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.

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.

Homage to My Grandfather

Before I open hostilities in the blogosphere against the Freemasons, which I have come to see as a sort of meta organized crime group operating internationally, I would like to pay homage to my grandfather, Walter Scott Boyd, who may or may not have been associated with the Freemasons early in his adult life. He was named after renowned Scottish man of letters, Sir Walter Scott.

Sir Walter Scott is claimed by the Freemasons as one of their own. He penned works that addressed issues that resonate to this day and unexpectedly permeate the social milieu of societies around the world. Because these issues recur, they challenge us to reaffirm our values as open modern societies. Some of the manifold issues Scott wrote about include the relationship of religion and politics, religion and economics, religion and secret military orders, as well as sectarian strife, freedom of conscience, and rule of law. His works can be seen as helping people bridge their differences, and facilitating civil intercourse between members of societies differing in their particular religious and cultural backgrounds. In that respect, his works are tomes that still resonate today, as they address common issued we continue to grapple with in modernity.

My grandfather was born in 1906 in West Virginia, and was raised in Pennsylvania and Ohio. He worked his way up to the level of a journeyman metal worker, becoming skilled in the diverse crafts of metalworking. He rode an INDIAN motorcycle, and travelled around a bit with his fellow motorcycling aficionados. He used to tell me a story about a rather large Russian fellow in their group who would forget to turn after he got drunk, and they’d have to fish him and his bike out of the woods at every bend.

At some point he decided to go abroad as a true journeyman, and he went to Russia to build buildings. I’m not clear on the exact time frame, but is must have been Soviet Russia sometime before the rise of Stalin, maybe late 1920s to early 1930s. If he was a Freemason, he was an old-school, blue collar Freemason, who went to another country to work side-by-side with the people there, building buildings, creating bonds of community internationally.

I believe that my grandfather m a progressive Republican, along the lines of the Theodore Roosevelt school of thought. In those days, it was possible to be a Republican and a progressive. I recall at one point while I was in college before joining the army or perhaps after enlisting that we somehow got on the topic of communism, and my grandfather told me that it “reads like a dream, but it just doesn’t work”, after which I just sort of gave him that old smug adolescent sort of—how could you be so naïve Gramps—sneer. I was a pure-breed red blooded American who could never be deceived by such utopian drivel. Naturally, that was before I’d ever read any substantial studies of modern history outside of high school curriculum, let alone social theory, such as some of the work of Max Weber, for example. At any rate, I believe got his point across that it was worthwhile to take into consideration other ideas rather than to dismiss them offhandedly or dogmatically. And I was impressed that he had gone to what seemed a distant and remote a place as Russia.

Later years I came to learn that it was the USA’s refusal to integrate the newly formed USSR under Lenin, rejecting his pragmatic compromise of communist ideology for modern economics in the form of what he proposed as the New Economic Program. And it appears that the primary reason for that refusal was pressure from the Morgan finance empire, who had been lending huge amounts of funds to the, apparently, oppressive Czarist regime. Lenin had refused to agree to repay the debt owed to corrupt financiers by the Czar.

At any rate, while my grandfather was toiling away with Russians and whoever else was there erecting modern buildings, getting to know the and be known by people, establish a degree of mutual intelligibility and trust, it would appear that the House of Morgan financiers were pulling the strings in Washington DC to alienate and isolate the USSR. They succeeded, Lenin lost his bid to rationalize the economy, and Stalin ascended with an inward looking hard-line agenda.

That was a successful creation of an irreconcilable “divide”, which is half the battle of “divide and conquer”.

I want to belatedly express my gratitude to my Grandfather for doing what he could to make the world a more humane place. Thanks Grandpa.