The
dance of Succession
“Whether
to succeed?
Wither to fail?
To wear the laurel
Or land in jail?”
It
has been such a pleasure writing for you over the years I almost wish
I knew who you were – but that would spoil it. As with lovers the
more you know about the other person often the less interested you
are.
Mystics
refer to “The call of the one”. It is both an inspiration and a
discipline. Simply put it is the awareness that for instance, for a
artist, all the artworks they creat are one. It’s variant I suppose on the
guys who would walk beside Roman generals in triumph saying “Remember
thou art mortal.”
When
I was growing up there was an unstable boy in the neighborhood. He
had a great deal of money, but he didn’t really look like the rest
of his family and his erstwhile father had been away from home
often. Like other wealthy people I’ve known he did not let the
presence of his wealth deter him from thievery and did little to
disguise his crimes. When caught he’d just shrug and be annoyed. I
tried the rule of one on him and he got mad at me.
Before
one can consider succession it is needed that one learn how to
maintain their rule. In America it is considered vulgar to openly
lust for power and so candidates often wait until the campaign is
goin and then declare they are running at the response to great
public demand.
In
monarchal situations the Kings real adversaries are often the nobles.
They both compete to exploit the peasants but this become more
difficult as time goes by.
William
the Conqueror (or Will the Bastard depending on how you see things)
being fresh to power was able to reward the nobles in his armies by
assigning them large sections of England. What the Norman lords did
in turn was take the Saxon slaves and give them the task of building
mounds upon which the Norman castles could be built.
But
of course that was of secondary importance. The two major reasons
were, by keeping the Saxon busy dragging dirt around all day it
assured they were too exhausted to ferment rebellion, and also, the
Saxons (named after the part of Germany they had lived in before they
invaded England) had been historically soldiers and they needed to
be broken – to get out of the habit of thinking like free men and
made to think like slaves. This takes years.
I
find this concept intriguing because it is effective and because it
is misleading. A good example of the technique involves the Shogun of
Japan. One warlord gained the throne and what he did is he moved
his capital to Edo, then a comparatively small town, and made it
known that he would offer favors to the nobles based on how splendid
their homes in Edo were.
Very
soon Edo became the most impressive city in the land- but what is
more important is the nobles had to spend all their money on the
houses and the celebrations that went on in them. The impoverishment
of the nobles was the shoguns real purpose and his family ruled for
250 years.
Such
methods continue until today. When I was a young man I worked for the
government and after three years I could make a good case for
deserving a raise. The situation was complicated because , like
Dante, I had entered the fray allied to a faction not currently in
power – and beside which the administration was extremely corrupt,
so they stalled and stalled. Meanwhile the other raises were
distributed as ordinary and then one day they announced that they
were on an austerity budget and no raises would be given.
That’s
politics. In NY state the teachers union is aligned with the
Democratic party and hence any improvement in the status of teachers
hurt the opposite party. On a national level we must be aware that
the less political clout the underclasses can muster the better off
it is for their opponents. In other words the stock market crashes,
the depressions, the recessions – they are not mistakes – they
are intentional!
We’re
now going to shift gears a bit. The US is now relatively stable
economically but from the late seventies until recently a series of
absurd economic measures meant to weaken the countries middle class
were instituted and to do this very strange stories had to be told.
All the leaders were guilty. By the time the second Bush came to
power the damage was done. The Clinton administration exhibited the
sham that was the two party system in the US. The wars, the
depressions, the collapse of the standard of living all contributed
to deep questions as to what was going on.
In
response people became very aware of the power of persuasion by the
media, of manufactured consent, advertising or brainwashing it was
the same and both ends of the political spectrum were concerned. One
thing that most agreed upon was that reality had become unhinged
and increasingly we were being lead not by reason but by myth.
A
hundred years ago Fredrich Nietzsche had predicted that as cultures
came into contact with others they would see that their own was not
unique which would lead to the “death” of universally accepted
Gods and in turn the rise of the superman who would act free from
boundaries of right and wrong.
To
some extent technology has fulfilled this prophecy in the rise of the
super empowered individual, but one might say the true myths have
begun to fight back. Currently reality is not much en vogue. The
largest selling book of the twentieth century was “the lord of the
rings.”
In
the twenty years of our existence the
Tamlinmediaco has covered first,
software, then the computer business, then the market, then the way
stories fit into their cultural contexts.
The
early knights of Europe were not often nice people. They and they
alone had the right to bear weapons, much like the Samurai, and
robbery, rape and murder was often the result. Thus Marie de
Champagne of Provence hired both troubadours and poets to glorify a
culture of self restraint. It was not unwise. As any psychoanalyst
will tell you if behavioral modification doesn’t come from the
individual the odds of it happening are small.
Thus
was born the cult of chivalry largely through myths such as the King
Arthur story. One could easily suggest that for the Renaissance to
happen and for God to leave center stage some other forms of morality
had to be created.
I
hope I have made it plain that we are in a similar situation
currently . To some degree we are, a a global society, holding up
well. We have not reinstituted slavery. Then again we have replaced
colonialism with neo- colonialism which, as it were, takes the
benefits of colonialism without the responsibilities.
Ordinary
genocide I find is best seen in terms of ritual sacrifice. They are
atonement rituals. The logic of the Jews was not incorrect – they
did not understand why the Germans did not use them for the war
effort – but the Germans were “not right in the head.”
We
are making an effort to control global warming and have not had
thermonuclear exchanges – all of which bode well.
History
always seems a record of how the wealthy lived but I suggest however
that we judge a society not by how well it treats it’s well to do,
but how well it treats it’s worst off.
Nietzsche
and Plato
Potentials
of the superior man.
Anthropology
has done a great deal in the last century to demonstrate the
universality of certain themes. Classically in fairy tales the boy
marries the girl, get the kingdom and they all live happily after.
In other words one generation successfully inherits from the
previous.
There
are bad guys, but the bad guys don’t win.
Early
on we did some research on Tibetan Buddhism and the different skills,
such as levitation, invisibility, action at a distance, heat
generation, etc, and made note of how they seemed to be like modern
scientific advances. They existed on two levels the metaphysical
and the practical.
For
instance a peasant and a king handle themselves different. A
peasant always keeps his eyes down cast, a king will look you in the
eye. A king is used to people getting out of his way. These type
things reveal the king even if he is dressed in peasant garb, and
there are times when the King must walk among his subject
unannounced. He must be invisible.
The
knowledge of myth is one way of learning such skills. Both Plato and
Nietzsche we may say, understood this.
Klink
Prelude
Essentially
what Nietzsche said was that mankind, once freed from the threat of
punishment in the after life would conduct affairs not according to
wrong or right but according to whether or not they could get away
with it. In this Fred was way out of date for societies had always
conducted themselves, as it were, beyond good and evil.
After
he died his sister tried to make him the official court philosopher
of the Nazi party, but one hardly thinks then needed one. My own
appraisal of the guy, for a long time now, is that he was not really
well read, or well travelled. His writing is at best okay. I find
myself echoing the comments of Robert Graves who ridiculed another
fascist who went insane – Ezra Pound, to the effect that if one is
take upon themselves the threads of a classicist one might at least
do their homework.
The
danger, of course with philosophy is academia. German academia iis particularly bad since theres no religious constraints. It has it’s
priorities – to survive and get paid. Few understood this as well
as Plato who watched the foremost logician of his day march to the
hemlock. This is why to engage in such pursuits it is not too good
an idea to expect recognition or reward.
Prelude
Essentially
what Nietzsche said was that mankind, freed from the threat of
punishment in the after life would conduct affairs not according to
wrong or right but according to whether or not they could get away
with it. In this Fred was way out of date for societies had always
conducted themselves, as it were, beyond good and evil.
After
he died his sister tried to make him the official court philosopher
of the Nazi party, but one hardly thinks then needed one. My own
appraisal of the guy, for a long time now, is that he was not really
well read, or well traveled. His writing is at best okay. I find
myself echoing the comments of Robert Graves who ridiculed another
fascist who went insane – Ezra Pound, to the effect that if one is
take upon themselves the threads of a classicist one might at least
do their homework.
The
danger, of course with philosophy is academia. It has it’s
priorities – to survive and get paid. Few understood this as well
as Plato who watched the foremost logician of his day march to the
hemlock. This is why to engage in such pursuits it is not too good
an idea to expect recognition or reward.
are your eyes getting tired? Here I'll switch fonts
Well. Here it is
summer once again and once again time to consider the transience of
of our existences.
Dig out those
philosophy books friends and try to catch up. Actually I read Plato
and Aristotle in my early twenties and, like learning how to ride a
bicycle - you can’t put into words what you learned but there’s
something there.
And this is apropos
the overall topoi. Which, it struck me a few moments ago is
confounded by the fact that it is the most important idea on earth
and secondly you don’t know what the hell I am talking about.
Actually I suppose you could bring the number of those who understand
thee writings to possibly one per cent of one per cent.
A bastard and
temporary variant of the theme is called the clash of civilizations –
which I don’t like because it does a disservice both to the
Moslems and the Christians – plus I am not sure I understand what
they are talking about.
I think it was Fouad
Adjami who went up to Bertrand Russell and asked if science had the
ultimate answer. Bert replied such was not possible, and Adjami said
that was the moment he became an Islamist – because he could no
tolerate a world that doesn’t “add up”.
Christian saints
have said the same thing, many times, saying in effect, “I believe
because it is impossible to believe” and most go even further,
saying if one does not believe on the basis of faith alone then
belief is worthless. Christ didn’t go that far. He just said
”Blessed are those who have not seen yet believed.”
There are not a few
cases in fact where Christ seems to be more Muslim then the
Christians! He cautioned that it is no good to have gained the world
and have lost one’s soul which is one of the arguing points not
only of Muslims verses the west but even of the more egalitarian
democracies in relation to what the French call “le economic
anglo-saxon”
Then again the
dialectic catches up with us, meaning one would hardly call the
monarchies of the middle east exemplars of egalitarianism, generous
as they may be
In any case one of the first things a working philosopher discovers is that it (the dialectic, or case study) is only good within a defined certain set of parameters. We can call these the terms of the discussion, context, or any one of my similar terms.
The irony is that it’s
like drawing a beautiful picture and then refraining from showing it
to anyone, such as the Tibetans who make lovely Mandela’s from sand
and then destroy them.
I
mentioned recently that beauty is often conceived as being in
relation to symmetry, consistency, purity and the like. I find as
well a close association between happiness and freedom.
To start Fredric
Nietzsche raised a fuss in the
19th
century because he said God was dead and man was responsible.
Neither believers nor non believers seemed to care, but everyone else
was quite upset.
It was the
implications that stemmed from this assertion that really terrified
because it implied that the zoo keeper had gone home, that the
conductor had left the train and Elvis had left the building. Some
might actually receive the news with joy but Nietzsche took things
a few steps further.
Man, he claimed,
was from then on to be free. Free from the chains of petty morality
man is free to do what he wants - beyond good and evil. Hence forth
people would be able to proceed as if no one else mattered – which
is the way that some had behaved from the beginning. Man would rise
to the level of uber –man, or super man.
At this point we must
explain that two of the most common goals of human life do not
involve being a decent percent. Both wealthy and smart people are, if
anything, inclined to view the common herd of mankind with disdain.
Nietzsche and
his followers then suggested the liberation of the mass of humankind
from what the French humanists, and Karl Marx, called the bonds of
religion would leave the dim witted animals in the human herd
leaderless and directionless, needing only for a strong confident
type guy to come along and tell them what to do.
Crime as such
was not a matter f what is wrong or right by any measurement, but
rather what you can get away with. God, being, as it we, the supreme
myth, the death of God was also the death of myth.
One could suggest at
least that Nietzsche predicted that the twentieth century would see
the advent of constant conflict as first one, and then the other
fought to control the notion of good via a voice on the radio.
Interestingly
enough the second half of the century , via the work of Mircea
Elliede, Joe Campbell and others taught us the biological origins
of myth as the rhythms of the body created parallels in story.
I have not the time
nor skill to go into all this different ways people dealt with the end
of the God Myth ---- many still haven’t. Some, like Camus discover
there is just something that remains when all cause and effect is
expended. Other initially start fighting the truth and then conceed
as does Aldous Huxley in “After Many a summer dies the swan”,
This next
section some might find disturbing but at least a mention of it is
critical to a full understanding because it relates to the
human(primate) social hierarchy .
Nietzsche
, felt himself destined for great thjings. The notion of marrying
just any old female did not appeal to him. As an “alpha” male
then, in the Germany of the time he took the opportunity to have sex
with prostitutes. In this way he was infected with the syphilis
disease that was to lead him to an early grave. nb - this long held belief is now being contested due in part to the long time he survived after the onset of madness. Irregardless a teenage heartthrob we may safely say he was not.
(There’s a sad tale
I’ll tell in passing. Paul Gauguin after spending a few years in
the tropics, and developing his characteristic style return to a
Paris that greeted him less then enthusiastically. Paul was a
masculine man, he had been a banker, had several children and had in
Tahiti a lifestyle that included many partners among the young girls
there. Downhearted, on the day he left Paris to return to the
Islands he picked up a streetwalker for a last encounter. He to
caught syphilis and return to Tahiti where he spread it among the
population before dying.)
Now I will say a few
words about sexuality in the ancient world, in particular
homosexuality and in particular the role such relationships played
in the culture. I do so because sex and power are invariably mixed together. Men traditionally enter the upper class through skills and women through sexual attractiveness.
Even for male humans physical attractiveness is often at least a predictor of success as intelligence. One need only walk through the financial districts of large countries to see this.
For the record I
am not gay, but I am not married either – much of my early adult
life was spent in hospitals and recuperating from a series of
birth defects stemming from my mothers taking an artificial hormone
prior to my birth.
The role of women
in Ancient Greece was not important. By the time of the Roman empire
they were able to at least own property but as for instance in the
case of Penelope, wife of the long missing “Ulysses “ wives in
Greekce were expected to remarry and handover any property from
departed husbands.
Brothels were a part
of every community and after all they were slave owning societies
with few constraints on prerogatives of the owners. The woman ran
the house and directed the slaves as to what to cook there societies
in Africa until recently were a similar thing happened. The women did
all the work and the men went to the river side and conversed all
day
There was what we
could call “ordinary homosexuality” – either love affairs or
one night stands – such as continue til the present and can be
compared with heterosexual affairs and then there was something else
more or less exclusive to the time and place.
(I must add that
current homosexual modalities are not my area of experience. As a
youth I was propositioned several times but no one even got close.
As with other things I’m more conversant once we go back five hundred years
or so
Ancient "Social"
homosexuality involved older men and younger men. There were
two aspects of it. One was like when Julius Ceaser adopted his
nephew Octavian and renamed him Augustus thus making him his de
fact son. Juluis was by no means heterosexually celibate. The word
was that he was named as guilty partying half the divorce cases in
Rome and in fact some believe Brutus to have been his illegitimate
son.
There are in
fact also strong indications that Julius Censer was killed as much for his
sexual license as for his threats to the republic.In other words he was killed by jealous husbands.
Augustus himself
while taking many female lovers, sought to put a lid on sexuality
because he saw it diluting the gene pool of "Pure Romans”. In a society such as Rome's it was an impossible task.
Plato, on the
other hand, as far as I know, liked boys. The Greek culture did have a certain predisposition towards the worship of the human body. It’s still something of a shock for
Americans to see the statues that Ancient Greeks took pleasure in.
We get the filtered down version but a great percentage of them are
of naked men – and not men in all their variety – but young men
with the bodies of football players.
The relation ships
between the Greek aristocrats’ and their partners was consummated
standing up, face to face and the parties manually stimulated each
other – what they call in the states- a hand job. This was
apparently some sort of ritual thing – and it did avoid venereal
disease.
The
symbolism, again is “the laying on of hands” and we might compare
it with the solemn occasion by which a novice is made into a full
knight – with all privileges and responsibilities. Even today,
while not in every organization there are many where in the CEO is
accompanied by a much younger male staff virtually everywhere. The
belief is that whereas a person of equal age and skill is a rival,
the younger staff is totally devoted. This can be compared to the
Roman practice of Aristocratic adoption.
There wasn’t
that much bequeathal of estates in Greece because among other
things, the Greeks never had the wealth the Romans had. They were at
war with each other much of the time.
Oscar Wilde was
once watering the lawn of a home, in the nude with his young
boyfriend, and his neighbor comes by, and very offended to which
Oscar replied, “My dear this is positively Greek!” Actually Oscar
was more of a donut boy then a greek god.
Plato ran an
academy, a finishing school for young aristocrats but was no friend
of the common man. the common man put his teacher , Socrates to death
for a crime no greater then asking questions. The legal charge was
teaching the youth to disobey the Gods - the real reason was he was
teaching the youth to disobey the aristocrats – a crime in fact,
even till the present.
I go into detail
about these practices because it was just these behaviors that
allowed the societies to advance so rapidly – even if they seem
counterproductive. Is it not natural to give ones property to a
child rather then a stranger?
The British
historian Michael Wood explains a similar case – that of north
western Europe. He suggests that the great comparative advantage
gained by people in these areas over the rest of the world result
from two factors. – late marriages and small families. The
causality is similar to that of primogeniture, or the assigning of
wealth to the oldest son.
In comparing
Nietzsche to Plato one maysuggest that Nietzsche saying that God
was dead could have been made any time in recorded history. He, of
course, was referring to the belief in God among the masses – a
belief heightened by Darwin’s discovery of the evolution of man
- and as well to the likely social effects.
Neither
Nietzsche nor Plato could be called believers in the common man. As
far as what have been called the absence of myth is concerned the one
rejoiced in the way it could be mechanized and turned into an
instrument of power- the other felt the same way without being quite
as happy about it.
As societies come
into contact with each other it is inevitable that their belief
systems conflict.. It may be that, as in a magnified hypnotic
experience, the wiping clean of one belief system will facilitate the
control of another.
Frank
Herbert, author of the Dune Series, and survivor of several submarine
crashes during the second world war said that it was his belief that
those who believed in a God with stood the pressures of combat
better then those who did not.
My own feeling is that
everything has a reason. When one see’s a pimp “turn” a whore
the process seems incredibly perverse and obvious – yet- it is a
tried and true methodology so we must assume the pimps actions
relieve a pain and if anything feel for the pain that must
afflict the young woman.
Plato was
no stranger to myth. He gave us Atlantis and left just enough room
to allow for the suggestion that is was Crete – although Crete is
not beyond the pillars of Hercules.
What is surprising in a
way is that Nietzsche took his dead god so seriously – did he never
hear of China, or India?
As I
mentioned after he died his sister wanted to play him up as the
authentic voice of the Nazi party but others have mentioned that he
did not care for nationalism.
He's in the same
bag as Hegel in that sense – in that german philosophers seem ever
eager to, if anything escape the label of local, simple minded
philistines and to do so adopt what they think is eastern ideas -
the swastika for example – but you can't have it both ways –
you cannot accept the universal sensorium and still wave the old
home flag. Schopenhauer probably succeeded best in shedding the
Teutonic skin and yet he is accused of being depressive. Take away
the sauerkraut and all that's left is potatoes
I am reminded
of what ACJobim gave as advice to Brazilian musicians - go to the
airport.
