Then And Now

Journal Entry: 11-25-2011: Modern Day Greeks

The ancient Greeks, according to Eric Hoffer, were, in the B.C. millennium, a people forming society out of a conglomeration of remnant tribes, peoples and diverse cultures smashed together on their shores. Where collective units break down, accidentally and unintentionally Fate may trigger an outburst of development and creativity from the alarmed individuals seeking to survive the horrifying, bewildering process. The remarkable intellectual prowess out output from these ancient Greeks is almost without precedent.

With Hoffer, one must read between the lines to decipher what is implicit in his seminal thinking. The incredible, short-lived outbursts of intellectual and cultural flowering evinced by many peoples and civilizations over the centuries likely came about when traditional social structures were shattered. The warm cocoon of tribal, corporate connectedness was for some years broken asunder. People only allow the absence of social structure and the loss of warm, communal comfort for awhile before they construct or adopt from others a replacement way of life and culture that ensconces the individual within it. This way he is not alone in the indifferent, hostile universe to face God, himself, his duty and destiny without emotional moorings in group propinquity.

What happened to the ancient Greeks, for some reason, was that they got a taste for being individualists and it led to their constructing a way of life that rewarded free and original thinking and independent living by individuals in a populated society or domain.
The Greeks were the exception to the rule that where traditional institutional structures are broken or obsolete, the collectivists that have lost their traditional way of life mope around for awhile before cobbling together a new way of life that lets them spend their lives asleep and without wonder. Most of the time these collectivist under went change but not awakening. There was not even a temporary, local Age of Enlightenment that was short-lived. It never happened at all.

The classical Greeks were a melting pot of many peoples. It took maybe 600 or 700 years for them to unite these disparate peoples into one regional people with a common ethos, common language, and common social and political structures that stifled their development, and ended their freewheeling, wondrous, productive brand of individualism.

For us to construct something like a Utopian society, it must be founded on five principles. God is who we believe in and serve. Spiritual and moral goodness are our dearest desires to work toward. Moderation is the way and means to happiness, health and plenty. It is the key to heaven. We must be social and political creatures whose primary human right is to live and grow as an individual and maverizer.

For us to replicate the Greek experience, we need to accept each of the seven billion inhabitants here lives by a personalized code of ethics. Each is to be provided some solid, basic training in philosophy to provide her with a metaphysical underpinning for her own articulated ethical code. She is to be well-trained to individuate with the will, skill, confidence and ambition to do so and do so well.

What would grow out of this would be a miraculous, unprecedented explosion of new thinking, exploring and inventing. By remaking familial and social institutions to supplant conformity, groupism, emotionalism and the unquestioning approach to the world, and a substandard yet common level of achievement with independent thinking, the vigorous exercise of personal imagining, the original processing of ideas, individual existing and rational wonder about everything and anything. Society will be culturally transformed beyond recognition.

Social institutions will not go to anarchy and chaos, poverty and lawlessness. Instead, they would be strengthened as real communities of freely associating and freely disassociating individualists do their own thing while keeping society operating smoothly as an entity. They soon would rival or surpass the ancient Greeks.