...and why it matters for post-modern people. Otherwise who would care what some Greek said, or some ancient Chinese sage said....and why you should listen to them all.
The Ancient Greek Historian Thucydides lays bare for us the mechanisms that occur when a society becomes overpopulated and cruel. In his history of the Peloponnesian War, he takes shot at all the things we think of as normal in human relationships.
His premise is "the strong do what they want, the weak suffer what they must." Herodotus on the other hand, from Chapter 1 of his book, proved that this attitude only comes about as a reaction to the material resources and our lack of them our perception that we do not have what we want; Herodotus says people are cruel when they want things. Olive oil, wine, gold, women, land.
When people do not want things and think about them in their relation to society they are called philosophers or historians.
The philosophers and historian's job, as it was understood was to seek truth, not only for its own sake, but in Socrates example, for society too. Society then became the realm of the philosopher who would use whatever of the truth he learned in honesty for the sake of his fellow citizens. This was not some altruistic love fest, no, this was for the serious business of making the society one that people could and would want to live in. How to make laws that people will want to live under. This is the basic gist of Plato's work Statesmen. It should be read for anyone even thinking of entering public life.
Lao Tzu on the other hand was a statesmen first, and a philosopher second. He was a sage always. He never minced words about his own position on things. His philosophy is the ancient equivalent of the enlightenment and revolutionary period thinking in America. it is a remarkable testimony to the development of human nature that people separated by time and place have frequently and often developed similar ways of thinking about the world based on conditions they have seen and experiences they have had.
I am reminded that the march of civilization has been one from the public individual of the Greeks, to the private individual where people's rights and privacy are respected, back to a system where all of our public information is neither respected or protected but sold on a market. In the reduction of the human person to a commodity on the market one has to wonder what Socrates would say. And one can only guess whether he would think we have regressed to a point beyond hope.
Thanks to MIT, many of these texts that were seminal in the development of society are online and should be studied by anyone interested in making an impact in the world of public affairs: http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/index.html
Thanks to the Lao Tzu page for having so much information on it: http://www.taopage.org/laotzu/
After you read them both, you should all take time to pay homage to William Penn- who studied the classics and practiced Quakerism- for the remarkable system of government and Quaker society he created for us in Delaware, and take time to join in with us and lament its passing into a post-modern world.
The Ancient Greek Historian Thucydides lays bare for us the mechanisms that occur when a society becomes overpopulated and cruel. In his history of the Peloponnesian War, he takes shot at all the things we think of as normal in human relationships.
His premise is "the strong do what they want, the weak suffer what they must." Herodotus on the other hand, from Chapter 1 of his book, proved that this attitude only comes about as a reaction to the material resources and our lack of them our perception that we do not have what we want; Herodotus says people are cruel when they want things. Olive oil, wine, gold, women, land.
When people do not want things and think about them in their relation to society they are called philosophers or historians.
The philosophers and historian's job, as it was understood was to seek truth, not only for its own sake, but in Socrates example, for society too. Society then became the realm of the philosopher who would use whatever of the truth he learned in honesty for the sake of his fellow citizens. This was not some altruistic love fest, no, this was for the serious business of making the society one that people could and would want to live in. How to make laws that people will want to live under. This is the basic gist of Plato's work Statesmen. It should be read for anyone even thinking of entering public life.
Lao Tzu on the other hand was a statesmen first, and a philosopher second. He was a sage always. He never minced words about his own position on things. His philosophy is the ancient equivalent of the enlightenment and revolutionary period thinking in America. it is a remarkable testimony to the development of human nature that people separated by time and place have frequently and often developed similar ways of thinking about the world based on conditions they have seen and experiences they have had.
I am reminded that the march of civilization has been one from the public individual of the Greeks, to the private individual where people's rights and privacy are respected, back to a system where all of our public information is neither respected or protected but sold on a market. In the reduction of the human person to a commodity on the market one has to wonder what Socrates would say. And one can only guess whether he would think we have regressed to a point beyond hope.
Thanks to MIT, many of these texts that were seminal in the development of society are online and should be studied by anyone interested in making an impact in the world of public affairs: http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/index.html
Thanks to the Lao Tzu page for having so much information on it: http://www.taopage.org/laotzu/
After you read them both, you should all take time to pay homage to William Penn- who studied the classics and practiced Quakerism- for the remarkable system of government and Quaker society he created for us in Delaware, and take time to join in with us and lament its passing into a post-modern world.
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