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History and Evolution:
By William E. Steinman:
Part 26,The Awakening:
September 15, 2003:
We should not leave Greece without acknowledging what amounts to a miracle of human evolution. That is the change of human focus from magic and superstition to science and reason. In essay number 6, I discussed three inexplicable events. These were the big bang, the development of life, and the development of consciousness in man. Now I would like to look at what seems to be a fourth inexplicable event. This is what happened in Ancient Greece. I prefer to call it an awakening.
This is the turning away from primitive notions of irrational religious beliefs, unseen forces, magic, and human servitude to a priest class. It was a turning toward reason, democracy, and human freedom. The earlier peoples saw the world as a place of magic. The Greeks saw it as a logical construct to be investigated and understood. Under their discerning eyes the world changed from a place of chaos to a place of order.
I believe this is another manifestation of the life force's drive toward higher life forms. To call it a miracle is not sufficient unless we attempt to understand it and tie it into our ongoing accumulation of knowledge. While we may never understand it, we can at least formulate some theoretical idea to be confirmed or debunked by ongoing history. We should want to explore the implications for the ongoing growth of the human race.
Mesopotamia can be called the cradle of civilization, but only if we see civilization as nothing more that an organized community. Real Western civilization is a product of Hellenist Greece wherein man began reaching for his best. Greece is a major pivotal point in the evolution of man. Later the primitive world of superstition and emperors staged a comeback in the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Church. The comeback held on for a long time, but the bag could not contain the cat. The knowledge of a better way remained alive. The superstitious dark ages could not continue forever.
With the Renaissance the primitive mentalities again failed. They will keep trying for there is a sickness in mankind yet. They only way that sickness can succeed is to completely destroy mankind and that is what the primitive religions are currently about. They would stop inquiry, stop research, stop science, stop freedom, and democracy. That's what Falwell and his cronies want. That is what the clerics in the Arab nations want, an end to human evolution, an end to change and growth.
Now, the Greeks did not abandon religion and spirituality. It is manifest in their art and poetry. It is also manifest in their temples and festivals. These things were an important part of their lives, but they did not dominate the Greek psyche as they did in the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt where there were god emperors and priests with magic powers to intimidate, control, and oppress people. In Greece the spiritual expressions were more of another way of seeing and expressing the total reality. They expressed it in combination with reason. There was ever the attempt to understand.
There is a great deal more about Greece that could be brought out and I do not intend to undervalue or short change this miraculous culture. However, I must examine these things with my own goals in mind. That is understanding, to the extent possible, the history and evolution of democracy, how philosophy influenced that, and how the events in ancient Greece influenced that. Before we leave Greece, let us take a good look at the good and the bad of Ancient Greece.
As I said, in my opinion, in spite of the credit due to Mesopotamia, Greece was the true cradle of Western civilization, it's institutions, sciences, and philosophies. This was the highest development of the human consciousness up to that time. It represents a magnificent flowering of civilization. The epitome of that was in Athens. Did it have flaws? Sure! We can look at those along with the good.
Too many writers glorify this time of Greek history without facing up to the fact that some really bad stuff was going on. When these people discussed rights and duties, they were talking only about Greeks. Others were excluded. These were not perfect or inclusive concepts. At that stage of human evolution, perfection was not possible. Ethics were in the process of blossoming. Even now, human morality has a ways to go. There is still an enormous gap between the rhetoric and the reality.
Let's look at the main contributions of Greece to western civilization. First and foremost must be the formal establishment of most sciences including mathematics. Next we find art in the form of sculpture, plays and poetry. Let us not forget the beginning of philosophy as a legitimate discipline. Add to those, the very first democracy and we have an era of human achievement never matched at any time in man's history. It is truly a miraculous time. Strangely enough, it was not a philosopher who gave birth to democracy, but the politician, Salon.
Democracy did occur in spite of the philosophers who deplored it. All three of the major philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, abhorred democracy. They had very similar views on leadership. Socrates and Plato choose as their model, the philosopher king. In Aristotle's case it was a king with a philosopher advisor. In retrospect we can see that all three of these men were greatly influenced, in fact biased, by the politics of their time. Though we can see where their thinking comes from, we need not agree with them whole hog.
Perhaps democracy in early Greece was an abomination precisely because, in a very real way, all three of these men abdicated their own responsibility. They are not unique in that. Throughout man's history, the thoughtful people have abdicated and left the arena to the thugs, buffoons, and demagogues. The same thing is happening today. The people who can think and are capable of guiding us toward higher values and achievements have abdicated. They leave it to the political animals like Bush, Clinton, Helms, Thurmond, Nixon, and others of that ilk.
This only changed for a very short time in the early days of America. Then the intellects of the thirteen colonies, the philosophers of that time, lead the way. They had had enough. That lasted for a very short time. Then the intellects and thinkers went back to their closets and left the arena to the political beasts. With a couple of rare exceptions, the political beast, with the support of the rabble, have ruled us since then. This is not just true in America. Regardless of the form of government, the thugs, the short term profiteers are in charge everywhere. I must ask, who is the more responsible, the thug who takes charge to steal, lie, and cheat, or the coward who knows what needs to be done and hides in his closet?
If the Greek city states had been able to unify, compromise, and cooperate as the thirteen American colonies did, the history of the world might be very different. Greece failed and America succeeded in creating a long lasting democracy. I think the major reason was the Greek's failure to create a strong federal establishment. Their inter-city jealousies prevented it. At the end, the sophists advocated pan-Hellenism, but, even if they had managed it, it was already too late. Rome was on the rise. If they had developed a stable unified nation early on, they may have resisted Roman domination in which case the face of the world might have been very different than we now find it.
America, on the other hand, did manage to create a strong federal establishment. No one understood the need for this better that Washington and Adams. Jefferson never did understand it. He struggled against it until he died. He would have created a government of strong states with a weak federal establishment. There are still fools struggling to make this fantasy of magically cooperating states come true. Although one of the American compromises was particularly abhorrent from an ethical standpoint, it did allow the birth of a very powerful democracy. It also preordained one of the bloodiest episodes in human history.
Slavery was also a common element of the Greek culture. Their good life came at the expense of much human misery supported by philosophy. The truth is, these three philosophers were not just elitists, they were raciest in the extreme. They justified slavery through a superior race theory wherein Greeks were fit to rule and other races were fit only for servitude. This, of course, is not much different from the positions of Thomas Jefferson and, more recently, George Wallace.
In spite of the fact that our representative democracy is currently
just as rotten and corrupt as that of Athens, I still see it as
the only realistic alternative for government. It is like our
educational system. We need to fix it, not discard it. The challenge
is to get involved and take charge without getting dirty. There
is a strong temptation to win by any means. We are tempted to
play the old ‘end justifies the means' game. Once we do that,
we have abandon any claim to superior values we may have had.
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