1. Human Origins: Are We All African?

Our common humanity is based upon the strongly confirmed genetic hypothesis that we all have the same set of parents who lived about 60,000 years ago, in central Africa. Our common mother and father are called Homo sapiens, by anthropologists; and they are supposed to have replaced, by some means or another, our much older ape-man relatives of Africa, Homo erectus, and who inhabit the modern territories of civilization. All this is known, not by religious scripture, tea-leaf reading, or unverifiable legends, but on the basis of a genetic analysis of the DNA molecule found in human blood groups. (1)

The story is most convincingly laid out by Spencer Wells, a contemporary population geneticist and author of The Journey of Man: a Genetic Odyssey. For several decades, our distant evolutionary past has been made increasingly accessible by the new investigative tools of biology and population genetics. At the same time, our scientific investigation and knowledge of the genetic links of our species only increases the sense of wonder and mystery. Evolutionary genetics is a developing science and story that increases the knowledge and appreciation of our collective past; and as we continue to increase knowledge of the human genome, and collect genetic material from other life-forms, our horizons of time, space and culture extends into other dimensions of reality. (2)

It should be remembered that apes—our closest ancestors among other hominids—first appeared in the fossil record about 23 million years ago. The first ape-men appeared some 20 million years ago. Homo erectus, the first humanlike group that migrated out of Africa, appear in the fossil record dating back some 2 million years ago; and they, in turn, were replaced by waves of other humanoids migrating out of Africa, over the hundreds of thousands of intervening years.—Future humanoids, part machine and part organism could become the superhuman cyborgs of science fiction, if our medical technology, genetic and cognitive sciences continue to progress as they have in recent decades. Yet nothing is certain in existence and future societies could as well lapse into a hellish dystopia, destroying everything that we have thus far discovered owing to a planetary catastrophe of our own making.

Human DNA analysis has traced the global migratory routes out of Africa of our most recent ancestors on the basis of blood types bearing a mutated Y chromosome gene in male descendents. As indicated above, our Homo sapien ancestors migrated out of Africa approximately 60,000 years ago. Since then, our ancestors spread out in settlement patterns that approximate the present civilized territories of the Earth although this process took another 30, 000 years or so. Now that these migrations out of Africa have ceased, and many new patterns of human migration have taken their place, the cultivation of a single living space for identifiable groups are the rule. (3)

All this means that we are all of African origin, wherever we live, whatever the color of our skin may be, the language we speak, the national or ethnic group that we belong to, our social class, religion, etc. We are one species, one global family, and we are all citizens of the Earth. Hence, whatever can be said about us as individuals, groups or nation-states, we share a common, pre-historical past and it is buried deeply within our genes and blood as Homo-sapiens.

The biblical story of Genesis notwithstanding, genetic findings provide the most definitive evidence ever that we are all originally the offspring of a single set of parents in Africa, long ago located among the ‘Song’ tribal people of South Africa. Meanwhile, a contrary hypothesis—mainly from Chinese cultural anthropologists—argues that there are many different places where the first human beings appeared, among them the Chinese mainland! And there are also legends and stories among indigenous people of the Earth, that it was their own distant ancestors and / or tribal gods who account for the origin of human beings.  

Spencer Wells also narrates his thesis about the African identity of human beings in the beautiful PBS documentary “The Human Journey” and other films. He vividly describes the probable contexts and consequences of a singular and significant genetic mutation that occurred within the chromosomal structure of our African parents, 'Adam' and 'Eve', even lending indirect support to the popular biblical story about our origins. However, what does not square with the ‘literalist’ reading of human genesis in the Bible is Well’s scientific dating of human evolution. For example. Wells states that:

"All modern humans were in Africa until at least 60,000 years ago.... Apes appeared first in the fossil record around 23 million years ago—a huge expanse of time and difficult to envision. But if we compress it down to a year, it helps to place the other dates in context. Imagine, then, the apes appear on New Year's Day. In that case, our first hominid ancestors to walk upright—the first ape-men, in effect—would appear around the end of October. Homo erectus, who left Africa around 2 million years ago, would appear at the beginning of December. Modern humans wouldn't show up until around 28 December, and they wouldn't leave Africa until New Year's Eve! In an evolutionary eye-blink, a mere blip in the history of life on our planet, humans left Africa and colonized the world." (4)

This is a rather graphic view about our common ancestral past and it is based upon the most advanced techniques for the genetic analysis of human blood groups. This means that between one million and two million years ago, Homo erectus (the humanoid who first walked upright) was replaced by Homo sapiens—the human types who supposedly use their brains in the now familiar ways.—If in fact the ‘sapiency’ or wisdom implied in Homo sapiens, the biological species, is to be taken seriously, then we should question what we really understand about wisdom and ourselves—which we shall do in due time.

It is estimated by Wells and his team of geneticists that Homo sapiens came out of Africa and migrated into present day Europe some 35,000 years ago, and there they replaced the Neanderthal men and women who were living there from earlier migrations. How or by what means this was done no one seems to really know and what since we know so little about the Neanderthals, what difference it has made in our own development as a species. The fact remains that we Homo sapiens of the 21^st century are relative newcomers on the genetic block of human beings and became the dominant form of recent human mutations, the reasons for which are largely unknown.

Whether we remain dominant—due to a greater powers of reason and adaptability as against the Neanderthal peoples—may be more flattering to our self-image than any known fact. What if, for example, it could be shown that the reason the Neanderthals lost out or disappeared in Europe and elsewhere was due to Homo sapiens’ greater penchant for violence and cruelty rather than powers of reason and adaptability? This just might cause us to re-think our ‘might makes right’ ethics and ‘just war’ theories.

2. Evolution and Destiny: Why are Here?

If we can agree about our common human origin, the question may then naturally arise, where are we going, individually and as a species? The question of the future, the ultimate or final end of our life-form (s) is not as straightforward or empirical of a question to answer as one concerning a past condition or event. Why? Because the data or evidence about the future (moment or distant) is only conjectural, projective and hypothetical or what is commonly called an ‘educated guess’ or even feeling. And this may lead us to an even larger question, the origin of Life itself or the universal Source of all life-forms in the universe?

What is the origin of Life itself—the creative and universal energy of all natural forms? The scientific hypothesis about human evolution has existed in a philosophical form since at least the ancient Greeks, especially in the poetic speculations of Empedocles from the 5^th century BCE.

Consider the following strange images from the evolutionary theory of Empedocles:

 “Here sprang up many faces without necks, arms wandered without shoulders, unattached, and eyes strayed alone, in need of foreheads… As one divine element mingled further with another, these things fell together as each chanced to meet each other, and many other things besides these were constantly resulting…. with rolling gait and countless hands.... Many creatures were born with faces and breasts on both sides, man-faced ex-progeny, while others again sprang forth as ox-headed offspring of man creatures compounded partly of male, partly of the nature of female, and fitted with shadowy parts…. Many a head came to birth without a neck ... [and then] they were put together by Love." (5)

Aside from the fact that Empedocles image of human evolution resembles the grotesqueness and weirdness of a Hieronymus Bosch painting, it is Love—a universal Force that conflicts with Strife—that is the creative Catalyst for the evolution of life-forms. Empedocles believed that the world is in a state of Strife now, just as it was earlier in a state of Love; and that the cycles of Love and Strife are universal, natural, and lawful, impersonally controlling all natural and historical forms. However, Empedocles’ certainty about Love and Strife has not received anything like universal agreement since these big ideas are not as easy to pin down or establish as certainties as he may have imagined.

Of course, many believe that Charles Darwin of the 19^th century gave us the first and most completely descriptive and verifiable form to the argument for scientific evolution in his Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). He wrote in the oft-quoted “Summary and Conclusions” of the book:

“Natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being [and] all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection…. These laws [of natural selection] taken in the largest sense being Growth and Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse: a Ration of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving…the production of human beings directly follows. There is

grandeur in this view of life with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, while this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.” (6)

 In light of the recent flap over Creationism versus Evolutionary Science, it is of more than mere literary interest that Darwin wrote ‘the Creator [God] originally breathed Life into the first forms or one’ that started the whole evolutionary process of nature; and “from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.”

In this one paragraph Darwin not only summarizes the best biological science of his times but relates it explicitly and unambiguously to the existence of a Creator Being. In fact, there is the clear implication that without the existence of a Creator Being, life-forms would not exist at all. Yet endless arguing and chest-pounding continues about whether human existence can be explained by means of either ‘natural selection and adaptation’ or a Creator God. Turn on any Christian TV channel today or sit in any biology class, and you will hear the arguments about how right ‘they’ are and how wrong the ‘other’ side is, on the subject of both origin and destiny.

2500 years ago, the rationalistic philosopher, Aristotle (384-322 BCE) may have gave the single best answer—for all good Christians and other theists—to the question of origin and destiny by asserting that the universe and its forms of existence were created by an eternal Unmoved Mover or God. Aristotle reasoned that not only can we logically prove the existence of an infinitely creative God but that the existence of the various species and genera of nature cannot be adequately understood by any other means. Aristotle surmised, based upon his field analysis and cataloging of numerous fossils, animals, plants and insects that all natural life-forms are hierarchically ordered by the Grand Designer and continue to evolve along planned lines. Aristotle’s biology was limited only by the sciences of the day (4^th century BCE) although his imagination allowed him to surmises that the entire universe and its life-forms are continually ‘progressing’. And by this, Aristotle meant that the intentional force that set everything in motion was propelling it forward to the day when those beings with sufficient nous or intellectual mind, i.e. the philosophers, would enjoy the ‘perfect happiness’ of thinking like God.

What Aristotle accomplished in his Physics and Ethics are perhaps no less debatable than what he did in his Metaphysics since his philosophy is the first among many other ‘systems’ of philosophy. His daring to think boldly is certainly undervalued while his tendency to analyze and dissect one concept after another may be overvalued. In defense of his philosophy, he applied the same techniques to abstract ideas that he did to the fossils and life-forms that he collected from nature or God’s creation. While most of his contemporary philosopher-scientists were merely observing and describing what they saw in nature and their surroundings, Aristotle surmised that everything had a meaning and a purpose and that ‘meaning and purpose’ was nothing that human beings had created but could discover for themselves. Aristotle assumed, right or wrong, that man’s place in the universe was to realize the identity of the creator God and in doing so, deliver himself from a quite imperfect world and all those who had the good sense to follow.

Aristotle’s philosophy arose partly in response to the atomists, skeptics and naturalists of his times. For their philosophical outlook was practically unanimous in claiming that there is no ultimate or absolute meaning and purpose in the universe. The existence of God cannot be proven, human beings have no immortal soul, and there is no Heaven or Hell to journey to in an afterlife except in one’s imagination and the myths of Homer. Instead what they offered—which Aristotle could follow and agree with up to a point—was a universe of many truths, many root elements and forms that were constantly mixing and dissolving, without any divinely creative Being to watch over everything. The best that could be thought about a purposeful or meaningful universe was given by a divine and mysterious Logos (Heraclitus), Nous (Anaxagoras), Love and Strife (Empedocles) that were inexplicably present in the universe and were ordering it all. Not so for the atomists, who viewed the infinitely small particles (atoms) that composed everything, swerving and veering like drunken sailors and creating anomalies everywhere and without any discernible reason or purpose. And the naturalists may have taken this argument to its ultimate conclusion in saying that in death we have absolutely nothing to fear since there will be no consciousness or awareness whatsoever, it being destroyed by the same processes that will take down the body.   

In sum, philosophers do not agree about the so-called ‘big’ questions or answers. Absolute agreement, often, is found among those who follow the same creed or doctrine, whether in science or religion. Instead philosophers offer options or choices to follow in one’s thought and action. Yet the questions of human origin and destiny are ultimate or final ones since there appears to be no way of coming back to this world, body or existence once we die. Hence at a biological and existential level, death is the destiny of all sentient life-forms. At a deeper level, it is Life with a capital ‘L’ that is supreme and universal. It is the eternal Life-force that is the basis for all life-forms that only cycle through nature, endlessly and without any meaning or purpose until we wake up to who we are.

The questions persist: where did we come from? Where are we now? And where are we going? Can we determine or control our destiny or final life-form and all stages leading up to it along the way? What else is certain in existence except the here-and-now, the aging process and death? For those who follow the lead of reason and science, there is nothing but dust, ashes and a recombining with the elements of nature while a conscious life-form that we presently experience will be utterly and completely gone at death. And those who follow the lead of faith and religion affirm that a soul, Self or consciousness exists independently of the material life-form and this is the basis for our destiny following the inevitable death of the physical body.

On both sides of this argument, there are compelling reasons and intuitions about the falsity of the other’s argument and affirmations, and virtually no way of absolutely settling the dispute except on the grounds of both faith and reason! Although there is no total agreement among educated and thinking persons about the big questions and answers, there are lively disagreements between groups of individuals and that is why the ‘schools of philosophy’, the various world religions, and the specialized sciences arose in the first place, and continue to persist. There is moreover the continuing wonder and Mystery of the universe that anything exists at all and that we are here, doing our best to understand, love and cherish what little we do.

3. Three Philosophical Questions: What? How? Why?

To anyone outside (or even inside) the fields of genetics and anthropology, the findings about our common ancestral past raise may raise disturbing questions about our essential nature. Are we inherently a conquering and aggressive kind of animal even towards the members of our own species or not? Also, what is the relation of our genetic inheritance to environmental influences as from family, education, and the wider community? Perhaps more importantly, what part has freedom in the form of the will and consciousness played in our evolution individually and as a species?  

Questions of a philosophical kind spring from the perspective of morality, i.e. could our most recent conquering or dominating ancestors have had a more aggressive and violent temperament than the former hominids (the Neanderthals) of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia? Has the dominating and adaptively superior behavior of Homo sapiens been the result of a violent, uncaring and aggressive use of our brains, hands, and tools, or are we the consequence of a more nonviolent, caring and compassionate way of being? (5 old) (6)

Such questions about our moral and ethical history, as a species, are more subject to interpretation and controversy, than is the counting of mutant Y chromosomes in our blood. But it may be more important to inquire about such matters, so that we might better understand the present and plan for the future. For, if we know how and why we have been, individually and collectively, we just might be able to change ourselves in more desirable ways.

Indeed, we may be guilty of the most egregious form of self-flattery and illusion making by naming ourselves Homo sapiens (the ‘wise hominid’). In doing so, we have failed to take into account the whole psychopathological and homicidal record of humanity's history of the last 5,000 years. Considering our tendency to slaughter members of our own species in warfare and genocide, it is nearly impossible to make a persuasive argument that we, as a species, are either wiser or morally superior to our nearest relatives in the animal world.

Yes—we surely have a more complex technology, collective culture, and brain structure than any other animal on Earth; but we are also the only species who murders, steals from, lies to, and brings pain and suffering to members of its own species, on a regular and systematic basis. Only the Great Ape, our nearest relative, shows similar tendencies! And, this may mean that when organisms evolve to a certain level of species complexity, their analytical and technical brain center can function quite independently of their moral, aesthetic, and social ones, creating conflicting existential tendencies as to the means and ends of their lives.

We have created religions, governments, ideologies, and legal systems that have sanctioned rape, murder, war, and genocide throughout history, and often for the ‘noblest’ of reasons. It is also a fact that every country of the civilized world has had military training programs of some sort that have brainwashed and conditioned its vulnerable, God-fearing, and patriotic youth into becoming the most efficient killers on a battlefield. At the same time, highly trained scientists have invented weapons of mass murder that could annihilate everyone and everything living on Earth in a matter of hours.

Where have we gone wrong? It took many waves of humans migrating out of Africa over two million years to create, for better and for worse, the present world order. The cities of civilization, the arts of culture, and the sciences of knowledge that we take for granted are truly momentous and awesome achievements compared with other sentient beings of the Earth. But, our human achievements will all be for naught if we do not learn rather soon to get along more peacefully, rationally, and nonviolently, with one another.

If philosophy and education are to flourish as the disciplines that promote nonviolent change in human consciousness and the world, it is important that a critical degree of security and freedom exists. This means that a freedom from want in terms of the fulfillment of basic physical needs, coupled with an experience of meaning in life and emotional closeness to caring human beings, should exist in society. And, as far as we know, these conditions could have existed to a far greater degree in the lives of our more distant Homo sapiens than it does in present relations between nation-states and living persons.

4. The Shaman as Primitive Philosopher: a Question of Origins

 Mircea Eliade was one of the great twentieth-century scholars of religious mythologies. His study on Shamanism, first published in 1951, places the subject of shamanism in comparative cultural contexts. Eliade defines the shaman as a male or female member of a mystical elite in pre-historic societies and who was given special role to play in their communities. Eliade’s work has shed clear light on the identity of this group of ancient ancestors and in the process, given us deeper insights into the shape of both religion and mythology.

The specialty of the shaman, in both pre-historical and historical societies, is the soul—the energetic means for immortality or the survival of a ‘person’. The shaman is a divinely inspired human being who can ‘see’ the soul, in terms of its energetic presence in and around the body, and in the ways that it has structured personal identity and influences our destiny, especially in terms of the eschatological or final states of Being. The main social role of the shaman is to ferry or guide the souls of the dead to and from the worlds beyond this one or the land of the living. (7)

In many primitive areas of the world, a shaman-priest is a mystical seer, psychic, and storyteller, all rolled into one role that is often central to community life. As Eliade wrote in his "Epilogue" to Shamanism: "It is consoling and comforting to know that a member of the community is able to see what is hidden and invisible to the rest and to bring back direct and reliable information from the supernatural worlds.” (8)

But, we may fairly ask, is what the shaman ‘sees’ really reliable information or is it a delusion? We will bracket, or put out of mind, this epistemological question for the moment, and assume that the shaman can really gain access to reliable information and knowledge about other worlds—like the ‘land of the dead’—that the rest of us cannot. Certainly this belief, expressed in mythic and narrative forms, was widespread in ancient Greece, India, China, and Africa, during ancient history and even long before that.

What the shaman seems to is a bizarre mixture of realistic and fantastic realities. First, there are real forms, persons, and stories that are situated in the ‘land of the dead’, either above in a heavenly realm or below in a hellish one. Furthermore, many of these stories can be seen in the great epic poetry, lyric prose, imaginative literature, and tragic drama of the ancient world, i.e., the tales of Gilgamesh of Mesopotamia, the dramatic Mahabharata of India, the myths of Orpheus, Dionysius, and Apollo in Greece, and other indigenous mythologies from around the world. In other words, the assumption is that much of ancient world literature—mythic, religious and philosophical—has been inspired by ecstatic, altered and metaphysical states of consciousness, and especially from the narrative or storied imagination of the shaman. (9)

If it is believed that the shaman-priest can possess metaphysical knowledge, then it is no wonder that he occupied such a central place in pre-historic and early, primitive societies. His or her special place in a tribal group was not only assured, but there is every reason to believe that the role of the pre-historic shaman evolved—perhaps when the great shift from more egalitarian to patriarchal societies occurred—to that of the ruling male shaman priest in ancient societies and eventually his role became a central element or ingredient in the major world religions, transcending the lives of individual persons. Indeed, how else can we explain the role of the priest, guru, eman, lama, or pope as a highly privileged position in the various religions of the world? 

In an anthropological sense, shamans were the first spiritual teachers, story-tellers, and healers, all rolled into one tribal role. Today, of course, modern bureaucracies and professional societies have fragmented the mystical role of the ancient shaman-teacher, and reduced it to a myriad of specialized roles and functions. In the process, postmodern societies have lost the original integrative and connected sense of reality that is embodied in such mystically developed persons.

Albeit, Eliade is skeptical of any primordial or ‘pure’ tradition even within ancient shamanic cultures since there are so many layers of experience, myth, ritual, and emotion that lie beneath the surfaces of any so-called spiritual role. On this, he wrote, "Nowhere in the world or in history will a perfectly 'pure' and 'primordial' religious phenomenon be found.... [yet] nothing justifies the supposition that during the hundreds of thousands of years that preceded the earliest Stone Age, humanity did not have a religious life as intense and as various as in succeeding periods." And the implication may be that as corrupted as religious life may be owing to institutionalization today, it may not have been any better or more ‘pure’ fifty thousand years ago! (10)

During the early Stone Age or lower Paleolithic—two million to two hundred thousand BCE— magical and religious myths became part of later religious conceptions and mythologies. In the same way, the spiritual heritage from pre-lithic or stone-age times probably "...underwent continual cultural changes as a result of numerous cultural contacts among pre- and proto-historical peoples. Thus, nowhere in the history of religions do we encounter primordial phenomena; for history has been everywhere changing, recasting, enriching, or impoverishing religious concepts, mythological creations, rites, techniques of ecstasy." And, even though each world religion, after a long process of inner transformation, has developed into a quasi-autonomous and unique form, there is nothing about any contemporary world religion that is completely new in the long evolution of human consciousness. (11)

These few generalizations about the shaman, mythology, and religion should be kept in mind while studying philosophers and philosophy. The history of world philosophy—in terms of belief, thought, and action—has interpenetrated the evolution of human civilization, knowledge and experience at every point. This is why it is said that the sometimes widely differing fields of mythology, religion, science, art and philosophy cannot be absolutely or completely separated from one another. Indeed, to believe so is to create a new myth, illusion, or story about philosophy in particular and human knowledge in general.

5. Metaphysical Philosophy: the Powers of the Shaman

Metaphysics refers to what is ultimate in origin. In religious philosophies, it refers to gods, souls, and other worldly states that cannot be empirically verified or proven to be true. Since ‘meta’ is a prefix that refers to anything above, beyond or transcending mundane reality, it can have a very wide and speculative meaning when attached to more familiar terms like ‘physics’.

How can we conceive of the shaman as a metaphysical philosopher? Eliade offers clear indications in terms of the soul and worlds beyond this one. Since ‘others world’ or even the existence of an immortal soul cannot be empirically verified or proven to be true, these beliefs are of a metaphysical or religious kind and based upon faith. If faith is used in a rational or narrative way, then it is a valid or true basis for metaphysical philosophy.

Eliade uses the mythologies of the shaman as a basis for his descriptive writing. He reports on the behavior and consciousness of the shaman-philosopher as if his powers are real and true to him or her. ‘Belief’ or a subjective thought process is the basis for the shaman’s consciousness as well as those members of the tribe who serve as witnesses and co-participants in the situation. Eliade enumerates the following powers of the shaman somewhat as follows: (12)

 First, the shaman’s role in which he or she goes into a trance state, perhaps induced by psychedelic drugs, an emotional frenzy, self-hypnosis or a combination of these influences. The specialty of the shaman is in taking a trip through the soul or consciousness and leaving the body, thereupon ascending into the sky and a heavenly world or descending into the earth where a hellish underworld awaits him. The knowledge that he brings back is believed to be of

Second, the shaman also has the power to engage helping spirits or those humans who have died. There are also nature spirits, the souls of animals, demons, angels, and even mythical beings, which the shaman is said to encounter when he leaves his body through the soul, en route to the sky or the underworld. And nowhere should we think that the shaman doubts the veracity of his own inner experiences, feelings, and visions.

Third, the shaman is also known to possess a mastery over fire. This knowledge later appears in the Greek myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from Zeus for the good of humanity—or so he thought. Fire was also seen as the essential condition of all forms in the universe in the mystical Logos of Heraclitus. And in modern times, we can still find the fire as a motif in the sacred rituals of the Hindus, Jains, and as the thematic basis of the Fire Sermon from the historical Buddha.

Fourth, the shaman allegedly has the power to heal, often magically. Could this be a source of early Greek medicine, such as we see in Alcmaeon of Croton, since he was as much concerned with the nature of the soul as he was with physiology? At the same time, it is known that Socrates valued the well-being of the soul above all else in this world; and that a life that is spent in pursuit of money, fame or honor was a wasted one in his view.  

Fifth, shamans also act as intermediaries for a Supreme God—usually pictured in the sky—for the sake of human redemption or benefit. This trait has an obvious corollary with the belief that Jesus Christ was the son of God who came to Earth for the salvation of humanity. In this context, Shamans are also said to be able to receive messages from the Supreme One for human benefit and enlightenment. The most famous case of this shamanic power is in the visions of Mohammed, the "messenger of Allah" in the Islamic religion.

Sixth, shamans are said to possess extraordinary psychic or extrasensory powers, which enable them to read minds, influence phenomena at a distance, and travel through their consciousness separated from the body. In the various religious traditions of the world, extrasensory powers are considered secondary powers of consciousness—secondary to an enlightened awareness of divinity in the world.

Are these shamanic powers for real or are they the stuff of mere superstition? And does the shaman occupy a mysterious and shadowy twilight zone between mythology, religion, philosophy and even science which no one can entirely explain or understand? From a more pragmatic viewpoint, the shaman is a story-teller, tribal healer, and divine intermediary between this world of dreams, visions, and hopes and another mythic world. In this sense, the shaman fulfills a function in society that is not ordinarily met by persons of lesser faith.

Perhaps the foremost skill or power of consciousness available to the shaman is the technique of ecstasy or the ability to separate him self subjectively from the more mundane concerns of the world. This ability is not unlike that of the monk, priest, ascetic, mystic, or yogi in the religious traditions of the world. It is also a salient characteristic of many ancient philosophers in the Greek, Indian, and Chinese religious traditions.

Besides the techniques alluded to above, the shaman can separate the soul from the body and ascend to the higher or descend to the lower worlds, at will. The shaman has been known to retire to caves, mountains, forests, and other remote places of this world and commune with the spirits of other worlds, alone in the way of the hermit or in small mystical communities. Other shamanic techniques include the ability to fast, meditate, pray, or chant for long periods of time, with a great concentration and energy. Psychedelic drugs of one kind or another have also been used by many shamans to alter their consciousness and put themselves into trance-like states. The control and interpretation of dreams, visions and real events are said to be among other techniques and powers of the shaman.

Plato, the most important of ancient Greek philosopher-writers, used myths, popular beliefs, and metaphysical perspectives quite generally to develop his philosophy. For example, Plato relates the myth of Er, in The Republic, through the character of Socrates, his revered mentor and shamanic-philosopher. Er was a young Greek man who was killed in battle yet returned to life twelve days afterwards and just before his body was to be cremated. Er then related what he saw in the afterlife world. Eliade interprets this as a typical ecstatic experience of the shaman. (13)

Opinion is divided as to whether the Greek god of divine ecstasy, Dionysus, should be thought of as shamanic in origin. I believe that he should be though Eliade does not. I side with Friedrich Nietzsche who sees Dionysus as symbolizing creative ecstasy, faith and instinct in relation to the god Apollo, guardian of reason, intellect and calmness. On the other hand, if one makes a dualistic or too hard distinction between spirit and matter, body and soul, or heaven and Earth—as Eliade does in several places—then nature gods like Gaia (the spirit of the Earth) and Dionysus (the god of human passion) are not eligible for shamanic status. But I think that this is a philosophical mistake.

Lastly, the Greek god Orpheus in the Orphic religious tradition, are high on the shamanic totem pole. Since shamans are by definition "psychopomps" or those who are most adept at conveying human souls between the Earth and other worlds, few other mystical gods in ancient Greece were said to excel Orpheus in this respect. It is true, of course, that Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, and even the more scientific Aristotle were among the most famous believers in the existence of a soul and its redeeming wisdom. Should we not count these philosophers as shamanic as well? (14)

6. Dionysus and Apollo: the Greek Gods of Mysticism and Science

The highly regarded F.M. Cornford, scholar of ancient Greek philosophy, has written that Greek philosophy –the pre-Socratics in particular—can be divided by two tendencies in thought—the scientific and the mystical. In Greek mythology, the former way, the scientific and rationalistic, derives from the gods of Mount Olympus (believed to be the residence for Zeus and his companions) while the latter way of thought, the mystical, comes from the lawless ways of Dionysus—a goat like denizen of forests, mountains, and wilderness areas and keeping close company with his erotic, playful, and intoxicated friends.

In the words of Cornford, "The type of philosophy to which an Olympian theology will give rise will be dominated by the conception of spatial externality, as Moira had dominated the Gods; and it will tend towards discontinuity and discreteness. Originating in an essentially polytheistic scheme, it will be pluralistic. It will also move steadily towards materialism, because having no hold upon the notion of life as an inward and spontaneous principle, it will reduce life to mechanical motion, communicated by external shock from one body to another. It will level down the organic to the inorganic, and pulverize God and the Soul into material atoms." (15)

Contrast this view of Olympian tendencies in Greek philosophy with Dionysian ones, as described by the Existential philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche of the nineteenth century:

"The word 'Dionysian' means: an urge to unity, a reaching out beyond personality, the everyday, society, reality, across the abyss of transitoriness: a passionate-painful overflowing into darker, fuller, more floating states; an ecstatic affirmation of the total character of life as that which remains the same, just as powerful, just as blissful, through all change; the great pantheistic sharing of joy and sorrow that sanctifies and calls good even the most terrible and questionable qualities of life; the eternal will to procreation, to fruitfulness, to recurrence; the feeling of the necessary unity of creation and destruction." (16)

Nietzsche contrasts this ‘Asiatic’ tendency in philosophy—the Dionysian—with the Apollonian. Apollo symbolizes an "eternity of beautiful form" a great ‘deception’ of "thus shall it be forever." Apollo means "a plenitude of power and moderation, the highest form of self-affirmation in a cool, noble, severe beauty: the Apollonian of the Hellenic will." (17)

Nietzsche tells us that:

"This antithesis of the Dionysian and the Apollonian within the Greek soul is one of the great riddles to which I felt myself drawn when considering the nature of the Greeks. Fundamentally I was concerned with nothing except to guess why precisely Greek Apollonianism had to grow out of a Dionysian subsoil; why the Dionysian Greek needed to become Apollonian; that is, to break his will to the terrible, multifarious, uncertain, frightful, upon a will to measure, to simplicity, to submission to rule and concept. The immoderate, disorderly Asiatic lies at his roots: the bravery of the Greeks consists in his struggle with his Asiaticism; beauty is not given to him, as little as is logic or the naturalness of customs, it is conquered, willed, won by struggle, it is his victory." (18)

The Dionysian factor became the defining characteristic of Nietzsche's own, Greek-inspired philosophy; and it is Dionysus, a symbol for sensuality, sexuality, and the affirmation of life, that Nietzsche contrasted with Christianity and the Crucified One, or Christ. And yet, Dionysus was a mystical affirmation of life for Nietzsche and those who have followed him. In the religious cauldron of Dionysus, Nietzsche tells us that deeply personal being is “counted as holy enough to justify even a monstrous amount of suffering. The tragic man affirms even the harshest suffering; he is sufficiently strong, rich, and capable...." (19)

By contrast, for Nietzsche—the fervent atheist and condemner of Christianity—"The Christian denies even the happiest lot on earth: he is sufficiently weak, poor, disinherited to suffer from life in whatever form he meets it. The god on the cross is a curse on life, a signpost to seek redemption from life; Dionysus cut to pieces is a promise of life; it will be eternally reborn and return again from destruction." (20)

Rebirth is a vital connection between ancient Greek philosophy and Indian philosophy since this doctrine is steeped in an organic and cyclical view of life. Existence is birth, life, death and rebirth in Buddhism—the only religious philosophy that Nietzsche expressed favor towards. In spite of his atheism, Nietzsche is one of the few philosophers who recognized the distinctly religious nature of most ancient Greek thought. 

In Greek philosophy, the Olympian or scientific tradition includes the Milesian philosophers—the first Greek philosophers in the official story of ancient philosophy: Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, the Atomists, Aristotle, the Sophists, the Skeptics, the Epicureans, Hippocrates of Cos, and others of the ancient medical school.

On the other side of Greek philosophy, there is the religious or mystical tendency. Cornford writes of it as follows, in the spirit of Dionysus, Orpheus, and Pythagoras:

"It [the religion of Dionysus] is the parent of mystical philosophies, of monistic and pantheistic systems, which hold that the One can pass into the Many and yet remain One. It is also idealistic in tendency, in the sense that it is other-worldly: the One is not only within, but beyond and above the Many, and more real, because more powerful, than they. Accordingly, the Many, as such, are condemned to unreality, to mere 'seeming' or appearance—half-false representations of the One reality." (21)

In many ways, this is the core metaphysical assumption or guiding idea of most if not all religions of the world, i.e. that there is One Absolute and Unchanging Source for everything and it is the basis for everything that is constantly changing in the manyness of the world. The ‘One and the many’ is most certainly fundamental to the Perennial Philosophy of modern times which assumes that a mystical or unitary Ground exists at the center of every major religion of the world. And if one wants to see the metaphysical idea of the ‘One and the many’ in its innumerable derivative forms—in both popular and academic forms of knowledge—it is there too.

If fact, the idea of the ‘One and the many’ is the most basic insight of those forms of human knowledge in the religious or metaphysical mode of consciousness, combining or making possible the paired oppositions of spirit and matter, heaven and earth, above and below, etc. And for all those forms of knowledge which have rejected the metaphysical or spiritual and religious mode, there is only the ‘manyness’ or pluralism of possible viewpoints in the world with no real hope of ever reconciling them with one another, due to the prior lack of any fundamental Unity as seen in the One.

Ancient Greek philosophers of the Dionysian tendency include Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Pythagoras, the Pythagoreans, Parmenides, Empedocles, Socrates, and Plato, at the minimum. The contrast between Christ and Dionysus should be kept in mind when we encounter the Christian faith in the Middle Ages, along with the extent to which Christianity is a consequence of a split or dualism between the Apollonian and the Dionysian ways of thinking found among many ancient Greek philosophers.

Of course, what Cornford and many other scholars of Western philosophy before the 1970s did not sufficiently recognize or appreciate is the extent to which the philosophical tendencies of the ancient Greeks paralleled the earlier Indian and Chinese philosophies of Asia. The sudden burst of comparative philosophical scholarship in this regard since the 1950’s in the West has begun to fill in this lacuna in the story of a more global view of philosophy.

The Dionysian and Apollonian ways of being and thinking in ancient Greek philosophy—and parallel tendencies found in ancient Indian philosophy—represent tendencies in all of us. For the ancient Greeks recognized the deeper, darker, more passionate and profound experiences symbolized by Dionysus, while the more conventional, controlling, and rational approach to life was expressed by the security-conscious identity of Apollo. In allowing Apollo to rule our lives, we sacrifice adventure, danger and freedom for security, rationality and control; and then give into the fear of our emotions, instincts and will to become who we really are.

7. The Legacy of Ancient Greek Education: Techne and Schole

On a more mundane level, ancient Greece gave us a double-edged sword, techne and schole or the pursuit of the technical and material sciences—expressed by techne—and that expressed by schole, from which we derive the ‘art for art’s sake’, the pursuit of knowledge, wisdom and truth, and the curriculum of general or philosophical education. These two terms also represent a dualism or artificial divide in our educational curricula and institutions, which in turn reflect wider divides in society and ourselves.  

"The Greeks relegated practical skills, techne, to a lower sphere; the ideal of a free man was leisure, schole, and the pursuit of wisdom which it permitted. But the modern world has made techne into a prodigious instrument for scientific investigation and material progress—only to discover, not, we hope, too late, that it is also a monster which may destroy all life on the planet, instantaneously or by slow erosion of the environment, which by genetic engineering may create unpredictable, and possibly dangerous forms of life....” (22)

Bernard Knox's assessment of ancient Greece's educational system gives us an initial insight into an insidious dualism between thought and practice in Western philosophy and education. The dualism between techne and schole is insidious because it is largely unconscious creating a rift between technology and science, on the one hand, and morality and the humanities on the other. The epistemological divide that began with ancient Greek philosophers between the reason and emotion, reason and perception, reason and appetites, reason and intuition, etc. became a title wave of differences in later centuries especially in wake of the European scientific revolution of the 16^th century. But this is large and complex story which we can only hint at here.

Not all philosophers in ancient Greece, though, succumbed to the largely artificial division in language and thought that separates abstract knowledge from immediate experience. Furthermore, this dualism of philosophy did not exist in ancient India and China to the degree that it did in ancient Greece. When we consider that Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theologies of the Middle Ages were strongly influenced the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, we can see the same dualistic tendencies in the divisions between faith and reason, spiritual and matter, God and man, this world and the next, etc. And this dualistic divide—begun so innocently perhaps in early Greek schooling between techne and schole and metaphysically between the body and the soul in Plato—snow-balled into the rift between science and religion in the modern world and the existential alienation of postmodern humanity.  

‘The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome’ may be true only if we look at the surface levels of these cultures. For the average person—and not wealthy entrepreneurs, generals or political leaders—their world was certainly anything but ‘glorious’ or ‘grand’ since the times were violent and war-torn, disease and poverty were widespread, and slavery, racism, and sexism were endemic to the hierarchical and very class-conscious society. The origin of hierarchical society can be traced to the ancient world nearly everywhere—in Egypt, Persia, India, China, and Greece—where brute force decided ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in the vicious war-games of existence. (23)

Among other values, early Greek philosophers were passionately committed to the pursuit of reason over force, truth over ignorance, and a tranquility of the soul or psyche over any disturbing emotions, appetites or sensations. Meanwhile, early Greek city-states were strongly militarized and nowhere more strongly than in Sparta and even cosmopolitan Athens. In these and other city-states, no greater glory could be realized by the average man than the struggle on the battle-field that ends in death and immortality. And for all the philosophical talk about truth, justice, and virtue among the philosophers, too few of them or their political leaders were given to the ethics of nonviolence, peace, and human fraternity. (24)

8. Crete and Malta: Island Cultures for Women, Egalitarianism, and Nonviolent Living

Nature, time, human violence and neglect take their relentless toll on all human constructions. In pre-Socratic Greece, we only possess fragments of the past, whether from Minoan Crete of the third millennium BCE or from Homer's heroic age of Odysseus of the first millennium. And the further back in time that we go, the less we generally know.

At the southernmost limits of Greece lies the elongated, mythic island of Crete—and it holds the remains from the oldest site of Greek culture and civilization from the third millennium. Yet archeological records do not always contain notable achievements in philosophical activity in spite of lovely lands, waters, and temple sites—as can be found on Crete.

To the west of Crete and south of Sicily, lies the beautiful island of Malta in the warm waters of the Mediterranean. Archaeological excavations at Malta have revealed architectural and sculptural evidence of a once flourishing feminist society. On Malta, the female form is dominant over all other motifs, revealing a goddess-centered culture extolling the virtues of Mother Earth. (18)

The absence of historical records does not necessarily mean that thoughtful, passionate, and philosophical humans did not once flourish on the islands of Crete and Malta. The ruins of temples remain and there are artifacts from daily domestic life, including religious shrines and especially statuary that celebrate the female body and its procreative function—and the male body to a lesser extent—suggesting that Crete may have been a place of significant power for women and a flourishing feminist civilization.

Although Crete's feminist civilization is somewhat speculative, Crete and Malta were among the last places to fall in the murderous waves of violence and destruction that swept through Europe, to the north in the second and third millennia BCE; and by the first millennium, marauding men from the steppes of Russia, possessing newly wrought weapons of iron, and riding on the backs of wild stallions, overspread and engulfed the inhabitants of pre-Homeric Greece. Archaeological evidence suggests that this was, by no means, a peaceful or nonviolent take-over and occupation, of one people by another. Yet precious little remains from this period of Greek history. (19)

The lack of philosophical writings from ancient Crete and Malta means, on one level, that we do not have any proof that ‘philosophy’, in the academic sense of the word, ever flourished there. Could it be that these ancient island cultures held a secret to our lack of historical knowledge i.e., that women held the key to another, nonviolent way of living which is now virtually destroyed and forgotten? Certainly current geopolitical patterns of civilization suggest that if a feminist culture based upon nonviolent and rational ways of settling disputes once flourished in pre-history, it has been all but destroyed by hierarchical society and the male dominant institutions of power and military aggression.

Margaret Alice, in her Hypathia's Heritage, writes passionately about the role of women in science and technology from prehistoric times to the present:

"The systematic development of knowledge and technology that we call 'science' originated in the millennia of prehistory, and early women were among the first 'scientists'. They [women] invented tools, accumulated knowledge about edible and medicinal plants, and probably discovered the chemistry of pot making, the physics of spinning, the mechanics of the loom, and the botany of flax and cotton. These developments occurred over long periods of time, arising independently in different parts of the world. Progress resulted from the activities of many individuals, both male and female, for most early societies were probably egalitarian [italics added], with women involved in every aspect of subsistence, and therefore in every aspect of developing science and technology." (20)

Most important in the preceding citation is the assumption that ‘most early societies were probably egalitarian’. How much of human suffering in history could have been prevented if egalitarian societies had been the rule, and they had not been destroyed by maraud ring male hordes of late prehistory? The truth is that we cannot know for sure yet we can wonder, imagine and speculate about how really different things could be today if a nonviolent, egalitarian and democratic pattern had prevailed in the ancient histories of the world.

Arguably, women more instinctively or naturally embody the values of nonviolence, human kindness, and a nurturing attitude towards the human self and all living forms, than do men. If egalitarian societies had been the rule in prehistory, then it is quite likely that men destroyed all traces of them as they plundered, raped, and came to political and social dominance in ancient times. And if there had been historical writings by women—‘her-stories’—they, too, were certainly destroyed by men due to the threat that they posed to the nearly absolute control and authority that men lorded over women.

Could ancient Crete and the island of Malta have been a development in Western history that would have made all the difference in the way that both history and philosophy developed? Or are these Greek island-cultures symbolic of a more widespread attitude and tendency among women that radically differs from men? And would not the dominant stories of the last three thousand years in the West be a lot less violent, with much less warfare or even no wars at all, if women had been free to exercise their superior moral sense of life in society?

Of course we cannot know the answers to these questions in an evidential way although we do know—based upon the insights of the feminist philosophical revolution of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries—that Western culture and its dominant philosophies has been written by ‘white male Europeans’ for nearly three millennia. And it is this same cultural history and philosophy that has brought humanity to the edge of the thermonuclear precipice.

How much longer does our ‘wise’ species—Homo sapiens—have before we are all plunged into the thermonuclear abyss by Homo ignoramus? –This is surely a question that any responsible philosophy of the 21 century must raise if it is to make the greatest possible difference in the destiny of humanity.

9. Crete: History, Creativity and Influence

The island of Crete had the first great civilization in Europe, dating back as early as the fourth millennium BCE. It was probably settled by migrations of peoples from the main lands of the Middle and Near East. The culture of Crete is called Minoan, named after the mythic king Minos, who in Greek mythology was the son of Zeus and Europa. The real king Minos earned the reputation of being as just as he was powerful.

Crete was settled during a period when the first known cities were built along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers of Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley of India, and the Nile River of Egypt. In these three regions of the world—India, Iraq and Egypt—the first city-States were hierarchical or class stratified by male privilege and power. They were patriarchic or non- egalitarian and this pattern of life, from the family structure to social institutions of all kinds, continued, flourished and hardened into the familiar patterns of today’s societies.

On Crete there are the bare remains of the great palaces and temples at the sites of Knossos, Phaestos, and Mallia. A series of earthquakes eventually destroyed them; and the invading Dorians from the north ravaged what remained in the twelfth century BCE. Thereafter, Crete underwent many invading occupations and was finally incorporated into Greece in 1913 after the Turks were defeated in 1912, some two thousand years later.

In very ancient or late prehistoric times, the economy of Minoan Crete dominated the Mediterranean area. The island's flourishing economy was made possible by the ‘Age of the Metals’—particularly bronze, gold, copper, and silver. These metals were fashioned into all sorts of art objects; particularly gold that was starkly fashioned into face or ‘death masks’.

On Crete, there existed all the tools for house construction, the domestication of animals, the development of agriculture and fishing, the construction of fleets of ships for trade with the mainland areas; and the refined and artful working of stone, metals, pottery, jewelry, sculpture, and fresco painting. And certainly most interesting of all, there are no records of military forces on the lovely and peaceful island of Crete. (21)

Gone now are the great roofs and walls of Crete's temple buildings, which once framed the remaining giant columns standing here and there among the fallen ruins. These muted structures probably set the standards for the noble classical architecture of Greece later known as the Doric, Corinthian, and Ionic styles. Here on Crete we can see the earliest indication of the ‘greatness of Greece’ in the creative arts of humanity.

Some of the most famous examples of these architectural styles, such as the Parthenon and other buildings of the Acropolis in Athens, were built much later on the mainland of Greece and its city-States. Thereafter, they were faithfully copied—first and foremost by the Romans in ancient times. In the seamless web that spread from ancient into medieval times, Greek culture and philosophy, Roman-Christian theology and culture, and Islamic architecture and its religious philosophy spread throughout Europe, Northern Africa, the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia. And in the Renaissance period of 15^th century Europe, Greek architecture enjoyed its greatest revival along with the philosophies, literature, sciences, and creative arts of Greece.

In our postmodern times, Greek architecture and culture have had a tremendous influence throughout the territories of Europe, North and South America, and many other parts of the world. It is as if the more than 100 generations of people (on the basis of five generations to every 100 years) who followed the Greeks have been trying to recapture the form, content and spirit of a culture long extinct in the almost religious superstition that it represented a moral and intellectual height never seen since then. There is probably little doubt that the ‘greatness that was Greece’ and the ‘grandeur that was Rome’ witnessed a flourishing of the creative consciousness in nearly all fields of knowledge, save one: the moral or ethical arts of due to the fact both of these cultures bequeathed to us, in the 21^st century, the glorification of war and the greatness of the warrior on the battlefields of slaughter.

What we have learned from the recent archaeological excavations of Crete, Troy, and Mycenae—all legendary cities of the Bronze Age and famous battle sites— is more than what the Greek historians of the fifth century BCE, Herodotus and Thucydides, appeared to know. The unearthing of these cities, their architectural ruins, dramaturgic masks, elegant pottery, bronze weapons, and the like, may not speak to us in philosophical language, but the do give us stunning visual glimpses into a past and its people that before, we could only imagine. It is this recovery of the artifacts and valuables of a once-thriving people lost to time, nature, and the violent savagery of wars—as we ourselves will one day be—that stirs the passions and fascination of all students of very ancient civilizations.

We can now only imagine what cultural splendor and riches abounded for the Minoan people of Crete-from their mythology, drama, poetry, and fine arts, to their possible contributions to science, philosophy, and religion. For, far less remains in the records and ruins of ancient Greek and Minoan culture than what surely must have once existed. As the Greek scholars Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns have commented:

"Back beyond about 700 BCE, we cannot go. Evidence for this period is rare; in fact, we know very little about Greece in the eighth century, still less, if possible, in the ninth. We have only the archaeological record—geometric pots, graves, some weapons. It is the era of Greek history known, because of our almost total ignorance about it, as the Dark Ages." (22)

As if to illustrate the relatively little difference in our knowledge of the Greek mainland prior to the 7^th century and the island culture of Crete and surrounding territories, Sir Arthur Evans divided the Minoan civilization that dominated Crete that later spread to the mainland, into three BCE periods: early Minoan (2800-2100), Middle Minoan (2100-1580) and Late Minoan (1580-1100). The first evidence of this culture was linked to the use of metals, hieroglyphic and pictographic forms of writing. (23)

Most importantly, there is no evidence of philosophy or even highly developed forms of religion during these times. We know by virtue of their creative arts and feats of structural engineering that these were thinking beings, but we have no firm or textual evidence about what they chiefly thought about, how they deliberated upon the nature of knowledge or truth, or their feelings about life and its meaning or purpose. However, we do have the intriguing gold ‘death’ masks unearthed on Crete that strongly suggest their acute if not fearful awareness of death as a fact of existence. But what the masks meant to the Cretans we can only guess at and from a very different temporal standpoint. (24)

10. Homer's Epics: Mythology and Education

Western philosophy began with a search for the truth about everything. The first philosophers did not accept Homer's mythology of the Greek gods and goddesses. Homer, the most popular poet and writer of the ancient Greek period, was also its major educator and shaper of human values, morals, and ideals. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were widely read, heard, and recited by the mass of people; and these books became the most popular books of Greek mythology and religion.

In fact, for hundreds of years before the fifth century BCE, Greek mythology—the preliminary stage in the formation of philosophy—flourished in the storytelling, singing, and lyrical poetry of many known and unknown artists, traveling the countryside and city-states of Greece. This form of entertainment was distinctly educational; and it fueled the imagination of the mass of people to desire glory in life which usually meant a heroic death on the battlefield. (25)

As H.I. Marrou, in his classic study of Education in Antiquity, has written about the shaping influence of Homer’s epics not only upon the Western conception of the hero, but upon its first major writer of philosophy, Plato:

"The poet's function is to educate, and education means inculcating [the] high ideal of glory. The aim of poetry is not essentially aesthetic but the immortalization of the hero. The poet, as Plato was to say, 'clothes all the great deeds accomplished by the men of old with glory, and thus educates those who come after.'"(26)

Marrou continues:

"To understand Homer's educational influences one only has to read him and see what his method is, what he regards as proper education for his heroes. Their counselors must set before them the great examples to be found in the old legends and so arouse the agonistic instinct, the competitive spirit." (27)

Crucial in awakening the agonistic instinct in Plato’s Republic or ideal society was to take young boys at an early age into a kind of boot camp environment, doubtlessly inspired by Sparta’s military State, and train them to be soldiers which instilled in them the competitive spirit for life. This marked the beginning of the military consciousness in academic philosophy as well, and the unquestioning acceptance of it through this educational influence. 

I have emphasized the ‘competitive spirit’ since they also capture the spirit of our own times. For we are, culturally speaking, hugely influenced by the agonistic, competitive, and mythic values of Homer; yet on another educational level, we have also inherited an equally powerful moral, philosophical and spiritual tradition that is critical of the value system that Homer's epics represent and glorify. And this counter-tradition to militarism, competition and a conflict-laden theory of life, within Western culture, is one that is humanistic and non-competitive, and grounded in the values of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’.

In the mythology of ancient Greece, there are several major gods including: Zeus, the controller of sky, air, and heavens; Prometheus, the god who defied Zeus by stealing fire and giving it to humanity in the various forms of creativity; Pandora, a sinister woman conceived by Zeus to destroy humanity for the sin of Prometheus and whose godly charms and human curiosity released the evils of the world; Gaia, a goddess who controls the whole earth, imparting nurturing and living qualities to it; Athena, the goddess of wisdom, peace, and the arts, but most significantly, in a latter period, the goddess who commands all military force; Poseidon, the ruler of the seas, water, and aqueous states; and so forth.

Perhaps the most telling of the transformation away from the egalitarian, cooperative and humanistic values of a lost world culture—Eden-like in the experiences of the many and not just for one famous couple of the Christian bible—was the statue of lovely Athena who graced the freezes and hallways of many a lost Greek temple and byways of village squares. For ancient Greece marked the beginning of a military consciousness that has profoundly shaped Western society for over 2,600 years through several different institutions, beginning with an educational process for the elite in ancient Greek times, culminating in Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum, through today’s post-industrial Capitalism that emphasizes collective security over personal freedom, and the profit-motive over the lives of people and other sentient beings.   

 11. The Myths of Homer: Their Influence in Greek Philosophy

What were the ideals of the ancient Greek world? Ancient Greek city-states, with the conspicuous exception of Sparta, generally expressed a transition from a military, adventure-seeking, manly Odysseus to the reflective, rational, and conscience-driven ideals of a Socrates. Although this was a gradual and almost imperceptible shift in ideals over several hundred years, it was by no means the dominating or core value of the Axial period (7^th –2^nd centuries BCE).

Philosophically the transition—as we shall see—in ancient Greek philosophy was from a crazy mixture of myth, reason and intuition during pre-Socratic times (6^th and 5^th centuries) through a more visionary, utopian and idealistic period of Socrates and Plato (5^th and 4^th centuries) to Aristotle’s more scientific and theological approach to reality in the 4^th century. The Hellenistic period that followed Aristotle in the 4^th through the 2^nd was a revival of Socratic ethics, humanism and skepticism, in large part. And this was based on the belief that Socrates embodied the deepest insights and highest ideals of all those philosophers who came before him and followed.   

Meanwhile, in Aristotle's Poetics, we can find as succinct a summary of Homer's second epic poem, The Odyssey, as can be found anywhere. Aristotle wrote:

"A certain man has been abroad many years; he is alone, and the god Poseidon keeps a hostile eye on him. At home the situation is that suitors for his wife's hand are draining the resources and plotting to kill his son. Then after suffering storm and shipwreck, he comes home, makes himself known, attacks the suitors, he survives and they are destroyed." (28)

The rest, Aristotle adds, somewhat derogatorily, is simply ‘one episode after another’.

It is pretty obvious that Aristotle, following Plato in this respect, and did not subscribe to Homer's adventuring, military man as a cultural ideal. Yet, human beings do not live on thought alone, anymore than they do on action. And Aristotle, more than Plato, emphasized the active, moral man of this world and not an ‘island of the blessed’ as in the case of Plato’s mythic theory of reincarnation, visible in the Republic and elsewhere. 

The Iliad, Homer's first epic poem written some fifty years before the Odyssey (c. 750 BCE) is the more violent record of heroic deeds and military exploits on the bloody fields of battle. The likely fertilizing ground for Homer's own creativity is the ancient oral tradition of storytelling, itinerant poetry, and song-making, which mainly told of military battles and similar manly glories, from legends of pre-Homeric origins. Populating Homer’s writings were the various gods and goddesses, whose super-human identities controlled the course of all events in the natural and social world.  

Adding to the drama of the ‘heroic man’—the man who first proved himself on the battlefield and who could claim all booty after battle, not the least of which was the most desirable women—was the fact that the inspired text communicated readily to the mass of people. The gods, the Muses, and the heroic men of Homer were the stuff of popular lore and entertaining legend for the mass of people. In fact, the stories of Iliad and the Odyssey, written in poetic imagery, with heroic characters and vivid action, were far more real, understandable and familiar to the general public than the abstract ideas, discourses, and speculations of the philosophers.

The recent prize-winning translation of The Odyssey by Robert Fagles, is commented upon by Bernard Knox in his luminous introduction to the epic:

"The Homeric epics were familiar as household words in the mouths of ordinary Greeks. They maintained their hold on the tongues and imaginations of the Greeks by their superb literary quality—the simplicity, speed and directness of the narrative technique, the brilliance, excitement of the action, the greatness and imposing humanity of the characters—and by the fact that they presented to the Greek people, in memorable form, with the images of their gods and the ethical, political and practical wisdom of their cultural tradition.” (29)

One could hardly expect a more inclusive educational influence upon the people of Greece by any writer—philosophical or not—than what Homer's epics so famously accomplished. Did Homer's immense popularity and philosophical influence among the early Greek people create a jealousy, competition, and division between the literary and philosophical, religious and scientific traditions in the West that are—somewhat misleadingly—still with us? Indeed, much evidence suggests that these dualisms in our educational and public establishments had their origin in part from the perceived and feared educational superiority of story, poetry and drama by Plato and his followers, over the bloodless abstractions, careful analyses, and extended discussions of the philosophers.

The Sophists or first professional teachers were clearly an exception to the public perception of the intelligentsia. For as we shall see, the Sophists were practical-minded teachers, looking for a way to market their experience, knowledge and skills to a needy public eager to acquire the necessary knowledge to get ahead in the highly competitive, commercial environment of ancient Greece. It was, of course, this social environment that Socrates grew up in and heaped much criticism upon for the greed, materialism, and shallow habits of thought and speech that it fostered in the typical Athenian citizen.

Yet some two centuries after Homer wrote his epics, fifth century Athens became the most favored city-State for artists, cosmopolitans, and the educated among whom were the first philosophers. Not surprisingly, many of the storied myths, gods and narratives of the Homeric period found their way into the writings of many Greek philosophers, especially the pre-Socratics, Plato, and the followers of Socrates.

12. Clistenes: The Midwife of Greek Democracy

In the year 508 BCE, the ordinary people of Athens rose up in anger and turned on the tyrant Isagoras and the forces of Sparta who had captured the Acropolis; and within three days, they overthrew the hated military rule of the city. This event marked the revolutionary beginning of democracy and the idea that they people have an absolute right to choose their own form of government. This appears to be the first of its kind in history. But what caused this momentous event and what were the events leading up to it?

In the year 570 BCE, Clistenes (also known as Cleisthenes) was born into an aristocratic family. He was brought up to think that he was superior to all others who were socially beneath him. But Clistenes was also raised in an atmosphere of what could be called a democratic athleticism, where it was believed that anyone, from any social class or region of Greece, could compete and achieve greatness at the Olympic Games, which had their origin in 776 BCE, at Olympia, Greece. These two somewhat conflicting ideas—excellence in individual achievement and the idea of equality before nature—are crucial in understanding the greatness that was ancient Greece and the crucial role that Clistenes played in the birth of democracy.

The historian Herodotus wrote that the aristocratic Pisistratus came to power in Athens, in 560 BCE, and started a series of new land and tax reforms for ordinary people; perhaps most importantly, he established the olive tree as the main source of material wealth in Greece. Before this time, Greece was, quite generally, a country characterized by serfdom and injustice, and the mass of people had no power and no real share in the wealth of the country. Now, every Greek citizen with land could actively participate in the new source of wealth since Greek’s soil and climate is uniquely suited to the flourishing of the olive tree; and most people of the world desired both the fruit and the oil from the olive tree. (30)

Herodotus, who always had an ear and eye for theatrical stories and sensational disclosures, outdid himself with Pisistratus. When Pisistratus was brought to power for the second time, he was ushered into Athens by a Minerva or an Athena look-alike who was then the gentle goddess of wisdom. The political handlers found a very tall and handsome peasant girl and they dressed her "in a complete suit of armor, and placed her on a chariot, and having shown her beforehand how to assume the most becoming demeanor, they drove her to the city, having sent heralds before, who, on their arrival in the city, proclaimed: 'O Athenians, receive with kind wishes Pisistratus, whom Minerva herself, honoring all men, now conducts back to her own citadel.' They went about proclaiming this; and a report was presently spread among the people that Minerva was bringing back Pisistratus; and the people in the city believing this woman to be the goddess, both adored a human being, and received Pisistratus." (31)

After absurd ploy or play-acting apparently worked for Pisistratus won the popular support that he needed for effective power. But in order to re-instated to office, he was coerced to marry the daughter of Megacles, an Athenian magistrate who helped put him into power. But believing himself to be under a curse and already having two sons, Pisistratus had only ‘unnatural’ intercourse with his new wife. Once this was known to Megacles, it was all over for Pisistratus and he was forced to leave his position once again. A third try put Pisistratus securely in power over Athens, and he established a benevolent tyranny until his death in 527 BCE. (32)

During the benevolent dictatorship of Pisistratus and in spite of the political corruption of that time, Clistenes perceived how Athens began to flourish under Pisistratus. Clistenes had begun to harbor ideas about social justice, the freedom and equality of persons, and the need to continuously reform the government of any city-State, to achieve a government of the people. It is somewhat miraculous and mysterious where Clistenes ideas came from since there was no precedent for a democracy in all of Greece or the known world, for that matter.

Following Pisistratus' death, his two sons, Hippias and Hipparchia, then ruled Athens jointly and with a fair hand, perhaps inspired by their father's example. In 514 BCE, everything suddenly changed when Hipparchus was murdered by two men from aristocratic families. Hippias sought revenge and immediately murdered the two men, and even tortured their wives. Whereupon, Hippias fell into a paranoid and vengeful madness, threatening everyone around him, whether they meant to harm him or not.

The Spartans, due to their hatred of Hippias and his clan, came to the aid of Clistenes and the Athenian aristocrats in the overthrow of Hippias. In the process, the Spartans became an unwitting party to the democratic reforms of Athens. The Spartans then felt betrayed and they later aided Isagoras, another aristocrat, in his overthrow of Clistenes. But Isagoras was no Clistenes; in fact he became a tyrant in the modern sense of the word; and he began to target the aristocrats of Athens—Clistenes among them. Clistenes fled for his life and with his family.

During the brief period of ruthless tyranny and military rule by Isagoras and the Spartans, over 700 aristocratic families of Athens were sent packing. Finally, under an oppressive civil order, the likes of which the ordinary citizens of Athens had never known, the people rose up in an armed rage one night, and stormed the Acropolis, where the rulers had fortified themselves. After two days and nights of ferocious fighting, the citizens of Athens overwhelmed the Spartan soldiers and overthrew Isagoras and his ruling faction. The people of Athens (not the aristocrats) turned to Clistenes, in exile, who had already proven his worth and goodness as a former ruler. They trusted him to do the right thing; and he did not disappoint them. (33)

The year was 508 BCE. Clistenes returned to Athens, by popular demand, and his return marked the birth of democracy—after its first birth pains and the historic revolution by the People. Clistenes by this time was completely persuaded that a revolutionary political solution was needed for a revolutionary social situation. He established a site for the first democratic assembly, and established a system of voting, for the citizens of the government, by means of white (a ‘yes’ vote) and black (a ‘no’ vote) stones. The new government could raise or lower taxes, decide to build roads or not, and do only what the majority of people wanted done. For the first time, Athens would have a government of, by, and for the people—all the people. It was, however, a quite imperfect ‘democratic’ government, for many reasons. Its chief offense in the history of philosophy and free speech was its trial of Socrates on entirely bogus charges and sentencing of him to his death.

13. Democracy in Ancient Greece: Its Cultural Matrix

Two other powerful cities existed in ancient Greece, besides Athens—Sparta and Argos. Did they contribute to the rise of democracy in Athens?

Argos was the most powerful city-state of ancient Greece before Athens rose to its cultural and military hegemony. Yet nothing like democracy could be seen in Argos—in its autocratic and aristocratic governments—during the hundreds of years of its prominence in Greece. Sparta, an ancient city in the Peloponnesus region or southernmost region of the Greek mainland, went through several transformations from the eighth to the fourth centuries, but only achieved a mixed record in politics, morality, and aesthetics.

Sparta was an armed encampment, based upon the conventional virtues of military courage rather than moral or intellectual excellence. Sparta was not a city or ‘polis’ in the Greek sense of the word, since its citizenship was based mainly upon military training. The root conception of ‘polis’ in ancient Greece conceived of the city as the ideal educational environment for education since it may offer many resources for learning and growth.

Sparta conscripted all fit boys at age 7 into its formidable army, and they were required to remain in its army until the age of 60. More notably, on a moral level, a young woman's role was not reduced to raising children and serving men, as it was in Athens and other Greek city-States. The women of Sparta enjoyed a legal and social equality with men that was truly unique in ancient times and only found elsewhere on the Greek islands of Crete, Malta, and Lesbos.

For example, young, child-bearing women were expected to be the equal of men in physical fitness and health since they would be more apt to produce healthy children for the military. Women were granted the same rights and privileges on personal and social levels which included the freedom to learn and travel and seek the company with whomever they deemed would contribute to their sexual, emotional and intellectual sense of well-being. The only caveat in this whom totalitarian scheme was that women were expected to produce and care for fit male children until they were taken by the militarized government of Sparta at the tender age of seven.

By 600 BCE, Sparta's fiercely disciplined soldiers were second-to-none in the Greek world. In the famous Greek battles against the Persians in the early fifth century, the Spartans fought alongside the Athenians in their defeat of the invaders. Sparta was a totalitarian city-state with enforced conscription of all fit male children; and if they were not judged to be healthy at birth, they were usually killed. Sparta's social structure was based upon the enslavement of the ‘helots’ or the Laconian and Messenian serfs who farmed the land, and the subjugation of the ‘freemen’ who worked in commerce and handicrafts. (34)

As described in the preceding section, the story of democracy in ancient Greece began with the installation of Clistenes. Clistenes was an elderly aristocrat and a tested military hero, and his record of constitutional and political reforms earned him name-recognition and instant appeal to the majority of the Athenian people when they forcibly removed Isagoras, his political rival. Clistenes “proposed a series of reforms, which, when finally adopted, made Athens the first notable democracy—a polis or city-State in which an active assembly of male citizens was invested with full sovereignty." (35)

Meanwhile, the political strength of the budding democracy in ancient Athens was tested by three famous battles against the invading Persians on the plains of Marathon in 490, off the island of Salamis in 480, and again at Plataea in 470 BCE—the year of Socrates' birth. In the last and most decisive battle, Darius, the king of Persia, commanded with greater numerical strength; but the Athenian army's greater strategic cunning, their strength of will, and their fleet's command under admiral Aristedes, slaughtered the Persian forces, demolished their fleets, and sent Darius fleeing for his life. These battles, although defensive in nature, probably marked the beginning of the notion that war is ‘politics by other means’ in a democracy and other forms of government.

Ancient Greek democracy involved a direct—rather than representative—form of democracy, where the citizens, as equal members of an assembly, participated directly in the making of laws and policies about affairs of the city-State. There was a system of rotation in the executive offices, so that each member of the assembly could serve their own alloted term. And the legal system was determined by the drawing of lots, rather than political nepotism or favoritism.

It has been said that a democracy of this sort—a direct one—was only possible due to the educational level of the assembly and the small size of Athens. Yet in The Republic, Plato rejected democracy since it is based upon a mediocrity of personal development, a distain for transcendental ideals, and an appeal to the ‘common man’.

Hear such criticisms of democracy, delivered by Socrates, in Book VIII of the The Republic:

"'And the tolerance of democracy, its superiority to our meticulous requirements, its disdain for our solemn pronouncements made when we were founding our city [in the Republic the State is ruled by a philosopher-king] that except in the case of the transcendent natural gifts no one could ever become a good man unless from his childhood play and all his pursuits were concerned with things fair and good—how superbly it tramples underfoot all such ideals, caring nothing from what practices and way of life a man turn to politics, but honoring him only if he says that he loves the people!”

'It is a noble polity indeed!' he [Glaucon] said.

'These and qualities akin to these democracy would exhibit, and it would, it seems, be a delightful form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike!'"(36)

Since a propect in politics and ethics would be intolerable to the totalitarian instincts of Plato.

In Plato's meritocracy of the Republic, the blurring of human differences in terms of birth, knowledge, and character was unacceptable. On a personal level, it was the very democratic assembly of Athens that handed out a death sentence to his dearest friend and mentor, Socrates, that so embittered Plato.  So how could Plato's judgment of democracy be otherwise? Aristotle, the student of Plato, merely judged democracy to be the least evil of the various forms of government, but by no means the best.

The year 509 BCE (one year before the birth of democracy in Athens) generally marks the end of the archaic or lyric age of Greece—an age that glorified the Hero or god-like individual especially for his military prowess. And the date also marks the beginning of new forms of popular drama that celebrated everyone—ordinary people with their ‘works and days,’ in their absurdities and tragedies, as the many dramatists would say. In the great amphitheatre of Dionysus in Athens, Aristophanes, Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus and many others, would celebrate the Greek people of all classes and walks of life through their existential conflicts and universal experiences. (37)

Perhaps the only class of people not to be found in the great amphitheatre were the slaves, who were thought to number two or three persons for every ‘free’ citizen of Greece—a pattern or ratio that has remained nearly constant throughout the world, in one form or another. Of course, this is one of the dirty little secrets of ancient Athenian democracy—that for all its humanistic and noble sounding ideals, its wealth and high levels of creativity in the arts, sciences, and humanities, were made largely possible by the slave labor of ‘barbarians’ or non-Greek speaking peoples who had been captured during their many military conquests.

Two thousand years later, a Euro-American system of black African slavery imitated the ancient slave-based societies of Greece, Rome, and Egypt, in the name of freedom, democracy, and the equality for all! And, just as Athens, and later Rome, would become the centers for Empire-building in the ancient world, the city of Washington D.C. would become the political center for an American Empire in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries.

In these three cases—and there are numerous others throughout the world—great Empires were built upon the established of a hierarchical social class order, based upon a protected economic inequality, a system of slavery for excluded racial and ethnic groups, a patriarchy that systematically discriminated against women and kept them ‘separate and unequal’ to men; the outright theft of land and resources from indigenous people and the destruction of their own culture; and the legalized murder of whoever stood in the way of state or ‘national interest’.—And this was indeed part of the heritage given to us by ancient Greece.

14. A Greek Tragedy: Defeat at Sicily and the End of an Empire.

War, especially when victorious, has conventionally been a unifying event for nation or city-States, in the case of ancient Greece. Writers and film-makers of the twentieth century exploit this form of human activity and use the events of warfare for its entertainment value. Indeed, such was the case in ancient Greece, when Aeschylus dramatized the defeat of the Persian ruler, Xerxes, at Salamis.

"In 479, with the burnt-out ruins of the city of Athens above and around them, Athenians watched Aeschylus' play The Persians which presented the defeat of Xerxes not as a triumph of Greek arms but as the divine punishment visited on a man who had tried to transgress the limits set by the gods to human greatness." (38)

The confidence with which the Athenians ruled their city, and for a while, the whole of Greece—the feelings that they had become the favored ones of the gods under Heaven and on Earth—should not be a strange idea to anyone who was born into the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious tradition. Yet, it is rare that rulers and the ruled gain wisdom from the unspeakable horrors and tragic victories of war. For, practically nowhere in the world today do we see an unqualified moral commitment among national leaders to end the madness of war.

Some fifty years after the final defeat of Persia by Athenian forces at Plataea, a small town north of Athens, in 470, Athens went to war again. But this time it was not for defensive purposes, but only for greater wealth and power, the two oldest motives for war-making. The object of acquisition then was the island of Sicily, over 600 miles by water from Athens; and Sicily was no means a third rate military power.

Even though Athens has just been engaged in an exhausting war with Sparta, it had also grown thoroughly arrogant from its worldly success. The judgments of its leaders were thoroughly deluded and Athens would commit the most stupid act of its young Empire: an all-out attack on the island of Sicily from a depleted and half-hearted military command. There were no strategic or tactical reasons for the attack—only greed, vanity, and military glory. The year was 415 BCE.

The Athenians sent their great fleet of ships with over 50,000 men to Sicily for the land and resource grab. But things went badly from the start. The commanders were divided about the best strategy, and worst still, many were uncertain about the morality of the whole venture. As a result, the Athenians suffered their worst defeat ever in terms of military losses and a nearly fatal blow to their moral spirit and political integrity at home. Athens, the glorious city-State of high culture and great wealth, would never entirely recover from its defeat at Sicily.

Meanwhile, the Persian leaders were watching safely from a distance and saw their chance to get revenge from their earlier defeats at the hands of the Athenians. Persia approached Sparta, the old enemy of Athens, and subsidized them with a fleet of maritime ships—a fighting capability that Sparta never had. Within 10 years, in 404 BCE, Athens was forced to surrender to Lycender, the commander of the greatly strengthened Spartan army, thanks to Persian gold.

Sparta increased its death grip upon Athens by forming a blockade against the shipments of food grains from Egypt. The people starved, plague broke out, and the government collapsed. The great protective walls of Athens were destroyed; and the pride of Athens—its great fleet of war ships—was left to burn in its harbor. More than anything else, the ships of Athens symbolized her military power. Athens would never again rule the Mediterranean seaways and as an Empire with economic and political influence, it was finished.

Sicily proved to be the Waterloo of Athens. More currently, the wars of the Middle East in Iraq and Afghanistan s well prove to be America's Sicily. Sometimes, history does repeat itself, or nearly so, especially if nothing is learned from the past while acting and deciding in the present. It does not matter whether governments call themselves democratic, socialistic, or theocratic—if the tragic folly of war is not seen by the leaders of nation and they act in the ‘national interest’ believing that their cause is just, their means proportional and their ends sane.

15. Greek Culture: Drama, Politics, and Philosophy.

On a lighter note, Greek drama had flourished after Aeschylus’ first play was presented in the amphitheatre of Dionysus in Athens-city. There had also been a remarkable range of plays by Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes—plays that the Greek philosophers knew of, and most certainly enjoyed. In fact, the vast majority of the citizens of Athens were richly entertained, purged, and educated by turns, by Greek playwrights, poets, storytellers, and performers of all kinds in the many amphitheatres of Greece.

Aristotle would later write, in the Poetics, that dramatic characters of a play are a source of catharsis for the audience, purging them of emotional conflicts and tensions to the extent that the members of the audience can identify with the situations, plots and actors that are dramatically represented. The only requirement is an act of imagination, suspension of reality, and a temporary absorption in the unfolding of the drama, leading to a catharsis or cleansing of the soul.

The poet Hesiod of the seventh century, and the historian Thucydides of the fifth century BCE, would bring Greece to other heights of creativity with their writing of history and without gods or goddesses influencing human destiny. Ancient Greek culture and history, more than anything else, was an active and self-conscious turning away from mythological forms of thought, to more realistic, humanistic, and philosophical ones. The bulk of its philosophy, poetry, and drama—once past the Homeric and Heroic period—marked the dawning of a new consciousness about humankind's existence in a godless, uncaring and indifferent universe.

In this respect, the new consciousness that followed the lives of three most famous ancient Greek philosophers—Socrates, Plato and Aristotle—resembled in many ways modern and postmodern philosophy, i.e. skeptical, fatalistic, ethical, naturalistic, scientific and pragmatic.

Pericles (circa 495-429 BCE) was a member of the famous Alcmaeonidae family of Greece through his mother who was a niece of Clistenes, the midwife of democracy. In about 450 BCE, Pericles promoted the political democracy in Athens by establishing a salary for its public officials. He opened every office to citizens, but he limited the definition of citizenship to persons whose parents were both Athenian by birth. Pericles also brought the famous Delian League to its greatest influence under his leadership of Athens. The League was a confederation of Ionian city-states numbering 144; and its initial purpose was in militarily opposing the Persian Empire. In time, the offices of the League were moved from the Temple at Delos—an island in the Aegean Sea—to the Acropolis in Athens. The effect of this move and the unity of the League greatly contributed to Athens as the legal and constitutional center of ancient Greece. (39)

Pericles enjoyed a 14-year period of leadership in Athens made possible by a 30-year peace treaty with Sparta, signed in 445 BCE. During this time, Pericles famously promoted the arts, sciences, and humanities, and Athenian cultural life flourished as never before. This was the peak time or Golden Age of Athens and perhaps for the Western world as well. In 431, the Golden Age of Athens suddenly ended with the breaking of the peace treaty and the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War—a final conflict between Sparta and Athens, which ended in 404—as previously discussed—with the humiliation and ruin of Athens. (40)

Of course, ancient Greek democracy, philosophy, science, and the arts was to continue long after the death of Pericles and the collapse of Athens. Otherwise, we would not be spending so much time on this period of history! Socrates (470-399 BCE) was easily the most important philosopher of fifth-century Athens. His own social immortality was ensured by Plato, his most famous student and writer of philosophy, while the succession continued with Aristotle, Plato's most remarkable student.

The pre-Socratic and Socratic influences upon Plato were institutionalized by Plato's Academy in 486 BCE—the first institution of higher education and philosophy in the West—and it was to continue for nearly nine hundred years. Aristotle also assured the educational continuity of previous Greek philosophers with the formation of the Lyceum, in c. 334 BCE, which became an equally famous and enduring legacy for generations of students. Both schools were located in Athens at the sites of the philosophers' teachings.

Just as the Parthenon atop the Acropolis of Athens still stands in its perfectly proportioned and noble architectural form, so do the historic achievements of the philosophers, Periclean democracy, the dramatists, the poets, and the artisans. Although Romans and Europeans would imitate and strive to replicate the creative forms of Greece, none would quite exceed the wonder, excellence, and cultural epiphany of fifth century Athens.

As the Greek classicist, Bernard Knox has written, "Fifth century Athens was not only an imperial capital, a center of wealth and power it was because of its primacy in literature and the arts, a magnet for talent from all over the Greek world. It became, in fact, in the famous phrase of its leader Pericles, 'the education of Greece.'" (41)

For the classical humanists in the West, fifth century Athens came to represent the very best that human beings have so far been capable of achieving anywhere. However, this viewpoint should be seen for its Eurocentric bias, stepped in an unhealthy brew of ethnocentric racism, social class prejudice and raw elitism. For as has been said from the awakened consciousness of feminist philosophy, European philosophy and its many step-children throughout the developed world, is a product of ‘old white men’.  

In northern Africa and the Middle East, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia all made seminal contributions to engineering, astronomy, and mathematics in ancient times; and their richly developed cultures built great pyramids, temples, and buildings that honored many gods and goddesses, as well as celebrating the achievements of many creative individuals in the arts and humanities. Zoroaster and the religious viewpoint that celebrated his vision of reality, is only one example of the nearly lost heritage of this region.—We will consider this and many other ancient viewpoints, in detail, in later texts.   

During the same period, great, flourishing civilizations existed far to the East of ancient Greece, the Middle East, and North Africa, on the largely unknown sub-continent of India and mainland of China. It would not be until General Alexander of Macedonia took his exhausted army into the Indus Valley region of North India, in 325 BCE, that a clear, unambiguous and direct contact existed between ancient Indians and Greeks. It was a discovery of differences and similarities between cultures and peoples that has grown separately from one another but from strikingly similar philosophical elements in the human self, nature, society and the cosmos. 

16. The Global Perspective in Philosophy: Postmodernism

In our postmodern world of the twenty-first century, the Greek philosophical heritage is still quite visible. It confronts us in our rationality and technology every day, and in our love of logic, science, and physicality. We also see Greek philosophy in the ideals of democracy, freedom, individualism, truth, virtue, education, and knowledge in general; for the ancient Greeks were dreamers and the original jugglers of ideas, with many things being tossed into the air at one time and all mixed together. They were also the first children of the light—the light of reason, language and consciousness—from which the followers of Apollo believed all worthwhile understandings in life derive. 

The postmodern ethos or spirit of contemporary society is the view that reality is essentially physical, organic, evolving, and above all, uncertain. We have created a whole mythos of uncertainty in our ‘modern’ living, thinking and being; so much so that almost no one trusts what is just here-and-now, and forever totality the same Reality. Instead we postmoderns look only upon the passing reality of the here-and-now, superficially and quickly since it is speed that counts for everything in the modern world. We hesitate to go deeply for fear of what is serious and beyond our control or will. Instead we miss what is most human and basic to life, the relationships that we form with one another in the realization that everything is impermanent especially the Life-force sustaining this body, mind and moment.   

In the Age of Terror, we are living in fear, fearful of ourselves, others, and the great nothingness. In our times, the guiding mythos is scientific materialism or the philosophy of nihilism, which offers no ultimate meaning or purpose for anything. Instead it offers only the certainty of the passing here-and-now—the momentary situation. The consequence in experience is the fleeting feeling, perception and image of reality while in knowledge it is a rapidly delivered play of words, fragments of understanding, and slogans for concepts. The lack of any real unity or continuity is outstanding between the fragmented, disconnected and superficial understandings.  

The leading advocates of our postmodern era generally follow an ethical path of secular humanism, a view that is anti-religious and pro-science, and advocate a problem-solving method for realizing human values. Among the traditions or schools of philosophy, secular humanism is embodied in Pragmatic Philosophy especially its non-religious wing as well as atheistic Existential Philosophy. Meanwhile, the critics of scientific humanism—the right-wing Fundamentalists or extremists of most religions generally refer to atheists and agnostics as ‘secular humanists’—a phrase they use with a heavy derogatory emphasis as if it alone condemns them to eternal hell. At the same time, ‘secular humanism’ carries an emotional charge that doubters and skeptics are godless heathens who are prone to moral blindness, selfishness and hedonism—as if religious fundamentalists are entirely above such human, all-too-human tendencies.   

The so-called ‘Culture War’ of the postmodern era is the result of the dichotomy between science and religion. The ‘war’ conceives of both science and religion in a somewhat narrow and extremely reductive ways, making common respect, understanding and peace between these two spheres of thought and belief very difficult if not impossible for the extremists. Extremism in thought and feeling not only leads to severe psychological ill-health but also, potentially, to ‘terrorism’ or acts of overt violence based upon an ideology. And an ideology is a distortion of a philosophy, religion or science, in that it insists on applying a given viewpoint to All when, in fact, an ideology only represents the view and values of a few or a certain group, class or cult.  

The roots for this dispute lie in the Middle Ages and religious or clerical fundamentalism rather than Greek philosophy or the interpreters and users of Greek philosophy among theologians. For sure, the bare framing of differences between the One and the many, faith and reason, mythos and Logos—can be seen in ancient Greek philosophy. But there it ends in so far as Greek philosophers were not interested in claiming their moral or religious superiority to others. Rather it was the institutionalization of religion in the Middle East and elsewhere that led to its moral corruption and philosophical distortion.

In the ancient worlds of Greece, India, and China during the Axial Age (seventh to second centuries BCE), virtually the same potentialities for human understanding existed then that we now possess. What has so drastically changed in the intervening centuries are the external, technological, and material conditions of societies nearly everywhere. This does not mean that the inner constitution of humans has not also changed; it means only that it has changed imperceptibly, at a much slower rate than external conditions would imply.

Parmenides, the ancient Italian philosopher, thought that the "Way of Truth" is unchanging. Or ‘the more things change, the more they remain the same’. On the other hand, the "Way of Seeming" or everydayness, he believed, greatly differs from the "Way of Truth". This dichotomy or artificial separation between Truth and seeming, Being and beings, or the One and the many, would come to haunt Western philosophy and theology like some ghostly presence in the form of an insidious dualism between spirit and matter, religion and science, and even philosophy and everyday life, ever since then.

Bertrand Russell, the twentieth-century British philosopher, has written i philosophical gem, Mysticism and Logic, that the twofold or dialectical nature of knowledge is philosophy's great strength. He wrote—in reference to Plato and Heraclitus, two philosophers of the ancient Greek period who illustrate this tendency, so well—that:

"It is with the impartial temper [of science and logic] that the mystic's apparent insight into a higher reality and a hidden good has to be combined if philosophy is to realize its greatest possibilities. It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit: divorced from it, they remain barren. But marriage with the world is not to be achieved by an ideal which shrinks from fact, or demands in advance that the world shall conform to its desires." (42)

Russell advocated a philosophy that would have been well received by the more pragmatic, logical, and scientific philosophers of Greece. But the Greek mystics such as Pythagoras, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and others, would have been somewhat puzzled by it, since they all believed in a higher Truth that lies beyond the everyday world of perception and ‘fact’. It was only with the more skeptical, naturalistic and ethical viewpoints of the ancient Greeks that the pragmatic and worldly philosophies of modern and postmodern times would be most fully appreciated and understood.

 

17. Hesiod (c. 700): The Poet of Pandora.

Theogony, or the theory concerning the origin and nature of the gods, is important to early Greek religion and the rise of Greek philosophy. The gods of Greek mythology are projections of human imagination upon nature. The Greeks imagined that the control or influence that the gods exerted was through natural elements like the earth, air, fire, water, sky, sun, moon, and the planets.

There were many stories spun from myth and legend based upon the identities of the gods. The ancient Greeks wanted to understand why things happen as they do, in nature, and in the human relationships of life. The stories were explanations and answers to the proto-philosophical questions of ancient people; and these myths and legends had a moral, religious, and educational force when effectively communicated.

Expressed allegorically, none of the myths is descriptive of actual events, and their originators probably never meant for them to be taken in this way. Rather, myth, religion, and even much of philosophy should be understood as metaphor—as representations, at a symbolic level, about the truth of human experience. If nothing else, mythologies around the world are indigenous expressions of human morality, which, in turn, have formed the major world religions.

Xenophanes, a poet who lived in the Greek city of Ionia, was critical of the Greek gods and mythology, because he thought that it taught the people false truths and promoted illusions. Ironically, he was cited in later centuries as one of the early promoters of theology.  

Hesiod is a poet who lived during the late eighth and early seventh centuries BCE. He is unique among the early users of Greek myths in that he related the actions of the gods to human life and especially the hard work, toil, and labor of ordinary humans.

In one of Hesiod's poems, "Pandora," it is woman who is the cause of the evils of the world. Useless, backbreaking work is one of the outstanding features of the social world. But, we must ask, what is the origin of work—work that may only serve the interests of others?

"For the gods have hidden and keep hidden
what could be men's livelihood.
It could have been that easily
in one day you could work out
enough to keep you for a year,
with no more working.
Soon you could have hung up your steering oar
in the smoke of the fireplace,
and the work the oxen and patient mules do
would be abolished,
but Zeus in the anger of his heart hid it away
because the devious minded Prometheus had cheated him;
and therefore Zeus thought up dismal sorrows
for mankind." (43)

According to the myth, the means for human misery was woman—Pandora—a completely charming, irresistible beauty but with all known treachery and falsehood in her heart. She opened the lid to the jar (in this version) and released all the evils of life: disease, old age, sorrow, death, etc; but even Pandora could do nothing to change things, since she herself became locked inside the jar with the spirit of Hope—ironically, her only companion.

Hesiod was a poet of the people in that he showed a real compassion for their common lot. Among his other poems are "The Ages of Man," and "Works and Days," which focus upon ordinary human experiences rather than the heroic. He used the sexist myths of Greece to portray the dark side of humanity—the evil and violence, fear and hatred, greed and misery, laborious work and slavery, illusions and ignorance. Of course, things have not always been like this, affirms another perennial myth: Once upon a time there was a Golden Age when people lived harmoniously with each other and nature, and they knew happiness, pleasure, and freedom. This myth was probably based upon the memory of the Mycenaean civilization (circa third millennium BCE).

A very similar set of myths exists in the Judeo-Christian story of Genesis. There, Eve, the first woman, is the source of all evil—along with snake. In her sin with Adam, the Lord said to them: "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all thy life. . . . In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. . . ." This is the same essential story that we find among the ancient Greeks. Only the cast of characters is different. (44)

Could we have a different world if humanity believed in the goodness of woman? Could things be different—indeed, far better—if we did not believe that the "gods" or a "God" controls everything? How different could human societies become if the rights of women were really honored, and women played a vital role in the political, moral, and economic decision-making of the world? Would the human world be less violent and destructive toward Earth and all living forms if women and men equally shared the decision-making, problem-solving, and power of nation-states?

Poetic Interlude

"The Most Beautiful Things Left Behind"
by Praxilla of Sicyon, fifth century BCE

Finest of all the things I have left is the light of the sun,
Next to that the brilliant stars and the face of the moon,
Cucumbers in their season, too, and apples and pears.

"Traveler"
by Simonides (556-468 BCE)

Traveler, take this word to the men of Lakedaimon:
We who lie buried here did what they told us to do.

 "After the Fall of Greece"
by Louis MacNeice

"And free speech shivered on the pikes of Macedonia
And late on the swords of Rome
And Athens became a mere university city
And the goddess born of the foam
Became the kept hetaera, heroine of Menander,
And the philosopher narrowed his focus, confined
His efforts to putting his own soul in order
And keeping a quiet mind.
And for a thousand years they went on talking,
Making such apt remarks,
A race no longer of heroes but of professors
And crooked business men and secretaries and clerks
Who turned out dapper little elegiac verses
On the ironies of fate, the transience of all
Affections, carefully shunning an over-statement
But working the dying fall.

From Autumn Journal The Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice (Oxford University, Oxford, 1967) p.118.

Notes:
Part I
Introduction to Ancient Greek Philosophy

1. The Journey of Man, by Spencer Wells (Princeton University Press, Princeton N.J., 2002) pp. 15-16.

2. The following are statements from Wells' book: The Journey of Man, by Spencer Wells (Princeton University Press, Princeton N.J., 2002) pp. 53-55. I also recommend his documentary produced for PBS and recently aired: "The Journey of Man," in 2 parts.

"Does the large number of Y polymorphisms [in men] still indicate an African origin for modern humans? The unequivocal answer is yes, and a study published by Peters and 19 other authors (including myself) in the scientific journal Nature Genetics in November 2000 stated the results clearly and succinctly. A worldwide sampling of men, from dozens of populations on every continent, were studied using the newly discovered treasure trove of Y polymorphisms [and] the oldest splits of Y-chromosome occurred in Africa.... We all coalesce into a single genetic entity—'Adam' in the case of the Y chromosome, 'Eve' in the case of the mt DNA—that existed for an unknowable period of time.... [Also] there is a range of dates that we get from Adam's age, between 40,000 and 140,000 years, with 59,000 being the most likely.... So the main point to be inferred from our estimates of the age of coalescent points—Adam and Eve—is that there were no modern humans living outside Africa prior to the latest date we can estimate.... This means that all modern humans were in Africa until at least 60,000 years ago."

 3. Ibid., p. 55.

4. Ibid., p. 24.

5. The Basic Works of Aristotle, "On Generation and Corruption" Book I, Chapter 1; Book II, Chapter 6.

6. Darwin, selected and edited by Philip Appleman, from Charles Darwin, “The Introduction” to the The Origin of Species (W.W. Norton Company, New York, 1970) p. 198-9.

7. Mircea Eliade, Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princeton University, Princeton, 1964) p. 8.

8. Ibid., p.509.

9. Ibid., p 510.

10. Ibid., p. 511.

11. Ibid., p. 12.

12. Ibid., p. 5.

12. The Worlds of The Early Greek Philosophers, p. 229.

13. I have gleaned some of this information from Eliade's Shamanism as well as The Worlds of the Early Greek Philosophers which I shall make more particular reference to later.  Also, I recommend Joan Halifax's Shamanic Voices (Dutton, New York, 1979) for a survey of many visionary narratives mainly of American Indian origin. Of course, there is also Joseph Campbell, that shaman of modern times, whose many books and videos are a rich source of ancient wisdom for almost any purpose.

14. We must not overlook the fact that it is still possible to know what the shaman of old knew. The awareness of this consciousness has been the subject of numerous studies and experiments. Perhaps a reawakening to our lost heritage is occurring in postmodern society through mysticism, mind-altering drugs, a perennial spirituality, and integrative philosophy. We can learn to reconnect with nature and our shamanic ancestors through the techniques of higher consciousness.

15. F.M.Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy (Harper and Row, New York, 1965) p. 123.

16. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (Random House, New York, 1968) p. 539.

17. Ibid. I have taken the liberty to change Nietzsche's 'Apollinian' to Apollonian.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid., pp. 539-40.

20. Ibid., pp. pp. 541-43.

21. F.M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy, p. 114.

22. Bernard Knox, The Oldest Dead White European Males (WW Norton and Company, New York, 1993) pp. 104-5.

23. One of the recurring themes of our troubled moral history everywhere has been that "might makes right" especially on the part of governments and their armies. At the same time, and beginning in pre-historic times with the Indian Jains, there has been the appearance of a significant minority of persons who are committed to a nonviolent ethics. It has been a truism since the 1950s and the beginning of the nuclear age, that if the human species does not learn to live without the preparation and threat of war, it will destroy itself.

24. It must not be forgotten that some of the worst atrocities of history have been committed by "civilized" white skinned, European men against the black skinned people of Africa. Yet, those atrocities, as horrible and lengthy as they were, lasting some four hundred years of modern history, are only a short chapter of the much longer, blood drenched record of human beings, in their climb towards higher levels of greed, domination, and civilization.

All over the world, there is a mind-numbing history of murder and mayhem, rape and plunder of one group against another for the purpose of territorial expansion, resource theft, power grabbing, greater security, freedom, and democracy. And, invariably there has been spread a thick tissue of lies and propaganda, misinformation and indoctrination, to persuade a population that what its government is doing is justified, right, and good.

18. A three part PBS video series, titled "Mysticism and Women" has documented some of these findings. The film also records a conference of well-known feminists in a variety of fields discussing their religious and philosophical backgrounds in relation to 'God' or male centered religions. Some very honest and frank discussion ensues!

19. See Elaine Reisner's The Chalice and the Blade . Also see Chapter 7, "Feminism" and an extended discussion of Ms. Reisner's thesis in relation to Feminist 'Her-story'.

20. Margaret Alic, Hypathia's Heritage (Beacon Press, Boston, 1986) p.12.

21. The Encyclopedia Britannica, 1977, V. 5, "Crete" (William Benton, Publisher, the University of Chicago, 1977) pp. 252-55.

22 The Norton Book of Classical Literature, edited by Bernard Knox (W.W. Norton & Company, New Yrok, 1993) pp. 31-2.

23. See Sir Arthur Evans, Palace of Minos, 4 volumes, 1921-25.

24. We will return later to the subject of female philosophers and their influence in ancient Greece, a subject that deserves separate and special treatment because women were mostly excluded from the privileged circles of male philosophers. This pattern has only recently changed in American higher education. 

24. H.I. Marrou, The History of Education in Antiquity (Mentor Book, New York, 1964) pp. 33.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid.

27. The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited and introduced by Richard McKeon, from Poetics, Chapter 17 (Random House, New York, 1941) p. 1472.

28. Homer, The Odyssey, translated by Robert Fagles, Introduction and notes by Bernard Knox (Penguin, New York, 1996) p. 12.

29. I know the importance of the olive tree to the present Greek economy but never knew of its origin until viewing the best documentary on Greek civilization that I have seen, "Ancient Greek Civilization" produced by PBS. Herodotus, however, in his gift for sensational gossip, makes no mention of the olive tree.

30. Herodotus, translated by Henry Cary (George Bell and Sons, London, 1898) section 60.

31. Ibid., section 61.

32. The Encyclopedia Britannica, 1994-2002, Deluxe Edition, CD-ROM, "Democracy in Ancient Greece" .

33. Columbia Encyclopedia, p. 2015.

34. The Norton Book of Classical Literature, p 32.

35. Ibid, p. 36.

36. Plato, The Complete Dialogues, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, "The Republic" (Pantheon Books, New York, 1961) p. 786.

37. The Norton Book of Classical Literature, p. 33.

38. Ibid.

39. The Columbia Encyclopedia, pp. 555-6.

40. Ibid., p. 1622.

41. The Norton Book of Classical Literature, pp. 36-7.

42. Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic (Doubleday, New York, 1917)

 p. 7. "It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit."
-Bertrand Russell

43. The Norton Book of Classical Literature, edited by Bernard Knox (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1993) p.188.

44. Ibid.

APPENDIX

Contemporary Society and the Ancient World: Homo sapiens or Homo ignoramus?

The twenty-first century began on 9/11/2001, with the simultaneous terrorist attacks on the World Trade Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. This date is symbolic of yet a new Era of terror and terrorism, fear and violence, anxiety and defensiveness. More than ever, the world is in need of a nonviolent ethics based upon compassion, justice, and hope. And more than ever, the world is in need of an educational system for peace, not war and war-making, and a society that is based upon equality, fraternity, and liberty for all.

The oldest known roots of academic philosophy extend no further back than the so-called Axial Age of three ancient world cultures: Greece, India, and China. The centuries of the Axial Age—7^th through the 1^st centuries BCE—mark a remarkable period of human consciousness, cultural developments, and spiritual awakening. Yet the date is somewhat arbitrary and conventional since, as we have seen with shamanism, which may pre-date the late Stone Age, there are no absolute boundaries for thinking about the first awakening to philosophy. The dates that mark the first philosophers in the West—Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes—are quite conventional and historical.

During the Axial Age, many great philosophers and seers appeared: Socrates and Pythagoras in Greece, Lao Tzu and Confucius in China, Mahavira and the Buddha in India, etc. Since then there have been thousands of philosophical visionaries and activists, shamans and healers, and countless caring, ordinary people who have kept human beings from annihilating themselves as a species. Now, more than ever though, humanity needs to be committed to a nonviolent, caring and compassionate philosophy before we destroy ourselves as a species, in a thermonuclear holocaust.

Presently, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, humanity is obsessed with global security, surveillance, and pre-emptive action against terrorism. In the process, governments have begun to substitute collective security for individual freedom and human rights, especially where there exists democratic and liberal values.  In the name of ‘security’, we have created a larger monster than terrorism, which is a fear of ‘the other’, the stranger, alien, or any person who does not look, speak or think like us. At the the root of present day terrorism is a huge divide separating the haves from the have-nots, believers from non-believers, and the educated from the uneducated.

Unfortunately, crimes against humanity still occur with alarming and depressing regularity. Education about our common evolutionary heritage may be the best means for reducing the danger of Armageddon. Present fear about WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) is nothing new in the history of the postmodern world; only the magnitude of the threat has changed in the forms of thermonuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. And in the name of "Homeland Security" American citizens may lose their constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms due to the totalitarian measures taken to guard against terrorist groups.

We need to ask who, in fact, are the real terrorists? Has the U.S. government, with great help from the media, created a climate of fear and anxiety, depression and cynicism, about our future? Are any of us more secure today from the U.S. government's unending war against terrorists? Is fighting really what we should be about as a country that is supposedly based upon ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness’? What is the truth about our nation-state—the United States of America?

"War is Not the Answer" is a memorable slogan among recent anti-war vigils, assemblies, and marches. The manufacture and keeping of a vast number (or any number) of WMDs is the biggest crime and terror against humanity in our times. The sheer presence of these weapons is the real terror, regardless of what their apologists or promoters say to justify their existence. Weapons of any kind make it easier for violence to be committed; and Weapons of Mass Destruction make it ever easier for the annihilation of the human species to occur.  And there is no other weapon-system that presently exceeds the destructive power of thermonuclear bombs.

Are we really as wise as we think we are, or are we about to annihilate ourselves as a species? Have we, the Homo sapiens species, become the Homo ignoramus species? Have we mutated to a more violent species than ever due to the growing gap between the older, the reptilian brain, and the newer brain—the cerebral cortex? Are we now merely a ‘higher’ mammal about to annihilate his ‘lower’ self, forgetting that what is higher is necessarily connected to what is lower? Have we humans outsmarted ourselves and become our own worst enemies? 

War, as a social, political and military institution, is a collective form of violence, destruction, and insanity between nation-states or groups within a nation-state.  Psychologically, the most immediate cause of war is the total devaluing of the ‘other’ or the enemy as a human being. War is all about killing, death, and slaughter; and there is absolutely nothing romantic, glorious, or desirable about it. And those who engage in actual warfare are guilty of the highest form of collective immorality, insanity, and crime against humanity.

Biologically, the cause of war resides in a surplus of the male hormone, testosterone, and its aggressive potency. The moral or ethical cause of war is a lack of Reverence for life. The political cause for war is the arrogance and aggression of government and its leaders. The educational cause is a profound ignorance about the fundamental immorality of war, and more often than not, the truth about the identity of the enemy’s motives, culture and ability to fight a war. And it is just this lethal combination of a lack of self-awareness, political arrogance, moral ignorance, and the presence of military power that threatens us all. (25)

Philosophy, morality is the awareness of our kinship with all sentient beings or life-forms—humans, animals, even plants and the elements of nature. Philosophy is not a magic potion or pill that one can take or ingest, but it represents an educational knowledge that can transform the present day Homo ignoramus species that we collectively are, to a true Homo sapiens being with a new Consciousness, for A New Earth.  We must awaken to the differences between ignorance and knowledge, ignorance and wisdom, ignorance and ‘enlightenment’ or true education, to achieve the Life, freedom, and happiness that so proudly proclaim as Americans.

In this new millennium, we desperately need a new philosophy and education that is not merely logical, calculative, and scientific, but one that is moral, aesthetic, humane, and nonviolent. A nonviolent ethics is the best means for living in a healthy, sane, and liberating way, for individuals. But nonviolence is meaningless, insipid and only an ascetic luxury for the leisured class unless it extended to all human beings of the Earth, and guarantees the fulfillment of basic needs, justice, and equality. Nonviolence embodies the noblest and best hope for humanity, but it cannot be achieved until we transform human consciousness from the attitude of violence and aggression, to that of peace, justice, and equality for all. (26)