backtracking

Chapter 1 Ancient Greece

I. Political Culture

Democracy: Origins of an institution

“Tyrant” is a word derived from the language of the culture of Ancient Greece, where it meant “illegitimate ruler”. The simple existence of this word teaches us much about the culture of the Ancient Greeks. For one, it tells us that they were not a complacent people, and that their sense of justice was highly developed. That is to say, the Ancient Greeks recognized themselves as an independent collective group of people sharing a common culture within relatively defined borders, and did not subscribe to the notion that “might is right” was adequate or desirable as the measure determining relations between individuals, or the structural relations that facilitated continuity in the existence of the collective we call society.

Democracy was originally adopted by a people whose civilization flourished in a relatively young polity in comparison to long established civilizations of the Ancient World, including Sumer, Egypt, and Persia. Democracy was first instituted as a means of preventing one form of illegitimate and autocratic form of rule from being replaced by another. It supplanted the arbitrary decision making power under autocratic rule with a process for enabling decisions of import to the collective as a whole to be checked by means of a process that relied instead on the free use of reason in a collective forum open to all concerned members of the collective deemed competent to address such issues in a meaningful and coherent manner. In doing so, the social structure was transformed from a hypostacized hierarchy in which the process by which decisions that affected the whole of society were reached was opaque, to a dynamic in which ideas that advanced the progress of the collective decision making process and contributed to furthering the interests of the collective were given currency, creating an environment in which all concerned could both understand the background of why such ideas were meaningful, and the evaluation of the context in which they were foreseen to exert a specific effect on the course of social development.

It is safe to assume that during its founding period, democracy was characterized in that it fostered collective coping in a manner that both harnessed the creative energy of the members of the collective and facilitated cohesion among the members in a harmonic accord. In effect, democracy decentralized the political decision making process in Ancient Greek society, and issued an implicit call to all members within ear shot to be diligent in making an effort to be well informed, so that they might participate in important discussions, and meaningfully contribute to the process by which the collective self-determination of society was perpetuated.

The result was that political decision making power was dispersed, diffused into the plural members of the collective, thereby transforming the dynamic by which political power per say was exercised in society. It aspired to open up a new horizon in which all members could contribute more directly to development of society, and provided an impetus to individuals to make an effort to contribute, as it was in each individual’s interest to stay informed and voice their concerns, thereby intending to ensure that misguided decisions which might adversely impact the future course of social development—and thus themselves--were not implemented due to a lack of informed input.

Members of society could only maintain their status vis-à-vis the viability of the collective, and the society could only remain viable based on how effective the collective was in encouraging its individual members to exert their utmost energies with respect to their capacities of reason and creativity to produce ideas that might contribute to informing the best possible decisions for maintaining stability while guiding society along a prosperous course into the future.

The impact of this momentous development would be hard to overstate, as it gave impetus to the rise of an intellectual work ethic in the West that brought about abstract conceptualizations about nature and the nature of reality that gave rise to philosophy and science, and underpin the modern academic disciplines. In a democratic political decision making process, the course of the deliberations might be informed by an individual posing a single adroit question.

It is therefore indisputable that democracy in Ancient Greece was a form of political decision making that encouraged people to use their minds, cultivate their intellects, and acquire broad knowledge so that they might engage in various forms of social discourse and intercourse. The lives of the individuals were thereby enriched, and their efforts would yield the cultural goods and knowledge which would in turn serve to continually revitalize and perpetuate the life of the collective as a whole.

Democracy fosters a social dynamic in which questions are posed and answers sought in a process of sustained collective inquiry conducted within a socio-historical continuum which is by and large intelligible to all concerned.

Theocracy, on the other hand, attempts to create and perpetuate social orders that are generally characterized by having a ruling priest class that contrives answers to issues perceived to be a threat to the social order, issues such answers in the form of edicts, prophecy or the like in the name of other-worldly forces or authority. Moreover, such ‘answers’ are derived by means that is not subject to a public process of reasoned evaluation, and are often intended to preempt public questioning arising in relation to whatever phenomenon is impacting the collective. Such edicts are in fact primarily intended to maintain the privilege the priest class enjoys within the social order, and are often imposed on the populous by force, against the peoples several and collective will. The social order in a theocracy is characterized in that it is hypostacized under the guise of otherworldly force(s) of which the priest class is a self-appointed representative, and there is no social mobility.

It may be the case that democracy found currency as a formal political institution in Ancient Greece precisely because there was a palpable awareness of the events in neighboring behemoths such as Ancient Egypt and Persia, which were for all practical purposes theocratically ordered societies under divine right monarchies (dynasties). If there is merit in such conjecture, it can be assumed that the Ancient Greeks adopted democracy as a progressive means of avoiding the pitfalls associated with social orders perceived to be nonresponsive, nonproductive, and ineffectual for charting a course into trouble free waters.

The social order cultivated by the Ancient Greeks represents a paradigm shift in the development of human history. It punctuates a progression to a stage in which the activity of the mind is recognized as paramount to serving the interests of individuals and society as a whole. It places a high value on learning from each other, and from others in general in order to preserve and enhance the lives of both individuals and the collective.

The institutionalization of democracy as a political decision making process for determining the course of social development through the free and open use of reason in an open forum instilled people with the confidence that together they could make progress and successfully cope with what the future holds, and also compelled everyone to participate and contribute to the process, lest they fail for want of effort. The collective decision to adopt democracy was instrumental in fostering the ethos of Ancient Greek civilization.

on the road

Once I had the chance to venture westward out of the bewilderness of southern New Jersey, I came to realize that there was a tangible difference between in disposition with the people in hospitable Albuquerque, NM.

One day a friend from the school I was attending, his brother and I crossed the Rio Grande as well as the roadrunner inhabited tumble weed plains that lie between us and the Sandia Mountains, a range in the Rockies. The mountains were compelling, bearing a sublime grandeur when viewed from afar, which is transformed into a rugged yet inviting terrain in the foothills. Off we went, and inspired by the natural surroundings and invigorated by the mountain air, in a state of rambunctious exuberance to see that greener grass (or bronzer sand) on the other side, I led the entourage over one boulder after another in a relentless charge to the top, until reaching a an impassible agglomeration of natural obstructions that would have given pause to a mountain lion, at which point a somewhat reflective Michael made an adage-like pronouncement to the effect that “sometimes you have to go backtrack down the mountain a bit before you can make your way up to the top”. It was something of an epiphany—don’t always have to go it the hard way--and it dawned on me that my new friends knew the mountains well, and I was visiting from the flatlands. At any rate, we paused to take in the vista, and catch our breath before resuming the quest for a more welcoming route up among the bolder, crevices, and desert flora.

That was a memorable moment of respite, but it wasn’t long before I was launched again into a relentless charge to the top, , where I was somehow sure a better vantage point awaited my arrival.

Once again I’ve arrived at an impassible juncture, so to speak. That is to say, I intend to convey certain aspects relating to matters at hand here in the ancient capital city Kyoto, which relate to foreigners I’ve met here whose incongruent actions lead me to believe that they may be members of secret societies. However, in order to make the issues I am trying to flesh out more readily apparent and intelligible, it appears that I should first backtrack a bit down the mountain, and throw a little light on the path that leads up to the high ground. I propose to do by examining two public policy actions that have had a major impact on American society, and which were implemented by two individuals holding public office who were publically known to be members of secret societies.

The aforementioned individuals had come to hold the office of the presidency of the United States. In my evaluation, both (ab)used their position in public office to implement policies that promoted a private agenda at the expense of the public interest, as defined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If my evaluation is accurate, there is a very high probability that their action could be construed to violate of the oath of office the individuals in question took upon assuming said office.

I will examine the so-called “Faith-based initiatives” promoted by GW Bush, and the perhaps even more taboo, though increasingly problematic topic of the recognition of the explicitly “Jewish” state of Israel by Harry Truman. It would seem that these secret society types have embraced a strategy of using religion as a tool to be employed in a divide and conquer strategy, deploying it both targeting the subjectivity of the individual, and the collectiveness of society. Anything relating to the issue of ‘Religion and the State’ with respect to the United States, as it were, must preliminarily offer an interpretation of James Madison’s most prominent contribution to the Constitution: the First Amendment.

These issues fall within the continuum of scholarly work I have been intermittently pursuing on the subject of ‘Modernity and Identity’, in a conceptual framework I starting laying out approximately 20 years ago.

When dealing with secret societies and the like there is inevitably a dimension of conspiracy, as that is the reason that current incarnations of secret societies exist, for the most part. They generally do not exist for mutual protection against an oppressive illegitimate authority, but either to acquire public authority and use it to advance their private interests, or to subvert public authority so that it cannot function to check their depredations. Public authority in a democracy is the democratic decision making process.

One obvious recent manifestation of the first of these strategies are the deregulation of the finance industry promoted by lobbyists for the financial industry employing illegitimate means, as well as individuals from financial firms recruited into administrations eager to make it look like they were on the ball with the economy. People have been enticed into voting for these people even though they didn’t understand one concrete aspect of the economic prophecies being put out by this self-serving group of people.

The second strategy is rather more complicated to thresh out, but I intend to address that strategy in the course of sketching a general outline of a problem that has come into focus of secret societies attempting to subvert the open society that our forebears built, and we inherited.

This blog will present a cursory framework dispersed among chapters following a course of development in a historical continuum. The theoretical framework and chapters are to form the basis of a more fully developed theoretical treatise (or other type(s) of work(s)) in the not-too-distant future. This is copyrighted material, with all rights reserved.

The fundamental issues I address were first addressed formally and collectively by the Ancient Greeks. So to start with, I’m going to outline aspects of the civilization cultivated by the ancient Greeks which, though fundamental to informing Western civilization that eventually succeeded it, have become obscured. There is no doubting that the road to modernity starts in Ancient Greece.

The genius of the Ancient Greeks is manifold, and inspired. The achievements made before the demise of that loosely federated group of city states served as the foundation upon which a distinct form of civilization, Western Civilization, as we know it today, was to be built. What was it that set the Ancient Greeks off on a new path? In the Ancient World, religion served as a predominant organizational principle around which societies were organized, and that probably hadn’t changed much since primitive times. Though humankind gradually had developed codes of conduct, such as that of Hammurabi, Confucius, the social systems as a whole continued to be premised on intangible principles, and rule by decree under divine-right monarch.