knowledge equal science? Is any knowledge science? Is the
knowledge of rites or astrology is science?), then you lost your faith into the
obviousness of the underlying facts. In short, the deduction is
reasoning that starts from a few principles and moves from the whole picture
(expressed in those underlying principles) to its parts (details).
Deduction, as a method of arriving to the 99.99…percentage full-proof
conclusions, has many advantages over induction. In contrast to induction
and experimentation, our conclusion is our truth, and it comes with our surety
in our premises. The deductive or theoretical method can also be implemented
without expensive instruments or loss of such. Before we can build a rocket, we
can apply the theoretical reasoning and decide the outcome. In the calculations
of astronomical distances, deduction is the only available method, because we
cannot apply a measuring line to the stars.
Despite all those advantages, theoretical reasoning (deduction) does not
supersede experimental reasoning (induction), because there is not a single
axiom that we cannot question. However, life goes on and for the most practical
purposes a high degree of probability, say, above 95% or beyond reasonable
doubt, may suffice.
Both of these scientific methods have their advantages and disadvantages.
Nevertheless, the Greeks insisted that all our conclusions be established by
using the deductive method. The Greeks were discarding all procedures, rules,
and formulas that the preceding urban cultures had produced by using the
inductive reasoning. Why did they do so? The answer to this question may be
found in the organization of the Greek society. Their scientists (philosophers,
artists, mathematicians, architects, and engineers) were members of the ruling
class, who regarded manual labor and commerce as unfortunate necessities. The
Pythagoreans boasted that they had raised arithmetic, a commercial tool, above
the needs of merchants. Plato and Aristotle declared that the trade of a
shopkeeper or mechanic is degrading for a free man and should be a crime.
Moreover, the Spartans and Boeotians actually had a law for those who defiled
themselves with commerce – they were excluded from the state office for ten
years.
The Greek attitude toward manual labor and commerce grew from a streak of
successful wars, in which they acquired a multitude of serfs and slaves. Now
slaves ran the households and businesses (manual and technical jobs, and even
such professions as medicine). Thus the slavery, deepening deep between upper
and middle classes, fostered the split between theory and practice, and
bolstered the development of the abstract and speculative part of science,
neglecting experimentation and practice. If you look at the present American
middle class, as its members preoccupied with commerce and industry, and again,
they prefer excessive inductive reasoning, then, it will not be hard to
understand the reaction of the upper class Greeks and their insistence on the
exclusivity of deduction. Their insistence on the theoretical method of
thinking removed the science from the artisans’ shop and the farmer’s shed.
Hence, it would be our reason that would decide what is the truth, not our
senses. Thus, the Greeks revealed to humankind the importance of our mental
powers.
The Greeks redeveloped a taste for analysis, for mental vivisection of material
objects. They followed in the riverbed of the ancient Aryan beliefs, discerning
the soul (psyche) from the body (soma). They were deeply concerned
with the problems of life and death, good and evil. Their reasoning circled
about broad generalizations. Even today, it is difficult to experiment with
souls; hence, they preferred the theoretical method of arriving at truths. The
Greeks preferred the abstract thinking because it appeared to them as something
permanent and perfect in the world of corruptible and imperfect material
objects. For them, the abstract man became more important than the real men did.
It means that the idea of reality becomes more important than reality itself.
Just as the structure, interval, and counter-point had become more important
than the music itself.
The Greeks began to perceive beauty as order (definite shape,
consistency, and completeness). Beauty became not simply an emotional
experience, but mainly an intellectual one. Reason prevailed over emotions. The
contemporary system of criminal justice finally prevailed over the system of
private vengeance. Pericles, in his famous speech, praised the Athenians who
died in the battle at Samos not only because they were courageous, but mainly
because their reason dictated them to be patriotic and protect the life,
liberty, and property of their compatriots. The abstract ideas such as
Intelligence, Justice, Beauty, Virtue, Honor, Order, State, Cosmos, and Nature
were to the Greeks as the cabala was to the Babylonian mystics and as the
essence of nature (God) would become to the Christians. They did not understand
the abstractness of those notions and perceived them as real as the feeling that
the earth was flat. For them, justice was something that was acting on its own
and if people would listen to it or would repeat the word ‘justice’ long enough,
then all would be right. Our daily affairs are not worthy of the attention of an
intelligent man but his duty is to use his mind to clarify the ideas of Truth,
Justice, and Goodness. These idealizations are the essence of the Plato’s
ideology and are on the same level as the abstract mathematical ideas.
It was a turning point for Plato when he had met Socrates. Plato had been
brought up in an upper class family; he was handsome, vigorous, and an excellent
soldier. Despite his youth, Plato had found a joy in the ‘dialectic’ games of
Socrates. It was a delight to look at the master puncturing and deflating the
old axioms and dogmas. Plato had entered the sport of the sharp questions under
the guidance of the old gadfly, as Socrates liked to call himself. He had
passed from mere debate and discussion to careful analysis. "I thank God," he
used to say, "that I was born Greek and not barbarian, freeman and not slave,
man and not woman; but above all, that I was born in the age of Socrates." The
tragic death of the latter finished the quiet life of Plato. Later Plato wrote
an apology or a defense of his teacher, in which the best known martyr of
ideology proclaimed the rights and necessities of free and unfettered thought,
asserted his social values, and refused to beg for mercy from his ideological
foes. Socrates thought that he could teach them to see their real interests
clearly, to see the distant results of their present deeds, by criticizing
their desires and channeling their chaotic short-range interests into a
long-lasting social harmony. He thought that the intelligent man might have the
same violent and anti-social impulses as the ignorant man, but the former would
control them better and slip less often into the animal state than the latter.
In a
rationally administered society, the individual (probably, the ignorant one)
would receive more powers than he gave in when he surrendered some of his
liberties, and the advantage of every man would depend on loyal conduct
(probably, to his neighbor). Then only clear sight would be needed to ensure
peace and order. But if the government is irrational and chaotic, if it rules
without helping, and commands without leading, then how is it possible to
persuade the self-seeking individual to obey the laws and confine his interests
within the common Good? And what is the "common good"; who will define it? The
mob usually decides the important issues in haste, thus, leaving out of
consideration some of the important facts, only to repent about it in the
aftermath desolation. Is it not usual that men in crowds are more foolish,
violent, and cruel than separated men? Mere numbers rarely gave wisdom. It is
more probable than not that the management of a State requires the sober thought
of the finest minds. Then, how can people be safe and strong if their sages do
not lead them?
Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn. However, Socrates’ tragic
death conceived Plato as a new thinker (as any death bears a new life in
itself), because it filled him with such a hatred (that bears love in itself) of
the mob that even his aristocratic lineage should hardly be responsible for it.
Plato concluded that extreme democracy must be replaced by the rule of
the wisest. How to find this wisest man and how to persuade him to rule – became
the all-absorbing idea of Plato. He went to Egypt and was shocked by the ruling
priests who scorned Greece as an infant-state, without stabilized traditions
(profound culture) and, therefore, unworthy yet to be taken seriously. Shock is
the best teacher; thus, the lesson of the ruling clerical bureaucracy of the
stagnating agricultural nation was reflected, and it is playing prominent role
in Plato’s Utopia. Then he sailed to Italy, joined the Pythagoreans, and learned
how a small group of men, living a plain life, could be ruled by the wisest. He
wandered for twelve years, imbibing every creed from every source that he could
find. A man of forty now, he returned to Athens and founded his Academia. He
lost a little bit of his youthful enthusiasm and gained the mature and real
perspective, in which every optimistic or pessimistic thought,
every extreme was perceived as a half-truth. He created for himself a
medium of expression in which both Beauty and Truth might find space and time to
play – the dialogue. His love for jest, irony, and metaphor leaves us at times
baffled in which character of a dialogue the author speaks. But, hey! That is
the beauty of his writings, in which he leaves the space and time for our
imagination, as the best Bibles usually do.
Of course, Plato has some of the qualities, which he condemns. On the one hand,
he complains against poets and their myths, on the other hand, he creates the
new myths himself. He scolds the priests who preach hell and offer redemption
from it in exchange for something material; however, he is a priest and moralist
himself. He condemns the phrase-mongering disputants (the Sophists) for chopping
logic and slipping into comparisons, but he slips and chops himself. Let see how
a parodist mocked him: "The whole is greater than the part? – Surely. – And the
part is less than the whole? – Yes. – Therefore, clearly, philosophers should
rule the State. – What is that? – Isn’t it evident? Let’s go over it again."
Despite all of that, his Dialogues (and his Republic is the best among
them) remain the best seller of the world, because here we can find the clearest
questions (a good question is a half of its answer) for contemporary problems in
communism, environmentalism, feminism, abortion-control, teenage-pregnancy, and
liberal education. Therefore, let us temporarily think like an extremist (caliph
Omar) who cried about Koran: "Fidels, burn all the libraries, for their
value is in this book alone!"
In his Dialogues, Plato uses many names, but usually his mouthpiece is Socrates;
his counterparts I will call – the Sophist. In the Representative Men,
Socrates asks the Sophist: "What do you consider to be the greatest blessing
which you have reaped from wealth?" The Sophist answers that wealth enables him
to be generous, honest, and just. Then Socrates asks him what he means by
Justice; for nothing is more difficult than to give and clarify a definition.
Then Socrates breaks all offered definitions until the Sophist blows his top
with a roar: "if you wish to know what Justice is, you should answer and not
ask, and should not pride yourself on refuting others... For there are many who
can ask but cannot answer". Nevertheless, Socrates continues to provoke him and
the angry Sophist gives the next Nietzschean definition:
"Listen, then, I proclaim that might is
right, and Justice is the interest of the stronger... The different forms of
government make laws, demo-cratic, aristo-cratic, or auto-cratic, with a view to
their respective interests; and these laws, so made by them to serve their
interests, they deliver to their subjects as ‘justice’, and punish as ‘unjust’
anyone who transgresses them... I am speaking of injustice on a large scale; and
my meaning will be most clearly seen in autocracy, which by fraud and force
takes away the property of others, not retail but wholesale. Now when a man has
taken away the money of the citizens and made slaves of them, then, instead of
swindler and thief he is called happy and blessed by all. For injustice is
censured because those who censure it are afraid of suffering, and not from any
scruple they might have of doing injustice themselves."
In the Gorgias, the Sophist denounces
morality as an invention of the weak to neutralize the strong.
"They distribute praise and censure with a view to
their own interest; they say that dishonesty is shameful and unjust
– meaning by dishonesty the desire to have more than their neighbors; for
knowing their own inferiority, they would be only too glad to have equality...
But if there were a man (like the Nietzschean Superman) who had sufficient
force, he would shake off and break through and escape from all this; he would
trample under foot all our formulas and spells and charms, and all our laws,
that sin against nature... He who would truly live ought to allow his desires to
wax to the uttermost; but when they have grown to their greatest he should have
courage and intelligence to minister to them, and to satisfy all his longings.
And this I affirm to be natural justice and nobility. But the many
cannot do this; and therefore they blame such persons, because they are ashamed
of their own inability, which they desire to conceal; and hence they call
intemperance base... They enslave the nobler natures, and they praise justice
only because they are cowards... This justice is a morality not for men
but for foot-men; it is a slave-morality, not a hero-morality; the real
virtues of a man are courage and intelligence." Plato,
Republic (p. 336-344), Gorgias (p. 483).
"Let us consider what will be their [the communards, VS] way of life
[definitely, not gay, VS].... Will they not produce corn, and wine, and clothes,
and shoes, and build houses for themselves? And when they are housed they will
work in summer commonly stripped and bare-foot, but in winter substantially
clothed and shod. They will feed on barley and wheat, baking the wheat and
kneading the flour, making noble puddings and loaves; these they will serve up
on a mat of reed or clean leaves, themselves reclining the while upon beds of
yew or myrtle boughs. And they and their children will feast -- drinking of the
wine, which they have made; wearing garlands on their heads; and having the
praises of the gods on their lips. They will live in sweet society, having a
care that their families do not exceed their means; for they will have an eye to
poverty or war.... Of course, they will have a relish – salt, and olives, and
cheese, and onions, and cabbages or other country herbs which are fit for
boiling. And we shall give them a dessert of figs, and pulse, and beans, and
myrtle-barriers, and beech-nuts, which they will roast at the fire, drinking in
moderation. And with such a diet they may be expected to live in peace to a good
old age, and bequeath a similar life to their children after them." Plato,
Republic, p. 372.
Here we can perceive Plato’s concept of population
control (by the infanticide of the feeble, on the Spartan manner), the
vegetarianism, and the ‘back-to-nature’ motive. However, Plato is not a naive
teenager to rest upon this idyllic picture. He asks himself a question: "Why is
it that such a simplicity or this Utopia has never come?" He answers – because
of greed and luxury, because men are not satisfied with a simple life. They are
jealous, competitive, acquisitive, and ambitious. They soon tire of what they
have, and desire for what they have not. The result is the encroachment of one
group upon the territory of the rivals. A war begins. The new necessities
quickly display, and demand is high. To supply the army, trade and finance
develop, bringing a sharp class division. – "Any ordinary city is in fact two
cities, one that city of the poor, the other of the rich, each at war with the
other." An industrious middle class arises; its members seek higher social
positions through new wealth – "they will spend large sums of money on their
wives". The new distribution of wealth leads to political changes – wealthy
traders and bankers prevail over the land-owning aristocracy and rule the State.
Thus, aristocracy gives way to plutocracy (from Greek, ploutos means
‘wealth’ and crates – ‘rule’).
Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic
principle. Aristocracy ruins itself by the excessive limiting of the
inner circle of power. Plutocracy ruins itself by the excessive scramble
for immediate wealth, mired in the successive row of corruption scandals. In
either case, a revolution comes. When a body is weakened by neglected ills, the
merest exposure may bring serious disease. So does the revolution; it may spark
from a slight and petty occasion (like the French revolution, which sparked from
the petty joke of the queen – "If the people have not enough bread, let them eat
cakes".) Although a provocation may be petty, the causing wrongs are always
strong and the result is always grave. Then the excessive democracy comes
– the poor overcome their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing the rest.
Although the extreme democracy gives the people an equal share of freedom
and power for a short period, it also ruins itself by the insistence on its
basic principle – the numeric equality. People are differ in quality,
have different interests and abilities. The insistence on the equal right of all
to hold office and determine the governing agenda becomes disastrous because the
people are not properly equipped by education to select the best rulers and the
wisest courses. To get an issue across (to get it accepted or rejected), it is
only necessary to switch the public opinion by praising or mocking it in a
popular spectacle; thus, the real power transfers to the media (the
news-and-gossips-mongering people). As to the people they have no understanding
of the real state of affairs and have to repeat the gossips. Mob-rule is a rough
sea for the state ship to ride – every wind of oratory stirs up the waters and
deflects the course. The offspring of such a democracy is tyranny or autocracy.
The crowd so loves flattery and so eager for it that at last the most cunning
and unscrupulous flatterer, calling them ‘conscious’ and himself ‘protector or
father of the people’ rises to supreme power. Thus, the vicious circle of
evolution is moving on with occasional disrupting revolutions.
Plato amazes that whereas in simpler matters, like shoe-making, we think that
only a specially trained person will serve our purpose, in politics we assume
that every one who knows how to get votes knows how to govern a city or a State.
When we ill, we do not ask for the most eloquent or handsome physician; we call
for a specifically trained and competent one. Then, when the entire State is
ill, should we not look for the service and guidance of the wisest and the best?
To devise a method of barring incontinence and corruption from public
office and selecting the best to rule for the common good – that
is the most important political problem.
However it may be, Plato sees behind these political problems the nature
of man. To understand politics, we must understand the motives or interests of
man. States are made out of the humans and the governments vary as the
characters of men vary. Therefore, we should not expect to have a better
State unless we have better men. Until then, the progress would be halt
and the simple evolution would flow. Plato sarcastically examines our interests,
with which the politicians must deal:
"How charming people are! – Always concocting and
complicating their disorders, imagining they will be cured by a quack,
recommended them by somebody to try, never getting better but always worse...
Aren’t they as good in legislation, imagining that by reforms they will
stop the dishonesty and fraud of mankind – not knowing that in reality they are
cutting away at the heads of a hydra?" Plato, Republic (p.425)
According to Plato, the human interests flows from
three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge. Desire
includes impulse, instinct, and appetite. Desire has its
seat in the loins; it is a bursting reservoir of energy, essentially sexual.
Emotion includes spirit, courage, and ambition. Emotion
has its seat in the heart, in the flow and force of the blood; it is the organic
reaction of experience and desire. Knowledge includes thought,
intellect, and reason. Knowledge has its seat in the head; it
is the eye of desire, and can become the pilot of the soul.
These abilities are all in all men, but in different degrees. Some men are but
the enlightenment of desire; acquisitive and restless, they submerge in material
quest. They burn with lust of luxury and show. They rate their gains always as
nothing compared with their neighbors. These men dominate and manipulate
industry. Those emotional, whose temple of feelings is courage, who care more
about victory, parades, and uniform than about real interests behind those
battles, those are the army men. They are rather pugnacious than acquisitive;
rather have pride in power than in possession, rather joy on the battlefield
than in the market place. In addition, there are the few knowledgeable, whose
delight is in meditation and understanding; who leave out both marketplace and
battlefield to devote themselves to the clarification of thought; who wish
rather truth than power or money. These are the sages.
The individual action is effective only when desire (warmed with emotion) is
guided by knowledge. So, in the Perfect State, the industrial forces
would produce but they would not rule. The military forces would protect but
they would not rule. The forces of knowledge would be protected and nourished
(by the military and industry), and they would rule. Unguided by knowledge, the
people are a chaotic multitude, like the sheep without a shepherd. The people
need the guidance of ideologists as desires need the enlightenment of knowledge.
Ruin comes when the trader, whose heart beats madly by the sight of wealth,
becomes ruler; or when the general uses his army to establish a military
dictatorship. The trader is at his best in the economic field and the warrior –
in the battlefield, because they have studied their respective sciences and
dedicated their lives to their professions. However, the science of
leadership includes in itself all the other sciences because a human
community is an organic body, the smallest part of which should not be
neglected; therefore, it is also a profession, which requires life-long
dedication.
To profess means to declare publicly, to announce, affirm, and avow.
To declare publicly about one’s devotion to the common interests is a moral act,
because it is not just a reflection of a private interest. To dedicate oneself
to a profession means not just have a livelihood. A profession engages one’s
brightest abilities and long-range common interests not just his short-range
private necessities. One must live for it and desire it, be prepared and
competent; only such an individual should guide a nation. One must find his
life-long goal or the meaning of his life; only then he will have life-long
passion and self-discipline, which derived from desire (inborn or cultivated).
External discipline (like a policeman with a nightstick, or a jail-keeper with a
key, or a doctor with a fancy diet) will not be useful for a professional man in
the long run. Cutting to the chase, the tangible question is - who will watch
the watchman?
Unless wisdom and political leadership meet in one person, the State will never
healthy.
So, the problems are set, what are the solutions?
Plato advises to people that if they really wish to live in a Perfect
State, then they should start sending all teenagers into the country site
schools to protect them from the ill habits of their parents. The Perfect
State cannot be built if the youth is corrupted by the bad examples of their
parents. The youth must be brought up from a clean (as it possible)
slate. From the outset, to every child must be given the equal educational
opportunity, because there is no way to predict where the talent and genius will
break out. These abilities should be impartially searched in every class and
race. Preteens should receive predominantly physical education in a gymnasium
and on a playground; their entire curriculum must be compiled from sporty
events; that will support their health in the rest of their lives and medicine
will not be necessary. The present system of medicine only perpetuates diseases
because it is not preventive. It is better to die than to spend the whole life
in nursing a disease for the amusement of the quacks. The nation of a Perfect
State will not afford to have malingerers and invalids.
However, the mere athletics and gymnastics would make children too one-sided,
too courageous. To teach them gentleness and justice, Plato
recommends music as a medium, because the soul learns harmony, rhythm, and even
a disposition to justice. Music molds character, and thus shares in determining
social issues. When modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State
change with them. Music not only refines feelings, but also preserves and
restores health. Because most diseases are the result of malfunction of the
mind, they can be treated through the repair of the mind. Thus, a priest treated
hysterical women with wild pipe music that excited them to dance until they
exhausted and fell sleepy to the ground; when they woke up, they were cured. The
unconscious behavior is touched and soothed by such methods; and only in the
unconscious state of mind, the genius reveals himself. No man when conscious
attains to true or inspired intuition, but rather when the power
of intellect is overridden by disease or some kind of deprivation. That is why a
prophet or genius appears to a commoner like a lunatic.
Sport and music provide health and grace to the soul and body; but again, too
much music is as dangerous as to much athletics. Being merely an athlete is
being nearly a savage and being merely a musician is being nearly a bleeding
heart liberal. Sport and music must be combined and taught until the students
are sixteen years old, though choral singing, like communal games, will go on
through life. Music must be used to attract students to such boring disciplines,
as mathematics and history. There is no reason why these studies should not be
beautified and smoothed with music and song. And in the free society it is the
only way to give the appropriate education to the youth, because your
instructions should be presented to the mind in childhood, but not with any
compulsion; for a freeman should also be a freeman in the acquisition of
knowledge. Knowledge that is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind.
Therefore, Plato advises do not use compulsion, but let early education be
rather a sort of amusement; this will better enable you to find out the
natural apt of the child.
We also can get some clues about their abilities by deciphering their dreams. It
is well known that certain desires are supposed to be unlawful; every person
appears to have them, but in some of us, they are subjected to the control of
law and reason. If in a person the necessary and good desires prevail, then the
unnecessary and bad desires are reduced in strength and number or entirely
suppressed. Under the bad desires, Plato means those desires...
"Which are awake when the reasoning and taming and
ruling power of the personality is asleep. The wild beast in our nature, gorged
with meat and drink, starts up and walks about naked, and surfeit at his wish;
and there is no conceivable folly or crime, however shameless or unnatural (like
incest or patricide) of which such a nature may not be guilty... In all of us,
even in good men, there is such a latent wild beast, which peers out in our
sleep. But when a person’s pulse is healthy and temperate... having indulged his
desires neither too much nor too little, but just enough to lay them to sleep,
... he is then least likely to be the sport of fanciful and lawless visions."
Plato, Republic, p. 571.
Understanding of our dreams leads to understanding
of our desires (interests) and respective abilities. The clear understanding of
our interests leads us to understand our rights and obligations to our
neighbors. However well the liberal education may be, it will be in vain without
the knowledge of rights and duties. The members of the Perfect State must
be united and integrated; they must understand that they are members of one
family and have rights before others and duties toward others, and engage their
abilities and knowledge respectively.
However, if people are jealous, competitive, acquisitive, and erotic by nature,
how they all can be the freemen or brothers and sisters? Do the freemen need the
police? If yes, are they free then? The only method to police them not
externally but internally, the people must have a religion (a common ideology).
Religion means ‘gathering together’; and Plato believes that a nation
cannot be united and strong unless its people believe in God. The idea of a mere
cosmic force, a Big Bang, or Mother Nature, that is not one, is not person,
could hardly inspire hope and sacrifice. Such idea could neither offer
comfort to the broken hearts nor inspire courage in the battered souls. However,
the idea of a living God can do all this; it can deflect or frighten the
selfish person, moderate and bring under control his bad, antisocial desires.
Moreover, if the belief in God is combined with the belief in personal
immortality, then the hope of another and better life gives the person
courage to meet his own death and to bear firmly the absence of his loved ones.
One is twice armed who fights with faith.
Of course, none of the beliefs can be demonstrated. After all, our God may be
only our personified ideal of our hope and love, and our soul may cease to exist
(like music that dies with the musician who gave it form with his instrument).
Nevertheless, it will do us no harm to believe in our God and immortality. Yet,
it may do us immeasurable good because, as the believers, we do not need the
police and large bureaucracy to maintain order among us.
Therefore, the mathematics, astronomy, and music must be taught to our children
until their twenties because we are likely to have trouble to explain all we
know if their minds are too simple. After the age of twenty, our children should
go through a ruthless and impartial test, which should be not only theoretical
but also practical. Every kind of ability should have a chance to show itself,
and every sort of stupidity should be brought to light. Those who failed should
be assigned to the economic work of the nation; they should be the farmers and
factory workers. Those who passed this first test should receive ten more years
of training of body, mind, and character. Then should come the second test, far
severer than the first one. Those who failed should become executive aids
(clerks, engineers, teachers, physicians) and military officers.
Those who passed the second test should receive ten more years for education in
the leadership. They should learn to think clearly and to rule wisely. The
essence of this higher education is the search for the first principles, axioms,
generalizations, and laws of development. Those who passed this training should
become the scientists and theoreticians. However, the latter should be tested by
the concrete world. These theoreticians should compete with the cunning
businessmen, hardheaded grasping individuals; in this marketplace scramble, they
should learn to apply their knowledge and abilities for fifteen long years.
Those who survived, scarred and fifty, sobered and self-reliant, shorn of
scholastic vanity by the merciless friction of life, and armed now with the
knowledge and experience of tradition and culture – those should become the
rulers of the Perfect State.
For Plato, democracy means equality of opportunity, especially in
education. Every person shall have an equal chance to make himself fit for the
complex tasks of governing, but only those who have proved their abilities,
character, and knowledge, shall be eligible to rule. Public officials shall be
chosen neither by votes, nor by secret cliques pulling ropes behind the
democratic scene. Nor shall any person hold office without specific training, or
hold high office until he has first filled a lower office well.
His critics argued that it looks like aristocracy. Plato replied that if the
people wish to be ruled by the best (that is the essence of aristocracy) but
without the hereditary form of aristocracy, then they would rather call
it an aristocratic democracy. There is no caste here; no
inheritance of the public position or is privilege; no stoppage of talent lowly
born; the son of a ruler begins on the same level, and receives the same
treatment and opportunity, as the son of a shoemaker. If the ruler’s son is
dull, he will be sifted at the first test; if the shoemaker’s son will show his
abilities, character, and knowledge, he will become a ruler of the Perfect
State. Career will be open to talent wherever it is born. This will be democracy
by essence but with aristocratic form, which will be displayed by learning
alone. By leadership, Plato means an active culture, wisdom that mingles
with the concrete activity of life; he does not mean a closeted and impractical
theoretician.
The rulers will dedicate themselves entirely to the maintenance of social
freedom and will not do any work that contradicts to this goal. The ruling class
will be the legislator, executor, and judge all together in one, because the
flexible and speedy ruling sometimes requires changing the rules (laws) quickly,
depending on the alternating circumstances. The ruling class should not have any
property beyond what is necessary for the simple life with ever evolving
standards of decency. They should receive from the citizens a fixed rate of pay,
enough to meet the expenses of the year. They should have common meals and live
together, like soldiers in a camp. If they ever acquire homes or lands or
businesses of their own, they will become housekeepers and husbandmen instead of
governors, enemies and tyrants instead of the allies of commoners.
This arrangement will make it unprofitable and even dangerous for the rulers to
govern like a band seeking the good only for their class alone rather than that
of the entire community. Thus, the vain ambitions of the rulers will be
neutralized and their power made without poison; their reward will be in the
sense of their necessity to the community, and corresponding fame and honor;
they will value their high reputation more than material wealth. The rulers will
have no wives; thus, they will be freed not only from the egoism of self, but
also from the egoism of family. The ruler should not be devoted to a particular
woman with his children but to the entire community. There should not be a
gender barrier in such a community and least of all in education – boys and
girls should have the same intellectual opportunities, the same chance to rise
to the highest positions in the Perfect State. When the Sophist rejected
this proposal on the assumption that it violates the principle of the division
of labor between genders, Plato replied that division of labor must be by
abilities and character, not by sex. If a woman showed herself capable and
willing of political administration, let her rule. If a man showed himself
capable and willing only of washing dishes, let him fulfill the function to
which God and Nature has assigned him.
If we get such good results in the selective cattle bringing with the desired
qualities with the breeding only from the best in each generation, Plato argued
why should we not apply similar principles to the mating of humankind. For it is
not enough to educate the child properly – he must be in the first place
properly born of select and healthy ancestry; therefore, the sexual education
should begin of before the impregnation and pregnancy. Therefore, the health
certificates will be required of every bride and groom. Men may reproduce only
when they are between 30 and 45 years old, women – between 20 and 40. Before and
after the specified ages of procreation, mating should be free, on conditions
that it is healthy and if there would be a fetus, it has to be aborted.
Offspring, born of unlicensed mating, or deformed, should be left to die and his
parents should be exposed. The marriage of the close relatives should be
prohibited, as inducing degeneration.
The perfect society must be protected not only from disease,
degeneration, and destruction within, but also from enemies without. The
community should restrict its population within the means of subsistence and
therefore be pacific; but if the neighboring States would not manage their birth
control, they would necessarily plunder the prosperous State. Therefore, the
State must have a sufficient number of well-trained soldiers, who will live
simple life like the rulers. Every precaution must be taken to avoid the
occasions of war. The primary occasion for a civil or international war is
over-population; the second is trade, with the inevitable competition and
disputes.
Therefore, in the political structure of the Perfect State, the small
class of rulers should govern the larger class of soldiers and administrative
aids. The latter, in their turn, should rule the broadest agricultural,
commercial, and industrial population. This last or economic class will retain
private property, private mates, and private families. To soften and moderate
the competition among them, they will be regulated to prevent excessive
individual wealth or poverty; any individual acquiring more than four times the
average possession of the citizens must relinquish the excess to the State or
unprofitable organizations. In the perfect society, each individual will
have his work (to which his abilities, character, and knowledge best adapted),
and not just a job to make a living. The rulers will maintain the harmonious,
well-adjusted whole, which will be a Just State. So, what is
Justice?
At last, Plato ventures to define it: "Justice is the having and doing what is
one’s own". It means that an individual is just when he is well adjusted
to his society; and a society is just when it harmoniously adjusts all
its individuals in itself. Each man should perform the function for which he
fits best and receive what he deserves. A just man is the well-adjusted
man who is doing his (right) work in the right place and in the right time. A
society of just men would be a highly efficient and harmonious
community, for every individual would be in his (right) place, in his (right)
time, and fulfilling his (right and appropriate) function like the members of a
perfect orchestra. So organized, the society is fit and likely to
survive.
Because if the members are out of their right places (when a businessman would
replace a soldier or the latter would usurp the position of a ruler), the
cooperation, integration, and coordination among them are destroyed; the society
decays, disintegrates, and dissolves. Therefore, the social justice is
the effective coordination of its parts; and the individual justice is
his well adjustment to his neighbors. Every individual is a chaos or an order of
desires, emotions, and ideas; let them be harmonious, and the individual
survives and succeeds; let them go astray, and disintegration of personality
begins and failure is inevitable. The individual justice is an order for
the healthy soul and is the same as Beauty for the healthy body.
Solon and Socrates had taught the Athenians that the universal standards of
right and justice exist, and that people arrived to these notions
through their thinking process, through their thought. Parmenides and Socrates,
moving along with the Hindu thought, believed that people could know reality
only through their minds. Based on their research, Plato concluded that a higher
world of reality exist out there, independent of the everyday things that we
experience through our senses.
Plato postulated that this higher reality is the realm of Ideas, or Forms –
unchanging, eternal, absolute, and universal standards of Beauty, Goodness,
Justice, and Truth. To live in accordance with these universal standards
constitutes the good life, and to know these Forms is to seize and hold
the ultimate Truth. On one hand, he appeals to us to be moderate; on the other
hand, he wishes that we go for the extremes of the unchanging, eternal, and
absolute.
Plato advocated the conscious, intelligent life and wanted to organize the Greek
society according to the rational rules. However, he also was a mystic who
sought to escape from this reality into a "higher" reality – which is without
the earthly injustice and ugliness. The Platonism, as well as its predecessor –
the Aryan ideology, is a two-world philosophy that would affect the development
of the religious ideology – the moral ideology of the lower and upper classes.
Later we will see his influence on the Christian mystics.
According to Plato, the Truth resides in this world of the Forms and not in the
world known through our senses. For instance, by observing beautiful things, a
commoner grasps only a patchy collection of notions of what Beauty is; but a
sculptor observes, through his senses, many human bodies, which have some flaw
in each of them. Through his thinking process, the sculptor tries to penetrate
the world of Ideas and to reproduce in his art a perfect human body. Similarly,
a commoner lacks a true conception of Justice or Goodness; only a philosopher
can tight in the right order the patchy collection of moral thoughts.
If you ask me: "When are you right?" I say, 'when I speak what I think and do as
I say, because, in this state of my mind, a truth shows self through my
actions'. If you continue and ask me: "what is the Truth?" And I say that I do
not know what is the Truth, but a Truth is an idea of a real state of affairs,
or a Truth is an idea of a particular reality. Truth is always concrete and
depends on always changing circumstances. Than more circumstances you can
account for, than more truthful you are in any particular situation. And you are
really truthful then, when you think and speak freely and truthfully, moreover,
act in accord with that truth.
However, Solon, Socrates, and Plato, following along the riverbed of the ancient
Aryan ideology, saw the world of the sensual phenomena as imperfect, unstable,
and transitory in contrast with the world of the universal and eternal Ideas.
Plato suggested that the true wisdom could be obtained through the knowledge of
the eternal Ideas, not through the imperfect and reflective ideas (the notions
that were directly acquired through our senses). What Plato was really trying to
convey through his misty theory of ideas is that he prefers the deductive
thinking to the inductive one.
Aristotle, following Democritus’ lead and mostly for the contemporary economics
and politics, respected the knowledge obtained through the senses and the
inductive method of thinking. Although he retained Plato’s stress on the
universal principles, he wanted that we would extract these principles from our
experience with the usual, material world. He considered the Platonic notion of
an independent and separate world of the Forms that are beyond space and time as
contradictory to the common sense. To comprehend this reality, said Aristotle,
one should not escape into "another" reality. He thought that Plato’s two-world
ideology suffered from too much mystery and poetry because it undervalued the
world of facts and the sensual objects. Aristotle also wished to comprehend the
essence of things and suggested that the understanding of the universal
principles is the ultimate aim of knowledge. However, unlike Plato, he did not
refuse to obtain such knowledge from this reality.
Aristotle thought that the Forms were not located in a "higher" reality but
existed in the sensual things themselves. Through human experience with such
things as men, horses, and white objects, he said, the essence of man, horse,
and whiteness could be discovered through reason – their Forms could be
determined. These universal Forms of Man, Horse, and Whiteness that could be
applied to all men, all horses, and all white things, were the true objects of
knowledge for Plato and Aristotle alike. However, for Plato, these Forms existed
independently of the concrete objects. The Forms for men, or horses, or
whiteness existed, weather there were the concrete men, horses, and white things
or not. On the other hand, Aristotle thought that the universal Forms could not
be determined without examining the concrete things.
Plato advised the Greeks to arrange their life according to the universally
valid standards, which exist objectively. However, do they really exist
objectively? For instance, if I am a tourist on a journey through Africa and see
a lion that just killing a gazelle. I would probably not call the lion an evil
and unjust beast. On the contrary, I would justify the lion’s action because it
need to survive and there is nothing right and wrong, just and unjust in the
nature. However, if I have a rancho in Africa and a lion would kill my horse,
then I would probably call it an evil beast. When the lion would trespass on my
territory and deprive me of my "fair" share of the means of survival, only then
would I start calling names and take measures against the "perpetrator". Thus,
only when something touches our (human) interests, then the notion of justice
and fairness appears. The human society is usually divided by classes with
distinctive class interests.
Therefore, I say to Plato and together with him to all Nietzscheans (fascists
and communists alike) that there is no such a thing as Justice (i.e. abstract
justice). However, there is the concrete, individual justice, which is
not the mere strength of the strong to the weak or infinite kindness of the
strong to the weak, as Plato stated it. This concrete individual justice of a
commoner is the harmonious and adjustable strength of a commoner (who became
a bureaucrat) toward another commoner (who is still weak). Moreover, it is
the harmonious and adjustable kindness of a commoner toward another commoner.
The former is strong and became a bureaucrat; the latter is weak and still needs
in compassion and mercy. The concrete social justice of the middle
class is the effective and adjustable order of the entire state
bureaucracy in the middle class dominated society.
There are no such things as just Justice or just Beauty or just Truth or just
Right, because the right is always a right of something concrete, like that
right angle or that right turn or that right idea. So is the truth; it is always
a truth of something, like the truth of the matter is... that that oral sex is
sex, as well as giving a bribe, and not receiving it, is still bribery, because
generalities consist of particularities. Truth is always concrete – as in the
case when one said, 'it is true that an individual can sometimes exceed his
abilities, character, and knowledge by taking advantage of a particular
situation, but the inescapable Nature of Things will bring him back to where and
what he really wants to live and die for'.
Therefore, there is no such a thing as Morality; however, there is the social
morality – morality of a concrete bureaucratic organization (like a family,
gang, corporation, or party, or the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims, the
Hindus, the Buddhists, etc., or the State, or the confederation of States).
Moreover, there is the individual morality. The latter begins with
association, interdependence, and incorporation of an individual into a social
formation (usually a family).
The life in the social group requires concessions of some individual interests
to the common order and welfare of the group. Those individual interests that
are accepted as the common interests usually called the common Good, or
individual rights, or human rights. Any member of the society
can invoke them at any time, and they sound like – ‘do that, or don’t do that’.
They are usually called obligations or duties, because the
individual obliged to protect the common interests (that include a part of his
own interests, socially acceptable) from his own unacceptable (antisocial)
interests. Gradually, with the growth of the group, these norms of individual
behavior and conduct become the norms of millions.
A social group survives or dissolves in competition with other groups and
formations, according to its unity of interests – the
abilities, characters, and knowledge of its members to cooperate, integrate,
and coordinate their efforts toward a common goal. Through learning and
practicing a particular morality, the social morality transfers into the
individual morality and from the latter back to the former and thus circles from
generation to generation.
There are three major kinds of a social morality: the upper class, middle
class, and lower class morality.
The upper class morality or the morality of masters was brought to the
southern Europe on the spears of the Aryan tribes, who later become known as the
Greek and Roman conquerors. Later, other waves of the Aryan nomads (the Germans
and Litu-Slavonians) disseminated this moral to the rest of Europe. The moral
code of the upper class was reflected by such poets as Homer, Vergil, and
anonymous authors of the Song of Roland and the Song of the prince Igor.
These
poems-codices were preserved by the upper classes of the Greeks, Romans, French,
and Russians, respectively, as the main uniting means, which indicated and
clarified for those classes their long-run interests. While reading aloud the
following passage from the 2nd book of Vergil's Aeneid, you
can feel how, in violence, were molded the main moral values of the upper class
of the Greeks and Romans -- bravery and loyalty.
"Pantheus, Apollo’s priest, a sacred name,
Had escaped the Grecian swords, and passed the flame:
With relics laden, to my doors he fled,
And by the hand his tender grandson led.
‘What hope, O Pantheus? Whither can we run?‘
Where make a stand? and what may yet be done?’
Scarce had I said, when Pantheus, with a groan:
‘Troy is no more, and Ilium was a town!
The fatal day, the’ appointed hour, is come,
When wrathful Jove’s irrevocable doom
Transfers the Trojan State to Grecian hands.
The fire consumers the town, the foe commands;
And armed hosts, an unexpected force,
Break from the bowels of the fatal horse.
Within the gates, proud Sinon throws about
The flames; and foes for entrance press without,
With thousand others, whom I fear to name,
More than from Argos or Mycenae came.
To several posts their parties they divide;
Some block the narrow streets, some scour the wide:
The bold they kill, the careless they surprise;
Who fights finds death, and death finds him who flies.
The warders of the gate but scarce maintain
That unequal combat, and resist in vain.’
"I heard; and Heaven, that well-born souls inspires,
Prompts me through lifted swords and rising fires
To run where clashing arms and clamor calls,
And rush undaunted to defend the walls.
Ripheus and Iph’itus by my side engage,
For valor one renowned, and one for age.
Dymas and Hypanis by moonlight knew
My motions and my mien, and to my party drew;
With young Coroebus, who by love was led
To win renown and fair Cassandra’s bed,
And lately brought his troops to Priam’s aid,
Forewarned in vain by the prophetic maid.
Whom when I saw resolved in arms to fall,
And that one spirit animated all:
‘Brave souls!’ said I, - ‘but brave, alas! in vain -
Come, finish what our cruel fates ordain.
You see the desperate state of our affairs,
And heaven's protecting powers are deaf to prayers.
The passive gods behold the Greeks defile
Their temples, and abandon to the spoil
Their own abodes: we, feeble few, conspire
To save a sinking town, involved in fire.
Then let us fall, but fall amidst our foes:
Despair of life the means of living shows.’
So bold a speech encouraged their desire
Of death, and added fuel to their fire.
"As hungry wolves, with raging appetite,
Scour through the fields, nor fear the stormy night -
Their whelps at home expect the promised food,
And long to temper their dry chaps in blood -
So rushed we forth at once; resolved to die,
Resolved, in death, the last extreme to try."
These moral values were accepted as the universal standard
of the upper class, especially among the Romans; for the Roman upper class, the
main virtues were manhood (enterprise), courage (bravery), and loyalty
(patriotism). The Romans not only conquered, but also consolidated and organized
the conquered. They have had no aptitude for mathematics, but they built
aqueducts that last for two millennia. Though they were not notable political
theoreticians, as the Greeks were, they organized a complicated yet stable (for
a century) federation (union), in witch Italy had been loyal to them in the
presence of invading armies.
The Romans strongest authority was the custom of predecessors. The body of Roman
laws is one of their greatest contributions to the present urban culture. The
character Romans most admired was purposeful, grave, and
serious attitude; and their highest words of recommendation were manly,
disciplined, and industrious. On the other hand, Pericles praised
Athenians for their adaptability, versatility, and grace.
This praise would sound strange to the Roman upper class, because Pericles
referred his praise to the middle class dominated Athenians.
The heroic poems, like those of Homer's and Vergil's, are ideological works of
the great artists, whose souls were bound by the interests of the upper class
and were the reflections of those interests. The goal of the authors of heroic
poems is to lead the minds of others to heroic virtues of the upper class
through the beautified examples.
A particular example must not necessarily show the manner of a hero to be
virtuous; however, in their entirety, these examples are a poetic beauty when
they are taken in their unity. A virtuous character may be set before the
students in the form of a hero or in the forms of several heroes. When a hero
possesses all virtues, it is more convenient for a student to imitate to such a
complete hero. Such a complete hero is Aeneas, who embodied the Vergil’s idea of
perfection in his heroic poem. The painters and sculptors have usually such an
idea of a perfect hero only in their minds, but their hands can rarely able to
express it in material forms because the beauties of a god in a human body can
be hardly expressed in the non-organic and static matter.
When a spectator pictures in his mind the Greek hero Achilles, who he saw on a
stage or in a movie, he pictures the hero with those hairs, bulging muscles,
warts, moles, and hard features of those actors who represent the hero.
Otherwise, the hero would be no more Achilles but a common John, for Homer has
thus described his creature, Achilles. Even he appears a hero, but with an
imperfect character of virtue; and the spectator must gather other
characteristics from other heroes, in order to compile his own idea of a perfect
hero. Incompleteness of a hero in a heroic poem is not a fault of the author,
because the whole poem usually has the missing characteristics of a hero. Taking
look at the cause of the creation of an heroic poem, it must be acknowledged
that it must teach the students to acquire those characteristics, which are
necessarily for surviving of that class of a society, which could afford to pay
for such a hard work.
The moral of Vergil’s poem appears not to be so clear as that of Homer’s, but
both, I am sure, were useful, Aeneid to the Roman upper class and Iliad
to the Greek upper class.
The Hellenic
culture of the would-be the Greeks had developed from the Myceno-Trojan culture.
In the Myceno-Trojan societies, the separation of classes was not completed yet.
The wealthiest and mightiest families, headed by the chieftains (who headed the
small armed forces and was the highest judicial authority), controlled
production and trade. The members of the chieftain’s family assisted the
chieftain as officers in the army and administration; as the priests, they also
supervised sanctuaries and rites. The free farmers, stockbreeders, and artisans
constituted the bulk of the free population. The smallest portion of the society
was the serfs and slaves (mostly the prisoners of war from the nomadic
aggressive tribes).
Inability of the nepotistic bureaucracy to adapt and reasonably accommodate the
development of trade and industry, and frequent foreign invasions led to
disintegration and destruction of the Myceno-Trojan culture. However, it left to
the later Hellenic culture its legacy of linguistic and religious forms,
agriculture, metallurgy, pottery, myths, legends, a warrior culture, and the
code of honor, immortalized in the Homeric epics.
The Hellenic
culture started from its transitional (the Dark Age) period. The migrating Aryan
tribes from the barren mountainous regions of Asia Minor had penetrated the
fertile plains of Greece and Aegean islands. The word "Aryan," from Sanskrit,
means just 'airy,' i.e., 'the mountain people,' or simply nomads, who came into
Europe from the so-called Aryan triangle, which lies between the Caucasus,
Zagros, and Taurus mountains.
One group of invaders (the Dorians) settled in the south of the peninsula and
founded Sparta. Another group (the Ionians) settled on the islands and both
coasts of the Aegean Sea; they founded Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, and other
seaports. After a couple centuries of the economic and political disintegration,
the town life was revived; the Phoenician script was developed into the more
efficient Greek alphabet; the use of metals was increased and overseas trade
expanded. With the expansion of the middle-class of traders and merchants, the
Greeks gradually founded settlements all around the north shores of the
Mediterranean and Black Seas. These colonies were autonomous city-states with
close economical and cultural ties to the mainland. For centuries, the Greek
youth grew up reciting the Homeric epics, admiring those heroes that strove for
honorable life, facing its sufferings (and deadly relief from them) with
courage.
The Iliad
is a poetic history of a small portion of the Trojan War that had taken place
during the Myceno-Trojan period. Mycenae was already conquered by the Dorian
Greeks, now came the turn of Troy. At the beginning of this epic, Homer thus
states the theme:
"The Wrath of Achilles is my theme,
That fatal wrath
Which, in fulfillment of the wish of Zeus,
Brought the Achaeans so much suffering
And sent the gallant souls of many noblemen to Hades,
Leaving their bodies as carrion for dogs and passing birds."
Homer’s moral was to urge the union of the Greek
upper class, to urge the Greek confederate states and chieftains to understand
who are their internal and external foes; as well as their own discipline in the
unified army. To inculcate the thought of necessity for the upper class to unite
under the rule of a monarch, he uses reverse psychology – he shows the ruinous
effects of disagreement in the camp of those confederates.
Agamemnon gives the provocation, and Achilles feels indignation. That wrath of
‘the swift and excellent’ Achilles was rooted in his deprivation of a
rightful war-prize (a captive young woman) by the chieftain Agamemnon. The
latter had insulted Achilles, hurting his honor and pride; the warrior heroes
should supposedly treat each other with respect. Therefore, Achilles had refused
to join Agamemnon in the battle against Troy. By demonstrating that the Achaeans
needed his valor and military prowess, Achilles tried to assert
and affirm his honor.
Both parties are faulty in the quarrel and, in due time, they are both punished.
The superior offender is compelled by circumstances to seek peace with his
inferior defender on dishonorable conditions; the latter is excessively proud
and refuses the offered satisfaction; thus, Achilles' stubbornness resulted in
the death of his best friend, Patroclus. The greater anger is quenched by the
less; thus, Achilles’ character is not completely destroyed but preserved for
the following heroic deeds. In the mean time, the Greek army’s casualties are
increasing and half of it is destroyed by a pestilence.
When Homer had shown the ill consequences of disagreement, then he proceeds with
the reconciliation. Homer shows that the good results follow the unity of the
Greeks, for the leader of their foe, Hector, is killed, and then Troy must fall.
The stagnating Trojan agricultural society and its leaders had become the main
obstacle for the expansion of the Ionian Greeks because it had grown too wealthy
and inflexible. The Ionian Greeks tried to constitute the republic among the
equal confederates while picking on the common foe. Besides, they feared that
the Trojans could become their masters, but they wished to be equal, however,
somebody had to lead the equals, but who and how. That was Homer’s moral, and
later, became Plato’s question.
Homer used this quarrel to demonstrate a principle of the human nature that
‘wicked arrogance’ and ‘ruinous wrath’ would be a cause of the sufferings and
deaths. Not only people, but also the gods, operate within a certain framework
of necessity. There is a universal order of things – such an attitude of
the Greek mind would constitute its fundamental difference from the Mesopotamian
and Egyptian minds.
To the latter, the gods were primarily responsible for the social and individual
good or evil that fell on the human beings. However, for the
Greeks, though the gods are still involved in human affairs, but the human
beings are now the decisive actors on the stage of life. Now people pursue their
own goals; the gods can help or hinder them, but success or failure is their
own. With death and life, the gods have the starting and finishing scenes of the
drama; but, in between, people do their best and have their portion of glory.
In the Iliad, Hector, the prince of Troy, goes into battle with Achilles,
though defeat and death appear definite. He fights neither because he is a nut
about combat nor because he hates life, but because he is a prince bound by a
code of honor. He knows about his rights and responsibilities, and he
conscious of his reputation before his peers. In this code of the aristocratic
warriors, honor means more than existence (the honorable life is not just
existence). Excellence is not a god’s excellence, but the human
excellence that combines thought with action (as a man’s bravery and skill in
the battle).
During the transitional period, the Greek ideology was a blending of beliefs and
cults of gods, inherited from the Myceno-Trojan and other Aryan beliefs that
came through Asia Minor. Homer probably did not intend to influence the Greeks
with his poetic treatment of the gods, nevertheless, his epics gave some clarity
and structure to the Olympian ideology that came out of it. The principal gods
were defined as residing on the highest peak of Mount Olympus in Northern
Greece, where the palace of the chief god (Zeus) presumably was.
The Greeks conceived their gods as an expression of the disorder of the
world. The Olympian gods were conceived as the personified representatives of
the natural forces, which followed their own wish even to the extreme
conflict with each other and with presumed disregard for the people who
might be affected by their deeds. Though all gods subjected to Zeus and could
not resist him openly, because of his superior strength, but sometimes they
would surreptitiously deceive him. Thus, Zeus too knew the limits of his power;
there still was the mysterious power of Fate behind him, to which even he
must bow. Although Zeus’s wish was accomplished through Achilles’ wrath, he
could not save the life of his son, the Lycian hero Sarpedon. Thus, the
relativism of the moral ideology was reflected in the Greek cosmology. There
were not only difference between the gods’ and people’s morality, but also
between the social and individual morality, and between the all gods’ morality
and the all averaging Fate’s morality.
Although cults pervaded their daily life, the Greeks already had no official
body of priests who would rule the social gatherings. Instead, their best
representatives chosen to serve as the priests conducted their rites and
ceremonies. Their cults had increasingly become a way of expressing the
individual’s affection to the community than a way of finding inner peace
through personal communion with the Infinite Being. In time, their growing
social conscious would challenge and reform their traditional cults. Their
city-state gave an individual a feeling of belonging, for each of the citizens
became intimately involved in the cultural as well as in the political life of
the community.
The evolution of the Greek city-state from a tribal culture (social
subconscious) to the developed political institution (social conscious) went
hand by hand with their transition from a horticultural society through an
agricultural society to an industrial society. No human society left better
historical documents and artifacts about these transitional periods than the
Greeks; that is why I give you their history as an example. However, before I
continue, I think that it is necessary to give here some explanations for words
that I used in the previous paragraph.
The word ‘culture’ derives from the word ‘cult’ and means the
social subconscious. The form of culture consists of the physical
objects of human art (clothing, food, houses, factories, books, pictures, etc.);
it can be understand as the material culture or the "hardware" of a
culture. The content of culture consists of the mental objects of human
art (language, rituals, customs, laws, skills, and ideologies – in short, the
whole system of knowledge); it can be understand as the "software" of a culture.
Politics is the form and economics is the content of
the social conscious. Politics and economics comprise a State
(with its bureaucracy or institutions), which is the social conscious.
The culture, politics, and economics comprise the mind of a society (its
subconscious and conscious).
A soul of a society is an individual.
A class society or a nation is an organized collection of
the human beings who claim property on a particular area of the earth and
the majority of whom have a common culture and authorities.
A property is a set of rules for the internal and external uses and
abuses. The system of property prescribes who of the humanity is included
and who excluded from the use and abuse of a particular territory and resources.
The culture and State develop hand by hand with the development of the
proprietary system (there may be a public, community, and private ownership) and
are necessary for the preservation of this system of subsistence and birth
control. Indeed, the main goal of the culture (social subconscious) and State
(social conscious) is to preserve the society (body) from the external and
internal threats, by adjusting and balancing the interdependent parts of the
entire social body.
To understand how the nations (class societies) got their territories into
their private property we must see how the human beings originated and how
they painfully climbed to a civilized state for nearly 3 million years.
There is evidence that the earliest human beings inhabited East Africa. The last
Ice Age (which started 2.5 million years ago) compelled them to devise the
primitive stone tools and wander through continents in order to survive in the
harsh climate. Our ancestors lived as hunters, scavengers, and food gatherers
until 10 thousand years ago they were compelled by the climatic changes to learn
a new technique in the food production – the domestication of plants and
animals.
The period between 2.5 million years ago and 10 thousand years ago in the
development of the humankind is called the Paleolithic Age because our ancestors
could not do better than the stone tools. From Greek, paleo means
‘ancient, old’ and litos means ‘stone’. The periods of the Ice Age in the
history of the earth are characterized by a significant, extended cooling of the
atmosphere and oceans. The earth last entered such an ice age about 2.5 million
years ago. The most parts of the continents and oceans were covered with ice.
However, about 10 thousand years ago, those continental ice sheets withdrew from
North America and Europe. Many scientists believe that the last Ice Age is not
over yet.
Ice ages occur about every 150 million years, and last a few million years.
Layers of rocks that consist of hardened glacial drift provide evidence of
earlier ice ages. The longest of the ancient ice ages was probably about 300
million years ago and affected all Southern Hemisphere lands. Still earlier,
about 435 million years ago, another ice age extended with the ice sheets from
Brazil to North Africa and all the way across to Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Paleo-magnetic measurements indicate that the South Pole then lay in West
Africa. About 600 million years ago, yet another great glacial age occurred.
Since the time of the earliest recorded life on earth (about 3.6 billion years
ago) the planet’s average surface temperature has been about 20° C (about 70° F), with a range of
uncertainty of about 5° C (about 9° F). For more than 90 percent of that time the earth has been free of
ice ages, and no large glaciers have existed except in high mountains.
The probable
cause of ice ages is defined by using some physicists’ astronomical observations
of the galaxy. The earth and its solar system are located asymmetrically within
one limb of the Milky Way galaxy. The galaxy completes one rotation about once
every 300 million years, circling the solar system through constantly changing
(in density) regions of interstellar dust and through changing electro-magnetic
fields. Two tidal phases appear to exist for each full cycle, so that every 150
million years a very slight change takes place in the galactic environment of
our solar system and probably alters the climate of our planet. In addition, the
tectonic processes of the earth are also involved. Because of continental drift,
periodic changes take place in the geography, the effects of which can be
understood by considering the changes that preceded the present ice age.
These changes occurred about 60-70 million years ago, when a warm equatorial
sea-stream (Tethys) separated the northern landmass (Laur-Asia) from the
southern one (Gondwana-land), bringing warm swirling currents to all the oceans.
The old southern lands were drifting northward and Africa, Arabia, and India
successively collided with Eurasia. Australia was separated from Antarctica,
thus allowing a cold current to circle the globe in the north-south direction.
Most of the former equatorial sea-streams were blocked by land. Each ocean was
now isolated and connected with polar latitudes by great swirls of cold current.
The quarterly (seasonal) points of the rotation of the galaxy might bring a
slight external cooling. Then a chain reaction of cooling might be initiated by
minor variations in the orbit of our planet. There were remarkable fluctuations
within each ice age, which are known as cold (glacial) and warm (interglacial)
phases, which correspond to a cycle of about 100 thousand years. Calculating
this cold-warm cycle, Milutin Milankovitch showed that the cycle has additional
modulations that make it fluctuate considerably.
These modulations correspond to three variables in the orbit of our planet. Most
important of these variations is the eccentricity cycle of 93.4 thousand
years – the deviation of the orbit from its almost circular path. This affects
the spin rate of the earth-moon system, which increases when our planet is
closer to the sun. The slower the spin rate, the stronger is the magnetic field
of the earth, which, in turn, tends to repeal the incoming waves and particles
of high energy from the sun, thereby cooling the climate. This deviation is
responsible for the cold-warm differences about 5° C.
The second variation of the orbital cycle is the deviation of the
inclination of the equatorial plane of our planet in relation to its orbital
plane over a period averaging 41 thousand years. About 25 percent of the
cold-warm temperature differences are due to this change, which varies around 3° C.
The third orbital phenomenon is the 25.9 thousand-year precession cycle,
which is similar to the wobble of a spinning top. However, another geographic
element can be accountable for the cold-warm cycles – the blockage of the
sea-streams at the present ice age. Most of the Northern Hemisphere is land,
which generates a continental climate, whereas the Southern Hemisphere is
encircled by a continuous sea-stream that provides far more maritime climates.
If the sea-streams were uniform in both hemispheres, the precession effect would
be more balanced.
Milankovitch’s cold-warm cycles do not fully account for the timing of all known
events and require some improvements; however, at present, his model (with some
corrections) is the most accurate representation of our climatic reality.
However it might be, about 11 thousand years ago, the axis of our planet still
was not pointed to the Pole Star, as it does now. The Northern Hemisphere was
not the closest to the sun in the summer, thus not bearing the relatively mild
summers and winters. This axial deviation resulted in a secondary cold effect
that caused the winter ice caps in mountains lie unmelted far into the summer,
thus causing intense droughts in the subtropics. These droughts compelled our
ancestors to intensify their efforts in the struggle for surviving.
kinds of societies
For nearly three million years, our ancestors were using the stone tools to hunt
and process food. Groups of families formed bands consisting of around 30-50
members. The men hunted for meat, and the women cared for the young and old,
tended the fires and gathered nuts, fruits and berries. By sharing their output,
men and women reinforced their social bonds. Hunting required physical strength
and self-control. Hunters had to study and analyze their environment and to
devise appropriate weapons. The physically or mentally deficient, who could not
track and cope with animals and other problems, did not survive for long. The
individuals with superior physical qualities lived longer and had more
opportunities to mate and to pass their characteristics onto the next
generations. However, the best survivors were those who had not only superior
physical qualities but also superior intelligence. The last two types of
individuals had considerably more opportunities to mate, thus gradually
improving the genome of the human species.
The Paleolithic people progressed through developing spoken language and tools,
thus evolving from their animal stage. The chimpanzees may use a twig as a tool
to extract some insects; however, they do not save their instruments for the
future use and do not progress in their tool making. On the other hand, the
Paleolithic people made instruments and decorations from bones, wood, and
stones. They preserved own creations, improved them, and taught the younger
generations how to use them. The next important instrument that the Paleolithic
people discovered was fire, which provided them with warmth, protection from
predators, and allowed them to cook food and to produce other instruments. Some
evidence, discovered in caves, showed that the Paleolithic people domesticated
fire about 1.5 million years ago. The control of fire, tool making, and language
enabled individuals to acquire and share feelings, experiences, and knowledge.
Language became the decisive instrument in the transmission of knowledge from
one generation to another.
The
Paleolithic people developed some beliefs, with which they tried to explain
life, death, the powers that operated inside and outside of their world; and
they tried to establish relations with those powers. To appease the hostile
powers, hunters and gatherers made offerings to them; thus emerged rituals,
chants, and arts. They considered death as a transition into another life and
buried their dead with offerings that might be useful in the other life. The
Paleolithic people were puzzled by the mystery of life and death and worshiped
the power of life. The archeologists have found many small figurines of women,
made in Europe and Asia about 40-20 thousand years ago. These figurines were
made from clay, wood, and ivory, and often without face but with distinctive
breasts and stomachs. These fertility figurines represented the interests of the
Paleolithic artists in the origin of life and in what was sustaining it.
Some 11
thousand years ago, the axial deviation of our planet resulted in a secondary
cold effect that caused the winter ice caps in mountains lie unmelted far into
the summer, thus causing intense droughts in the subtropics. These droughts
compelled our ancestors to intensify their efforts in the struggle for surviving
and they came up with the new techniques of the food production – the
domestication of plants and animals. Some people no longer relied on rain in the
production of crops and they moved into the river-valleys, gardening,
establishing villages, polishing stone tools, making pottery, and waving
fabrics. Thus, about 10 thousand years ago, the Neolithic Age (the New Stone
Age) began in the Near East.
Horticulture (hortus,
from Latin, means ‘garden’), the deliberate planting and cultivation of crops,
was developed in the river-valleys of the Near East. At the foot of the northern
Caucasus, western Taurus, and eastern Zagros Mountains, pastoralists began to
domesticate the sheep and goats. The Neolithic women, in contrast with the
Paleolithic ones, instead of spending time searching for grains, nuts, and
fruits, grew wheat and barley near own homes; instead of tracking animals over
great distances, men pastured domesticated sheep and goats in the nearby hills.
Gardening made possible a new kind of community. Hunters and gatherers were
needed large territories to have adequate food supply; consequently, their bands
could not be more than 50-100 members, because their leaders could not
effectively control them. If the band grew too large, the rivals of the leader
would form a new band and moved on the new territories. However, in the new
horticultural community, several hundred and even thousand people might live in
a village. A few villages of 200-300 people had emerged in late Paleolithic Age
in areas that had a stable food supply – near river or lake with plenty of wild
wheat and barley, and herds of wild goats and gazelles. However, the Paleolithic
villages were rare exceptions, not the rule.
The development of gardening and trade compelled people to gather in the village
communities. The food surplus that gardening provided, freed some people to
specialize in tool making. The artisans and their demand for raw materials
fostered trade, sometimes across long distances, which led to the formation of
trading settlements. Archeologists have uncovered several Neolithic villages,
the oldest of which was established about 10 thousand years ago. The most famous
of these villages are Çatal (Shatal) Hùyùk in Asia Minor and Jarmo in
Mesopotamia. The construction houses and defensive walls required cooperation
and a division of labor, which were on the brink of the capacity of the
Paleolithic band. Such a situation necessitated the Paleolithic people to begin
to organize into the tribal confederations. By shaping and baking clay, the
Neolithic people made bricks for the construction of their houses and defensive
walls. With the invention of the potter’s wheel, they could more quickly and
precisely make pottery for cooking and storing food and liquid. The inventions
of the wheel and sail improved their transportation and intensified trade; the
inventions of the plow and yoke made tilling possible on larger lots than it was
possible in the gardening system.
At the end of the Neolithic Age, people began to use metals. First, they used
copper, which was easy to form into tools and weapons, then, bronze (a
combination of copper and tin), which was harder than copper and let possible to
make sharper cutting edges. Knowledge of the particular individuals grew more
formal and structured, thus turning into the social culture. The horticultural
societies were growing more organized and complex, and turned into the
agricultural societies; consequently, villages turned into towns, and then, the
first cities arose in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China around 5
thousand years ago.
As the name implies, an agricultural society is a society with the cult
of land. This type of society relies for its subsistence primarily on the
cultivation of crops, using plows and domesticated animals for dragging the
former. The same land can be cultivated almost continuously, letting the
settlements become permanent. In effect, the large fields of crops replaced the
small gardens of the horticulturists and food output was increased with a
substantial surplus. Such a revolution in the means of production allowed a
minority of population to specialize in the other trades and professions (such
as those of soldiers, artisans, blacksmiths, and merchants) and to live in the
cities. The cities were larger, more populated and complex in their economic,
political, and social structure than the Neolithic villages. The cities, for
their food supply, depended on the inhabitants of the adjacent villages, whose
farming techniques had to be sufficient to produce food surpluses. The invention
of writing enabled people to organize, expand, and preserve knowledge; the
social control became more efficient.
The religious ideology became the main organizing force in these primary
urban cultures because it provided satisfactory explanations for the powers of
nature; it helped to ease the anxiety of death, and justified the traditional
rules of morality. The laws were considered as the commandments of the gods.
Religion united people in the common enterprises that were needed for their
collective survival, such as conquering territories that are more fertile or
construction and maintenance of the irrigation systems. Religion became the
special inventions of urban culture. It became organizing instruments in the
hands of the ideologists, who would shape the upper class. With this instrument
they could discipline, drill, and handle the large masses of people as units in
their destructive assaults on "alien" peoples, their extermination, seizures,
and enslavement. Later, we will see how Moses shaped the upper class of the
Hebrews, with which he managed to conquer Palestine, but for now we must embrace
generalities that we can understand his elusive language.
The distinct social classes begin to shape. Differentiation and integration are
in full play. Different social functions require prolonged training but are
necessary for the survival of a society. Such vital social function, as that of
a soldier, requires talented and skilled people. This social role requires the
prominent communicative abilities and the ability of a team player because the
very life of a soldier (and not only his own) depends on him. Because this
social role involves the heaviest stress and sacrifice, leaders must attract
talents by rewarding the loyal people and giving them portions of the leadership
(social) power, such as the moral prestige and wealth.
In the agricultural society, this unequal distribution of social power
(moral prestige and wealth) begins on a large scale, with the social
stratification as its inevitable result. At the beginning, such unequal
distribution appears to the majority of population as fair and just
because the talents are taken from the whole population. Later, the mediocre
descendants of those who personally had protected this territory from the rest
of humanity, wished to save the social power while being not reciprocal (not
giving a fair share of own labor into the society). Thus, they re-organized
themselves into a society with the inherent and closed classes
(castes). In this case, the majority begins to consider the unequal
distribution as unfounded, and therefore, unfair and unjust.
A caste system is a closed (rigid) form of social stratification
in which status of a member is defined by the trade, color of skin or hair,
shape of nose or ears of his parents. In other words, the status is defined by
the inherent external and adaptive (to the environment) characteristics, which
have nothing or very little to do with the individual’s internal talents. This
status and labeling of all members of a society is usually supported and
entrenched by the members of the upper class who try to mask their own
mediocrity behind the elaborate heraldic colors. Moreover, this is the main
source of all kinds of nationalistic ideologies. The latter are nothing
more as the attempts of the upper class to protect their inherent "right"
to rule over a particular population and territory.
The human power consists of a social power and a personal
power. The social power consists of the moral prestige and wealth.
The personal power consists of beauty and charm (as an
individual’s subconscious), of reason (as an individual’s conscious), and
of a physical power (as the bodily endurance of an individual).
The social power is not just a compound of the personal powers, but is
their synergy. Moral prestige is the ability of an
individual or faction (interest group) to influence the governmental decisions.
Wealth also can be social and personal. A social wealth consists
of cultural, human, and natural resources of a nation. A personal
wealth consists of personal assets and personal profits. The
personal assets can consist of such objects as real estates, objects of luxury,
factories, and mines, which in an industrial society can be represented by
stocks and bonds. The personal profits can consist of such items as the
part of the rent, dividends, and salaries, which give an individual the ability
to have the free, from finding the means of subsistence, time. I
do not consider wages as the personal wealth because they are just the
representations of the life necessities, the means of subsistence.
Every society that wishes to survive must allocate its basic resources in
the way of matching the social roles with rewards. However, the leaders of a
society usually allocate the surplus resources in the way that the
lion’s share of them goes to the upper class. To justify such unequal
distribution the leaders need a moral ideology. Thus the moral ideology
of the upper class is born, and thus it becomes the basic part of the society’s
culture.
The history shows the tendency for social stratification and culture to grow
simultaneously and more complex. As the anthropologists found out, the
hunting and gathering societies were generally lacking a surplus.
Thus, they have had no stratification because there is no way for the leaders to
pass their social status and wealth on to their descendants. On this stage of
their development, the societies generally have the egalitarian
(brotherly) ideology and culture. Hunting and gathering people live in small
primary groups that rarely exceed fifty members because the environment cannot
support a large concentration of people who rely on whatever food and other
means of subsistence they can gather and hunt on a day-to-day basis. Such a
tribe needs for its survival several hundred square kilometers of territory.
A leader of such a tribe reveals himself in the regular contests of his physical
power and intellect with the challengers (usually the most powerful people of
the tribe). The revealed leader is accepted and regarded by the rest of the
tribe as their protector and father. Actually, such a tribe is based on kinship
because most of its members are relatives by blood and marriage. The
leadership rewards usually include the choice of the most beautiful wife
(the beauty of whom reflects her potential to bring the healthiest, physically
and mentally, descendants) and the presiding in the tribal council, but
that is about it. The leader is responsible for securing and
providing the tribe’s territory and taking on own shoulders the
heaviest blows of the tribe’s foes.
The other social divisions are only by gender and age because women need to look
after the children; therefore, women, children, and old men are generally
gatherers, and adult men are hunters. Because such people are constantly
searching for food, the accumulation of material wealth would obstruct their
movements. Nobody can accumulate wealth and therefore the tribe usually enjoys
the brotherly relationships between its members. The moral ideologies of the
hunting and gathering peoples rarely include a belief in a powerful god or gods
who are active in human affairs. Instead, they usually see the world as
populated by invisible spirits that must be taken into considerations, but not
worshiped.
The more productive horticultural and pastoral societies still
have a shortage in surplus that permits only the limited inequality in
distribution and the limited stratification among the members of
such tribal societies.
A horticultural society relies for its subsistence on the hoe cultivation
of domesticated plants and needs a fertile soil and water, which can be found in
the valley of a big river, such as Tigris or Indus. A pastoral society
relies for its subsistence on domesticated herd animals and needs the large open
pastureland, which can be found at the sole of a mountain range like Caucasus or
Hindu Kush. These types of societies developed about 10 thousands years ago,
when some hunters and gatherers began to deliberately sow, tend, and harvest
edible vegetation in small gardens, and some – began to capture, breed, and tend
some species of wild animals.
Horticulturalism and pastoralism are much more reliable and
productive strategies than hunting and gathering. These strategies assure a
steady food supply and the possibility of a surplus. A food surplus means that
some people can do work other than cultivation or herding. So specialized, new
statuses and roles appear, such as those of the shaman, trader, and craft
worker. Through such means as trade, this surplus can be converted into such
forms of wealth as sophisticated weaponry and objects of luxury. Some
individuals have become more powerful than others and could even pass their
social status unto their descendants. The hereditary chieftains appeared, as
powerful families have been able to secure their positions in the society. Such
a society can consist of several tribes with several thousands members.
The pastoral societies developed the ideologies that include a belief in a god
or a family of gods with a father-god (the most powerful god), who take an
active interest in human affairs and look after the people in the same manner as
the people look after their flocks. However, because of insufficient surplus,
the classes still were flexible and tensions between them – not so antagonistic.
It means that the ideology yet to be developed into a moral one. This
would occur only when a pastoral society conquer several horticultural
societies and reorganized them into an agricultural society with a considerable
surplus that could support the entire, hereditary, landowning class –
aristocracy. The best description of such a conquest and its ideology that the
history could give us is in the Bible:
"The LORD said to Moses, ‘ Send some men to
explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each
ancestral tribe send one of its leaders.’
So at the LORD’ s command Moses sent them out from the Desert of Paran.
All of them were leaders of the Israelites...
When Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said, ‘Go up through the Negev and on
into the hill country. See what the land is like and weather the people who live
there are strong or weak, few or many. What kind of land do they live in? Is it
good or bad? What kind of towns do they live in? Are they unwalled or fortified?
How is the soil? Is it fertile or poor? Are there trees on it or not? Do your
best to bring back some of the fruit of the land.’
So they went up and explored the land from the Desert of Zin as far as Rehob,
toward Lebo Hamath. They went up through the Negev and came to Hebron... When
they reached the Valley of Eshcol, they cut of a branch bearing a single cluster
of grapes. Two of them carried it on a pole between them, along with some
pomegranates and figs.... At the end of forty days, they returned from exploring
the land.
They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in
the Desert of Paran. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and
showed them the fruit of the land. They gave Moses this account: ‘We went into
the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its
fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified
and very large.... The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and
Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and
along the Jordan.’
Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, ‘We should go up and take
possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.’
But the men who had gone up with him said, ‘We cannot attack those people; they
are stronger than we are.’ And they spread among the Israelites a bad report
about the land they had explored....
Joshua... and Caleb... who were among those who had explored the land, tore
their clothes and said to the entire Israelite assembly, ‘ The land we passed
through and explored is exceedingly good. If the LORD is pleased with us,
he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will
give it to us. Only do not rebel against the LORD. And do not be afraid
of the people of the land, because we will swallow them up. Their protection is
gone, but the LORD is with us. Do not be afraid of them.’" (Numbers 13,
14)
The potential size of the agricultural
societies is much greater than that of the previous, tribal societies. It can
run to several million people and several million square kilometers of
territory. The security and protection of such large territories and populations
require huge armies that would develop elaborate bureaucracy for their
supply. Now the surplus allows for the establishment of such armies and cities
for their supply. Although the industrial and commercial population of the
cities slowly grows, yet it is a considerable minority among the generally
rustic population. For the efficient protection of the huge territory and
population, an army needs an efficient chain of command to coordinate the
activities of the soldiers in a battlefield as well as in a camp. Thus, the army
develops its officer corpus, its formal organization – its bureaucracy,
with a hierarchical authority structure that operates under explicit rules
and procedures.
Although the embryonic and fetal stages of the bureaucracy can be traced to the
family and tribal society structures, the well-developed bureaucracy appears
only in the agricultural societies that have a sufficient surplus to afford a
standing army. Rights and responsibilities within the officer corpus are already
attached to the office that an individual occupies, and not to the individual.
Now the formal approach to any organization can be done through displaying the
relationships of the various official positions to one another, without any
reference to the actual individuals. Although ‘bureaucracy’ often seems
inefficient to those people who see the officials as blinded by petty
regulations and ‘red tapes’, yet it can be efficient when it is highly
rewarded. In fact, the present bureaucracy always tries to get its lion share
from the nation’s surplus whereas the past bureaucracy (now called aristocracy)
would always poke their damaged parchments of pedigree in the noses of the
nouveau riche bureaucrats, requiring on these pity grounds their share of the
national surplus. Eventually they would find the common ground how to divide the
pie; if not... then, a revolution comes and new and more efficient
bureaucracy emerges.
However it can be, the agricultural societies tend to be at war and in
systematic empire building because ‘an attack is a better defense’. These
conditions demand an effective military organization, and permanent
armies appear for the first time. The need for efficient communication
and transport breeds the development of roads and navies. Previously isolated
villages are brought under close supervision of the central government. This
body of a State develops from the officer corpus into the full-fledged
bureaucracy that has the following common characteristics: division
of labor, hierarchy and rules, record keeping and impersonality.
The division of labor by gender and age of the previous forms of societies now
develops into the clear-cut division of labor by functions of governing, which
previously were entirely in the hands of the tribal leaders or chieftains.
First, the division of labor in an agricultural society necessitates its leaders
to divide own assistants into the clerical, military, and civil
bureaucrats. The clerical bureaucracy serves to create a nation (a class
society); the military bureaucracy serves to destroy the external and
internal foes of the upper class; and the civil bureaucracy serves to
maintain order between classes in a society. Each of these bureaucracies
usually requires further division into the law-giving and
law-enforcing (legislative, executive, and judicial) branches.
Keep in mind that the boundaries between the bureaucratic branches are not stiff
but in constant flux, because they often use each other to accomplish their
common goal, the goal of the upper class – to keep the lower classes in their
disposal. Keep in mind that we all use each other in our particular interests –
wives use husbands, husbands use wives; children use parents, parents use
children. If people would not use each other, there would not be the highly
structured societies with their institutes of marriages and other institutions.
The question is not who is using whom, but is it reciprocal, is it balanced? The
static possession of the material is the primary useful social function of the
upper class, and the dynamic use of the material is the primary activity of the
middle-class. Therefore, the upper class people tend to be conservative and
stabilizing, while the middle-class people tend to be loose and destructive
liberals. Both these functions are necessary to move a society forward (to be
progressive but not self-destructive at the same time).
For instance, the military bureaucracy gradually develops such offices as
infantry, cavalry, supply of weaponry, supply of food, etc. Each member of such
an office has a specialized job to do. The army has a hierarchical authority
that takes the shape of a pyramid, with greater authority for the few generals
at the top and less for the many soldiers at the bottom. Each official takes
orders only from the above-staying official and gives orders only to the
below-staying officials. The army has a specialized staff of commanders and
record keepers, the sole function of whom is to keep running the whole army
smoothly. The need for accurate records of taxation and governmental
transactions leads to the invention of better systems of writing. The written
records (files) are kept of all governmental activities. The leaders acquire the
knowledge of the human nature and better state building. At the beginning of an
army building, they select soldiers based on a few principles, such as
loyalty to their leaders and hatred to the leaders’ enemies (this
principle masked under the name ‘patriotism’); ambition and
virtues (such as manhood and bravery) to be promoted.
These principles must be implanted in the heads of the potential soldiers with
the milk of their mothers; therefore, they should be cited and sung in a
poetical form by generations. That is where the leaders need such poets as
Homer, Vergil, or the writer of The Song of Roland. Thus, the latter
sang:
Roland replies: ' Now may God grant us that.
We know our duty: to stand here for our King.
A man must bear some hardships for his lord,
stand everything, the great heat, the great cold,
lose the hide and hair on him for his good lord.
Now let each man make sure to strike hard here:
let them not sing a bad song about us!
Pagans are wrong and Christians are right! ’
Thus, the moral ideology was molded, and all
atrocities that came with it were excused or justified by its creators. However,
when the armies are already built, the leaders know that if they wish a better
officer corpus, they must create the conditions of the conscious execution of
one’s duties. It means that a soldier must have the equal opportunity for
unfolding all his talents. Therefore, candidates for the upper positions should
be appointed based on seniority and merits, not on the grounds of favoritism or
nepotism. The leaders also know that the officers should interact with each
other and with the outsiders in detached and impersonal manner for speedy
execution of their orders. Therefore, the officers should keep their personal
feelings aside of official conduct. Thus, an elaborate system of rules and
regulations begins to develop into a written system of laws, which should
be used for the every day operations of the officials.
However, the formal (based on laws) structure of a bureaucracy always cohabits
with the informal practices, for people get to know each other in their other
social roles, not only as the state officials. Particularly, the leaders
themselves are guilty in building the informal social network because they have
wives, children, and relatives, and they feel that they create the laws, and
therefore, can change them or neglect them for a while. As Russians say, "A fish
decays from its head, although it used to be cleaned from its tail". Following
the tortuous route of the bureaucratic channels is no less irritating to
insiders than it is to outsiders; however, the insiders have advantage over the
outsiders because they can faster learn shortcuts through the system. Moreover,
the bureaucrats use their knowledge of informal networks to help or sabotage
someone (in who they have interest) by bending or evading the laws.
Moreover, the pyramidal hierarchical system of the bureaucracy has a built-in
dysfunction, which identified by the sociologists as: inefficiency in
unusual cases, "trained incapacity", goal displacement, bureaucratic
expansion, and authoritarian structure. Officers can easily and
effectively handle the typical cases by applying uniform rules and
procedures, yet they stump when unprecedented case arises. The latter may
circulate from desk to desk for years before it might come to someone who has
authority and will-to-decide. Alternatively, relying on their predictable
routines, the bureaucrats tend to respond to unfamiliar problems with familiar
(and sometimes inappropriate) procedures. Overtime, officers tend to grow in the
goals of the organization and build the momentum and inertia. When the old goals
are reached and the new ones are born, some bureaucrats tend not simply resign
from their old jobs and look for the new ones. They fear that their knowledge is
inadequate for the new jobs; thus, they either claim that there is still work to
be done in their old jobs or they artificially create the new work by destroying
the results of the previous work.
As C. Parkinson points out: "The natural tendency of any formal organization is
to grow. Officials [the appointed leaders, VS] have to appear busy, and
therefore they create tasks for themselves. In due course, they have so much
work to do that they need assistants. When an official has an assistant,
however, the burden of work on the official actually increases, because he now
has to supervise the subordinate. Much of the subordinate’s time is taken up in
turn with submitting reports to the superior official. As work continues to
expand, more assistants and officials are added..." thus multiplying personnel,
which spends time and effort on form filling, memo writing, and file keeping and
on checking the form filling, memo writing, and file keeping of others.
Parkinson argues that the bureaucrats spend an immense amount of time and
effort and all of this activity is unnecessary. Concerning the first part
of his argument, I think that the bureaucrats’ efforts in the time biting can be
accounted, and it costs to the taxpayers somewhat less or around the national
surplus. Another question – is their service necessary? Moreover, if the answer
is positive, then a new question arises – for whom? On these questions, I will
answer shortly after.
By form, the structure of a bureaucracy is a pyramidal system of horizontal
layers laid on top of each other and decreasing in size toward the top. By
essence, the officers of a horizontal level are equal in rank, but they rarely
communicate with each other in their working capacities. Supposedly, all working
orders stream downward and formal response flows upward without obstacles.
Because the vertical structure of the bureaucracy is a hierarchy of unequal
partners, the equal officers of the same level (communicating with each
other informally) tend to develop an attitude "us versus them" – against those
who are at the top as well as against those who are at the bottom. They consider
themselves as a team, but as the team in a training process when it is
against a coach, and not in a real game when it is against another team of
equals. They can cheat in front of the coach, but they cannot fool the
spectators in the actual game. This attitude and development of the informal
relationships between each other lead the equal officers to conceal their
mistakes and inefficiencies from their supervising political leaders. Sometimes
it leads to complete distortion of the responses and those at the top of the
hierarchy are unaware of the real problems or feelings of those at the bottom.
Thus, the political leaders might be "clueless" in such situations and their
orders might remind the actions of those who "try to catch a black cat in a dark
room," as the Chinese would say. From this particular moment in its development,
the bureaucracy got its bad name. However, is it really as bad as it sounds? Is
the bureaucracy always inefficient?
The state bureaucracy develops from the army bureaucracy. Any big problem or
goal (like the protection of a large territory and population, or building a
pyramid, or the construction of a railroad and a spacecraft) requires a large
organization for its resolution in the reasonable time span. Only small
organizations (like a family, or a tribe, or a small-scale enterprise, which
have small problems to resolve and friendly relationships to begin with) can
afford the informal, friendly, and equal relationships among its members.
However, a resolution of a big problem requires many people and large resources,
therefore, it requires a large organization (like a corporation or State), where
gathered sympathetic and apathetic people. Somebody must to sort those people
down from squabbling with each other and accommodate them for resolving the
common large goal of the organization. This somebody must have either a
moral-political authority (which is elective, and like that of Moses’) or an
administrative authority (which is appointive, and like that of Aaron’s).
To be elected (to become a political leader), an individual must
show to his electors that he knows and understand the common problem(s) and
capable to resolve it in the interests of the majority of the electors. To be
appointed (to become an administrative or appointed leader), an
individual must show loyalty to his political leader.
The largest effective organization that people could devise for the
effective implementation of their interests is the State (or the federation
of States – Empire). The forms of a State essentially depend on the development
of its population and their knowledge of own interests. At its toddler stage of
development (in the agricultural societies), a State usually took the familiar,
hierarchical, army form – monarchy (the rule of one), with its officer
corpus – as its aristocracy. In such States, the army officers were
simultaneously the state administrators. They had access to knowledge and
facilities that were not available to others, and they could control much of the
information that flowed down to the rest of the people. Thus, the army
bureaucrats could effectively eliminate the rest of the public from the
electorate. Eventually, they should realize their own interests as contrasting
to the interests of the rest of the population, and they would take the attitude
"us against them". "Us" were those who had the weapons and who could stand for
their interests; they are aristocracy – the upper class. "Them" were those low,
vulgar, ordinary, common people who could not stand for their interests with the
sword in hand; they are the lower class. Now the army officers could choose
their own leader who would protect their own, aristocratic interests against the
interests of the common people. Thus the separation of an agricultural society
resulted in the upper and lower classes and thus was born the cult of a hero
(the Nietzschean Superman) and the morality of masters – loyalty,
valor, and intellect.
However, all bureaucracy is not always the millstone on the wheel
of progress, as Karl Marx asserted in his analysis of the two-class societies.
On the contrary, in my book, all historic nations (class-societies) have been
comprised from three major classes; only in times of decay and disintegration
they were polarized and looked like as the two-class societies. Moreover, only
those hereditary bureaucrats are useless for the prosperity and happiness of the
middle-class, who ‘have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing,’ as Talleyrand
(a minister of foreign affairs of the Napoleonean France) said about the
restored Bourbons. I hope that I can show you why.
To see more clearly, how the separation of the agricultural society was
practically implemented, we should look at the history of Sparta. We already
know that between the 11th and the 8th centuries before
the new era, Europe was submerged into its 1st Dark Age. The
Myceno-Trojan culture was dying because only several small horticultural
societies, each with its own ruling chieftain, had it. If these societies were
united under one leadership, they probably would effectively defend themselves
against the aggression of the nomadic Aryan tribes. So probably the Canaanites,
Hittites, and other Palestinian societies would effectively defend themselves
against the aggression of the Jews if they would not be divided among
themselves. However, the history does not like the subjunctive mood.
The Myceno-Trojan societies (as well as the Palestinian societies) were the
horticulturists who rather die protecting own garden than protecting the common
pastureland. Each one of them, as a separate society, had no surplus to afford a
standing army. Their leading families could not find the common ground, stop the
quarrels among themselves, and have the political will to unite under the rule
of one of them to meet effectively the common foe. And this foe was the Aryan
over-populated tribes of the Dorians and Ionians. The Dorians penetrated the
Peloponnesian peninsula and conquered the south of it, including Mycenae. The
conquerors founded their settlement and called it – Sparta; thus, they become
known as Spartans. The Spartans kept the defeated Mycenaeans as the state serfs
(helots) who did all agricultural work for them; they owned the serfs
rather collectively (as the upper class) than individually. Several times the
Mycenaeans tried to free themselves from the servitude. However, every time the
Spartans had cruelly suppressed each uprising. The bloody struggle with the
serfs put its heavy burden on the Spartan conscious – their State and laws.
To maintain their dominion over the serfs, who outnumbered them ten to one, the
self-made aristocrats of Sparta transformed their moral of masters (bravery in
violence and loyalty in peace) into the State’s laws. According to these
(Lycurgian) laws, the Spartan society was divided into three classes: lower
class of the serfs (helots – agricultural workers, who had no rights at all,
even the right for emigration). There also was the middle class of the
trade- and craftsmen (perioikoi, who were free to move around but were
not the real citizens, because they had no rights to choose the political
authority). And, of course, there was the upper class of military and
civil bureaucrats.
According to these laws, the only activity that was allowed to the upper class
was to serve the State. It means that they should serve themselves by training
themselves in the arts of war. Military training for upper-class boys began at
age seven. They were drilled and indoctrinated; they exercised, competed, and
endured the physical hardship. The Spartan soldiers were admired by the members
of the upper classes of the other Greek societies for their courage, obedience
to law, and achievement in molding themselves according to an ideal. The Spartan
soldiers were better trained, disciplined, and physically fit than other Greeks.
To keep constantly the serfs in fear and subservient state, the aristocrats
converted themselves into a military camp. Thus, they effectively isolated
themselves not only from the lower classes of own society, but also from the
others Greek societies, economically and culturally as well. Sparta became a
closed military town that did not share in the cultural uprising of the
Ionic Greeks. The cultural retardation of the Spartans stamped on them the
general unhappiness as the heavy price for their military strength.
At the end of the 6th century BC, the young Aryans, who became the
upper classes of the Greeks, engaged into a struggle for world domination with
the old Aryans, who conquered and organized the Persian Empire. In this
struggle, Sparta emerged as the leading force of the Dorian Greeks and organized
a confederation (Peloponnesian League) of the fellow-States among them. (For
simplicity’s sake, I will call this confederation the Dorian confederation.) The
Spartans always viewed the Dorian confederation as an instrument for the common
Greeks defense, not for aggression and acquiring new territories. The Spartan
leaders were reluctant to send their soldiers far from home, where they were
needed to control the serfs. Thus, the Spartans pursued the isolationism in
their foreign policy. Probably their motto was "Greece for the Greeks".
Whereas politically Sparta was a land military power, economically it was
exclusively agricultural. On the contrary, Athens, which was founded by the
Ionian Aryans on the peninsula of Attica near the coast, possessed a great navy
and was the commercial and industrial leader among the Greeks. The ambitious
upper class of the Athenians endeavored to expand their cultural and economic
hegemony all over the Mediterranean coasts. The Athenian upper class wished to
protect their State from the external and internal enemies; however, their
internal policy sought the political freedom and full development of the human
personality of citizens (the members of the upper and middle classes). On
the other hand, to the Spartan upper class, freedom meant preserving their
independence from the outsiders and maintaining their use and abuse of the
insiders (commoners and serfs). The economical, political, and cultural views of
the two leading powers of the Greek world became increasingly antagonistic and
clash between them became inevitable.
In this struggle between the Greek upper classes themselves, the relatively open
Athenians might engage the middle-class into this struggle for power, and became
a temporal economic and cultural leader of the Hellenic urban culture. To
understand how they could possibly engage the middle-class into the struggle for
what is apparently not in their interests, we must understand the interests of
the latter and their moral ideology.
Although all Greeks recognized the Olympian gods, each locality retained their
own rituals and gods. Many Greeks, particularly from the middle class, found
answers on their most profound questions about life and death in the sacred
ceremonies of the mystic cults. The believers of the Eleusinian cult believed in
a happy life after death and felt themselves purified and reborn through their
rituals. The believers of the Orphic cult taught the unimportance of the earthly
life and the need to be prepared for life after the grave. They taught that the
soul, which once enjoyed a happy existence in another world, was imprisoned in
the body for an unknown fault that could be repaired and the soul would be free
again if the individual controlled his fleshy desires. These cults appear to be
the mutative offspring of Hinduism, which was developed by the Hindus (another
Aryan branch) from the ancestral Aryan ideology. Therefore, we will look at it
more closely, to clarify the development of the moral ideology.
People have different abilities and needs, but most of them, eventually, come to
one common need – to fulfill their lives. The fulfillment requires understanding
why they are here and now and not there and then. To understand it, each
individual needs his own method (discipline), according to his abilities and
stages of life. As there are four seasons in a year, so every life likewise
passes through four seasons, each possessing distinct characteristics, which
dictate a distinct response. Hinduism marks the four seasons in a human life:
the student, householder, retiree, and stranger to this world.
The student's season begins after the rite of initiation (puberty),
usually between the ages of eight and thirteen. During about twelve years, the
student lives under the supervision of his teacher, receiving from the latter
instructions and boarding house, and rendering some service to the latter. His
primary duty is to learn. What has to be learning, besides the information about
his trade, includes – habits that should be cultivated and character that should
be acquired.
The householder’s season begins with marriage. When the individual’s
physical powers are at their apogee, interests naturally concentrate on the
outer world. Normally, attention is divided between family, vocation,
and community to which the individual belongs. This is the time for
satisfying the basic human wishes: pleasure (through marriage and
family), success (through vocation), and duty (through civic
participation). The seasons come and go, and people notice that the drive for
pleasure, success, and duty no longer yield excitement, having grown repetitious
and stale. When this time comes, people know that they should change their
clothes. Some of them (like the playboys) would probably say that there is no
life behind the middle age, but a Hindu would insist that it depend on our
values and definitions. If the body and its senses have dominance in the
people’s lives, then they may assert that the life after middle age goes
downhill. If reality is a monotonous and depressing job and individual no more
than a robot, the subtle rewards of self-knowledge and long-range vision cannot
rival with the rough sensual pleasures and the pleasures of social achievements.
However, if self-understanding and long-range vision carry rewards (new
kinds of pleasure) surpassing the old ones, then the old age has its own
opportunities and happiness.
The retiree's season begins any time after the arrival of a first
grandchild. The individual may take the age-prescribed opportunity and withdraw
from the social obligations. For nearly thirty years, the society has pumped its
dues from the individual; now relief is in order. So far, the society required
from the individual to specialize in his vocation; so, he had no time to ponder
generalities such as the meaning of life. Thus comes the time for an individual
to start his real education and discover who he is and what his life is all
about. Was he born for a monotonous job and a life of misery, only to die
without knowing what the happiness is? Traditionally, those who dared to go on
the highway of spirituality were known as the pilgrims, hermits, and anchorites
– probably because they are the safeguards of individuality against the social
pressures. They would leave the comforts and constraints of society and plunge
into the wilderness, to launch their program of self-discovery. All material was
left behind because the sight riveted only to eternity. It is time for the
individual to work out his ideology and then start to practice it.
The final season is that of the complete stranger. The individual
has already built his theory of life and death, and now he is practicing it.
Now, he "neither hates nor loves anything". Now the anchorite may return to the
world, for his intent of the hermitic discipline was achieved. He dissolved his
antagonism toward society. Now he can be free anywhere. The marketplace has now
become as hospitable as the wilderness. He may be back, but now he is different.
Having discovered that complete freedom is synonymous with complete anonymity,
the complete stranger has learned the art of keeping his mind absentminded lest
it spoil his soul. The life that suits best to this complete stranger is that of
a homeless mendicant. Others will seek to be economically independent in their
seventies, but the complete stranger freed himself even from economics. With no
fixed place on earth, no belongings, no obligations, no expectations, no social
pretensions, no pride – he no longer cares whether his body falls or stays. For
his mind is now at rest in the essence of bliss – the Infinite Being.
The modern psychologists only redecorated this ancient model of the human
development stages, without correlating them to the industrial method of
production and distribution. Thus, Carl Jung renamed the above-mentioned four
stages of human life into the following four stages -- athlete, soldier,
statesman, and spiritual man.
The athlete is preoccupied with his own body, trying to find out how much and
what quality of pleasure he can extract from it. The soldier is preoccupied with
the larger environment, asking the question -- what's in it for me? The
statesman is preoccupied with a much greater environment, asking the question --
how can I serve you and how can I unite with my people? The spiritual man is
preoccupied with his own spirit, asking the question -- how can I unite with the
Universe?
The basic premise of the Hindu ideology is – you can have what you wish and
what you want. However, what do you really wish and want? Hinduism teaches
that people wish and want three things -- pleasure, pleasure, and pleasure.
There are two kinds of pleasure: bodily pleasure and spiritual pleasure;
the latter, in its turn, can be discerned as the pleasure of social
success (wealth, fame, and power) and the pleasure of infinite existence,
knowledge, and bliss. The bodily pleasure and the pleasure of social success
comprise the Way of Desire, and the pleasure of knowledge – the Way of
Realization.
a) bodily pleasure
It is natural to wish pleasure. We all are born with the built-in pleasure-pain
receptors. If we would ignore them and blissfully sit in a campfire, then we
would soon die. Acknowledging our sensuality is somewhat different from
condemning it. If you wish a bodily pleasure, a Hindu would say to you: ‘Go
after it – there is nothing wrong with your wish. This world is awash with
sensual delights. However, beware, there are other worlds above this one where
pleasures are millions of times more intense at each sphere; and in due time we
will climb to those spheres if we reasonably indulge in our impulses now. The
short-range immediate goals must be sacrificed for the long-range ones; and our
impulses that would injure others must be curbed, to avoid fights and following
remorse. Only the stupid will lie, or cheat, or steal for immediate pleasure, or
addict to a particular sensual pleasure. As long as the core of your morality is
observed, you are free to seek all the pleasure you wish. If pleasure is what
you wish, do not suppress the desire, but seek it using your mind and heart.’
Realization that sensual pleasure is not all that one wishes will come to
everyone, though not to everyone in their present life. The reason that everyone
eventually comes to this discovery is that the sensual pleasure is too trivial
to satisfy one’s total personality. The sensual pleasure is essentially
personal, and my feelings as the object of my considerations are too casual and
small to elicit from me the constant enthusiasm. Eventually everyone wishes to
experience more than the kaleidoscopically flowing sensual pleasures, however
delectable. When this time comes, the individual’s interests usually shift to
the second major wish – social success -- that comes through power
(wealth and fame).
b) social success
This also is a worthy wish, satisfaction of which lasts longer than the sensual
pleasures, because this success is a social achievement, and as such it
involves other personalities besides your own. Now your wish-to-receive
for yourself goes hand by hand with your want-to-give others. The
moderate social success is indispensable for supporting a household and
discharging the civic duties responsibly. The drives for power, position, and
possession run deep in our nature, but they also have their limitations.
Your wealth, fame, and power depend on the interests of others, hence
competitive. Unlike the spiritual values, your wealth, fame, and power do not
multiply when shared. If I own a house, it is not yours; and if you have fame,
it is not someone else. If fame were distributed equally, then nobody would be
famous; not only you but other people too wish wealth, fame, and power; and who
knows when you will succeed? When people make these things their main ambition,
their lusts cannot be satisfied; for these are not the things that people
really wish, and people can never get enough of what they do not really
wish. It is the same as trying to extinguish fire by pouring oil into it, or
trying to reach, as a donkey, for a carrot attached to a stick that is fixed to
its own harness. The social success is also proves to be too small for the
constant enthusiasm. The other reason why social success cannot satisfy us
completely is that our wealth, fame, and power do not survive our death – ‘you
cannot take it with you into your grave’.
The sensual pleasure and social success lie on the Way of Desire because the
personal desires and their external appearance have so far been the prevailing
feature of the individual’s life-course. Other wishes lie ahead, but this does
not mean that we should repress our primary desires or pretend that we do not
have them. Hindus regard the objects of the Way of Desire as toys. There is
nothing wrong with toys because children without them are sad; and adults are
even sadder when they fail to develop interests more significant than dolls and
balls.
But what can attract us more? Those of us, whose personal development is not
stopped on the Way of Desire, transfer to the Way of Realization. The latter
always comes after the former. Realization would never arise if people
could be satisfied only in the way of following their instincts. Realization
comes with disillusionment and despair, which signal to the
individual that his desires are not worthy of his efforts and, at the same time,
signal to him that life holds more than he has experienced so far.
If disillusionment entails the sacrifice of the short-range interests for
a more promising yet-to-be, then it is like that of athletes or models who
resist a rough physical indulgence that could deflect them from a more noble
wish. Despair can come with a disappointment of a lover who enters a
monastery to compensate a failure in a struggle for the acceptance in a larger
society. These people, who do not see a more attracting pleasure, are
pessimists; for to live, people must believe in something for the sake of
which they live.
As long as people sense no futility in sensual pleasure and social success, they
can believe that those are worthy to live and die for. They will do so with the
appropriate zest, because two men, both forty years old, may be psychologically
different, though chronologically, they are the same. One of them may still be a
child and the other – an adult, because they were reincarnated a different
number of times and thus are on the different parts of the Way of Desires. Thus,
the forty-year-old man may play the game of desire as zealously as the
ten-year-old cops and robbers and will die with the sense of living the
fulfilled life, though knowing little else.
The enthusiast is caught in the flush of novelty, whereas the realist,
having played many times this game in his previous lives (déjà vu), seeks other
pleasures. They both still throw themselves into sensual enjoyment, enlarging
their holdings, and advancing their social status. However, neither the pursuit
nor the attainment brings real happiness, because their failure to get
other things makes them miserable.
Throughout the life span, each attainment appears to stimulate the new desires;
none satisfies fully; eventually, the suspicion comes that the individual is
caught on a treadmill, running faster for lesser rewards. When this suspicion
comes, he cries: "Vanity... all is vanity!" Then he comes to understanding that
the problem lies in the smallness of his own personality, to which he has been
scrambling to serve. Realization of life’s triviality is the turning
point and birth of the moral ideology, which begins with the quest for meaning
and value beyond selfishness (egoism). This quest breaks through the
ego’s claim of its totality.
But what is greater than myself? The obvious candidate is... the community.
In supporting the happy lives of others, beside my own, is the commandment to
transfer my loyalty to the community, giving its claims priority
over my own. This developmental step in my life produces my duties, while
the Way of Desires produces my rights. Billions of men transformed the
wish-to-get into the want-to-give and the wish-to-win into the
want-to-serve. To serve your country well, yields notable rewards, but
also leaves the person unfilled. Faithful performance of one’s duty brings
respect and gratitude from his peers, and more importantly, the self-respect
that comes with doing his best. Nevertheless, in the end, even these rewards
prove insufficient, because the community, in its time, will turn into history,
and history is finite and hence... tragic. It is tragic not because the
community or its history will die, but because it cannot be improved – there is
no hope in the past. The final human good must lie in the
future.
c) infinite existence, knowledge, and bliss
Pleasure, success, and duty are never our final wish and want. At best, they are
means that we assume will take us in the direction of what we really wish
and want. Indeed, what do we wish?
First, we wish to exist. Normally everyone wish to be than not to
be. None of us takes happily the thought of the future in which we shall have no
part.
Second, we are insatiably curious and wish to know all the secrets
either of our neighbors or of nature.
Third, we wish joy – a feeling that is the opposite of frustration,
boredom, and futility.
These are the things that the person really wishes and wishes them
infinitely. What the person would really like to have is infinite
existence, infinite knowledge, and infinite bliss. By
circumstances, he might have to settle for less, but those three things are what
he really wishes. He wishes to be infinite, to be God, to free
himself from all physical things that flow and give pain; in short, to free
himself from the sinful – not to be, not to know, not to joy. He wishes to leave
for himself the ideal – to be, to know, to joy. (This is the pinnacle in the
development of the Hindus thought after which they went backward and the Greeks
caught up the banner and moved forward.)
What people most wish, they can have all that – infinite existence
(being), infinite knowledge (awareness, consciousness), and infinite
bliss (joy). All these goods are within their reach; moreover, people already
possess them. For what is a human being? A body? Partially, yes. However, he
also has a personality that includes the mind (with its
propensities and memories). What is propensity if not memories of
some good and bad, according to which one’s mind bents to act? The personality
(body and conscious) is the surface Self that compiles from a
unique trajectory of life-experiences. Moreover, there is something else besides
the body and conscious, and this something is the subconscious or soul.
The latter is the animated and hidden Self that is a reservoir of the
inexhaustible power and unrestricted being, awareness, and joy. The
soul is the infinite center of every life and is the hidden Self
or the Godhead.
If someone does not feel that he has it or that it is not so perfect, that is
because, the Hindus say, the soul lies under the almost impenetrable false
assumptions and self-regarding thoughts that comprise our surface-Selves
(body and conscious). Therefore, one must cleanse the dross of his
surface-Self to the point when his infinite center (inner-Self) can
shine and display the way to others. Of course, we are imperfect and limited in
the existence, knowledge, and bliss, but it is possible to overcome the
strictures that limit us from those things.
The first and weakest limitation of a human being is the strictures on
his joy, which fall into three categories: physical pain,
psychological pain (from frustration of the thwarting of a
desire), and boredom (from the life itself).
Physical pain can be subdued because the intensity of it is partially due
to the fear that accompanies it; therefore, by conquering his fear, one can
reduce his pain. The biggest our fear is to die, but for those of us, who
believe in immortality of the soul, conquering their fear is not a problem. For
those who do not believe in their immortality, the society has doctors, drugs,
and other techniques that help a patient to focus his attention to the point
where nerve impulses can barely be perceived.
Psychological pain is the frustration that arises from the thwarting of
the particular desires. Frustration is more serious than the physical
pain. Disappointments are the results of our unfulfilled expectations. If my ego
would have no expectations, there would be nothing to disappoint me. If my
interests were expanded to the point of view of God’s eye, then I would see all
things under the aspect of eternity and accept my failure or success as an
amazing human spectacle of good and bad, positive and negative, push and pull,
yea and nay. How would I feel disappointed at my defeat if I would experience
not only the bitterness of my defeat but also the sweetness of the victory of my
opponent? When detachment from the finite-Self (body and conscious) and
attachment to the whole of things (the soul, infinite-Self) occurs, life is
lifted above the possibility of frustration.
Boredom arises from the feeling that there are no more pleasures to
conquer in the world. Go and get a new wish, a new goal. Boring... boring,
nyah-nyah-ny-nyah-nyah! Get the hell out of here, the Hindu would say. Stop
whining and learn some secrets about nature or your neighbors.
The second limitation of a human being is the lack of his knowledge (ignorance).
The Hindus claim that this stricture can also be removed. Our mind (awareness,
conscious) is our personality that accumulates of our life-experiences. The word
personality is a theatrical word, which derived from the word persona
(from Latin, per and sonare – ‘sound’) that was used toward an
actor who sounded behind a mask. The mask was a representation of a character.
Thus, a Hindu believes that his conscious mind represents the patchy collection
of his experiences that are details for a summarizing insight of his soul, which
deducts (from its infinity of the Godhead) the integrative connection for those
patchy experiences through his subconscious. The mind is a collection of an
individual’s experiences, but the soul is the experience of all species. The
soul answers on the question: what is a picture all about? However, the
conscious mind asks the question: how many colors were used to paint the
picture. The conscious mind gathers the raw data and the soul (through
subconscious) digests it and produces a genuine and infinite
knowledge. That is why a genius sometimes looks like a madman.
The third limitation of the human being is his restricted existence.
If we would ask a Hindu the question: how would he define the boundary of
himself, he would answer that it is certainly not by the amount of water that he
displaces in a bathtub. It makes more sense to him to measure his own being
by the size of his soul (in his heart) and mind (in his head), the range of
reality with which he identifies himself. If he, in his previous lives, was a
dolphin, a horse, the rose bush, a family woman, a tribal leader, could he
identify himself with the humankind or even with God Himself? If he could, he
would be unlimited. The Hindus see the soul’s hidden connection to the Godhead
as stretching into infinity. Therefore, he can be infinite in being, in
awareness, and in joy if he will clean his soul diligently.
The specific directions how to clean myself and actualize my human potential
comes under the name of yoga that means yoke – discipline. Each of
us has a unique trajectory of experiences, but all of them fall under four basic
personality types: a) some people are primarily reflective; b) some
people are basically emotional; c) some are essentially active; d)
others are bent on the psycho-somatic experiments.
The types are not rigid, for every human being possesses all four talents, but
it makes sense to go with a prevailing one. Because the aim of the disciplines (yogas)
is to render the surface, external-Self (body and conscious) transparent to its
underlying divinity (its soul or internal-Self), it must first be cleansed of
its gross impurities. The selfish, egoistic acts restrict and make the soul’s
borders finite, but the altruistic acts dissolve them into infinity. Ill-wish
confuses the digestive process of subconscious, but good will
helps it. The selfish wish-to-receive restricts the inner, infinite-Self
and makes it superficial, external-Self; while the altruistic want-to-give
dissolves the border of the external-Self and turns it into the inner-Self.
One’s extremism in the altruistic want-to-give oneself to another is called the
Platonic love. One’s extremism in the egoistic wish-to-receive another
only for oneself is called the jealous love. Thus, a healthy love
would require a careful and balanced combination of the above-mentioned extreme
loves; it would require their reciprocity. Therefore, the first step of every
discipline involves the cultivation of such habits as truthfulness,
self-control, non-injury, non-stealing,
cleanliness, and self-discipline. Finding of one’s moral
values and practicing them is indispensable preliminary to any yoga. (Any
ideologist, who wishes that his ideology would last longer than a day, knows
that this ideology must have a moral base.)
a) the discipline for people with the reflective character
The discipline for the reflective personality (jnana yoga)
intended for those people who have a strong reflective bent. Thinking is
important for such people. They are imaginative and live in and through their
heads because their images and ideas have for them a virtual vitality; they sing
and dance with their images and ideas. Thoughts have physical effects for such
thinkers. When such a thinker wishes to expand the boundaries of his soul into
infinity through knowledge, the discipline recommends that he must be aware that
this is not only the encyclopedic knowledge, but also an intuitive
discernment that eventually transforms the thinker into that which he
already knows. This discernment is the power of the thinker to distinguish
between his external-Self (body and conscious), which obstructs the thinker’s
vision of the whole and deflects his attention from the larger, inner-Self
(subconscious and soul). It is the same as the crowd of stars in the Milky Way,
behind which we cannot see the nucleus of our galaxy. Cultivating this
discernment goes through three states: learning, thinking, and shifting our
mind into our soul.
Learning proceeds through listening to sages and reading scripts to be
introduced to the knowledge of the essential being (soul) inside us that is
Infinity.
Thinking proceeds through prolonged and intensive reflection of a
hypothesis that assumes that life must start somehow. The soul of a student must
change from idea to its realization. A Hindu would offer to his disciple some
lines of reflection, for example, to examine his everyday language and ponder
its implications. For instance, the word ‘my’ always implies a
distinction between the possessor and possessed. When I speak of my home or my
cow, I do not suppose that any of those objects is I. However, I also speak of
my body, my mind, or my soul, as differentiating myself from them. So, what is
this ‘I’ that possesses my body, mind, and soul, but is not their
equivalent? There is the flow of blood in my body and the regenerative process
will renew it in a month or so; and my mind will change too. Yet, throughout
their renewal, I will remain the same person – the person who believes that I
was in my past, I am present now and here, and I will live some time from now.
What is this in me that am more constant than my body and mind?
The task of this discipline is to find out the developmental stage of the
disciple and correct his false identification to the role that is precisely what
his personality is. If he is unable to remember his previous roles (of a monkey,
a cow, or a State leader), then he is blind to his future roles. By turning his
awareness inward, he must pierce the multiple layers of his personality until he
reaches the joyfully unconcerned inner-Self (subconscious and soul). Such
reflections will eventually open the gate of the Infinite Self that
underlies his finite-Self (body and conscious). The two will
become increasingly different in his perception and then he will be ready for
the third step – to shift his finite-Self
to his infinite-Self (soul).
The direct way for the disciple to do so is to think of himself as a ghost, and
not only during his meditations, but also during his daily tasks. This exercise
helps him to discern between his mind and soul and to think of his mind in the
third person. Instead of thinking: ‘I am shopping’, he thinks: ‘John is
shopping’. He sees himself as detached in order to visualize himself through the
omnipresent point of view of the security cameras around the shopping mall.
Thinking of self as of the third person does two things simultaneously – it lets
him discern between his mind and his soul, and forces his mind to submerge on a
deeper level (through knowledge, identical with the knowledge of the infinite
Being). Thus, the disciple becomes entirely what he always was at his
heart. The guiding image of this discipline is that of an infinite sea
encircling the atolls of our finite selves. This sea typifies the all-pervading
infinite Self, which is as well within us as without, and with which we ought to
search for identity. A thus envisioned God is uni-personal and includes in
Himself an infinite number of forms (personalities).
This discipline for the reflective people is the shortest way to the divine
realization, but it also the hardest way that requires superior rationality and
poor emotions, and therefore, is only for a few people. The majority of the
population lives under the rule of their emotions, leaving their reason on a
back burner.
b) the discipline for the emotional people
By in large, the people live by their hearts, not by their minds. Many emotions
siege the human heart, but the strongest of them is love. Even hate
can be interpreted as a reaction on the thwarting of love. Moreover, people tend
to become like those whom they love. Therefore, the discipline (bhakti
yoga) advises the emotional people to direct, to channel their excessive
love toward God. "As the waters of the Ganges flow incessantly toward the
ocean", says God through the writer of the Bhagavata-Purana, "so
do the minds of the emotional people move constantly toward Me, the Supreme
Person residing in every heart".
In contrast
with the reflective people (for whom God is uni-personal and infinite), the
emotional people’s feelings are more real than thoughts, and therefore, God
appears different and finite with each encounter with Him. The healthy love
tries to unite two or more individuals into one, not to divide one into several.
Therefore, the emotional discipline advises to its disciple to reject all
suggestions that he and God are one and the same. Rather he should insist on
God’s otherness, because there would not be love between a mother and her child
if they were one. When the disciple firmly believes that he and God are
different, then he will strive to adore God, not identify himself with Him. A
scientist may admire the cold abstract infinity, but the normal object of a
commoner’s adoration is a person with the specific character. Therefore, the
disciple must choose the most preferred form of God. The selected representation
will be his adopted form of divine. He must not avoid other forms, but the
chosen one will always enjoy a special place in his heart. The ideal form for
the majority of people will be a human form of the God’s incarnations, because
our hearts are already attuned to love people. The disciple must love God and
love Him dearly in fact, not just claim such love by having any latent reason
(even such as to be loved in return); he must love Him with the Platonic love
for love’s sake alone. He will feel joy in the same degree, as he will succeed
in this love experience. Moreover, every increase of his love toward God will
weaken his affections toward temporal persons and things, which have had so much
influence over him before he came to this discipline.
To dispel the
charm of the material world, Hinduism produced several hundred images of God and
thousands of rituals so colorful and material as to introduce the human heart to
what they represent but themselves are not. The frequent service in those rites
imperceptibly becomes a genuine appeal of the heart. The frequent prayer brings
warm and joy into the heart of a disciple.
The emotional discipline uses many nuances in its models of the relationship
between God and his devotee, but usually it uses the image of the loving father
(for his present child) or the groom (loving his future child). The discipline
acknowledges the presence of overtones between those relations (between friends,
man and woman, parents and child). However, the emotional discipline holds that
all of these modes should have their place in strengthening the believer’s love
to God; therefore, it encourages the disciple to use them all in his prayers.
c) the discipline for the active people
The discipline for the active people, intended for individuals with active
character, is the way to God through work. The work discipline (karma
yoga) advises to its disciple to discern between job and work.
Job is what we do temporarily for living, without our hearts and minds.
Work is what we want-to-do throughout our lives with all our hearts and
minds. Ultimately, the bend to work is rather psychological than economic.
Forced to early retirement, such people become extremely irritable and soon die.
They have a name "workaholics", and vary from the compulsive housekeepers to the
great scientists. To such people the discipline says, ‘You do not have to retire
because you can find God in every object around you. Throw yourself into your
work with all your heart and mind. Learn the secret of your work by which
your every movement can carry you toward God and do it wisely so that it can
bring the highest joy and satisfaction.’ How it can be done, depends on the
disciple’s predominant disposition – emotional or reflective.
If the disciple has active and emotional inclinations, then the work
discipline advises to shift his interests and his love toward his personal God,
whom he is experiencing as distinct from himself.
His work can be a vehicle for self-transcendence, for every action performed
upon the external world reacts on the actor. Everything he does only for his own
profit adds another layer to his ego, thus increasingly insulating him from God.
On the contrary, everything that is done without thought of profit for himself
diminishes his egoism until the final barrier between him and God is broken. For
instance, if he chops a bush that obscures his view from a window, he marks the
process of chopping as a selfish one and his job scores him back accordingly. If
he chops the bush because his ill child needs more sun, the chopping process
would leave different marks on him.
When the disciple has acted no longer for his personal rewards, people regard
him as if God has prompted his actions, or as if his actions have been enacted
by God’s energy. Now actions lighten his ego instead of hardening it. His every
task becomes a sacred ritual, lovingly fulfilled as a living sacrifice to God’s
glory. "Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you offer in sacrifice,
whatever you give, whatever austerity you practice... do this as an offering to
Me. Thus shall you be free from the bondage of actions that bear good and evil
results... Do without attachment to work you have to do. Surrendering all action
to Me, freeing yourself from longing and selfishness, fight – unperturbed by
grief", says God through the writer of the Bhagavad-Gita. When all
claims on work have been renounced, including whether it will succeed or not,
the disciple’s actions no longer swell his ego. Thus, the disciple works out the
accumulated impressions of previous deeds without acquiring the new ones.
If the disciple has active and reflective inclinations, then the work
discipline advises him to transcend the smallness of his finite-Self by
identifying himself with the uni-personal Infinite Being that resides at the
core of his heart. In this case, the principle advice is the same – the disciple
must work unselfishly. However, his approach to work should be slightly
different from that of the active emotional disciple. The scientific mind of the
active reflective disciple bends to find the idea of the Infinite Being at the
bottom of his heart, which is more meaningful and attractive than the idea of
the Creator who watches over His world with love. Therefore, the way that leads
to his enlightenment is through his detachment from his finite, practical-Self
(mind) while he works. People usually approach their work in terms of causes and
effects; they constantly think about the results of their actions (or the pay
that work may bring); this process inflates, thickens, and insulates their egos.
Therefore, the disciple must draw a line between his mind that acts, and his
eternal-Self (soul) that observes his action. While he was working, only his
mind was at work. "While seeing, breathing, speaking, making letting go, opening
and closing the eyes, he observes only senses moving among sensual objects", as
the writer of the Bhagavad-Gita put it eloquently. Now he must
bring his soul into his work. When he becomes increasingly indifferent to the
results of his deeds, he will appreciate the dictum of the Bhagavad-Gita:
"To work you have the right, but not to the fruits thereof". Thus, duty for
duty’s sake becomes his motto.
The disciple should try to do each thing that comes as if it were the only thing
to be done in his life. Having done it, he should proceed to the next task in
the similar manner. Fully concentrating on each of his tasks, the disciple will
resist impatience, excitement, and the vain attempt to do or think of a dozen
tasks at once. Thus concentrating his genius on one task at the time, he will
resist idleness and laziness that are other forms of selfishness. Then the
disciple will learn to accept loss, pain, and shame with calm and equanimity,
knowing that these are also teachers.
Both kinds of the active disciples should engage in a radical reduction of diet
and sex, which designed to starve the finite ego (mind) of the disciple by
depriving him of the results of his action that feed his ego.
d) the psychosomatic discipline
This discipline (raja yoga) designed for people who have the scientific
bend or the balanced reflective-emotional character. This discipline is the way
to God through psychosomatic experiments. (A raja, from Sanskrit,
means ‘a king,’ apparently the one who must keep the opposite forces of the
society in balanced unity; from Greek, psyche means ‘mind,’ and soma
means ‘body’.) The discipline approaches the mind and body as scientifically as
is possible for the form to study its content. The approach calls for a strong
suspicion that the individual inner-Self is more than just a combination of
conscious and subconscious. For those who possess these characteristics, the
discipline outlines a series of steps in a psychosomatic experiment. If
it does not produce the expected results, then the theory did not work out for
this particular experimenter. However, the discipline claims that the future
experiences will confirm this theory.
The natural sciences do their experiments on the external (to the observer)
objects; on the contrary, a disciple of the psychosomatic discipline experiments
not only on his body but also on his mind. The experiments take the form of
practicing prescribed physical and mental exercises and observing their
subjective effects.
The basic theory of the Hinduism assumes that the human self is a layered
content. The detailed analysis of those layers does not necessary for my
purpose; it is enough for now to summarize the theory by reducing the layers to
the principal four. The first layer is our body. The next one is our
conscious of the mind. The third layer is our subconscious of the
mind. The individual has built up his conscious through his present life
experiences. However, his subconscious had been built through the experiences in
his previous lives. Most of these past experiences have been lost for his
present memory (conscious), but they continue to shape his life surreptitiously,
through dreams and subconscious impulses. Underlying the conscious and
subconscious mind, stands the fourth layer – the soul, the gate of the
Infinite-Self, the Infinite-Being, the Infinite, the Eternal. As God says
through the writer of the Bhagavad-Gita: "I am smaller than the
minutest atom, likewise greater than the greatest. I am the whole, the
diversified-multicolored-lovely-strange universe. I am the Ancient One. I am
Man, the Lord."
If the disciple could drag out portions of his subconscious, he would experience
a remarkable expansion of his powers. The discipline also aims to help the
disciple to retreat past inconsequential experiences and to make them
sequential. Thus, the discipline goes beyond the present life experience. It is
rather a ‘nonviolent’ resistance to the routine daily existence that can
distract the disciple from the unknown interests and demands that can rise from
the bottom of his heart. The successful disciple lifts the solutions of his
routine problems to the new magnitude, not passes them around, because he now
has access to the unquenchable source from which all people and things are
renewed. In body, he remains individual, but spiritually he becomes
characterless, universal.
The purpose of the psychosomatic discipline is to demonstrate the validity of
this four-layer human self by prescribing the disciple to direct personal
experience of "the beyond that is within". Its intent is to drive the psychic
energy of the inner-Self to the darkest spots of the external-Self, to enlighten
it and the individual.
Of course, this experiment can be risky, but if something goes wrong – at best,
the disciple will lose some time; at worst, his conscious can disintegrate into
psychosis. However, if the experiment is rightly done, the disciple will able to
integrate the insights of his past-lives experiences and will emerge enlightened
with self-knowledge and greater self-control.
The experiment
that purported to prove the proposed theory should proceed in four steps. The
first step concerns the moral preliminaries with which all four disciplines
begin. The experimenter-disciple must abstain from lying, injuring, stealing,
greed, and sensuality. The second step is to be observant –
self-controlled, clean, content, studious, and contemplative of the divine.
The disciple who set himself for rediscovery will be distracted from his task by
his bodily cravings and mental inquietude. Just as the disciple may start
concentrating, he may have an urge for a sip of water or a scratch of his nose.
The first two steps of the discipline seek to prevent and eliminate such
distractions. Although the discipline concerns with the mind, it goes through
the body because, in the final analysis, they are one.
The disciple attempts to reach a bodily state midway between discomfort and
complete relaxation. To achieve such a balance, the disciple must use some of
the 84 postures; the best known of them is the ‘lotus’ posture. If you
take into consideration that standing induces fatigue, chairs invite slumping,
and reclining encourages sleep, then you will understand the necessity of a
correct position of the body that it can remain stiff and alert for the long
sessions. The disciple must also train his breathing because unbridled breathing
can interrupt his meditation. Bronchial irritations trigger coughs and other
irregularities. Beyond general health, the main reason of the first two steps is
to keep the body of the disciple from distracting his mind while he is
concentrating. Therefore, the disciple must learn to be insensitive to his
surroundings, because he is testing the theory (that the deepest truth is opened
only to those who turn their attention inward) and, in this experiment, his
physical senses (that direct his attention outward) may probably be destructive.
When the postures, respiration, and insensitivity have been mastered, the
disciple should feel himself comfortable and ready for meditation.
The third step is intended for the disciple to learn how to
concentrate only on one thing at a time, because such a complete
concentration excludes the mental irritability from other things. When the
outer intrusions are stopped and the disciple is alone with his mind, its
processes (memories, daydreams, and anticipations) may cause the mind to ripple
like a stormy sea with its ever-changing reflections. Left alone, the mind
rarely stays calm and clear. (As the contemporary psychologists counted – the
‘normal’ mind stays concentrated on an object without interruptions for three
and a half seconds.) If the mind could be focused on one object at a time, would
not its strength be concentrated, like the concentrated light of a magnifying
glass? Therefore, the disciple must condition his mind to focus protractedly on
an object to fathom it deeply. He begins by relaxing his mind to allow thoughts,
which need release, to flow from his subconscious into his conscious, from where
he can easily purge them. Only then he selects something to concentrate on
(preferably the object that matters less), and keeps his mind on the object. On
this stage of practicing, his mind has been stabilized to the point where it
would flow uninterrupted toward its object. However, it has not yet lost
conscious of itself as an object different from the one on which it has been
focusing.
In the fourth step, when the disciple’s concentration deepens into
meditation, the union between him and his object grows to the point where
his conscious submerges into his subconscious where he and his object emerges as
one. The merger is possible because both of them have a connection with the
Creator of All Things. The distinctive future of this step is that the disciple
must dissolve his own form (conscious) and the form of his object, because forms
are limiting boundaries. To be one with his object and know how it feels itself,
the observer must exclude all forms, including mental. His mind is functioning,
but functioning without its form – the thought. (Descartes would say: "I am
thinking, therefore, I exist", but a Hindu would say: "I really exist
when I am not thinking".)
When the observer is united with what is observed, then the observer has been
brought to the knowledge of the Infinite Being and has been dissolved into Him.
The disciple has finished his experiment successfully when he has attained the
insight "That, verily, that Thou are". Most of the disciples continue to
practice and be observant because the truth is sweet, and Hinduism encourages
them to test and combine all four disciplines as it best fits for their needs.
However, what are their needs?
As you can see, Hinduism is a two-world ideology, with which you can go either
way – to understand this reality or to escape into the "higher" reality. You
also can see from the final season of a human life that Hinduism assumed that
the individual (while building own theory of life and death) has no choice but
to build it individually. Thus, the content of this theory should be about the
individual, because the life and death are individual. However, the older Aryans
has missed the possibility of a theory about the individualistic society
– its life and death. The Greeks, the younger Aryans, accomplished this task.
Having developed commerce and industry, the Greeks had increasingly become to
envision the society as the only highway to the good and dignified life of the
individual in this reality.
In the early stage of the development of their social conscious, the Ionian
Aryans still went along the riverbed of their ancestral thought of the Hindus
and Sumerians. They conquered the Attica and founded Athens and their social
development looked like that of the Spartans. They turned the conquered
horticultural population into the agricultural slaves and themselves into the
military administration, with the hereditary aristocracy and a monarch. However,
the things turned sour for them soon, because the mountains were the natural
barriers for the agricultural economic. Unlike the Spartans, the Athenians
possessed only the coastal strip of land. The necessity to overcome their own
overpopulation through the intensive agriculture and colonization led to
development of navy, commerce, and industry. Many people from the upper class
should, like Jason, go for their own Golden Fleece and learn new skills and
professions. The political form of the military bureaucracy and monarchy
restrained this development in economics. Thus, after a coup d’etat, the
paramilitary bureaucracy took power into their hands and the aristocratic
republic was founded in the eighth century before the new era. Gradually, the
tensions mounted between the landowning aristocracy, who dominated the
republican government, and the newly rich and ambitious middle class of
merchants and traders, who wanted their fair share in governing Athens.
The farmers, who borrowed from the aristocracy under high percentage and
mortgaged their lands as security, lost their property and even became enslaved
because they could not pay the accumulated debts. Most of the farmland passed
into the hands of a few aristocratic families. The embittered middle class
demanded redistribution of land. The aristocratic government appointed a
commission, with Draco as its head, to draw a new code of laws. Although the
Draconian laws reduced the arbitrariness of the aristocratic judges, the
penalties remained extremely severe. The middle class continued to rally around
the slogans of cancellation of their debts and the redistribution of land.
To deflect the approaching civil war, the aristocracy elected Solon (a
philosopher who long time was studying abroad and considered as a neutral
foreigner to the upper and middle classes) as their president and gave him the
dictatorial power to work out the necessary laws. Solon (c. 640-559 BC) believed
that there is the order in the universe. He believed that the universal law
underlies the social life, and that a principle of fairness and
justice underlies the human community, and if people violate this ever
evolving standard of justice, they ruin their community. Solon held that the
written laws should be in harmony with the natural order of things, and he
withdrew the judicial questions of fairness from the sphere of the gods and gave
them a humanitarian foundation. He attributed the community’s problems to the
specific behavior of individuals and he sought for them the practical solutions.
Thus, he found that the excessively wealthy landowners, through their greed, had
disrupted the community and brought it about to a civil war.
Solon had a concern for the interests of the whole community; therefore, he
avoided the radical extremes in his decision-making and treated the upper and
middle classes with moderation. He refused to go along with the extremists who
wished to confiscate and redistribute the land of the aristocracy.
His
economic reforms aimed to restrain the extremely wealthy aristocrats and to
improve the standard of living of the middle-class. He canceled the debts of the
latter, freed those who were enslaved for debts, and redeemed those who was sold
abroad. Recognizing that the soil of Attica was not fertile for growing wheat,
he urged the farmers to cultivate the wine grapes and oily olives, the products
of which could be exported. He acknowledged the fine quality of the native
reddish-brown clay and urged the Athenians to develop pottery for export. The
engraved and decorated vases became a major luxury export of the Athenians
throughout the Mediterranean world. For the protection of the free trade, the
military and freight navy was required; and to encourage the industrial and
commercial expansion, he granted citizenship to foreign artisans who wished to
migrate to Athens. He also made it compulsive that all fathers taught their sons
a trade. His economic reforms had transformed Athens into a great commercial and
industrial center of the ancient world.
His political reforms rested on the inference that although the
aristocrats had abused the electoral system they should continue to have the key
positions in the government, because the middle class were not prepared for
self-governing. However, the very structure of the government should be changed.
He proposed that the supreme body of the State should be the Assembly of all
adult males of the upper and middle classes, who would be the legislative
body, which would elect the executive body (of Four Hundred) and would
accept or reject the laws proposed by the executives.
Solon established a property requirement for being a member of the executive
body and thus effectively deprived the lower middle-class of the illumination
and fair representation of their interests. By establishing a property
requirement for being a member of the legislative Assembly, he effectively
deprived the lower class of non-proprietors (the serfs –
agricultural workers, slaves – industrial workers, and adult females) of
real citizenship and of the fair representation of their
interests. On the other hand, he opened the highest positions in the bureaucracy
to the newly rich men of the middle class, thus depriving hereditary aristocracy
of its most devastating (for the community’s well-being) feature – the
nepotistic mediocrity. It also meant that the paramilitary bureaucracy was
transformed into a civil one.
Successfully completing his reforms, Solon retired from the executive office.
Although a group of the aristocratic bureaucrats urged him to stay in power
longer and rule the State as a leader of their junta, he refused to do so. Thus,
he personally demonstrated the power of the moral principle of justice and
proved his integrity to the Athenian society. Believing that the justice is the
observance of the common interests that unite a community, he did not think that
he would fairly represent those interests any longer.
With the growth of the economic power of Athens, the factional struggle inside
and between the upper and middle classes for its fair distribution continued.
The tyranny of the mediocre hereditary bureaucracy was hard to swallow even for
some of the members of the hereditary aristocracy. It frequently occurred in the
Greek city-states that the ambitious and knowledgeable aristocrats asked and
became the leaders of the middle-class in its struggle against the aristocracy.
To show that they represent the needs of the entire community, these leaders
often supported the extension of the citizenship to the non-proprietors and even
to foreigners, as to increase their own base of the popular support. Thus,
Pisistratus, a talented aristocrat, organized a faction (a special interest
group) of the newly rich men and, in 546 BC, secured the political power of his
party by exiling some members of the aristocratic faction.
Pisistratus’ government acted in accordance with Solon’s constitution. Its
economic reforms were concern with the problems of the middle-class. The land
confiscated from the exiled aristocrats was divided between the small farmers,
who also were granted the state loans. His government initiated the construction
of aqueducts and promoted other architectural projects; it encouraged sculptors
and painters, arranged for the public recitals of the Homeric epics, and founded
festivals that included the dramatic performances. This refined culture,
formerly being affordable only to the aristocracy, now became available to the
commoners. Thus, Pisistratus’ government led Athens to emerge as the cultural
capital of the Greeks, and later – of the ancient world.
When Pisistratus died, his two sons headed the government. The partisans of the
exiled aristocrats soon assassinated one of them, and the other was driven from
Athens by the Spartans who intervened on behalf of the exiled aristocrats,
wishing to restore the latter to power. However, the young, ambitious, and
knowledgeable aristocrat Cleisthenes managed to organize the middle-class and
headed a new government in 527 BC. His government had its major political
accomplishment in redistricting the voters. The old voting system was based on
the genetic allegiance of an individual to his tribe (clan). The members of a
tribe chose their representatives in the state government as tribal leaders.
This system had caused many bitter fights in Athens because after five hundred
years of history it was difficult to find out and prove one’s pedigree.
Cleisthenes’ government replaced this practice of the traditional authority with
a new system of choosing leaders by residential areas. The new voting system
effectively insured that the loyalty to the State (which is the organization
that should protect the common interests of citizens) would surpass the historic
allegiance by blood (which no longer protected fairly and justly the
interests of a commoner). Thus, finally, the Athenians became not the Ionians or
Dorians but the Greeks. Although some shameful aristocratic features still
existed in the government (like the notorious Council of the Areopagus – that
consisted of the retired high-ranking bureaucrats), but Athens persistently
moved toward the hegemony of the middle-class.
Meanwhile, on another shore of the Aegean Sea, the descendants of the older
branch of the Aryans (who had built their Persian Empire) subjugated the Ionian
Greeks of Asia Minor (the colonists of the younger branch of the Aryans).
Although the Greeks of Asia Minor were left autonomy, the Persians heavily taxed
them. In 499 BC, the Greeks of Asia Minor started their war for independence
from the Persians. Trying to help the nearest relatives and business partners,
the Athenians sent twenty military ships to aid the Greeks, fighting for their
independence. In retaliation, Darius I, the king of Persians sent an expedition
corpus to Greece. The Athenians defeated the Persians on the plains of Marathon.
Ten years later, the Persians organized a new expedition with a quarter of a
million men and more than a half of a thousand ships. The older Aryans decided
that they could reduce the younger Aryans to the subservient state.
Herodotus perceived this encounter as a struggle for the Greeks’ freedom. In his
Histories, Herodotus described as three hundred Spartans, staying at the
narrow mountain pass of Thermopylae, resisted to the outnumbering Persians. They
resisted "to the last with their swords if they had them, and if not, with their
hands and teeth, until the Persians, coming on from the front over the ruins of
the wall and closing in from behind, finally overwhelmed them". The Persians
continued to attack and burned a deserted Athens. The Greeks regrouped and under
the leadership of Themistocles lured the Persian fleet into the narrows of the
Bay of Salamis and destroyed it. The outnumbered Greeks managed to defeat the
Persians because they were more conscious about their interests than the
Persians, and because the Greek ships were designed better and were more
maneuverable than the Persian ships. A year later, the Spartans defeated the
Persians in the land battle of Plataea. Thus, the younger Aryans effectively
aborted the older Aryans’ quest for the world domination. However, the moral
prestige (confidence, pride, and arrogance) that came with the victory, incited
the Athenians for the dominance in Greece, and later, instigated the Macedonian
Greeks (who became the victors in the struggle between the Spartans and
Athenians) for the world domination.
Immediately after the Persian Wars, nearly two hundred of the Ionian Greek
city-states, under the leadership of Athens, organized a confederation (the
Delian League) to protect selves from the future Persian invasions. (For
simplicity sake, I will call this confederation the Ionian confederation.)
Conceived as a voluntary association of the independent Greek States, the
confederation gradually became an instrument of Athens’ domination. Athens
supplied the bulk of the human and material resources necessary for the
protection of Greeks from the pirates and Persians. The Athenians consciously
and eagerly manipulated the confederation for own economic and political
advantage over the fellow-states (see the conversation between Socrates and the
Sophist). They did not see the antagonism between imperialism and
democracy in the international affairs because they did not see the
antagonism between the hegemony of the middle-class and the depressing state of
the lower class of the serfs, slaves, and women inside their own society. When
24 centuries later we have slightly improved our foreign and domestic policies –
do you think it is just a coincidence? Aren’t our imperialistic policies toward
Latin America the same sort as the policies of the Athenians toward their
neighbors were? Isn’t the imperialism just the rotten remnants of the
military bureaucratic mentality?
The Athenians smacked their empire because with their dominance in Greece they
quickly acquired unjustifiable wealth and moral prestige. They used directly and
indirectly the confederate treasury to finance the public works in Athens. They
considered such a state of things as natural, for it is "natural" when a strong
state increases its might at the expense of the weaker ones. Moreover, they
boldly claimed that the other fellow-States benefited from the Athenian hegemony
in the confederacy; and under this pretense, they forbade the other
fellow-States to withdraw from the confederacy, crushed their revolts and
stationed garrisons on their territories. Although the fellow-States did receive
protection, did enjoy increased trade, and were not overtaxed, they resented
Athenian domination and the sheer arrogance of its administrators. The hatred
for Athenian imperialism grew inside of the Ionian confederation as well as in
the Dorian confederation, along with the decreasing threat of the new Persian
invasion. The Athenian imperialism, as the minor consequence of the Persian
Wars, would be mounted in time as the major one.
However, for a while, the major consequence of the Persian Wars was the bloom of
the Athenian economic and political life. The democratic institutions continued
to be entrenched and, in 462 BC, the aristocratic Council of the Areopagus was
stripped of its moral prestige and ability to influence the public policy. The
Athenian State became a direct democracy for the members of the upper and middle
classes, because they all were the electors and electorees – the citizens and
own representatives at the same time. In the legislative Assembly, in
which all adult males of the upper and middle classes were gathering some forty
times a year, Athenians made the laws. Here they debated and voted on the
essential social issues – such as the declaring wars, signing treaties, and
spending the public funds. The small-size enterprise shopkeeper and the wealthy
aristocrat had their opportunity to express own opinions in the Assembly, to
vote as representatives, and be elected as executives. By the mid-5th
century BC, the common interests of the upper and middle class Athenians, as
expressed in their Assembly, was supreme for them.
The executive office (the Cleisthenes Council of Five Hundred that
replaced Solon’s Council of Four Hundred) managed the military installations,
ports, mills, factories, and other social properties and prepared the agenda and
projects of laws for the Assembly. The members of the executive office
should be chosen annually by lot and could not serve more than twice in a
lifetime, thus preventing their domination over the legislative Assembly.
Some 350 districts chose their magistrates also by lot and for year tenure. The
Assembly elected only 10 military generals (whose positions required special
knowledge and personal characteristics) for the ten-year tenure.
Although, by form, Athens was the direct self-ruling of the middle class, by
essence, the aristocrats continued to dominate the political life for most of
the fifth century. The generals and leading politicians in the Assembly were
frequently voted from the upper class, because the aristocrats had more free
time to acquire the special knowledge needed to perform these duties.
Eventually, the newly rich men, under the Pericles’ leadership, challenged the
aristocratic dominance and, in the last third of the fifth century, the payment
for government officials was introduced in the Assembly. It meant that a
commoner could afford to leave his job for a year to serve in an executive or
judicial office.
Because of the lot system of the Athenian democracy, many observers described
the Athenian State as a government of amateurs; there were no professional (for
lifetime) administrators, soldiers, or judges. The commoners and aristocrats
alike, but in different proportions, performed the governmental duties. The
Athenian governmental system was based on the assumption that the average member
of the upper and middle classes of proprietors is capable of consciously
(intelligently) participating in the affairs of the State. Thus, Athenians
equated personal excellence with good citizenship.
During Pericles’ leadership, Athenians achieved the peak of their economic,
political, and cultural development. After the first year of the Peloponnesian
War, which lasted the last third of the fifth century BC and was between Ionian
and Dorian confederations, Pericles made a speech honoring those Athenians who
sacrificed their lives for the Athenian democratic ideal:
"Our constitution doesn’t copy the laws of
neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves.
Our administration favors the many and not of the few; this is why it is called
a democracy. Our laws afford equal justice to all in their private differences.
As to the social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for
capacity; class considerations not being allowed and the claim of excellence is
also recognized. Poverty does not bar the way to a man who is able to serve the
State... The freedom that we enjoy in our social life, extends also to our
private life, in which we are not suspicious of one another, not angry with our
neighbor if he does what he likes... all that eases our private relations
doesn’t make us lawless as citizens.... Reverence pervades our public acts; we
are prevented from doing wrong by respects for authority and for the laws....
Further, we provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself from
business. We celebrate games and sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance
of our private establishments shapes our daily source of pleasure and helps to
distract us from what causes us distress. While the magnitude of our city draws
the produce of the world into our harbor, so that to the Athenian the fruits of
other countries are familiar a luxury as those of his own.... Our love for the
beautiful things does not lead to extravagance and our love for knowledge does
not make us soft. Wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the
real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle
against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to
attend to; and our commoners, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are
still fair judges of public matters. For, unlike any other nation, we regard the
citizens who take no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless. And
we are able to judge proposals even if we cannot originate them; instead of
looking on a discussion as an obstacle in the way of an action, we think it is
an indispensable preliminary to any wise action. Again, all in our enterprises
we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation... although
with the rest of mankind, a decision is the fruit of the doubtful ignorance...
But the prize for courage will surely be awarded most justly to those who best
know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to
shrink from danger." Thucydides, The History of the
Peloponnesian War, bk. 2, ch. 37-40.
Throughout the speech, Pericles contrasted the
Spartan, aristocratic, upper-class moral ideal with the Athenian, democratic,
middle-class moral ideal – daring with deliberation. Unlike the Spartans,
the Athenians valued both – the political freedom and economic creativity.
Indeed, Pericles recognized that the political freedom unleashed an enormous
amount of the creative energy in the economic life, letting Athens reach the
extraordinary cultural achievements.
Although the Dorian and Ionian Greeks have shared some cultural elements, such
as language and literature, they remained politically divided because of their
economic differences. Sparta and other members of the Dorian confederation were
the agricultural states, which felt that the industrial and dynamic Athens and
other members of the Ionian confederation threatened not only their political
independence but also the economic way of life. Agricultural economics requires
only territorial expansion, leaving the culture intact for millennia.
Whereas industrial economics does not necessary require the territorial
expansion, but it requires the intensive cultivation and use of the
present territory to maintain the growing population. The industrial society
intensifies the use of the scientific knowledge to the technology of production.
This intensity in the agricultural business goes through matching the soil with
the crops and domestic animals that it can sustain in the maximum volume. The
chosen crops or animals would be intensively selected and their products would
go into the industry for the final processing. The bulk of the final product
would go for export, not for the local consumption. The commerce and finances
would create new needs, and new industries and new technologies would emerge to
satisfy them.
Industrialism is a highly intensive and efficient subsistence strategy, for it
allows the minority to feed effectively the majority of the population. Now a
society reached a point of its economic development where it became more
important not only to produce plenty, but to effectively (speedy and without
losing) distribute what was produced. Industrialism is the intensive production.
However, in greater degree, it is also the intensive and effective distribution
and exchange. A developing infrastructure between the productive organs is the
major characteristic of an industrial society. Indeed, at the peak of their
economic and political development, Athens had only a third of their population
(mostly serfs) employed in agricultural business. The Athenian population grew
very rapidly in the early stages of their industrialization because people lived
longer because of better living standards (better roads, sanitation,
communication, etc.). Their society became highly urbanized, with the bulk of
the population living in or around Athens, where most jobs were located. Their
economy became intensive, vast, complex, and pervasive in its effects on the
politics and culture. The influence of traditional religion decreased
considerably, for people no longer share similar life experiences; consequently,
they held many different and competing ideologies. Education became a major
social institution because the industrialization requires mass literacy.
Feeling that their simplistic agricultural way of life would soon be eliminated,
the Spartans invaded Attica in 431 BC and set on fire the Athens’ countryside.
One year later, a plague that came from Ethiopia through Egypt killed nearly
third of the Athenians, including Pericles. Because the Ionian confederates had
the superior navy and the Dorian confederates were unable to crash the Ionian
ground troops, the first ten years of the war ended in stalemate, and the tired
combatants signed a piece treaty.
Six years later, the Athenian imperialism erected again, for the population
quickly increased and required new colonization, the best possible of which the
Athenians saw in Sicily. Syracuse, the main city of Sicily, resisted the Athens’
expansion. Intoxicated by the prospects of being riches soon, the Athenians
approved the Sicilian expedition. In 415 BC, the largest expedition corpus was
dispatched for Sicily under the command of three generals (two of them from the
upper class); there was a constant scramble between the upper and middle classes
for the highest positions in the army.
"The Athenian envoys arrived from Sicily, and the
Egestaeans with them, bringing the 60 talents [about 1.3 ton] of uncoined
silver, as a month’s pay for 60 ships, which they were to ask to have sent to
them. The Athenians held an assembly, where they heard a report from the
Egestaeans and from their own envoys, as attractive as it was untrue. After
hearing the state of affairs (in general and in particular as to the money, of
which, it was said, there was abundance in the temples and the treasury), the
Athenians voted to send 60 ships to Sicily, under the command of Alcibiades...
Nicias... and Lamachus... who were appointed with full power. The expedition was
bound to help the Egestaeans against the Selinuntines, to restore Leontini upon
gaining any advantage in the war, and to order all other matters in Sicily, as
they should deem best for the interests of Athens.
Five days after this, a second assembly was held, to consider the speediest
means of equipping the ships, and to vote whatever else might be required by the
generals for the expedition. Nicias (who had been chosen to the supreme command
against his will) thought that the State was not well advised but upon a slight
and specious pretext was aspiring to the conquest of the whole of Sicily (a
great matter to achieve). He came forward in the hope of diverting the Athenians
from the enterprise, and gave them the following counsel:
‘We should still examine whether it is better to send out the ships at all...
Individually, I gain in honor by such course, and fear as little as other men
for my person – not that I think a man need be any the worse citizen for taking
some thought for his person and state. On the contrary, such a man would for his
own sake desire the prosperity of his country more than others...
I affirm, then, that you live many enemies behind you here to go there far away
and bring more back with you. You imagine, perhaps, that the treaty, which you
have made, can be trusted. A treaty that will continue to exist nominally, as
long as you keep quiet (for nominal it has become, owing to the practices of
certain men here and at Sparta). However, this treaty, in case of a serious
reverse in any quarter, would not delay our enemies a moment in attacking us.
First, because the convention was forced upon them by disaster and was less
honorable to them than to us; and secondly, because in this very convention
there are many points that are still disputed. Again, some of the most powerful
states have never yet accepted the arrangement at all. Some of these are at open
war with us. Others (as the Spartans do not yet move) are restrained by truces
renewed every 10 days. And it is only to probable that if they found our power
divided... they would attack us vigorously with the Siceliots, whose alliance
they would have in the past valued as they would that of few others.
A man ought, therefore, to consider these points, and not to think of running
risks with a country placed so critically, or of grasping at another empire
before we have secured the one we have already. For, in fact, the Thracian
Chalcidians have been all these years in revolt from us without being yet
subdued, and others on the mainland yield us but a doubtful obedience. Meanwhile
the Egestaeans, our allies, have been wronged, and we run to help them, while
the rebels who have so long wronged us still wait for punishment. And yet the
latter, if brought under might be kept under; while the Sicilians, even if
conquered, are too far of and too numerous to be ruled without difficulty. Now
it is folly to go against men who could not be kept under even if conquered,
while failure would leave us in a very different position from that which we
occupied before the enterprise.
The Sicilians, again, to take them as they are at present, in the event of a
Syracusan conquest (which the Egestaeans most use to frighten us), would to my
thinking be even less dangerous to us than before. At present they might
possibly come here as separate states for love of Sparta; in the other case one
empire would scarcely attack another; for after joining the Peloponnesians to
overthrow ours, they could only expect to see the same hands overthrow their own
in the same way. The Hellenes in Sicily would fear us most if we never went
there at all, and next to this, if after displaying our power we went away again
as soon as possible. We all know that which is farthest off and the reputation
of which can least be tasted, is the object of admiration; at the least reverse
to us they would at once begin to look down upon us, and would join our enemies
here against us. You have yourselves experienced this about the Sparta and their
allies, whom you become despising suddenly, after unexpected success, and whom
you feared at first. That success tempted you further to aspire to the conquest
of Sicily. Instead, however, of being puffed up by the misfortunes of your
adversaries, you ought to think of breaking their spirit before giving
yourselves up to confidence. You ought to understand that the one thought
awakened in the Spartans by their disgrace is how they may even now, if
possible, overthrow us and retired their aristocratic dishonor, inasmuch as they
have for a very long time devoted selves to the cultivation of military renown
above all. Our struggle therefore, if we are wise, will not be for the barbarian
Egestaeans in Sicily, but to defend ourselves most effectively against the
aristocratic machinations of Sparta.
We should also remember that we are only now enjoying some despite from a great
pestilence and from war, to the no small benefit of our estates and persons. And
that it is right to employ these at home on our own behalf, instead of using
them on behalf of these exiles whose interest it is to lie as well as they can.
And who do nothing but talk themselves and leave the danger to others. And who,
if they succeed, will show no proper gratitude and, if they fail, will drag down
their friends with them. And if there be any man here, overjoyed at being chosen
to command, who fairness you to make the expedition, merely for ends of his own.
Especially if that man is still too young to command and seeks to be admired for
his stud of horses, but on account of heavy expenses hopes for some profit from
his appointment. Do not allow such a one to maintain his private splendor at his
country’s risk, but remember that such persons injure the public fortune while
they squander their own. Remember that this is a matter of importance, and not
for a young man to decide or hastily to take in hand.
When I see such persons now sitting here to at the side of that same individual
and summoned by him, alarm seizes me. And I, in my turn, summon any of the older
men that may have such a person sitting next him, not to let self be checked by
shame, for fear of being thought a coward if he does not vote for war. Instead,
he should remember how rarely success is gained by wishing and how often by
forecast; he should leave to the youth the mad dream of conquest. And as a true
lover of his country (now threatened by the greatest danger in its history),
such a man should hold up his hand on the other side. And he should vote that
the Sicilians be left in the limits now existing between us – limits of which no
one can complain... to enjoy their own possessions and to settle their own
quarrels. Let the Egestaeans, for their part, to be told to end by themselves
the war with the Selinuntines, which they began without consulting the
Athenians. And that for the future, we do not enter alliance, as we have been
used to do, with people, whom we must help in their need and who can never help
us in ours.
And you, Prytanis, if you think it your duty to care for the commonwealth, and
if you wish to show yourself a good citizen, put the question to the vote, and
take a second time the opinions of the Athenians. However, you are afraid to
move the question again and incur any charge; therefore, you will not be the
physician of your misguided city. The virtue of men in office is briefly this --
to do their country as much good as they can or, in any case, to do no harm that
they can avoid.’
Such were the words of Nicias. Most of the Athenians who came forward spoke in
favor of the expedition and of not annulling what had been voted, although some
spoke on the other side. By far the warmest advocate of the expedition was,
however, Alcibiades... who wished to thwart Nicias both as his political
opponent and because of the attack he had made upon him in his speech. Besides,
Alcibiades was exceedingly ambitious of a command by which he hoped to reduce
Sicily and Carthage. He also hoped for personal gain in wealth and reputation by
means of his military successes. For the position he held among the citizens led
him to indulge his tastes beyond what his real means would bear, both in keeping
horses and in the rest of his expenditure; and this later on had not a little to
do with the ruin of the Athenian State. Alarmed at the greatness of the license
in his own life and habits, and aunt the ambition which he showed in all things,
whatsoever that he undertook, the mass of the people marked him as an aspirant
to the tyranny and became his enemies. Although, in his public life, his conduct
of the war was as good as could be desired, in his private life, his habits gave
offense to everyone. Thus causing the Athenians to commit affairs to other
hands, and thus, before long, to ruin the State. Meanwhile he now came forward
and gave the following advice to the Athenians:
‘Athenians, I have a better right to command than others. I must begin with
this, as Nicias has attacked me and, at the same time, I believe myself to be
worthy of it. The things, for which I am abused, bring fame to my ancestors and
to myself, and also profit to my country. The Hellenes, after expecting to see
our city ruined, who rule all of by the war, concluded it to be even greater
(than it really is) by reason of the magnificence, with which I represented it
at the Olympic games. I sent there the seven chariots (a number never before
entered by any private person), and I won the first prize, and was second and
forth, and took care to have everything else in a style worthy of my victory.
Custom regards such displays as honorable, and they can not be made without
leaving behind them an impression of power. Again, any splendor that I may have
exhibited at home in providing choruses or otherwise, is naturally envied to by
my fellow citizens, but in the eyes of foreigners has an air of strength as in
the other instance. And this is no useless folly, when a man at his own private
cost benefits not himself only, but his city. Nor is it unfair that he, who
prides himself on his position, should refuse to be equated with the rest. He,
who is badly off, has his misfortunes all to himself. As we do not see men
courted in adversity, on the like principle a man ought to accept the insolence
of prosperity. Or else, let him first allot out equal measure to all, and then
demand to have it allotted out to him. What I know is that persons of this kind,
who have attained to any distinction (although they may be unpopular in their
lifetime, in their relations with their fellow men and especially with their
equals), leave to posterity the desire of claiming connection with them, even
without any ground. And they are boasted by the country to which they belonged,
not as strangers or evildoers, but as fellow countrymen and heroes. Such are my
aspirations and, however, I am abused for them in my private life, the question
is whether anyone manages public affairs better than I do. Having united the
most powerful States of the Peloponnesus, without great danger or expense to
you, I compelled the Spartans to make their stake upon the issue of a single day
at Mantinea; and although victorious in the battle, they have never since fully
recovered confidence.
Thus did my youth and so-called monstrous folly that found fitting arguments to
deal with the power of the Peloponnesians, and, by its ardor, win their
confidence and prevail. Do not be afraid of my youth now, but while I am still
in its flower, and Nicias appears fortunate, avail yourselves to the utmost of
the services of us both. Nor should you rescind your resolution to sail to
Sicily, on the ground that you would be going to attack a great power. The
cities in Sicily are peopled by motley rabbles, who easily change their
institutions and adopt new ones in their stead. Consequently, the inhabitants,
being without any feeling of patriotism, are not provided with arms for their
persons, and have not regularly established themselves on the land. Every man
thinks that either by fair words or by party strife he can obtain something at
the public expense, and then, in case of a catastrophe, settle in some other
country, and makes his preparations accordingly. From a mob like this, you need
not look for either unanimity in counsel or unity in action. They will probably
come in one by one, as they get a fair offer, especially if they are torn by
civic strife, as we are told. Moreover, the Sicilians have not so many hoplites
as they boast. Just as the Hellenes generally did not prove to be so numerous as
each State reckoned itself. But Hellas greatly overestimated their numbers and
has hardly had an adequate force of hoplites throughout this war. Therefore, the
States in Sicily, from all that I can hear, will be found as I say. And I have
not pointed out all our advantages, for we shall have the help of many
librarians the barbarians, who from their hatred of the Syracusans will join us
in attacking them. Nor will the powers at home prove any hindrance if you judge
rightly. Our fathers (with these same adversaries, which it is said we shall now
leave behind us when we sail, and the Persians as their enemy as well) were able
to win the empire, depending solely on their superiority at sea. The
Peloponnesians have never had so little hope against us as at present. And let
them be ever so optimistic, although strong enough to invade our country even if
we stay at home, they can never hurt us with their navy, as we leave one of our
own behind us that is a match for them.
In this state of affairs what reason can we give to ourselves for holding back,
or what excuse can we offer to our allies in Sicily for not helping them? They
are our confederates, and we are bound to assist them, without objecting that
they have not assisted us. We did not take them into alliance to have them help
us in Hellas, but that they might so annoy our enemies in Sicily as to prevent
them from coming over here and attacking us. It is thus that empire has been
won, both by us and by all others that have held it, by a constant readiness to
support all, whether barbarians or Hellenes, that invite assistance. Since if
all were to keep quiet or to choose whom they ought to assist, we should make
but few new conquests, and should imperil those we have already won. Men do not
rest content with parrying the attacks of a superior, but often strike the first
blow to prevent the attack being made. Moreover, we cannot fix the exact point
at which our empire shall stop. We have reached a position in which we must not
be content with retaining what we have but must scheme to extend it for. If we
cease to rule others, we shall be in danger of being ruled by others. Nor can
you look at inaction from the same point of view as others, unless you are
prepared to change your habits and make them resemble theirs.
Be convinced then that we shall augment our power at home by this adventure
abroad, and let us make the expedition, and so humble the pride of the
Peloponnesians by sailing off to Sicily, and letting them see how little we care
for the peace that we are now enjoying. At the same time, we shall either become
masters, as we very easily may, of the whole of Hellas through the accession of
the Sicilian Hellenes, or in any case ruin the Syracusans, to the no small
advantage of ourselves and our allies. Our ability to stay if successful, or to
return if not, will be secured to us by our navy, as we shall be superior at sea
to all the Sicilians put together. And do not let the passive policy which
Nicias advocates, or his setting of the young against the old, turn you from
your purpose. Instead, in the good old fashion, by which our fathers, old and
young together, by their united counsels brought our affairs to their present
height, do you endeavor still to advance them? You should understand that
neither youth nor old age can do anything the one without the other; but that
levity, sobriety, and deliberate judgment are strongest when united, and that,
by sinking into inaction, the city, like everything else, will wear itself out,
and its skill in everything decay. However, each fresh struggle will give it
fresh experience, and make it more used to defend itself, not in word but in
deed. In short, my conviction is that a city, not inactive by nature, could not
choose a quicker way to ruin itself than by suddenly adopting such a policy. The
safest rule of life is to take one’s character and institutions for better and
for worse, and to live up to them as closely as one can.’
Such were the words of Alcibiades. After hearing him and the Egestaeans and some
Leontine exiles, who came forward reminding them of their oaths and imploring
their assistance, the Athenians became more eager for the expedition than
before." Ibid. Bk.6, ch.8-19.
From these speeches of two Athenian generals, you
can easily discern the two moral ideologies, and who is I-me-my, arrogant
aristocrat and who is we-us-our, modest democrat.
The Athenian
expedition corpus could not overcome the Syracusans and appealed for
reinforcement. The Athenians repeated their recklessness and sent a second large
expedition to Sicily. The Athenians' strategy to divide Sicilian cities failed.
Failure continued in their tactics. The army grew tired physically and morally,
and the Athenians decided to withdraw. There was a moon eclipse just when the
Athenians were ready to depart. They took it for an evil omen and decided to
postpone their evacuation for 27 days. This period was enough for the Syracusans
to block the mouth of their harbor, preventing the Athenians' escape. The
Athenians tried to escape by land. In this retreat they were attacked from all
sides by the Syracusans, run in panic, leaving their wounded behind. They were
trapped; then they surrendered. Most of the captives died of hunger and disease
in the Sicilian rock quarries. The Athenians and their allies lost nearly 50
thousand men and 200 ships in this reckless adventure.
Fearing the Athenian expansion in Sicily and strengthened by financial support
from the Persians, Sparta moved toward the continuation of the war. After the
Sicilian catastrophe, many Ionian confederates defected, and the besieged and
isolated Athens (with a decimated navy and a trickling down food supply)
surrendered. The Dorian confederates dissolved the Ionian confederation and left
Athens with only a handful of the merchant ships. They demolished the city’s
protective walls; however, they did not massacre or enslave the Athenians.
The Peloponnesian War effectively suppressed the economic, political and
cultural development of Athens and shattered the industrialization of the
Hellenic urban culture.
The economic devastation and disorganization (multiplied by the remnants of the
tribal hatred between the Dorians and Ionians, and the hatred between the upper
and middle classes) led to political disintegration of the Greeks. During the
protracted war, the Greeks became brutal and selfish; they neglected their civic
duties; their moderation degenerated into extremism and revolution. The scramble
between the upper and middle classes (between the aristocrats and democrats) had
been growing again. The aristocrats wished to concentrate the political power in
own hands and the democrats tried to assert the achieved level of the political
freedom. Both sides sought to dominate the Assembly and courts by using the
unlawful methods -- both resorted to bribery and even to the assassination of
their opponents. During the Peloponnesian War, the conflicts between these
factions erupted into the civil wars in many city-states (including Athens) and
ruined the economic and moral basis of the Hellenic society.
Thucydides thus described the Greeks’ moral and economic decay:
"The Corcyraean revolution began with the return of
the prisoners taken in the sea fights off Epidamnus. They had been nominally
released by the Corinthians [the Dorian confederates, VS], upon the security of
800 talents [about 18 tons, VS] given by their proxy, but in reality upon their
engagement to bring Corcyra under the rule of Corinth. These men proceeded to
scrutinize each of the citizens, and to intrigue with the aim of detaching the
city from Athens. Upon the arrival of an Athenian and a Corinthian vessels, with
envoys onboard, a conference was held in which the Corcyraeans voted to remain
allies of the Athenians according to their agreement, but to be friends of the
Peloponnesians [the Dorians, VS] as they had been formerly. Meanwhile, the
returned prisoners brought Peithias, a volunteer proxy of the Athenians and
leader of the commoners, to trial, upon the charge of enslaving Corcyra to
Athens. He, being acquitted, retaliated by accusing five of the aristocrats of
their number of cutting stakes in the ground sacred to Zeus and Alcinous. The
legal penalty was a stater [nearly 2 drachmas or 16 g of gold] for
each stake. Upon their conviction and because the amount of the penalty was very
large, they protested and organized a sitting strike in the temples, demanding
to be allowed to pay it by installments. However, Peithias, who was one of the
Council, prevailed upon that body and demanded to enforce the law. The accused
aristocrats, being desperate and learning that Peithias had the intention, while
still a member of the Council, to persuade the people to conclude a defensive
and offensive alliance with Athens. They banded together, armed with daggers,
and suddenly bursting into the Council, killed Peithias and sixty others Council
members and private persons. Some few only of the party of Peithias took refuge
in the Athenian trireme [the battle ship, VS], which had not yet
departed.
After this outrage, the conspirators summoned the Corcyraeans to an assembly,
and said that this would turn out for the best and would save them from being
enslaved by Athens. They moved to receive neither of the fugitives unless the
latter came peacefully in a single ship, treating any larger number as enemies.
They compelled to adopt this motion and instantly sent off envoys to Athens to
justify what had been done and to dissuade the refugees there from any hostile
proceedings, which might lead to a reaction.
Upon the arrival of the embassy, the Athenians arrested the envoys and all who
listened to them as the revolutionists, and lodged them in Aegina. Meanwhile, a
Corinthian battle-ship arriving in the island with Spartan envoys, those in
control of Corcyra attacked the people [the democrats] and defeated them in the
battle. Night coming on, the democrats took refuge in the Acropolis [the
citadel] and the higher parts of the city, and concentrated themselves there,
having also possession of the Hyllaic harbor, their adversaries occupying the
Agora [the marketplace, VS]... The next day passed in skirmishes of little
importance, each party sending into the country to offer freedom to
the slaves and to invite them to join them. The mass of the slaves answered
to appeal of the democrats. The aristocrats had hired eight hundred mercenaries
from the mainland.
After a day’s interval hostilities recommenced, victory remaining with the
democrats, who had the advantage in numbers and position; the women bravely
assisting them, pelting with files from the houses, and supporting the
hand-to-hand fighting with a fortitude beyond their gender. Toward dusk, the
aristocrats in full rout, fearing that the victorious commoners might assault
and carry the arsenal and put them to the sword, set fire to the houses round
the marketplace and the lodging-houses, in order to bar their advance. They
spared neither their own houses, nor those of their neighbors. Much stuff of the
merchants was consumed and the city risked total destruction if a wind had come
to help the flame... Hostilities now ceased, and while both sides kept quiet,
passing the night on guard, the Corinthian battle-ship stole out to sea upon the
victory of the democrats, and most of the mercenaries passed over secretly to
the continent.
The next day the Athenian general, Nicostratus... came up from Naupactus with 12
ships and 500 Messenian hoplites [the Messenians were exiled by the Spartans and
the Athenians settled them at Naupactus, V.S.]. He at once endeavored to bring
about a settlement and persuade the two parties to agree together to bring to
trial ten of the ringleaders of the aristocrats. The latter were no longer in
the city, while the rest were to live in peace, making terms with each other,
and entering an alliance with the Athenians. Thus arranged, he was about to sail
away, when the leaders of the democrats induced him to leave them five of his
ships to make their adversaries less disposed to make trouble, while they manned
and sent with him an equal number of their own. He had no sooner consented, than
they began to enroll their enemies for the ships; and these, fearing that they
might be sent off to Athens, protested with a sitting strike in the temple of
the Dioscuri. When an attempt by Nicostratus to reassure them and to persuade
them to rise proved unsuccessful, the democrats, armed upon this pretext, and
alleging the refusal of their adversaries to sail with them as a proof of the
hollowness of their intentions, took their arms out of their houses. They would
even have killed some whom they fell in with if Nicostratus had not prevented
it. The rest of the aristocratic party, being not less than four hundred in
number and seeing what was going on, protested with a sitting strike in the
temple of Hera. They protested until the democrats, fearing that the aristocrats
might adopt some desperate resolution, induced them to rise, and conveyed them
over to the island in front of the temple where provisions were sent across to
them.
At this stage in the revolution, on the fourth or fifth day after the removal of
the aristocrats to the island, the Dorian ships arrived from Cyllene where they
had been stationed since their return from Ionia. They had 53 ships in number,
still under the command of Alcidas, but with Brasidas also onboard as his
adviser. They dropped anchors at Sybota – a harbor on the mainland, at daybreak
made sail for Corcyra.
The democrats, in great confusion and alarm at the state of things in the city
and at the approach of the invader, at once proceeded to equip 60 vessels. They
sent out the ships as fast as they were manned, against the enemy, in spite of
the Athenians recommending them to let them sail out first, and to follow
themselves afterwards with all their ships together. Upon their vessels coming
up to the enemy in this straggling fashion, two immediately deserted, in others
the crews were fighting among themselves, and there was no order in anything
that was done. So got the Dorians, seeing their confusion, placed 20 ships to
oppose the Corcyraeans, and arranged the rest against the 12 Athenian ships,
amongst which were two vessels: Salaminia and Paralus.
While the Corcyraeans (attacking without judgment and in small detachments) were
already crippled by their own misconduct, the Athenians (afraid of the numbers
of the enemy and of being surrounded) did not venture to attack the main body or
even the center of the division opposed to them. Instead, they fell upon its
wing and sank one vessel. After that the Dorians formed in a circle, and the
Athenians rowed round them and tried to throw them into disorder. Perceiving
this, the Dorian division that opposed to the Corcyraeans (fearing a repetition
of the disaster of Naupactus) came to support their friends. The whole fleet,
now united, bore down upon the Athenians, who retired before it, baking water,
withdrawing as leisurely as possible in order to give the Corcyraeans time to
escape while the enemy was thus kept occupied. Such was the character of this
sea fight, which lasted until sunset.
The Corcyraeans now feared that the enemy would follow up their victory and sail
against the city and rescue the aristocrats in the island, or strike some other
equally decisive blow, and accordingly carried the aristocrats over again to the
temple of Hera, and kept guard over the city. The Dorians, however, although
victorious in the sea fight, did not venture to attack the city, but took the 13
Corcyraean vessels that they had captured, and with them sailed back to the
continent from whence they had put out. The next day they again refrain from
attacking the city, although the disorder and panic were at their height, and
though Brasidas, it is said, urged Alcidas, his superior officer, to do so, but
they landed upon the promontory of Leukemme and laid waste the country.
Meanwhile, the democrats (being still in great fear of the fleet attacking them)
came to a parley with the aristocrats and their friends, in order to save the
city. They convinced some of the aristocrats to go on board the ships, of which
they still manned 30, against the accept attack. But the Dorians (after
plundering the country until midday) sailed away. Toward nightfall they were
informed by beacon signals of the approach of 60 Athenian vessels from Leucas,
under the command of Eurymedon... which had been sent off, by the Athenians,
upon the news of the revolution and of the fleet with Alcidas being about to
sail for Corcyra.
The Dorians, accordingly, set off at once, in haste, by night, for home,
coasting along shore. They hauled their ships across the Isthmus of Leucas, in
order not to be seen doubling it, so departed. The Corcyraeans (made aware of
the approach of the Athenian fleet and of the departure of the enemy) brought
the Messenians from outside the walls into the city, and ordered the fleet,
which they had manned to sail round into the Hyllaic harbor. While it was so
doing, they slew such of their enemies as they laid hands on, killing afterwards
as they landed them, those who they had persuaded to go onboard the ships. Next
they went to the sanctuary of Hera and persuaded about 50 men to take their
trial, and condemned them all to death. The mass of the aristocrats who had
refused to do so, on seeing what was taking place, slew each other there in the
consecrated ground; while some hanged themselves upon the trees, and others
destroyed themselves as they were severally able. During seven days that
Eurymedon stayed with his 60 ships, the democrats were engaged in butchering
those of their fellow-citizens whom they regarded as their enemies. Although the
attributed crime was that of attempting to put down the democracy, some were
slain also for private hatred, others by their debtors because of the moneys
owed to them. Death thus raged in every shape. As usually happens at such times,
there was no length to which violence did not go. Fathers killed their sons and
refugees were dragged from the altar or slain upon it, while some were even
walled up in the temple of Dionysus and died there.
So bloody was the march of the revolution, and the impression which it made was
the greater as it was one of the first to occur. Later, one may say that the
whole Hellenic world was convulsed. Struggles, being everywhere, made by the
popular leaders to bring in the Athenians and by the aristocrats to introduce
the Spartans. In peace, there would have been neither the pretext nor the wish
to wait such an invitation. But in war, with an alliance always at the command
of either faction for the hurt of their adversaries and their own corresponding
advantage, these opportunities commanded to the revolutionary parties to
bringing in the foreigner that was never welcomed in the peace time. The
sufferings, which revolution entailed upon the cities, were many and terrible.
Such sufferings, as have occurred and always will occur, as low as the nature of
mankind remains the same, though in a severer or milder form, and name varying
in their symptoms, according to the variety of the particular cases.
In peace and prosperity states and individuals have better sentiments because
they do not find themselves suddenly confronted with imperious necessities; but
were takes away the easy supply of daily wants and so proves a rough master that
brings most men’s characters to a level with their fortunes. Revolution thus ran
its course from city to city, and the places which it arrived at last, from
having heard what had been done before, carried to a still greater excess the
refinement of their inventions, as manifested in the cunning of their
enterprises and the atrocity of their reprisals.
Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given
them. Reckless boldness came to be considered the courage of a loyal supporter;
prudent hesitation – specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for
unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question – incapacity to act on any.
Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness, cautious plotting – a
justifiable means of self-defense. The advocate of extreme measures was always
trustworthy, his opponent – a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to
have a shrewd head, to forestall a plot – a still shrewder. However, to try to
provide against, having to do either, was to break up your party and to be
afraid of your adversaries. In short, to foresee an intending criminal, or to
suggest the idea of a crime there where it lacked, was equally praiseworthy.
Until even blood-tie became weaker than party-tie because of the superior
readiness of those united by the latter to dare everything without reserve. For
such associations sought not the blessings derivable from established
institutions but were formed by ambition to overthrow them. The confidence of
the party members in each other rested less on any religious sanction than upon
the partnership in crime.
The fair proposals of an adversary were met with jealous precautions by the
stronger of the two, and not with a generous confidence. Revenge also was held
of more account than self-preservation. Oaths of reconciliation, being only
offered on either side to meet an immediate difficulty, held well only so long
as no other weapon was at hand. However, when opportunity arose, he, who first
ventured to seize it and to take his enemy off his guard, thought this
treacherous vengeance sweeter than an open one. When the considerations of his
safety were satisfied, the vengeance became sweeter because the success by
treachery had won him the prize for superior intelligence. Indeed, it is
generally the case that men call readier the rogues as clever than they call the
simpletons as honest. Men are as ashamed of being the second as they are proud
of being the first.
The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and
ambition, and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties, once
engaged in contention.
The leaders in the cities made the fairest professions – on the one side, with
the cry of a political equality of democracy, on the other side,
with the cry of a moderate aristocracy. Nevertheless, they both sought
prizes for themselves in those public interests which they pretended to cherish
and, stopping at nothing in their struggles for ascendancy, engaged in direct
excesses. In their acts of vengeance they went to even greater lengths, not
limiting them to what justice or the good of the state demanded, but making the
party caprice of the moment the only standard. They both invoked, with equal
readiness, the condemnation of an unjust verdict or the authority of the
strong arm to glut the animosities of the hour. Thus religion was in
honor with neither party; but the use of the eloquent phrases, to arrive at
guilty verdicts, was in high reputation. Meanwhile, the moderate part
of the citizens perished between the two, either for not joining in the
quarrel or because envy would not permit them to escape.
Every form of iniquity took root in the Hellenic countries because of those
troubles. The ancient simplicity, into which honor so largely entered, was
laughed down and disappeared. The society became divided into camps in which no
man trusted his fellow. To put an end to this, there was neither promise to be
depended upon nor oath that could command respect. All parties, dwelling rather
in their calculation upon the hopelessness of a permanent state of things, were
more intent upon self-defense than capable of confidence.
In this contest, the blunter wits were most successful. Apprehensive of their
own deficiencies and of the cleverness of their antagonists, they feared to be
entangled into a debate and to be surprised by the combinations of their more
versatile opponents. Therefore, they boldly had resorted to actions; and their
adversaries often fell victims to own lack of precaution, arrogantly thinking
that they would know in time and that it was unnecessary to secure by actions
what policy could provide.
Meanwhile Corcyra gave the first example of most of the crimes alluded to:
firstly, of the retaliation exacted by the lower classes, who had never
experienced equitable treatment or indeed anything but insolence from their
rulers. Secondly, of the gross injustice of those who desired to get rid
of their accustomed poverty and ardently coveted their neighbors’ goods. And
thirdly, of the savage and pitiless excesses, into which, men, who had begun
the struggle not in a class but in a party spirit, were hurried by their unruly
passions. In the confusion, into which life was now thrown in the cities, the
human nature, always rebelling against the law and now its master, gladly showed
itself unruly in passion, above respect for justice, and the enemy of all
superiority. The human nature, had it not been for the fatal power of envy,
showed itself unruly because any its pivotal point would not have been set above
religion and gain above justice. Indeed, men, who too often take upon themselves
in the prosecution of their revenge and set the example how to get rid of those
general laws to which everyone can look for salvation in adversity, these very
men allow these laws to subsist until the day of danger when the aid of these
laws may be required for their own salvation.
While the revolutionary passions, thus for the first time, displayed themselves
in the factions of Corcyra, Eurymedon and the Athenian fleet sailed away. After
that, some 500 Corcyraean exiles, who had succeeded in escaping, took some forts
on the mainland and, becoming masters of the Corcyraean territory on the
mainland, made this their base to plunder their countrymen in the island. They
did so much damage as to cause a severe famine in the city. They also sent
envoys to Sparta and Corinth to negotiate their restoration. However, meeting
with no success, they got together boats and mercenaries and crossed over to the
island, being about 600 in all. They burned their boats, so as to have no hope
except in becoming masters of the country, and went up to Mount Istone.
Fortifying themselves there, they began to harm those in the city and obtain
command of the country.
At the close of the same summer, the Athenians sent 20 ships under the command
of Laches... and Charoeades... to Sicily, where the Syracusans and Leontines
were at war. The Syracusans had for allies all the Dorian cities except Camarina
– these had all been included in the Lacedaemonian [Dorian] confederacy from the
commencement of the war, though they had not taken any active part in it – the
Leontines had Camarina and the Chalcidian cities. In Italy, the Locrians were
for the Syracusans, the Rhegians for their Leontine kinsmen. The allies of the
Leontines now sent to Athens and appealed to their ancient alliance and to their
Ionian origin, to persuade the Athenians to send them a fleet, as the Syracusans
were blockading them by land and sea. The Athenians sent it upon the plea of
their common descent, but in reality to prevent the export of Sicilian corn to
the Peloponnesus and to test the possibility of bringing Sicily into subjection.
Accordingly they established themselves at Rhegium in Italy, and from thence
carried on the war in concert with their allies." Ibid. Bk.3, ch.70-86.
During the three decades before this war, the
Athenian middle-class has had Pericles’ effective leadership. In the Assembly,
Pericles could assert with sounded arguments those policies, which he saw as for
the common good and often he had won over those that were directed in the
interests of a few aristocrats. After Pericles’ death and during the war, the
new Athenian leaders, instead of examining issues soberly on their substance
(the benefit of majority in the long run), rather preferred to support policies
that would gain them the popular votes now-and-here. In their turn, these votes
would give the leaders an opportunity to gain the personal wealth in the
short-run. Having such leaders, the Assembly at times acted over-eager and
unwise, as it did taking decisions about the Sicilian expedition. After the
failure of this expedition, the already deteriorated moral of the Athenians was
decaying by the hour; frequent panic and riots had led the aristocrats to power
and they gained control of Athens in 411 BC. Seeking to deprive the middle-class
of its political influence, the aristocrats reformed the executive body (of the
500 into the 400) and restricted citizenship to 4000 men. However, the crews of
the Athenian fleet, loyal to the democrats, challenged the authority of the new
government and forced the aristocrats to flee.
When the Spartan aristocrats defeated the Athenians in 404 BC, they restored the
aristocratic rule in Athens. The executive body of thirty, led by Critias,
trampled on the democratic rights of the Athenians, confiscated their property
and condemned many people to death. In less than a year, the new military
bureaucracy was deposed by the returned exiles who led the uprising.
The Peloponnesian War was the great crisis of the Hellenic urban culture, after
which it could not fully recover – either bodily (economically) or spiritually
(politically). The general result of this war and these revolutions was a
deterioration of the Greek culture (their economics and politics). The
industrialization of the Ionian States, including Athens, was shattered; and the
tiny remnants of the middle-class again had to wear a yoke of the hereditary
bureaucracy. The Greeks’ social conscious (civic responsibility) and their
devotion to the commonwealth that marked the Age of Pericles, now degenerated
into the egoistic concern for private affairs and non-civic ir-responsibility.
Increasingly, the professional bureaucrats, rather than the common people, would
execute the social goals (and even would define those goals); the mercenaries
began to replace the citizen-soldiers.
The economically and politically retarded Sparta could not unite the Greek
world; only the industrial and open-minded Athens could do it. In many
city-states, the aristocratic Spartans replaced the democratic governments with
the aristocratic puppet-regimes under the supervision of a Spartan governor.
However, because of the vast territories and the difficulties in communication,
soon the Ionian city-states had thrown off the Spartan yoke, formed new systems
of alliances and persisted in their external and internal conflicts.
For the Ionian
Greeks, reasoning, living with human dignity (which is not the arrogance and
haughtiness of aristocrats, and is not the humbleness and the bootlicking of
slaves) and with democratic institutions here-and-now were of primary
importance. The Ionian Greeks’ interest in the average John was so great that
even their gods were anthropomorphic, that is, created in the image and shape of
man – slightly idealized man, of course.
Zeus was the powerful chief of the gods and ruler of the heavens. Apollo was the
sun god, the god of wisdom, light, poetry and healing. He was usually depicted
as serene, poised, and majestic. Dionysus was the god of intoxication, ritual,
and drama. Athena was the goddess of wisdom and patroness of Athens. According
to a legend, she was born by springing fully-grown from the head of Zeus.
Aphrodite was the goddess of love, fertility and beauty. They were gods and
goddesses in the form of humans. And like humans, they hated and loved each
other – they were angry and jealous, and fought battles; they were joyful and
happy, and made love. They also took sides in the human affairs and wars. The
middle class ideology of the Ionian Greeks reflected their interests through the
imaginative actions of their gods, who acted with certain aspects of human
characters, at their idealized best for the commoners. The ideologists (priests,
poets, and sculptor) created these images and materialized those gods in the
form of powerful, dignified, and graceful human beings. A few cultures had
believed in such humane gods.
For example, the
Egyptian gods were depicted through the extremely distorted animal and human
forms. But the Ionian Greeks believed into themselves to be the module, or basic
unit of measure; that is why they presented themselves in their sculpture of
themselves and their gods. The sculpted figures are strong and straight, with
many vertical lines to emphasize their strength, much like a column, the
predominant element in the Greek temple architecture. This cultural association
between man and the architectural column indicates that the Greeks identified
the human being with the characteristics of the column: strong, orderly, erect,
dignified, and handsome.
The column symbolized the living man, his human reason (conscious) and his
animal (procreative) spirit (subconscious). Thus, we think of the Ionian Greeks
dedicating their multi-columnar temples not only to the ideas of natural powers
(gods), but also to the ideal man, the substitute of the average John. Thus, the
commoner, with his common sense, indeed, became the measure of all things, even
of his gods. As each column contributed to the support of the whole structure,
so each commoner contributed his support to the whole community.
In their concept of the community (polis –
the city-state) lies the Ionian Greeks’ greatest creation. Their polis (from
which comes such words as politics and police), their city-state, their
institutions or bureaucracy was created through the process of trial and error,
with the intent to find out such a form of government, which would not oppress
the commoners, like the previous, monarchical form did. Rather, the Ionian
Greeks realized their interests as the interests of the majority, of the
commoners; and they were committed to materialize these interests into the
republican form of their bureaucracy. Thus, their republican ideal influenced
all aspects of their lives – their spiritual and material culture (customs,
science, and art).
The spiritual
center of the city-state was the State, its republican bureaucracy, which
presided in a high and sacred place of the city. Originally, it was a fortified
stronghold, but it became more a symbolic than a practical place. It was called
the Acropolis (from Greek, acro means ‘high’, and polis means
‘citadel’). Upon it was focused much of the ritual and ceremony of Greek life.
The Athenian Acropolis was crowned by a mere handful of buildings, erected
during the Periclean Age of Athens. There is a building at the entrance of it,
which is called the Propylaea. Right next to it stands a tiny temple dedicated
to the patron goddess of Athens for her help in the victory over the Persians.
Toward the center of this vast platform were built two more temples, the
Erechtheum and the Parthenon. The latter was dedicated to the goddess Athena and
housed her statue, made of ivory and gold.
Humongous dimensions of the Egyptian pyramids did not inspire the Ionic
imagination. Rather, the Ionian Greeks took pride in painstaking refinements and
subtleties of their artworks. The above mentioned four buildings are not a large
number to crown a great age. But to the Ionian artists, as to the Dorian
athletes, excellence was a goal to be pursued in all aspects of life. Attainment
of perfection, of the complete realization of one’s potential, was called
arete (virtue).
The Greek ethical theories circled around the notion of virtue (arete).
The dominant upper class of the Dorians, through their ideologists, worked out
their virtues as ‘manhood and excellence’. The dominant middle-class of the
Ionians worked out their virtues as ‘goodness and excellence’. The virtues of
manhood were bravery in war and loyalty (discipline) in peace. The virtues of
goodness were daring with deliberation in business. Both of the Greeks
understood the virtue of excellence as the activity by which someone or
something performed his or its function well. Thus, the function of a knife is
to cut; a good or excellent knife cuts well. However, the inanimate objects and
animals could not have manhood or goodness (bravery or prudence); only humans
(in a human society) have such functions.
If you will still insist that a horse, for instance, might have manhood (bravery
and loyalty) in a battle, I will say that, firstly, the horse might have
horse-hood, not manhood. Secondly, if the horse would understand what the people
(including its master) were fighting for, this horse would run from the
battlefield as a scalded one, with or without its master. If you would continue
the argument and sarcastically ask: ‘How do you know what the horse would think,
for you are not a horse?’ I would answer, that ‘Right now I am not a horse, but
my human experience shows me that 99.99% of horses would do the job, allotted
for them by a new master, as well as they did for a past master, if the new
master feeds and shelters them appropriately. Horses do not have human bravery
and human loyalty to human superiors. They might have their horse-leader when
they are in a herd, but they do not understand the human concept of superiority,
which is valid only in a human herd (I mean society). For a horse, its groom
(who takes care of it) might be far more superior to the groom’s king (who can
ride on both of them). Therefore, I believe that animals, plants, and inanimate
objects cannot have human manhood or goodness, but they can be the
excellent means for humans and the excellent extensions of a human
society, but not the indispensable parts of it, as humans do. Imagine that a pig
would be the president of our empire… Then, we would be the members of Orwell’s
Animal Farm, and not of a human society. Although a few humans can behave
like pigs, but they are exceptions, not the rule; and usually they are either in
a prison or in a mental institution.
Matter (God and Nature) organizes inanimate objects, which consist of
this same matter that is transforming from one living form into another, from
one system of organization into another. We usually call this transitional stage
– death. For instance, two centuries ago, my grand-, grand-…grand-pa cut
a tree. From the tree’s corpse, he built a country-house, which was gradually
decaying. Probably in the time of my grand-, grand-son, it will completely turn
into dust, from which a new tree will spring and, in five centuries, my grand-,
grand-…grand-son will cut that tree and built from its corpse a new
country-house, which will decay and… you’ve got the picture. All living objects
decay to the molecules, atoms, electron-positrons, etc., and finally, to the
waves of light (repulsive force – energy) and the waves of dark
(attractive force – gravity). From that point, the matter begins its
re-organization by using its principle of duality – love and hate
(attractive and repulsive forces). Its ascension goes through the levels of
organization – to leap to the next level of organization the matter has to reach
its critical mass. From which level of organization (atomic, molecular,
one-molecule object, two-molecule object, etc., one-cell object, two-cell
object, etc.) should we start to label the objects as alive, I do not know. It
is rather a matter of convention (politics) than of science – the abortionists
know it better. However, I believe that all the laws of nature and society (such
as the laws of gravity and of supply and demand, for instance) flow from this
principle of matter – the law of love and hate (gravity and energy or, if
you prefer, Mother Nature and Father God). It is enough for this subject, for
the rest will be addressed in the third book.
Plato argues in his Republic that when reason rules the soul, as is its
function, the soul is virtuous (that is, it has and manhood and goodness). As
such, the human soul possesses wisdom (temperance and justice) and bravery. That
is, Plato tried to make an "excellent" mixture of the virtues of the middle and
upper classes.
For Aristotle,
the virtuous individual habitually chooses his path of action according to a
rational mean between two extreme vices. Thus, when faced with a fearful
situation, the individual chooses the mean, which is courage, rather than
wallows in an excess of fear, which is cowardice, or proceeds boldly and
fearlessly, which is recklessness. Aristotle, in his Ethics, recognized
that people are not always rational and their passionate characteristics can
never be eradicated, and therefore, should not be ignored. Aristotle considered
surrendering oneself completely to own desire as descending into the animal
stage of one’s development. However, completely depriving oneself of the
gratification of own desire and living as a hermit would be a foolish and
unreasonable rejection of human nature. Aristotle stated that by proper training
one could learn to curb one’s desires and achieve moral excellence when one
rationally avoided the extremes of behavior. "Nothing in excess" was Aristotle’s
motto.
However, Aristotle was inconsistent and did not stress the constant
feature of his Golden Mean Rule. There is nothing wrong with the want-to-give
and wish-to-receive in a short-run situation, but they become extremes if
they are practiced too long or as the long-range interests. One, who submitted
self to the constant influence of one’s extreme desires, may finish as a
beggar or as an insane; that is, his prolonged acting to achieve the extreme
desire would crystallize into his constant social function. However, the
constant practice of the Mean Rule brings the individual into the state
of internal and external harmony, balance, and will-to-take what is just.
Thus, he would find his social function, his role in a society, which is in
accord with his innate talent; thus, he becomes a peaceful and law-abiding
citizen. There is nothing wrong with an individual who has wished-to-be a
hero (to-receive respect from the society) and, when opportunity occurred, has
jumped into a flaming house and saved a child. However, when his wish-to-be
a hero becomes his constant obsession to be in the public eye, then, his passive
wish-to-receive may transform into active want-to-give (dialectics shows
that extremes converge into each other). Thus, he may start artificially setting
other houses on fire in order to give his "helping" hand to save their
residents. Thus, his extreme and constant obsession of being a hero would play a
dirty joke on him (making him a criminal instead of a hero) and would jeopardize
the lives and property of others. That is what happened with Nero, a Roman
emperor.
In essence, Aristotle, following Plato, also tried to make an "excellent"
mixture of the virtues of the upper and middle classes. Probably that is why his
Ethics, in large, have only been read by aristocrats. Nevertheless, even
they could not act on his prescriptions because, to be a courageous one, the
individual must act spontaneously and make a decision instantaneously. The
individual’s hesitating reason would not allow him to find the Golden Mean
instantaneously in an unexpected situation. While he is hesitating, others are
evaluating his deeds and will pronounce him a hero, commoner, or scoundrel;
thus, others would not perceive him as a courageous one if he would reason and
hesitate. That is why most of the heroes would tell you that they acted without
deliberation or hesitation, and they just did their job, their duty. Thus, the
morality of the upper class (bravery) must be separated from the morality of the
middle class (prudence). You cannot be good for all. There would not be class
divisions in a society if there would be no necessity in the separation of such
human characteristics as bravery and deliberation, and corresponding social
functions – the military and civil bureaucrats.
The Dorian and
Ionian Greeks and two of their major authorities on ethics (Plato and Aristotle)
agreed that the virtue of excellence is an activity by which someone or
something performed his or its function well. The inanimate objects, as the
products of the prudent commoners, could be excellent if those commoners act
habitually in accord with a rational mean between two extreme vices. To achieve
excellence in art, Aristotle said, the correct proportions of a building were
those which respected the scale of the common man, and reached a mean between
extremes. Thus, the buildings of the Athenian Acropolis are an excellent example
of the achievement of the middle class dominated Ionian Greeks in architecture.
The plan of
the basic temple form actually changed little over the five centuries of the
Greek dominance in the Mediterranean. They just refined this basic temple form.
They looked for the best proportions of the various elements, which together
make up the temple. Among the 300-odd Greek temples that are preserved to us,
many are smaller than the Parthenon, and many are larger. But it seems to me
that the Parthenon best represents the middle-class ideal of excellence.
For example,
the columns of some temples seem massive and crude (as those of the Basilica
comparatively with those of the Parthenon) while others seem tall and elegantly
detailed (as those of the Erechtheum comparatively with those of the Parthenon).
The Parthenon columns reflect the Golden Mean between the extremes of the
Basilica and Erechteum’s columns. Hence, the Parthenon represents the
architectural apogee of the middle-class dominated Ionian Greeks – the balance,
harmony, and proportion of their spiritual and material culture. Because it was
dedicated to the patroness of Athens, the Parthenon was a reflection of the
ideological (religious) ideal of the middle class dominated society. Its
architects had little or no practical requirements to consider; thus, they came
up with the idea to express the middle-class culture (its ‘software’) in the
‘hardware’ variant. Since Athena was the goddess of wisdom, the Athenian
commoners would best serve their own prudence by a temple that incorporated
logic and reason.
What
could be more logical than geometry? Hence, the Parthenon was based on the
geometrical formula known as the Golden Ratio. The Greeks reckoned that by
dividing any straight line AB into two equal parts and taking a part as
the second base of the rectangle they would have the necessary instruments to
construct the Golden Ratio. They would erect a perpendicular BD at point
B, equal to CB and AC. Then they would draw the hypotenuse,
and would mark off DE, equal to BD, CB, and AC.
Thus, they would get a segment AE that would not be equal all other
segments. If they would mark off this segment AE on the original line as
the segment AF (AE=AF). Then the point F would divide the original
line into two unequal parts: AF and FB. The relation of AF
to FB is the Golden Ratio. This Ratio can also be expressed
algebraically. The Golden Ratio is such a proportion that would be produced by a
line segment that is divided the line into two parts. The longer part (a)
relates to the shorter part (b) as the entire segment (a + b)
relates to the longer part (a); that is, a/b = (a + b)/a. The
value of the Golden Ratio is approximately 8/5 or 1.618.
The height
and width of the Parthenon are in the Golden Ratio. Thus, the middle-class
Greeks’ rational of beauty was materialized in their architecture. However, the
Ionian Greeks were not slaves to 2D (two-dimensional) geometry. To the contrary,
they felt in their guts that there is 3D geometry and that the earth is not
flat, but they could not prove it yet. Therefore, the Parthenon has the subtle
refinements of the minute variations of 2D geometric form.
The steps of
the Parthenon have a slight convex (bulging) curve toward their center. These
variations alter the otherwise straight lines and mathematical regularity of the
building. The columns are not equally spaced, but are slightly closer together
at the corners, as if the thrust is greater in the corners of the building. The
platform, from which the building rises, and the roof above it were curved
slightly, as if the earth was round. Thus, the Ionian Greeks tried not to
disrupt the water- and life-cycles. The columns also bulge slightly in the
center, as if they bear the heavy load. These slight deviations from 2D geometry
were probably intended to reflect the sense of flowing, of swelling, of life,
and of nature (its completion and unity). Thus, the middle-class dominated
Ionian Greeks showed that they were not slaves of the extreme deductive
reasoning, but they also relied on their intuition and inductive reasoning,
keeping own culture in systematic balance and harmony.
Standing next
to the Parthenon is the Erechtheum. Its columns are of the Ionic style. Compare
them with the simpler Doric-style columns of the Parthenon. The Ionic-style
column (shown on the right) is taller and slender than the shorter, stockier,
and more massive Doric-style column. And the Ionic-style capital has elaborate
spirals, like the horns of a ram, while the Doric-style capital is very plain.
(As usual, the aristocratic ideologists, who coined the names of the column
styles, mixed up their content with their forms, thus, trying ‘to catch a fish
in the murky waters’; however, for the time being, we will use their
terminology.)
The two
buildings are complementing each other, just as reason (conscious) and emotion
(subconscious) of each human being are complementing each other in his mind
(soul). The massive, symmetrical and masculine Parthenon stands juxtaposed to
the more elegant, graceful, and feminine Erechtheum. The most distinctive
feature of the Erechtheum is the Porch of the Maidens. The columns of this porch
represent the direct association of a column with a human being. This porch
showed that 2D geometry was not enough to fulfill the middle-class ideals, to
achieve the virtue of daring with deliberation.
This virtue
was also reflected in the Ionian Greeks’ idea of perfection in the human body.
They admired not just the brute strength in man but also the grace and beauty in
woman. Their balance in the deductive and inductive reasoning can be seen also
in their sculpture. For example, Polyclitus’ statue of the Spearbearer has
reflected the same concern for proportion that can be seen in the architecture
of the Periclean epoch. Polyclitus, whose works are dated between the years
450-420 BC, made a careful study of the proportions of the human body and wrote
the Canon, a treatise on the subject. His sculptures have powerful muscular
frames, with the faces that are square rather than oval and with broad brows,
straight noses, and small chins, the lines of which are sharply defined. His
contemporaries praised him for his technical skill, delicacy of finish, and
beauty of line. Polyclitus sculpted his Spearbearer in accord with the Golden
Ratio, which he applied to his contemporary idealized commoner. Thus, the
building and its sculpture were conceived as totalities that consisted of
orderly and harmonious parts, as well as their environment.
The Ionian
Greeks were also sensitive to the natural rhythms of life, and they took much of
the old Aryan ideology. Their sense of rhythm can be seen in the sculpture that
encircles the Parthenon in the frieze behind the columns. Although the rhythm is
repetitious, there are subtle variations; just as in nature, things are never
repeated exactly. Realistic bulging veins and rippling muscles of the horses can
be seen; however, this naturalism in reflection was controlled by harmonious
combination of the deductive and inductive reasoning. The rhythm of the
sculpture was reinforced by the rhythm of the columns. All aspects had profound
interdependence, and only taken together did they reflect the whole common man
and his world. All aspects were reasonably blended and harmonized, thus
achieving a systematic balance or a virtue of excellence. How was that balance
destroyed?
The decline of the civic responsibly among the citizens was the major factor
that contributed to the decline of the Greek city-states. The vitality of the
State depends on the willingness of its citizens to give priority to the
commonwealth over their private concerns. Thus, the main principle of a
democracy is the rule of the majority. Of course, the Athenian democracy had its
limitations. The lower class of serfs, slaves, and women was politically
neutered and deprived of the citizenship. Today, most of us believe that slavery
contradicts political freedom, but to the Greeks, these notions were
complimentary. The Greeks assumed that if an individual chooses not to die with
glory but to exist in shame that is his choice and his freedom. They did not yet
understand how an individual could be conditioned to a subservient state from
the moment of his conception. However, we should not underestimate the Athenian
democracy because it had some flaws. Their idea of a State as a community from
citizens, through citizens, and for citizens, is the keystone of the
contemporary Legal State – the government that based its actions not on brutal
military force, but on laws devised, debated, altered, executed, and obeyed by
free citizens.
This idea of the Legal State, as the embodiment of the social conscious, could
have arisen only in a society the individuals of which were aware of and
respected own individual conscious – own reason. When the society respects the
individual, the latter, in his turn, respects the former; thus, the society
becomes a self-sufficient and stable by its form. Indeed, during nearly two
hundred years after Cleisthenes, Athens has had only two short-lived attempts to
topple the republican government; and both attempts were made during the
Peloponnesian War.
The Greeks
removed the mysticism from the sphere of public politics. Holding that the
government is the major mean of the people to satisfy their needs (interests),
the Athenians regarded their leaders neither as gods nor as priests, but as men
who had demonstrated their physical and intellectual capacities for the
leadership. However, the Greek political life demonstrated the extremes of the
best and worst of the political freedom. On the one side, as Pericles proudly
said, the political freedom encouraged the active citizenship, reasoned debate,
and government by law; on the other side, as Thucydides lamented, the political
freedom degenerated into the factionalism, demagoguery, violent selfishness, and
civil war. The Greek politics, as their social conscious, also revealed both the
capacity and the limitation of the civic duties.
Originally, the city-state derived from the tribal institutions of the Aryan
nomadic people who developed a cult of a divine hero with its corresponding
monarchical bureaucracy. The laws, first, was directly and later – indirectly,
bestowed on the people by the gods. When the Greeks’ intellectuals became more
pervasive (and realized that the laws are the reflections of the social
interests), then the gods’ directives lost their authority. When the
sociologically illiterate masses lost their regard for the laws and did not yet
learn or see that the laws reflect their own long-run interests, then their
respect for the laws diminished and weakened the moral foundation of the
society. Because the majority of the population was the sociologically
illiterate, the result displayed that the Greeks became morally uncertain, with
a consequence of the party conflicts and politicians scrambling for personal
gains.
To that time, the Greek social life already had plenty of experiences and now
came the time when these social experiences should be resorted to; thus came the
time of the deductive method of thinking and such thinkers as Socrates and
Plato. Recognizing the danger of the moral uncertainty, the aristocrats insisted
that the laws must again be conceived as the gods’ emanations and the people
must treat them with awful reverence. That is why Plato, while championing the
reason and aspiring to study and to arrange human life according to universally
valid standards, also wanted-to-teach the youth with the tales (the "royal
lies", as he called them) about the divine origin of the laws. On the one hand,
for Plato, the Perfect State could not be founded on the upper class tradition
and its extreme offspring – the doctrine of the mighty being right (for the
inherited aristocratic attitudes did not derive from the rational standards). On
the other hand, his Perfect State aimed at the moral improvement of its
citizens, not at the increase of the State’s power. Therefore, the crux of the
problem transferred, for Plato, into the area of the citizenship. Indeed, who is
the real citizen?
An aristocrat by birth and character, Plato believed that it was foolish to
expect from the commoner to think rationally about economics and politics.
Plato’s Republic was his criticism of the Athenian democracy, which permitted
the common man to speak freely in the Assembly, to vote, and, by lot, to be
selected for an executive office. He wished-to-believe in the democratic ideal,
but he knew that the commoner usually has no time or ability to dig the essence
of a question at hand. The second danger of the democracy, he conceived as that
its leaders were chosen for non-essential reasons like eloquence, handsome
looks, and family background. The third danger of the democracy, he considered
as that it could degenerate into anarchy when the citizens, intoxicated by the
protection of their rights, could lose the balance and forget their
responsibilities and respect for the laws:
"The citizens become so sensitive that they resent
slightest application of control as intolerable tyranny, and in their resolve to
have no master they end up by disregarding even the law, written or unwritten."
Plato, The Republic, p. 289.
Such liberality leads to the confused morality,
continued Plato:
"The parent falls into the habit of behaving like
the child, and the child like the parent: the father is afraid of his sons, and
they show no fear or respect for their parents, in order to assert their
freedom... the young... argue with... [their parents, VS] and will not do as
they are told; while the old, anxious not to be thought disagreeable tyrants,
imitate the young and condescend to enter into their jokes and amusements."
Ibid. p. 289.
When the democratic State became internally
unstable, the fourth danger displayed. A demagogue would come to power by
promising to plunder the rich to benefit the poor. To maintain his rule, such a
‘Robin Hood’ would
"stir up one war after another, in order that the
people may feel their need of a leader, and also be so impoverished by taxation
that they will be forced to think of nothing but winning their daily bread,
instead of plotting against him." Ibid. p. 293.
Because of these built-in dangers of the democracy,
Plato believed that Athens would be ruled justly only when the wisest
people, the scientists and philosophers, come to the political power.
"Unless... political power and philosophy meet
together... there can be no rest from troubles... for States... for all
mankind." Ibid. p. 179.
Plato attempted to analyze the society rationally in
order to implement the acquired knowledge for rebuilding the Athenian State so
that each individual could fulfill his best – to attain the Socratic goal of
moral excellence. However, whereas Socrates believed that all people
could exercise their actions reasonably and acquire moral virtue, Plato asserted
that only a few were capable to discern unchanging and Perfect Ideas and
that these few were the real citizens and the State’s natural
rulers. Plato rejected the basic principle of the Athenian democracy – that the
commoner is capable reasonably participate in public affairs. Plato argued that
reasonable people would not entrust the care of a sick relative to anybody but
the best possible physician. Yet, in the democracy, the amateurs ran the
government and supervised education – no wonder the Athenian society was
disintegrating. Therefore, only those scientific minds who approach human
problems with reason and wisdom (that derived from the knowledge of the
unchanging and Perfect Ideas) should perform civic duties and rule the
State.
Thus, the whole Platonic concept of citizenship depends on the Absolute
Ideas. However, what if there are no such things as the Absolute and
Perfect Ideas? For Plato, these Ideas (Forms) existed independently
of particular objects. That was how even Newton got his ideas-axioms (not proven
wrong because we still do not have a unified physical theory) that space and
time exist by themselves, independently from matter. Now the question
relays into the metaphysical sphere – is there something that is independent at
all? The next question is: ‘Can a part of a system be independent from the
system?’ There are more questions – ‘Is our universe a system, is it ordered or
chaotic? Moreover, if it is ordered, then who and how would select the
citizen-ruler?’ From our answers to these questions would depend our agreement
with the Plato’s conclusions. Until then we must restrain ourselves from
criticism of Plato’s conclusions, and rather look at the results of their
practical applications.
We already know that Plato conceived the organization of the reformed State as
corresponding to human nature, which had three abilities – two of the mind and
one of the body. The mind had two abilities, which were – reason
(the conscious as our ability to pursue knowledge) and spirit (the
subconscious as our ability for courage, ambition, and self-assertion).
The body had one ability – the bodily desire (the "savage" that
wishes food, drink, shelter, sex, and possessions). All three abilities, Plato
united into the individual soul. Later, this model of the human nature would
serve the Christians as their concept of the Holy Trinity – Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. But for now, Plato obviously prefers the mind over the body, and
correspondingly divides people into three classes:
1) those few, who demonstrated the scientific abilities, should be the
rulers;
2) those some, who demonstrate courage, should be the soldiers;
3) those masses, who fell under the spell of desire, should be the
producers (tradesmen, artisans, and farmers).
Plato did not mention to whom these abilities should be demonstrated, probably
because for him it was too obvious, so obvious that he could not spare a word
for it. He also assumed that the entire society would recognize the superiority
of the intellect over the body and, acting on this assumption, the society would
create a Harmonious State in which each individual would do what he best
can and would receive what he actually needs. Plato implied that the State’s
rigorous educational system, that is open to all children, would fairly and
justly separate the students according to their abilities and, at the same time,
the educational system would be under the supervision of those
scientists-rulers, whom it tries to sift from the mass. The rulers would not be
interested in promoting their own children because they would have no family and
their children would be upbringing in the State’s boarding schools. The rulers
would seek neither personal wealth (which reserved for the producers),
nor moral prestige (which reserved for the soldiers); but they would
concern only with the pursuit of justice and happiness of the entire society.
Therefore, the upper class of rulers would consist of the extreme altruists and
the lower class of producers would consist of the extreme egoists; thus, the
entire society would be balanced, stable, and happy.
In Plato’s mind, it would be a Just State when people would recognize the
human inequalities and diversities and make the best possible use of them on
behalf of the entire society. This doctrine of justice was neither
exactly a democratic ideal nor an aristocratic ideal. His doctrine
was not democratic because he repudiated the basic democratic principles
-- the right of commoners to participate in government, their equality before
the law, and checks on leaders’ power. His doctrine was not aristocratic
either because he held that women and men should have equal educational
and occupational opportunities. It also was not exactly the lower class’
ideal because, although the scientists-rulers would search for truth, the
mass of people would be told clever stories ("royal lies", as Plato called them)
to keep them obedient. Besides, Plato could not yet directly argue on behalf of
serfs and slaves because the Greeks considered the latter as free men, who
freely chose to live in shame over to die with glory. In the same manner, today,
we consider the convicted criminals as free persons who freely chose to violate
our laws. So, what exactly was Plato’s doctrine of Justice?
Although the extrinsic purpose of this doctrine was to warn Athenians that
without respect for laws, wise leadership, and the proper education of youth,
their Democratic State would soon degenerate into the worse kind of mob-tyranny.
(He regarded social discord as the greatest of evils.) However, the intrinsic
purpose of Plato’s doctrine of Justice was to give all three classes of
the society the right blend of mental food that each one of them can use for
their particular goals.
Indeed, for nearly a millennium, Europe was rebuilding under the rule of an
order of guardians like that of Plato’s. During the 2nd European Dark
Age, the Christians customarily classified themselves as clergy, soldiers, and
workers (oratores, bellatores, and laboratores). The very fragile
infrastructure of the Roman industry was demolished by a new wave of the Aryan
and Mongolian nomadic conquerors in the 2-5 centuries AD. These Germanic and
Mongolian nomads thwarted the development of Europe back to its previous
agricultural stage, which could hardly afford the surplus that could support
both – soldiers and clergy. Thus, we could see the constant scramble between the
sword and cross for supremacy in Medieval Europe. Neither soldiers (who
monopolized the means of production, including the main of them – land) nor
clergy (who monopolized the means of education) could not effectively rule
without each other. Where they united against workers (tradesmen, farmers, and
serfs), as in England, France, and Spain, they prospered for awhile.
Although the united class of soldiers and clergy used formally the moral
ideology of the lower class, essentially they substituted Christ’s teaching by
Plato’s "royal lies". In reality, their interpretations corresponded to the
aristocratic moral ideology (like that in the Song of Roland) and the
hierarchical structure of their bureaucracies – either soldiers or clergy. The
ideas of Heaven, Purgatory, Hell, and even the educational "quadrivium"
(arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, in their medieval forms) could be
traced to Plato’s Republic. The doctrine of Realism (the objectivity of
general ideas) was an interpretation of the doctrine of Ideas. The cosmology of
scholasticism came from Plato’s Timeaus. That is why Protestantism
repelled their monarchical bureaucracy and asserted the lower classes’ right for
self-interpretation of the Bible. It was not only the aristocratic political
shrewdness but also the economic necessity that propelled the aristocracy to use
Plato’s mixture of the ideologies of all three social classes in own
self-interests, because, as Russians would say, "It is easier to catch a fish in
the murky waters".
Based on the same principle, the Russian communists, after their revolution of
November 1917, reorganized their party and State bureaucracy in the form
reminiscent of Plato’s scientists-rulers. They were a small minority among the
agricultural population and held together almost by the religious fanaticism and
severest discipline, skillfully handling the weapons of orthodoxy and
excommunication, and devoted themselves to the industrialization and
commonwealth of commoners. However, they could not abstain from wives and
children, the personal wealth and prestige, as Plato advised, because, as he
noted, humans by nature are jealous and acquisitive. Soon, when they became the
hereditary aristocratic bureaucrats, they became the main obstacles to the
economic progress, because heredity has little or nothing to do with reason,
which is the main engine of economic progress and is the main virtue of the
middle class.
Nowadays, when Israelis celebrate the 50th anniversary of their
State, the orthodox Jews stir up a new controversy – who is a real Jew?
Actually, the present controversy implies the Platonic question: who is a real
citizen, who should rule Israel? Is it the aristocratic land-owning minority of
the orthodox Jews or the industrial majority of the common Israelis? Of course,
the Orthodox Jews try to protect and conserve their aristocratic bureaucracy.
However, what does their heritage have to do with reason, industry, and
economic progress? The over-populated Israel can not afford to continue the
unproductive and ineffective bureaucracy. Now the Israelis have two choices:
either to go to war for new territories (with the following militarization of
their bureaucracy) or to industrialize their society (with the following
civilization of their bureaucracy and intensification of those means of
production, which are already acquired). In short, will their society be
dominated either by the aristocrats or by the commoners, that is the question?
You know what usually happens with those who stay on the way of the economic
progress or with those who instigate the expansionistic policies. It is
happening in Russia, it will happen in China and Israel. Of course, economic
progress will continue in America, with corresponding development of the
political institutions.
Today our democracy is not a direct one (to which the Athenians aspired from
Solon’s reforms) and Newt Gingrich only fantasizes about how computers can bring
us to that Perfect State. We are more concerned with protecting ourselves
from the State, which we often see as the "Big Brother" that threats and blocks
our personal freedoms, because our bureaucracy is still the aristocratic and
imperialistic one. Today most members of the lower and middle classes are not
sure that the State is a "fair" reflection of their personal "good". The only
peaceful mean to turn this tendency back, as it seems to me, is through
educating the middle and lower classes about their long-run interests and
amending our constitution in the way that will promote the conscious
responsibility of the commoners. In that end, the new amendment would require
the citizens to make "our" constitution one that is really ours; that is,
made by us, not by our ancestors or whatever. Each new generation of citizens
(which regenerates approximately in 20 years) should have a right to choose or
reject their constitution (with or without new amendments), in a
referendum. The latter should be held in every twenty years.
Indeed, if I am not allowed to change the rules of my life, such rules are not
mine but somebody else who forces those rules upon me. I have inalienable rights
for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that are given to me by God and
Nature, and it is my right either to take the manmade rules as my own (if they
promote my long-range interests) or break them into pieces (as the external and
alienable) and to create the new ones. When I will have my internal, my own
laws, then, I will police my own behavior and there will be no or little need
for the external police. Than more rigid a constitution is, in the sense of its
adaptability to the long-range interests of the new generations of a nation,
than greater percentage of the population perceive it as an external and evil
device that serves to the upper class to keep them in the subservient state.
Consequently, to keep this "deviant" populous in line, the State becomes more
and more the police state.
However, the Greeks were not concerned with mounting safeguards against the
State (the bureaucrats and, particularly, the military ones) because they did
not perceive yet the lower class people (the serfs and slaves) as the Greeks.
Consequently, they did not perceive the upper class organization, the State, as
an evil force that should be feared and protected against. The State, its
bureaucracy, should protect and was protecting them from the serfs and slaves,
and they loved it for that. To the Greeks, the State bureaucracy was a moral
association, their extended family that taught them the proper conduct to each
other and enabled them to fulfill their talents.
Now we would be better off if we define the lower class morality before we
continue to analyze the Plato’s doctrine of Ideas.
chapter4
Victor J. Serge created this page and revised it on 04/13/03