Who is Eric Johnston?

Before I present a brief synopsis of the historical development of Japan as a backdrop against which to examine the Christian missionary and related issues, it seems necessary to give further background to some of the factors that have motivated this project.

Having worked on the thematic topics of Modernity and Identity as an undergraduate, focusing on the concrete manifestations I could find in the relations between East Asia and the West, it was natural to again take up those themes after moving to Japan. First, of course, I had to get the language down, but eventually I did find myself drawn back into the fold of related research.

During the course of the ensuing years I read some of the works that have been produced by a succession of eminent Buddhists that have contributed in manifold ways to the development of Japanese society since the time of Kukai, a couple of Japanese classics, such as the Tale of the Heike and the Tale of Genji. I started to look at studies written in English for some context, background information and the like, such as histories, literary treatises, and so on. I found excellent works by Marius Jansen, George Sansom, Robert Borgen, Gary Ebersole, among others, all accomplished Western scholars of Japan.

On the one hand, there was a wide range of well researched and well-written works on a range of topics in which I was interested, in fact, it required some deliberation just to decide where to start. On the other hand, while I was making my way through some of the above-described substantial body of viable scholarship on Japan available in English, I came across some astonishing and absolutely ludicrous writings on serious topics in the local and national print media by foreigners trying to pass themselves off as one sort of “expert” or another on Japan, though it was readily apparent from the teleology of their writings that they had not been motivated as a result of individual scholarship, and that fact was reinforced by the glaring bias evident in the writings, belying an ulterior agenda.

I suppose it just goes to show that there is some value in reading the newspapers and the like, as occasionally you come across a real gem of a story, even if not of the sort you were expecting to find.

In any case, the writings of these individuals were so blatantly propagandistic that I was incredulous, flabbergasted at seeing them published in the local and even national print media; it was incomprehensible. That raised several disturbing questions; namely, who was interested in putting out such disinformation, and what ends did it serve. That in turn resulted in my looking into the secret societies angle, the Freemasons, etc. The first thing I noticed was that all of the “authors”, and I use the term loosely, were based here in the Kansai area.

The writer under scrutiny in this post is a staff writer for the Japan Times, a long-standing and generally reputable English language newspaper. In fact Eric Johnson’s bigoted assertion that “…Nara was, in essence, a Korean colony” smacks of the type of the pattern of deception found in the so-called “British Israelism” fabrication disseminated by the Freemasons, or the parallel Freemason fabrication that the Japanese are descended from a “Lost Tribe of Israel”.

Such pseudo-religious fabrications are would appear to be disseminated solely for the purpose of deceiving people, undermining their cultural identities, diverting their energies from productive activity, perhaps even inculcating a sort of entitlement mentality. Such an entitlement mentality can produced a type of hypostacized subjectivity that can be harnessed as reactionary angst by an apt demagogue, for example. That is a tangential discussion for another post, maybe on the so-called “Tea Party”.

At any rate, one glaring common theme in some of the writings of Dougill and the article by Johnston was an inordinate and exaggerated attribution of the degree to which Koreans have contribution to the development of Japanese culture, religion, and history.

I have come to suspect that most individuals producing writings laden with religious subterfuge are Freemasons (or members of some other secret society); therefore, a question arises with regard to the existence of a connection between the Koreans and the Freemasons.

It just so happens that the most successful efforts of the Christian missionaries in Asia have been in South Korea, all occurring in the brief period since the end of the Korean War, as far as I know. I don’t know much about the spread of Christianity in Korea, except for the fact that Yi Sung Man, the Korean with rubber stamped degrees from Harvard and Princeton Universities who was ensconced as the first President of South Korea by his grooms in the American administration of Bible Belt Freemason Harry Truman, was want to spout bigoted evangelical dogma in an attempt to display some sort of charisma.  

In all fairness to the Freemasons, in the case, for example, that my grandfather was a Freemason, I’m sure that he would only have joined such a group because he thought he was becoming more pro-actively involved in bringing open society to places where there was little or none of the defining characteristics thereof. In his case, embarking to a remote destination like Russia to labor among the people, establish camaraderie, engage in cultural exchange, and extend the breadth and scope of international society in recognition of a type of species being among humans sharing the same universe.

On the other hand, even the Freemasons weren’t exclusionary enough of a secret society to serve as the vehicle for achieving the goals of some types of secret society cretins. I’m thinking of people like Cecil Rhodes, Yale’s Skull and Bones, etc. Mr. Rhodes started his own secret society, and one of the express aims of that secret society was to bring the United States back into the fold of the British Empire.

As England can be seen to be sort of a bipolar country with respect to its political system, being both a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy with a hereditary legislative chamber, perhaps one cannot find fault with that country for trying to cultivate relations and create conditions in other countries perceived to serve the interests of the British polity that would not be in accord with American values. One could point to the efforts exerted by the UK toward fostering the creation of the Islamic theocracies in the Middle East after WWI; that is to say, they didn’t promote the establishment of parliamentary, let alone popular democracies. Top down systems enable those at the top to conduct all national business, and facilitate the perpetuation of their status at the expense of a social dynamic based on meritocracy and social mobility in a free-market economy.

But for Americans to be actively pursuing such an agenda would seem prima facie unconscionable, if not simply illegal under American law.

This brings us back to Harry Truman, a farm boy from the Bible Belt that attained the highest rank of 33-degrees in Freemasonry. Mr. Truman’s friendship with one of the purported authors of Britain’s Balfour declaration, Chaim Wiezmann, and his subsequent unilateral recognition of the “Jewish state of Israel” over and against official US policy, betraying his Secretary of State, George Marshall, and pulling the rug out from under the UN process to establish an unbiased policy to guide the course of social development for the people in the former British administered Palestine, would seem to be contradictory to American values, in the above-described sense.

It would seem that any state named by including a religious denomination in its name would by definition be somewhat theocratic in nature, and therefore, somewhat un-democratic. Could that amount to direct US support for a connection between religion and the state in another country?

I am of the opinion that it could be argued that Truman’s act in and of itself violates the First Amendment, but that is an extremely complicated issue beyond the scope of this post. In any case, the parallel between the establishment of the Islamic theocracies by the UK and that of the act by Truman establishing a quasi-theocracy should be pointed out. It is indisputable that the burden placed on the citizens of the United States by Harry Truman’s impetuous act has taxed participatory democracy both home and abroad at an unsustainable rate that could prove to be the straw that broke the camel’s back--to borrow a saying from the region--unless effect corrective measures can be devised and implemented in the very near future.

Moreover, it should also be pointed out that according to the information available on the Internet, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, perhaps America’s two foremost intellects at the time of its founding, and the respective authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, were not Freemasons, though the freely associated with Freemasons in the course of securing their mutual liberty and building an open society.

So what are these people—the Freemasons and the like—trying to do here in Kyoto, Japan?

It was simply inconceivable to me how people like Dougill and Johnston, who, obviously knowing next to nothing about Japan, not only had the gall to write such blatantly biased and bigoted diatribes, but were also able to have such utterly offensive nonsense published, let alone in what I generally consider to be a reputable newspaper—the Japan Times.

The following link is to Japan Times article by Eric Johnston from July 6, 2003, and entitled:

Buried treasure: the mysteries and majesty of Nara
The Japan Times moved the link from:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20030706a1.html

to here:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2003/07/06/general/buried-treasure-the-mysteries-and-majesty-of-nara/
And this time I archived it:
http://web.archive.org/save/https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2003/07/06/general/buried-treasure-the-mysteries-and-majesty-of-nara/

Note that Eric Johnston also had “work” published in the Kansai Time Out, like Mr. Dougill.

Kansai, it should be notes, is where the largest criminal organization in Japan is based. It should also be noted that the criminal organization in question is purported to have a large percentage of Korean members, as well as a large number of burakumin (a former outcaste class) members. The current governor of Osaka, Hashimoto, is of burakumin decent. I will be addressing some of the recent political machinations of Hashimoto, such as the “Ishinkai” a title which has been inadequately translated or discussed in the English language newspapers that I’ve seen, and is laden with meaning related to the theocratic pseudo constitutional monarchy established through the Meiji Ishin (the restoration of the emperor as sovereign) and exploited to create an essentially fascist state based on so-called State Shinto. Yes, you might say that I’ve become hypersensitized to anyone trying to inject religion into politics.

Mr. Johnston uses the term Korean “imperial family”. The Packche prince who was apparently exiled to Japan, and from among whose descendants a female apparently several generations later married into the royal family and became the mother of Emperor Kammu were from an era when the Korean peninsula was divided into three separate kingdoms, which were frequently in conflict, as well as a small “confederacy”, etc. I can’t imagine that the term “imperial family” was used with reference to Korean royalty prior to the Unified Silla period (7-10^th centuries), which basically unified the southern half of the peninsula. This is just one such conflation mechanism at work in the rhetoric employed by Mr. Johnson. In this case, it is a juxtaposition of historical periods and categories that attempts to place Korea on an equal footing with Japan. It is a minor point, perhaps, but it demonstrates that Mr. Johnston knew very little about the history of Korea when he penned this passage.

Although the overall thrust of the article is to promote the quaint character of Nara as a tourist destination, Mr. Johnston intersperses passages including astonishingly offensive statements in decidedly strong language about sensitive topics. It’s as if he is trying to dazzle the reader with revelatory pronouncements. It is charlatanism, plain and simple. Maybe some would prefer the term skullduggery.

The article evinces a startling lack of historical knowledge on the part of the writer, though he refers to “scholarly debate” and such more than once, as if he were well informed. There is an inexcusable lack of fact checking by the editorial staff at the Japan Times, and apparent disregard for the sensitivity of the matter and the potentially adverse effects that could be generated by the dissemination of such atrocious disinformation to the public through the country’s oldest, and perhaps most trusted English language newspaper. It must mark a low point in journalistic credibility for the Japan Times.

More specifically, in the article he writes (bolded emphasis mine):

More conclusive is the evidence that Nara was, in essence, a Korean colony. Excavation of burial mounds found throughout the prefecture has revealed earthenware artifacts virtually identical to those found in similar burial mounds on the Korean Peninsula. And nobody challenges the notion that Buddhism first entered Nara from there. The word "nara" itself means "motherland" in Korean.

Imperial mysteries abound here and are most visibly represented by the above-mentioned kofun, which can be found at various locations throughout the prefecture but are concentrated in the northern part. Some mounds date back to nearly 200 A.D., but just who the occupants of the earliest kofun were is still the subject of scholarly debate.

For example, the Hashihaka burial mound, which sits at the foot of Mount Miwa, is nearly 280 meters long. Who, exactly, was buried here? While many archaeologists say it was an ancient princess born in Japan, legend holds that it was Queen Himiko, who ruled the ancient kingdom of Yamatai Koku -- which may have been less of a kingdom and more of a colony established by settlers from the Korean Peninsula.

Much of the pottery, stonework and other artifacts found in the mounds excavated so far is virtually identical to that in similar burial mounds on the Korean Peninsula, leading to the obvious conclusion that Nara got its start as a Korean colony.

These mystifyingly obscurantist statements contain assertions that are so ludicrous and utterly lacking in scholarly support, that suffice it to say much of the spurious nature will become readily apparent to the readers of this blog simply upon reading the following section and perusing the few extracts from Wikipedia that I’ve appended at the end of this post. It is equally baffling that he makes some of these pronouncements projecting an air of authority, and that the editors let that go to press.

Parallel Processing in a Zero Sum Game

Christian Missionaries in Asia, and Christianity in Japan

In examining the religious culture of a country, one can learn much from the manner in which the country has interacted with religious belief systems not indigenous to their country. In essence, if a country had been open to the introduction of a new teaching, it may be the case that the intellectual culture within the country was vibrant and forward looking, actively engaged in the cultivation of knowledge and wisdom. In more modern parlance, we could characterize such a society as an open society, or at least one which had aspects that parallel the current societal norms relating to the freedom of conscience, the freedom of speech, the freedom of association, all of which serve to underpin what we refer to as “civil society”.

In the case of Japan, there was a syncretic religious system in place for over a thousand years before Western intervention upset the social equilibrium. And monotheistic dogma and orthodoxy is easy to counterpose to syncretism and pluralism. In particular, the doctrine of Accommodation prevalent in Mahayana Buddhism, which fostered the development of the syncretic system of Japan, is woefully understudied and practically unheard of in Western academia.   

One of the reasons that I am writing about Leibniz and the Jesuits is to preempt the sentimentalist drivel that a pseudo-intellectual, most likely Freemason, almost certainly an officer of the British MI6, aka John Dougill, is going to have disseminated about the “Hidden Christians” through the gray media propaganda machine operated by front companies of the MI6.

There is interesting material about the Hidden Christians, but it is not as important, in my estimation, as the question as to why the Christian missionaries were banished and Christianity banned in the first place.

In considering the characteristics of the Judeo-Christian tradition, one would likely cite the most obvious feature of a one-and-only God (i.e., monotheism) as the defining common trait of the Jewish and Christian religions. I have recently come to view another characteristic of the two religions, which are commonly referred to as forming a single tradition, that may take precedence in some respects: the shared notion of victimhood.

In other words, both Judaism and Christianity share a common feature that can be characterized as a persecution complex. In the case of the Jews, the Old Testament recounts a tale of enslavement of Jews by the Egyptians, and that a prophet named Moses, guided by their one and only god, led them out of slavery and toward the Promised Land. Slavery is indeed a most extreme form of persecution. In the case of Christianity, the New Testament can be seen to portray Jesus, a Jew, as being persecuted by religious figures among his own people, such as the Pharisees priest class and the fundamentalist zealots, as well as the Romans, yielding more targets upon which to seek to lay blame.

Although the missionaries seeking to propagate Christianity would appear to have developed a highly sophisticated methodology for inculcating and exploiting a persecution complex in one form or another, it should be noted that there are very few Christians in Japan, especially in comparison to the neighboring country, South Korea. There could be a little social psychology involved there, especially in relation to the contradiction of a work ethic versus a persecution complex/entitlement mentality.

In any case, what needs to be examined first, albeit in a somewhat speculative fashion, is why the Christian missionaries were banished from Japan in the first place. How is it, you may ask, that Christian missionaries on a good will mission could represent a subversive force? I will sketch a cursory background here to be revisited and filled out later…

The schema looks something like this. The missionaries enter a country on the pretext of spreading a moral/ethical teaching, hoping to do nothing more than to thereby benefit mankind. However, in the case of the Judeo-Christian tradition, this involves telling stories of epic proportions that seek to cultivate certain dispositions in those receiving the teaching. Those dispositions include sympathy and empathy toward victims. In the case of the Old Testament, the victims are the entirety of the homeless Jews, and in the New Testament, the persecuted figure of Jesus. Eventually, if the missionaries are successful, some of the people to whom they have been proselytizing will come to identify the plight of the persecuted as covalent with their own existence. And that can lead them to finding a plight in their life where in fact there isn’t one.

As mentioned above, the plight of Jesus was two-fold: against the religious authority of a would-be Jewish priest class and fundamentalists with revanchist aims of restoring a theocratic rule and monopolizing political power; and against the state, that is to say Rome.

That in turn can be turned into a politically subversive movement—as opposed to a religious movement—if the people being proselytized come to view the political authority of their country as oppressing them. That in turn could lead a scenario in which the missionaries come to be viewed as personages revered for having brought a teaching that might liberate the people from a hitherto unforeseen insidious form of persecution. The missionaries may thereby ascend to positions of worldly authority, assuming that they lead the people to overthrow their leaders.

The only Christian missionary movement in East Asia that wasn’t undertaken on the premise of converting the entire population of a country to Christianity occurred in China, by the Jesuits. The Jesuits recognized an ethical teaching in the form of Confucianism that was a peer of that of the Judeo-Christian tradition. They therefore sought to accommodate that teaching in terms of “natural theology”, adopting a dualistic approach to traditions that was unitary in terms of content, so to speak. That approach shares a good deal with the Mahayana Buddhist doctrine of “Hoben” (“Expedient Means”, “Accommodation”, etc.).

Leibniz was engaged with the Jesuits, and supported their efforts at Accommodation. He was also seeking to learn as much as possible about the culture and history of China, which he then correlated, in a sense, with his extensive learning with respect to the Ancient Greeks. He was the first Western intellectual to engage with the intellectual, political, and religious tradition of China, and the results were somewhat astounding.

At any rate, the point here is simply to focus on the fact that there was one brief gleaming moment in the history of Christian missionary work in East Asia that evinces values of openness and mutual respect, not bigoted exclusionism.

The commonality between the Accommodationist position of the Jesuits and the long running Accommodationist approach found in Buddhism can be seen to lie in the trait that both share a characteristic openness toward the truth value of their respective teachings. That is to say, they felt that the truth would shine through, even if the teaching was presented in a manner that might not be deemed to be in accord with some doctrinal issue. This value also holds that the truth is basically accessible to anyone who pursues it with dedication, and the mode of presentation would not detract from the truth at which one has arrived after such a sustained effort. The truth would become self-evident, so to speak, and capable of being represented in another mode, if necessary.

Although Mr. Dougill has changed the tone and tried to shift directions in his blog posts of late, in his past writings for that nebulous (i.e., “gray media”) publication the Kansai Time Out, and the guide book he had published by a publishing company called Signal Books that releases titles with the status of a subcontractor under the American division of Oxford University Press. It was a rather convoluted process to figure out all of that, but that is the purpose of using such gray media outlets, of which Kansai Time Out most definitely was.

As to Signal books, I received no response from the person in charge of fact-checking and editing Dougill’s book, though I did receive a fair amount of cooperation from the person in charge at UOP America. It could very well be that Signal Books is a front company, one which publishes only books in specialized niche—primarily travel related literature targeting an educated audience—and that in this case, is a company that appropriates the reputation of a famed academic publisher, Oxford University Press, using some sort of insider connections. Mr. Dougill has told me that he has a PhD in Slavic Studies, which makes it curious that he is here in the first place. At any rate, publishing under the umbrella of an Academic name with the stature of Oxford University gives credibility to the deceptive and propagandistic content being written by intelligence operatives like Dougill, which contains a good deal of religion-themed subterfuge, and has obviously been crafted with an ulterior motive and subversive agenda—in this case, to cultivate certain types of dispositions among the educated travelling public. 

Note that I have complained to the US Consulate about Dougill and other gray media propagandists here in Japan, but have been forced to escalate the complaint due to inadequate remedial measures. 

It has therefore also become necessary to take this issue public, with the aim of providing a little enlightened intellectual guidance to those responsible for conducting the foreign policy of the United States, as well as having the so-called Intelligence Identities Protection Act amended by the United States Congress. Those are a couple of the objectives that I will be returning to here in the near future.

I would imagine that some of the people at the State Department and the like might regard me as a pretentious upstart, but the United States of America has lost touch with the role played in open society by the intellectual. 

...continued

2. 1.    Collective encounters with the unknown

The notion I have about the ‘liminal’ in Greek Culture is proving to be quite challenging to flesh out. So, before I try to articulate that in an intelligible manner—next installment—I’d like to preface it with a few remarks, and a basic outline of what I’ve referred to as ‘structural dimensions’ to the artistic use of the chorus in Greek Tragedy.

Although I’ve framed this analysis of the chorus in terms of structural dimensions, which is amply accommodated thanks to the dynamism the presence of the chorus affords to the artist, the perilous undertaking of proposing a theory of art, particularly an ancient art, compels me to make a disclamatory statement of sorts.

In attempting to postulate the basics of a theory of artistic mechanisms of an art form, the pitfall of discounting the agency of the individual beholding the artwork is ever present. In the case of Greek Tragedy, which has resonance more in a social as opposed to aesthetic sphere, and can even be participatory as opposed to simply a passive reception, I am reasonably confident that my efforts to avoid pigeonholing the agency of the subject are on track and will suffice. The crux of such efforts inheres in that fact that I will endeavor to sketch the theory on the basis of relationships that I perceive between the intentions of the artist against a background of specific yet multidimensional social context. Of course, such contextual aspects are open to interpretation, on plural horizons; at the same time, that it part and parcel to the collective undertaking of the festivals.

On that note, I should take a step back to reiterate a point that precedes any discussion of artistic intent. And that again relates to the feature regarding the staging of the dramaturgical reenactments at the festivals in the form of a competition. In short, the organizers of the festivals—the cult of Dionysus—introduced a dimension of the unknown into the festival by causing the competing playwrights, actors and chorus members to not disclose details relating to their performance in advance. I would imagine that it is in part owing to the dynamic effect of sparking the imagination of the members of the audience by introducing such a dimension of the unknown that enabled the festivals to thrive, and gave rise to an art form seminal to the cultural heritage of Western Civilization.

What I hope to accomplish with this discussion is to reintroduce aspects of the genius of Greek Tragedy which appear in a somewhat cogent manner to me, yet seem to be overlooked in the admittedly small number of modern studies I’ve accessed thus far. I feel that the notion of the liminal can serve as a vehicle for expounding a theoretical grounding of such aspects. This was not the original purpose of undertaking this study, but has taken on a significance on which I will have to focus more attention at some point in the future. So please excuse the inadequacy of this cursory presentation.

As this section represents the most theoretical—as well as the most difficult—part of my look at the culture of Ancient Greece thus far, I will follow it with an examination of Aeschylus’ “The Persians”, which I find to address themes that relate to the central questions of “modernity” I have been contemplating for quite some time now.

In fact, due to my limited knowledge of Greek Tragedy, I’ve also been concerned that I might be putting too much emphasis on what I’ve found in my recent reading of the Persians, extrapolating those observations to a general theory of Greek Tragedy. So, I’ve tried to limit the scope of the following discussion and keep it concise, with the intention of revisiting it after I’ve had the chance to reread Sophocles, for example, read Euripides for the first time, etc, and survey a wider selection modern scholarly works on those texts.

The Chorus

The first dimension with regard to the presence of the chorus is physical, and relates to the location of the area where the chorus performed, with respect to both the actors on the stage and the audience. The reenactment of the tragedies took place in amphitheaters, which were generally built into hillsides.

The chorus was situated in an area interposed between the stage and the audience, called the orchestra. The physical place occupied by the chorus within the amphitheater facilitated the ready juxtaposition, via the members of the chorus, of diverse groups with the figures acting out the main narrative on the stage. For example, the chorus could represent groups of people involved in the story but too large to be accommodated on a stage, or people peripherally affected by the action of the narrative.

Situating the chorus in a space between the audience and the stage enabled it to be used to good effect as an intermediary, in diverse capacities, offering the audience various types of perspective with respect to the story, in a manner limited only by the imagination of the playwright.

The second dimension is temporal, and twofold: on the one hand, the chorus moved around in the orchestra, dancing or marching, in a cyclical manner; and on the other hand, they sang or chanted their parts. Each of these features of the actions of the chorus offer modalities with which a contrast can be brought into relief with respect to the acting out of the historical or mythological narrative being carried out on the stage.

The main narrative of a tale will generally segue from one event to another, with the action following a recognizable, basically linear trajectory from a starting point to a concluding point. The chorus, on the other hand, circling around in the orchestra may appear to be simply repeating a series of acts without progressing from a starting point to a concluding point.

The use of singing or chanting, as opposed to spoken (or intoned) dialogs or monologs, might also serve as a medium for highlighting a contrast related to a propensity to use reason, or a propensity to rely on emotion, for example.

In this case, too, the contrast could be between a linear progression and cyclical phenomena, recursive patterns, etc. And again, the artistic use of such contrasts would be limited only by the artist’s imagination.

The third dimension is social, and relates to the fact that the members of the chorus would, on occasion, interact with the actors on stage, and/or members of the audience. Such an interaction might serve to open up a new horizon for understanding or further exploring the events being reenacted.

It should be noted that the playwright himself was usually acting on stage or in the chorus during the festivals, so there can be little doubt of his being fully capable of responding in a dynamic manner to any such interjection regarding the content he intended to present in the course of the reenactment. 

Greek Tragedy

1.    General – A culture of the liminal

Another cultural first in Western civilization that originates with the Ancient Greeks is the dramatic arts. Greek Tragedy as a mature art form arose from the festivals held in honor of the god Dionysus. Here too, a connection between polytheism as practiced in Ancient Greece and the development of a socio-cultural practice that generated a positive feedback loop reaching into society at large comes into clear relief against the background of the festivals of Dionysus, which hosted the competitions centered on the dramaturgical reenactment of events from Greek history or mythology.

In so far as the god Dionysus is associated with wine, music and ecstasy, his cult can be seen to represent a collectivity that embraced teachings and practiced that related to the human desire to live in life affirming liberty, on the one hand, while preserving an awareness of the latent tendency of individuals to react hostilely against undue oppression of their instincts as embodied beings, as creatures with a life in nature as well as the man made world of society.

It may be that the impulse promoting the dramaturgical recanting of tales depicting historical figures in a manner such as to highlight a tragic dimension was to transmit some of the cult’s teachings openly, calling attention to practices or values in society that may have been seen as oppressive, subjecting them to scrutiny. Such practices could be elucidated through dramaturgical reenactments of the lives of well-known historical figures or important myths, being depicted as factors contributing to the cause of a tragedy. For example, such practices may have been seen as factors contributing to the formation of detrimental character traits in individuals, dysfunctional group dynamics, or other shortcomings apparent in the lives of the figures portrayed.

The function that such an artistic endeavor would perform is socially progressive in the sense that by subjecting questionable practices and values to scrutiny it would help to ensure that aberrances deemed to be attributable to such practices could be reevaluated and addressed collectively in order to prevent the recurrence of similar mistakes and similar tragedies stemming from aberrant forms of subjectivity traced to aberrant social practices and values. In this manner, art, too, could spur society to make progress, and evolve as a collective. Greek Tragedy was a quintessentially social art form.

The artistic endeavor embodied by such festivals would appear to have been highly complementary to the collective political decision making process in the democratic society of Ancient Greece. An artistic mode of representing historically relevant occurrence could serve not only to stimulate discussion and debate, but also to enhance the depth and breadth of the subject matter by appealing to senses other than the intellect. Although the impressions garnered from an encounter with such an artistic rendering of history would have to be digested and filtered, they would nonetheless feed the decision making process by which legislation that could have an impact on oppressive social practices was enacted.

Thus, aside from simple amusement or diversion, the festivals of Dionysus can be seen to have contributed to efforts to ensure that the laws underpinning society evolved apace of developments on the historical and cultural fronts. The revelry at these festivals was focused, not dissolute. By bringing the emotional attachment to history into the open, the festivals of Dionysus served to enhance the collective decision making process by enabling participants to more closely link social practices and cultural values in a manner such as to reflect them in the law.

In this light, it is noteworthy that the cult of Dionysus—at least in its mature form—is shown not to have been an association of errant individuals seeking to promote deviance or promiscuous excess, or of anti-social individuals intent on promoting reckless abandonment, for example, seeking the dissolution of society at large. On the other hand, sensitive topics, such of sexual intimacy, were not glossed over or shunned as taboo; to the contrary, their importance was highlighted in a manner that demonstrates a degree of openness in addressing such topics, while preserving a due degree of delicacy in light of the importance matters related to such sensitive topics played directly in peoples’ everyday lives as individuals, and indirectly in the preservation of society at large. It was only through highly considered treatment of such topics that the festivals could focus people’s attention and stimulate peoples’ imaginations with respect to a topic of collective import in a manner that would also facilitate and encourage open discussion of sensitive issues among individuals. This is one way in which art can play a role in promoting civility in society.

The fact that Greek Tragedy derives from festivals celebrating the god Dionysus likely contributed to the maintenance of the open, interactive environment of a festival, which continued even after the festivals had evolved into cultural institutions that were highly organized, and the dramaturgical productions were undertaken by professional writers, directors, actors and singers.

The fact that the dramaturgical reenactments were held in the form of competitions is also of great importance, albeit in a somewhat counterintuitive manner.

We cultivated moderns would generally be in agreement that competition is not compatible with artistic creativity, or an artistic sensibility. The suggestion itself sounds repulsive, vulgar, and utterly counterproductive. While there may be some truth in this understanding, the function of competition per se in the Ancient festivals of Dionysus had resonance in a completely different register than that of the subjectivity of the artist—it related to the imagination of the audience. In a setting in which the dramaturgical reenactments were to be presented in a competitive context, the exact content of the presentation to be staged by the competing playwright/actors could not be divulged in advance, lest the concept of a competition be rendered empty.

In this regard, it might have been the case that the people planning to attend the festivals were informed of the names of the dramatic pieces beforehand, enabling them to refresh their memory of the historical events in advance, but it is highly unlikely that they would have been informed of the presenters’ interpretations of the events. In a competitive context of such type, the festivals could be transformed into a space in which the members of the audience would not be passive consumers, but plunged into the depths of a direct encounter of deeply resonant events from their shared history, as interpreted and rendered by personages deemed to be capable of presenting the topics in an engaging and meaningful manner.

Forcing such an encounter among the highly cultivated citizenry of the polis of Athens would have served to reinvigorate social intercourse regarding such events and their significance, and any insights gained through the encounter could subsequently be fed back into the democratic decision making process, for example, in relation to the norms and values addressed in the dramaturgical reenactments. This type of cultural activity served to improve the resolution of the shared background against which things stood out as intelligible to individuals, thereby strengthening cohesion in society at large.

The actual performances of Greek tragedies at the festivals were interactive and open on several levels. The physical presence and the diverse roles of the chorus are emblematic of the dimensions of interactivity. There are at least three structural dimensions related to the role of the chorus that merit consideration.  

To be continued…

Interlude I

Mystery Cults in Ancient Greece

The existence of mystery cults in Ancient Greece teaches us that tolerance of diverse religious beliefs and practices held sway to the extent that a number of cults incorporated teachings and practices that were only transmitted during secret rites. An individual desiring to undergo had to vow not to disclose under penalty of death, which was apparently a sanction provided for in the law. Therefore, it must be assumed that such teachings and practices did not in themselves transgress the law or promote transgression of the law, which presumably served to articulate various norms and rules that provided a degree of mutual intelligibility that facilitated a modicum of cohesion among the individuals constituting society.

The secret transmissions associated with the Eleusinian mysteries, for example, were conducted under the auspices of the goddess of agriculture and fertility, Demeter, and I would therefore surmise it to be likely that the teachings related in some manner to phenomena relating to the reproduction of life. With regard to human beings, for example, considering that across cultures the intimacy of human reproduction is treated with the utmost sanctity, and considered to be a most private matter between the man and woman concerned, the respect shown to the secret transmissions of the Elysian mysteries under the law shows that people in Ancient Greece placed great value on the right to privacy.

Here, it is noteworthy that Socrates, perhaps Athens’ most renowned citizen and an early champion of open society, is said to have declined an invitation to be initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, citing the reason that the requirement for secrecy would preclude his discussing the initiation with his students. To Socrates, it seem that such an oath would have represented a de facto self-imposed constriction on his intellectual freedom, perhaps compromising his intellectually integrity. His declining the incitation would appear to indicate that Socrates and his cohorts had come to understand that in order to promote learning and foster the development of a coherent system of ethics for informing a good life in a viable society, intellectual integrity and freedom was an indispensible condition.

The aptness of their judgment in this regard can be discerned from the fact that Plato introduced the thought and discourses of Socrates in a manner that would suggest that he had devoted a substantial part of his life to becoming acquainted with the scope of human knowledge, and that the fruits of Socrates’ efforts can be seen not only to have contributed to broadening that scope, but to also have introduced question that remain without definitive answers, and which may be questions that recur during the course of human development and intercourse. These questions posed by the thought of Socrates have led to various forms of reflection relating to the nature of epistemology per se.

There is little doubt, given the popularity of the cult of the Eleusinian mysteries along with the fact that its secrets were not divulged over the course of more than a thousand years, that Socrates may have missed out on something that was highly valued by his contemporaries and many people over a sustained period. It is also noteworthy in this regard that on the basis of what is known of the core rite of the Eleusinian mysteries, that is, that the transmission involved “something done, something shown, and something said”, the transmission would seem to embody a tactile, sensory approach as opposed to a strictly didactic approach to learning, giving it what we moderns would consider to be an artistic dimension.

Still, the culture of learning and sustained collective inquiry that the efforts of Socrates along with his students, cohorts and predecessors were intent on passing along, with an orientation toward the unknown that served to preserve freedom and enable an ethically valuable life to be led in an open society in which such freedoms could be enjoyed would seem to indicate that the reasoning on the basis of which he reached his decision to forgo the initiation was not without merit.

Moreover, although Socrates was highly critical of the Sophists, whom he essentially considered to be engaged in a fraudulent and mercenary form of pedagogy, as far as I know he was not critical of the mystery cults themselves. This would seem to demonstrate that he respected the privacy of the cult and the people who chose to undergo the initiations, expecting nothing more than a reciprocation of respect for his privacy.

Perhaps Socrates had ascertained through his interactions with the people he encountered who’d undergone the initiation that the initiation and secret teachings transmitted during the rites held some form of intrinsic value to them as evidenced in the manner in which they comported themselves in leading their lives. To Socrates this must have resonated to the extent he professed teachings relating to the ethical dimension of leading a good life as a citizen in an open society and sought to inculcate a mode of subjectivity in his students comprising a conscience, if you will, and the secret initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries seemed to have succeeded in creating a sense of intrinsic value in the initiates in a manner that would be in harmony with Socrates’ goal of fostering a ethically informed subjectivity.

To further clarify the point by way of illustration, in contrast to such resonance one can simply point to the stark contrast which many drew between the life work of Socrates and that of the Sophists. It boils down to the contrast between democracy, as brought into being by Cleisthenes for enabling a group of people to become reflexively self-aware of their shared history and culture to institute means for governing themselves in the interest of the collective, versus democracy as a vehicle that was misappropriated by a group of self interested people seeking to cultivate techniques of persuasion that would enable them to convince people to act against their own interests, or to not act at all, creating conditions ripe for exploiting some perceived vulnerability in the social fabric.

If the contrast drawn above is valid, Socrates again comes to the fore as a pivotal figure in facilitating our study of the early democratic society in the city state of Athens in Ancient Greece. To reiterate, Socrates’ somewhat ambivalent disposition toward the mystery cults, respecting their privacy but wary of the implications of secrecy, indicates something about the characteristics of the functioning of polytheistic religion in society in Ancient Greece in general. Polytheistic religion in Ancient Greece, as embodied in mythology, associated practices, and even secret teachings and practices served, in addition to the role of a preserve of piety, faith and a register of cultural intelligibility, as a vehicle for imparting various forms of learning, and promoting the cultivation of the value of living a life imbued with intrinsic meaning. It was not primarily a tool deployed by a privileged priest class aiming to secure its own status within a hypostacized socio-economic hierarchy by inculcating obeisance among the multitude of the less privileged in the name of an other-worldly authority in whose name they legitimized their status.

To Socrates and his cohorts the ascendency of the Sophist represented a trend of people who had access to the material means to a materially good life to sacrifice the intrinsic dimension of an ethically meaningful life in society in order to perpetuate their own status by means of artifice contrived specifically to deceive or mislead others in the course of public life in the opens society of the democratic polis.

We can see that this represents a corruption of the intellectual work ethic that to some extent informed the democratic character of Ancient Greek society, and to Socrates it is likely that the ascendency of the Sophists was a symptom of a metastasis that heralded the onset of decay and systemic disintegration of open society in the democratic city state of Athens.

It should be emphasized that the degree of respect for privacy that existed in Ancient Greece was an uncommon privilege that, once lost in the course of the history of Western civilization took more than a thousand years to recuperate and enshrine as a fundamental right guaranteed under the law.

game theory? or practice

b. The Games: Origins of an Institution

Another of the defining features of modernity that can be traced to a cultural institution developed by the Ancient Greeks is meritocracy. The Pan-Hellenic games, familiar across the globe in their present form as the Modern Olympic Games, represent an embodiment of meritocratic values and practices.

Games were held once every four years in four city-states: Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, and Corinth. They were conducted as open competitions, and any free man or woman from anywhere in the Greek-speaking world could enter to participate as a representative of their city-state, colony, etc.

Participants in the Games could set themselves apart solely by excelling the field in the sporting event in which they had chosen to compete. The criteria for achieving excellence were laid out, and open for all to see. It would appear that all who partook were in agreement that the rules framing the competition were fair; otherwise, it is highly likely that they would not have wasted their time and energy to prepare, travel, and compete. We can also assume that there was some sort of democratic process involved in adopting the rules in the first place, as well as revising them as the Games evolved over time and participants and observers provided feedback.

The winners of the competition were feted and honored for their superhuman achievements with a wreath—which was fashioned from a different plant depending on the location of the Games. In other words, the prize awarded for winning an event consisted solely in the recognition of the excellence demonstrated by a participant. There was no immediate economic benefit or gain to the individual, it was a social function, and honor was the reward.

The Games celebrated a set of values and ideals that they also strove to embody. In a sense, participants whose efforts to excel in the event in which they had chosen to compete earned them the opportunity to distinguish themselves at the Games essentially as torch bearers of those values. Their achievement at the Games was representative of an aspect of the intrinsic worth of the Games to all, and that intrinsic worth was seen in terms of passing the baton of hope to future generations that one’s efforts could bear fruit, and earn the recognition of one’s peers.

From another standpoint, the winners gained the respect of others through the success that they demonstrated one could be achieved by making a sustained effort. The Games established a normative realm of socio-cultural activity through which people were encouraged to establish goals, and strive to achieve those goals. In a sense, people were encouraged to make the effort to establish and live up to their own standards, which would then be built on by future participants.

By and large, it is probably not an exaggeration to say that the motivation to participate was to a substantial degree generated by the values intrinsic to the Games, and not based on some extraneous form of motivation.

The Games brought people together in an event festive yet highly focused, and which had been opened to enable people to compete in a manner dependent on skill more than cunning, for example. Time and space, two of the more readily apprehensible phenomena served as objective criteria against which performance was assessed in many of the events. Objective criteria of evaluation as found at the Games could then be extended and applied in helping to establish a degree of harmony among the various Greek city states, colonies and the like, which were prone to coming into conflict. Because the Games we an open competition that were well attended and based criteria that were objectively assessable to all present, victory could not be earned by deception; victory could only be won on the basis of ability and effort.

One had to make the proper choice of event to compete in according to one’s ability, and then one had to invest a daunting amount of effort to excel the field. Cultivating attributes such as these would help individuals succeed in society, and making choices and making effort represent matters people have to cope with on a regular basis throughout life. If we are to maintain a degree of cohesion in society as we pursue our several interests, we have to learn to recognize the capacity to make the right choices and then make the effort to follow through in ourselves and others. And individuals who do make the proper choices and the requisite effort must receive due recognition if the glue of meritocracy is to continue to hold people together. The Games represent one horizon in which all of the above become possible.

By bringing together people from far and wide throughout the Greek-speaking world, the Games also therefore served as a means to check hubris from being generated to excess on the part of individuals, or in any of the city states that sent representatives to participate. The honors garnered at the games had resonance throughout the Greek-speaking world and beyond, making the Games a periodic event that periodically punctuated a timeless and shared tradition in a historical continuum that united the plurality of participants and their respective places of origin. The Games enabled people to associate and interact freely in an open atmosphere of good will, taking part in a cultural activity that all in attendance could understand and appreciate. The Games served to open a horizon which emphasized the fact that people could interact civilly in terms of culture activities they valued and shared in common, rather than live in fear of mutually unintelligible aspects of difference which separated them.

It also bears mention that the Games were held in honor of Zeus, Apollo, or Poseidon—depending on the location. Therefore, as social functions having a religious dimension in the background, it may be postulated that the polytheism practiced by the Ancient Greeks contributed to the formation of pluralistic societies in which tolerance of different religions among inhabitants became feasible. The Games represent a shared horizon that opened the possibility for civil and open interaction among people who had aspects of mutual different in their respective backgrounds. Not only did the Games prefigure a prototype of civil pluralistic social intercourse, they created a common periodically revisited site that generated tangible results readily apprehensible to all present, and held out the promise for future progress.

Moreover, though the Games had a quasi-religious resonance, it should be emphasized that they were not a hollow ritualistic reenactment of mythological origins designed to perpetuate the status of priest castes of the respective cults of Poseidon, Apollo, and Zeus. They embodied a collective effort to periodically open a horizon in which individuals could gain recognition in light of their achievements.

and so on

II. Culture of the Mind, the Body, and the Liminal

a. Academia: Origins of an institution

The development of the academy in Ancient Greece as well as academic disciplines can be regarded as a tandem development to the use of reason in public life. If the Greeks sought to avoid the pitfalls that other nations with which they were familiar had suffered, then the discourse of history would be useful in providing a body of knowledge that illustrated such perils, or alternatively, examples of successful collective endeavors for the purpose of educating succeeding generations. Herodotus is widely acknowledged as producing the first historical accounts in the West.

The discipline of history is based on several discreet factors. The first is the recognition of distinct groups of people who share the basic attributes of culture and continuity through time. A second and perhaps more important factor is the recognition of the role of human agency and effort in influencing the course of development in groups of people. History does not assign causality to events on the basis of some supernatural force beyond the ken of human reason.

On the other hand, reason and religion were not necessarily mutually exclusive, as one often finds mention of the gods or reference to the Delphic oracle in Plato’s dialogs. It may be that they were useful in maintaining the distinction between the two. The Delphic oracles, in fact, are generally cryptic messages that require use of the mind to analyze and apply in one’s life. And perhaps the most widely cited teaching associated with the oracle is the saying that implores, “Know thy self”, which is a fairly straightforward call for self reflection.

The Greeks did not subject themselves to religious dogma or superstition in public life, as is typical in theocratic societies. To the contrary, the Greeks gave free range to their capacity of reason, and established institutions that expanded the scope for open exchange and communication in relation to manifold issues confronting society.

The fact that a form of the Ancient Greek language later became the lingua franca spoken from Egypt to Babylon after time of Alexander the Great bears witness to the transformative influence that the culture cultivated by the Ancient Greeks had on the Ancient World in Asia Minor and beyond. At the Tower of Babel they didn’t need to speak in tongues, they could speak in Koine Greek.