East vs. West
What we are witnessing in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon today-- indeed, in London, New York and everywhere else-- is a continuation of the 2,500 year-old War Between East and West.
"2,500 years?!" I hear you cry. "I thought it started with the Crusades, weren't they only about 1,000 years ago?" Well, yes, they were, but I believe in order to trace the origins of this conflict, you have to go back even further than the Crusades; in fact, you have to go 'way further: about 1,500 years futher, all the way to ancient Greece.
See, back in about 500 BCE (that's "Before the Common Era") the Greeks invented a new way of thinking. We call it rationality, or logic. (The word comes from the Greek word Logos. Not sure what the connection is to sleazy marketing gimmicks, but whatever.) This way of thinking is so natural to us today, it seems unfathomable that it actually had to be invented. But there you have it: nobody had done it before them. The new way of thinking worked so well, they used it for everything. Like a shiny new toy, they brought it with them everywhere. You can see this if you read some ancient Greek manuscripts (in English of course-- I'm not that much of an egghead.) They introduce all kinds of convoluted logic in places where we wouldn't even think of it. For example, if you read Xenophon's account of his march back from Babylon through Asia Minor, he records a number of discourses by high-ranking generals, himself included, which are so erudite and confusing in their logic, that I, for one, have trouble following them. (I won't go over my credentials, but I ain't no slouch when it comes to parsing out logical statements-- or accounts of military exploits, for that matter. But I digress.) And some of these were speeches to the troops! The Greeks saw rationality as such a virtue, that the more convoluted the logic, the better-- to the point where even the ordinary Greek footsoldier was pleased and persuaded by very high-falutin' rational arguments. (One wonders whether the troops really followed them, or just viewed the debates as a sort of spectacle-- much as we judge the outcome of a presidential debate not by whose arguments were sounder, but by the charisma quotient of the candidates.)
Now, building on this new way of thinking, the Greeks came up with an altogether new idea: the proposition that the Polis (i.e., the city state-- prototype of our modern nation) consisted of independent, thinking, rational individuals whose ideas were important and who should have a say in how the Polis was run. And the leader of the Polis owed his station to the agreement of these men (and only men-- not women: they weren't that enlightened).
The idea is called Democracy. Not everyone bought in. The Persians-- the Greeks' neighbors to the east-- for example, didn't want anything to do with it. They saw things in completely opposite terms. To them, the Emperor was divine, and all the human beings under his reign owed *their* existence to *him*. This is gruesomely illustrated by the story of the noble courtesan, himself a wealthy and powerful man, who requested of the Emperor that his youngest son be allowed to stay home instead of participating in a campaign. In this way, the man could be assured of having at least one son to take care of him in his old age. The Emperor was outraged, and his response-- a sort of Satanic parody of Solomon-- was to order the boy cut in half lengthwise, with the halves of the corpse placed on opposite sides of the army's course of march, as a quaint sort of gateway. Thus he reminded his subjects that they lived at his pleasure, that they lived to serve him, that they owed everything-- their very lives, even-- to him.
And where was the mighty Persian army marching to? To conquer Greece. The Greeks fought as men fighting for their freedom will: tooth and nail. Though they were outnumbered, they held off and then defeated the Persians-- notably at Thermopylae and Salamis. Had they lost, ancient Greece would have become nothing more than a minor outpost on the western fringe of the great Persian Empire. Had they lost, there would be no such thing as "western civilization". Had they lost, I would not be writing this, you would not be reading it, and your entire outlook on life, the human condition, right and wrong, would be completely different.
To quote Edith Hamilton at length:
"Five hundred years before Christ in a little town on the far western border of the settled and civilized world, a strange new power was at work. Something had awakened in the minds and spirits of the men there which was so to influence the world that the slow passage of long time, of century upon century and the shattering changes they brought, would be powerless to wear away that deep impress. Athens had entered upon her brief and magnificent flowering of genius which so molded the world of mind and of spirit that our mind and spirit to-day are different. We think and feel differently because of what a little Greek town did during a century or two, twenty-four hundred years ago. What was then produced of art and of thought has never been surpassed and very rarely equalled, and the stamp of it is upon all the art and all the thought of the Western world. And yet this full stature of greatness came to pass at a time when the mighty civilizations of the ancient world had perished and the shadow of 'effortless barbarism' was dark upon the earth. In that black and fierce world a little centre of white-hot spiritual energy was at work. A new civilization had arisen in Athens, unlike all that had gone before."
Work in web commerce, do you? Bent on changing the world, are you? How much of your thought and effort will remain in the year 4545-- if man is still alive?
But there are two pillars of Western Civilization. So much for the Greek pillar.
to be continued
"2,500 years?!" I hear you cry. "I thought it started with the Crusades, weren't they only about 1,000 years ago?" Well, yes, they were, but I believe in order to trace the origins of this conflict, you have to go back even further than the Crusades; in fact, you have to go 'way further: about 1,500 years futher, all the way to ancient Greece.
See, back in about 500 BCE (that's "Before the Common Era") the Greeks invented a new way of thinking. We call it rationality, or logic. (The word comes from the Greek word Logos. Not sure what the connection is to sleazy marketing gimmicks, but whatever.) This way of thinking is so natural to us today, it seems unfathomable that it actually had to be invented. But there you have it: nobody had done it before them. The new way of thinking worked so well, they used it for everything. Like a shiny new toy, they brought it with them everywhere. You can see this if you read some ancient Greek manuscripts (in English of course-- I'm not that much of an egghead.) They introduce all kinds of convoluted logic in places where we wouldn't even think of it. For example, if you read Xenophon's account of his march back from Babylon through Asia Minor, he records a number of discourses by high-ranking generals, himself included, which are so erudite and confusing in their logic, that I, for one, have trouble following them. (I won't go over my credentials, but I ain't no slouch when it comes to parsing out logical statements-- or accounts of military exploits, for that matter. But I digress.) And some of these were speeches to the troops! The Greeks saw rationality as such a virtue, that the more convoluted the logic, the better-- to the point where even the ordinary Greek footsoldier was pleased and persuaded by very high-falutin' rational arguments. (One wonders whether the troops really followed them, or just viewed the debates as a sort of spectacle-- much as we judge the outcome of a presidential debate not by whose arguments were sounder, but by the charisma quotient of the candidates.)
Now, building on this new way of thinking, the Greeks came up with an altogether new idea: the proposition that the Polis (i.e., the city state-- prototype of our modern nation) consisted of independent, thinking, rational individuals whose ideas were important and who should have a say in how the Polis was run. And the leader of the Polis owed his station to the agreement of these men (and only men-- not women: they weren't that enlightened).
The idea is called Democracy. Not everyone bought in. The Persians-- the Greeks' neighbors to the east-- for example, didn't want anything to do with it. They saw things in completely opposite terms. To them, the Emperor was divine, and all the human beings under his reign owed *their* existence to *him*. This is gruesomely illustrated by the story of the noble courtesan, himself a wealthy and powerful man, who requested of the Emperor that his youngest son be allowed to stay home instead of participating in a campaign. In this way, the man could be assured of having at least one son to take care of him in his old age. The Emperor was outraged, and his response-- a sort of Satanic parody of Solomon-- was to order the boy cut in half lengthwise, with the halves of the corpse placed on opposite sides of the army's course of march, as a quaint sort of gateway. Thus he reminded his subjects that they lived at his pleasure, that they lived to serve him, that they owed everything-- their very lives, even-- to him.
And where was the mighty Persian army marching to? To conquer Greece. The Greeks fought as men fighting for their freedom will: tooth and nail. Though they were outnumbered, they held off and then defeated the Persians-- notably at Thermopylae and Salamis. Had they lost, ancient Greece would have become nothing more than a minor outpost on the western fringe of the great Persian Empire. Had they lost, there would be no such thing as "western civilization". Had they lost, I would not be writing this, you would not be reading it, and your entire outlook on life, the human condition, right and wrong, would be completely different.
To quote Edith Hamilton at length:
"Five hundred years before Christ in a little town on the far western border of the settled and civilized world, a strange new power was at work. Something had awakened in the minds and spirits of the men there which was so to influence the world that the slow passage of long time, of century upon century and the shattering changes they brought, would be powerless to wear away that deep impress. Athens had entered upon her brief and magnificent flowering of genius which so molded the world of mind and of spirit that our mind and spirit to-day are different. We think and feel differently because of what a little Greek town did during a century or two, twenty-four hundred years ago. What was then produced of art and of thought has never been surpassed and very rarely equalled, and the stamp of it is upon all the art and all the thought of the Western world. And yet this full stature of greatness came to pass at a time when the mighty civilizations of the ancient world had perished and the shadow of 'effortless barbarism' was dark upon the earth. In that black and fierce world a little centre of white-hot spiritual energy was at work. A new civilization had arisen in Athens, unlike all that had gone before."
Work in web commerce, do you? Bent on changing the world, are you? How much of your thought and effort will remain in the year 4545-- if man is still alive?
But there are two pillars of Western Civilization. So much for the Greek pillar.
to be continued
posted by Chicago MBA, Stanford BA at 3:48 PM
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