Greek Polis
We are living in times where we are being challenged to come to terms with what it means to live in healthy, balanced relationship with other people. More than ever, we are charged with implementing the democratic values that we espouse, and supposedly form the bedrock of our society.
More than ever, more people than ever, are marginalized and treated as expendable by the institutions that supposedly are organized to help. This is all a pattern in history that Marx wrote brilliantly about as a repeating cycle that can only be remedied through revolution.
There are many public health crises in our country and the world, one of them being the American Medical Association, coupled with the Pharmaceutical Industry, collaboration in contributing to an epidemic of prescribed pain medication addiction, over doses, and ruined lives and families.
Another health crisis is suicide. Every year there are 800,000 people in the world that die from suicide; one suicide every 40 seconds! Suicide is the fifth leading cause of death among those aged 30-49, and the second leading cause of death in the 15-29 years age group.
Walking Dead
The proliferation of zombie, apocalypse, and vampire movies, books, and T.V. shows corresponds to how dead, drained, and hopeless people feel. It is fascinating to me how a show like Walking Dead forces us to look at some of our deepest needs, instincts, and values of surviving, living, and thriving in a threatening world.
The characters must face issues of sacrifice, raising children, making hard choices, trust, and working collaboratively and democratically as a group. I think the show (going in to its 7th season), is a brilliant portrayal, on a visceral level, of how people are feeling as we are pursuing our inherent drives toward the pursuit of happiness.
Go Greek!
There are three main influences that make up the Western mind, they are the Hebrews, Romans, and the biggest influence in my view, are the Greeks. The Greek influence on our world view can be simplified in terms of Logos, Eros, and Ethos, The True, The Beautiful, and The Good. These represent respectively; Logos is the rational principle, which includes verbal and mental constructs- “In the beginning was the word,” (Logos). Here Logos and language is seen as the creative principle in which God manifests the universe.
Eros is the vital and relational principle in which erotic love, aesthetic sensibilities, and the passion for life exist, it is the archetype of the Lover, the one who appreciates and expresses beauty and compassion. And finally, what I want to write about today; Ethos- the principle of goodness, justice, morality, and the ethical dimensions of living in accord with others in the way we consider civilized.
The City and the Civic Life
Poleis literally means city in Greek, this is where we get our word politics. It can also mean citizenship and body of citizens, in which we derive our word civic, civil, and civilization, so we can see right away the nature of the Greek mind in relation to city, civic, and politics as being about a body of people living in a relationship to one another that is based on kindness, cooperation, and compassion.
In modern historiography, polis is normally used to indicate the ancient Greek city-states, like Classical Athens and its contemporaries, and thus is often translated as "city-state."
In Plato’s Republic, he considers the highest form of government as ruled by a benign philosopher king, who is an enlightened, wise leader who visions and enacts the highest good for the collective. The idea of one Philosopher King, that is the sovereign ruler, may seem foreign to us, but just consider what we are envisioning, intending, and desiring when we’re voting for a president, it’s just that, one who will lead with an enlightened wisdom.
The best form of government of the polis for Plato is the one that leads to the common good, this is the essential point that is truly Greek. Now we should also add that part of the reason the Greeks could envision such a high ideal as the common good, is because they had the slaves and wealth to do things like sit around and philosophize about this shit!
The philosopher king is the best ruler because, as a philosopher, he is acquainted with the Form of the Good. In Plato's analogy of the ship of state, the philosopher king steers the polis, as if it were a ship, in the best direction.
Tolstoy, Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, and M.L.K.
In order for a true leader to become acquainted with the essence of the common good, she must achieve a common good within herself. This is only accomplished through the guidance of one that has journeyed that journey and become, as Joseph Campbell wrote, “Transparent to transcendence.” In other words, one has quelled the opacity and hold the ego has on one’s life, and become translucent to divine guidance.
In the 12-steps, this is the 11th step; “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”
The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was struck by the description of Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu ascetic renunciation as being the path to holiness. He saw deeply into the nature of being human, and lived in simplicity and humility. Modern society teaches and conditions people to live in complexity, greed, and arrogance, this is the opposite of the common good.
When Jesus says; "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God," or “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven,” he is not so much talking about material wealth and poverty, as he is the psych-spiritual poverty and simplification of the ego.
The same is true of Buddha, who grew up in extreme material wealth, and went to the other extreme of asceticism before he formulated the “middle way.”
Once Buddha had his awakening, he was the common good that he took out into the world to teach. Just as Gandhi said; “Be the change you want to bring into the world.”
Just as Martin Luther King lived the dream he had;
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
All this is pointing toward the actualization of the common good in a leader before he or she is capable of actually leading.
Identity
Identity based solely on what you have, what you do, what you know, or your social status, is doomed to failure. Identity should be about who a person is, her character (see my essay on character), her inner core, her essential nature. If you have contact, and have awakened your essential Buddha nature, then you will naturally do good works, be very wise, people will be attracted to you, and you will succeed.
This is what a good therapeutic process is about- awakening and recovering your essential, good nature, which a lifetime of abuse and conditioning has overshadowed. It takes a therapist or mentor that can mirror back to you your goodness until it becomes internalized and your core identity.
This is the process that ideal parenting engenders, but as a society, we have given such little value to how a human being is made (i.e. parenting), that we basically suck at it, and we’re seeing the consequences!
The ancient Greeks’ strong sense of identity was grounded in civic life, to the common good. One's loyalty went mainly to the polis. The most tragic figure in Homer is the “stateless” man—one who lacked a civic grounding or identity. The ancient Greek poleis were never controlled by an official religion, but they were also never wholly secular. This is a natural separation of church and state, and we can see the seeds of such wisdom that we have adopted (some of us).
The Greek pantheon was a brilliant psycho-social mythology in which all the strengths and foibles of being human were personified in their gods and goddesses, so people could understand and cathart over the tragic/comedic drama that is human life. When religion came to embrace monotheism is when the real shit hit the fan!
Greek culture had a strong psych-social milieu due to having a pantheon with very human gods and goddesses replete with all our human strengths and weaknesses personified and dramatically amplified. This type of polytheistic culture, compared to the horrendous harsh monotheism of a judging, vengeful male god, is the difference between mental health and mental illness sociologically speaking.
The historical record shows a remarkable unity and integration of the religious, civic, familial, and personal dimensions of life. Great and highly defined individuals come to the surface throughout this period, but individuality was not to be won at the cost of the polis. To set oneself apart so as to give greater importance to self than to polis was a hubristic act deserving severe punishment.
The status of slaves and women, moreover, was markedly different from that enjoyed by the free, property-owning citizens of Athens. Contradiction and moral confusion are not unique to the modern world! But the Greeks had a brilliant embrace of the contradictions of human life and they celebrated it in the context of the common good polis.
Differences
We must be careful not to idealize Greek culture and recognize they struggled with many of the issues that attempts at modern democracy does, however, we do owe them a great deal as the progenitors of ideas, philosophy, and practices that we hold to be so dear.
It is important to note that the Greek Polis had a very modest size and population. There is a critical mass of population density in which you cannot enact what the Greek expression of the common good must have been like. So we can forget about the common good (in the Greek sense), in large, industrialized, metropolitan cities, they will remain a hotbed breeding ground for crime, poverty, addiction, and violence. A lot of infrastructure will always be to put out fires, and turn down the volume. We can see this as the Modus operandi in all large bureaucracies.
Ancient Greece also had a degree of ethnic and cultural homogeneity that would be impossible to attain in the modern world, nor should we try. But we can get people on the same page of music in a solidarity of what a common good might look like.
The ancient Greek world exalted individuality but condemned individualism. This is something that is very foreign indeed, for we are all about individualism, even to our own detriment.
For the Greeks, gods and the Homeric heroes are highly individuated, however, individuality was not to be won at the expense of the polis. The claims of individuals could not take precedence over the needs, desires, and wishes of the community. One who set himself in opposition to the polis would become an outlaw and subject himself to ostracism, which was felt as a penultimate punishment (as it was in Rome).
We have certainly evolved beyond the Greeks in the sense that Greek slaves and women, had very limited and revocable rights. The democracy that resulted from Greek culture was ever fragile, with oligarchs waiting in the wings to restore the initial rigid class system in times of strife. We see this being played out in contemporary times, which is certainly historic patterns repeating themselves.
The ancient Greek polis was the first political community to debate the very terms of civic life at both a practical and abstract level. Plato’s dialogues and Aristotle’s political treatises closely examine the relationship between citizen and state, individual and community, and the personal and the public good.
Aristotle
Next to Socrates and Plato, Aristotle would come to expound the essential nature of the Greek polis.
The law was seen as friend, as Aristotle would expound, making clear that all personal and collective initiatives point toward a political community controlled by the rule of law and pursuing the mutual benefit of the collective.
Aristotle would even regard the polis as prior to the family and the person! For Aristotle, the polis creates and sanctions the various forms of family life and the duties and rights of the individual members. The polis thus grounds the very civic identity of the person and preserves that identity in its memory of him.
Finally, the polis and only the polis guides human development, nurtures virtues, punishes vices, and otherwise realizes those human potentialities by which we have a flourishing life. This relates very much to our idea of the right to pursue happiness.
Aristotle explains that law has the property of philikon—a friendly quality. He identifies three possible grounds of friendship: pleasure, utility, and perfected friendship (i.e.,telea philia). The last of these obtains between those who want what is good for the other for the other’s sake (brotherly love).
Perfected friendship is possible only among people who are comparable in virtue and are thus able to render to each other what the other deserves. Montesquieu identified particular qualities as appropriate for those who live under various political regimes. Those who live under a tyranny should be inured to fear. Those who live under monarchy should possess a sense of honor. Those who live under republican government should cultivate virtue.
Civic life is most possible among those who live in friendly relations with each other. The right kind of law evokes the best qualities of the citizen and eliminates the worst. It is like a friend in that it seeks what is good for the other as other.
No comments:
Post a Comment