A history piece

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

I just watched an interesting documentary about the Athenian democracy. First, here is a summary and then some remarks of mine.


We choose to forget that in the name of democracy, Athens followed a policy of aggressive overseas expansion and persecuted some of its leading intellectuals. Despite its recent popularity in the West, democracy in ancient Athens did not flourish but quickly died.

Bettany Hughes searches for the truth about the Golden Age of Ancient Athens, investigating how a barren rock wedged between the East and West became the first democracy 2,500 years ago.

Democracy, liberty and the freedom of speech are trumpeted as the bedrock of western civilisation, but what was Athens really like?

Bettany goes deep underground to explore a treasure trove of pre-historic bones and ancient artefacts. In silver mines and tombs she uncovers evidence for what this society was really like.

This was a democratic city built on slave labour, manipulated by aristocrats, where women wore the veil and men pursued a bloody foreign policy, slaughtering thousands in the pursuit of the world’s first democratic empire.

The programme reveals amazing, sophisticated voting systems but also a society where smooth-talking politicians used spin, and where those who didn’t vote were known as idiotes.

The film charts the epic story of Athens’ victory in one of the greatest sea battles of the ancient world, when the Athenian triremes defeat Xerxes’ mighty Persian fleet at Salamis, and reveals the real story of the building of the greatest monument of this first democracy – the Parthenon – as a symbol of Athenian power.

Watch documentary: Part 1
Watch documentary: Part 2


Some conclusions stick out at a first reading. The first one is about the way empires are being born. The Athenians figured that if they did not expand, they would be conquered. They had to meet the Persians far away from their borders if they wanted to survive. And the only way was to expand and create an empire of their own. In a sense, I think many empires have started this way. Most of them began as trading networks stemming from the mother state, but then those routes and networks had to be somehow protected (by force and diplomacy), so the mother state was compelled to expand politically and militarily. The British empire is a fine example in this respect.

Another aspect of this film demonstrates how the Athenian democracy was NOT exactly what we are being told and what we imagine it to have been. Democracy was there only for a select few - the Athenian-born, free, males. Everyone else was excluded. Slavery was prevalent, and the slaves (in Sparta, the helots) did the dirty job, so that the rest of the "free people" could be able to enjoy their prosperity and liberty.

Also, democracy, in its Athenian form, meant that the majority could impose even the most outrageous decisions on the minority (or just one person, like Socrates in this case). And also, while Athens did encourage pluralism, in the meantime it guarded its democracy very jealously. And anyone who dared to question it, like Socrates here, would get burned.

I have now been reading the Socratic and Platonic dialogues about the role of the state and the concept of the Philosopher King and the primacy of the benevolent elites over the uneducated, unwashed mobs, etc. And the more I read, the more I begin to resent it. I'm wondering if I should venture into reading the Aristotelian works because I'm starting to feel uncomfortable already.

Comments

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

That said, our modern forms of government and those we elect take that same tack - that they are benevolent elites who need to rule us by whatever carrot-stick works. Meanwhile, they're also fond of secrecy and avoiding accountability.

Protection of things like minority rights are a definite improvement to base democracy though we can see in modern America, they are no given.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

*Some* do. Some, like the various totalitarianisms just assume that they know everything under the Sun and put bullets in the brainpans of anyone so foolish as to object.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

The trial against Socrates is fascinating in many ways, mostly because it reveals some unpleasant things about the hive mentality, even in a democracy. Especially in a democracy! And the intolerance to those who question the tenets of society and its established postulates. This is very topical at any time, including today.

Socrates is also fascinating in that he remained true to his own principles. The founder of the rational approach to discourse, he had to stand by his own preached principles. So he didnt use the services of any lawyer to speak for him. He defended himself alone. Plato also desrcibes this obsession in Socrates - the most important thing in a discussion for him was to destroy the feigned knowledge of the opponent and this way to make people ask questions to themselves. He believed that the one who had feigned knowledge had lesser wisdom than the one who had "true" knowledge, so the former wouldnt have any valid questions. He kept probing people's reality by asking them uncomfortable questions that made them feel stupid, and for a reason.

So when he stood in front of the trial, he only remained true to his convictions and he took his defense in his hands, fully. He began with questioning his own premises and beliefs, which disarmed the opponents. Because for him philosophising and self introspection was a way of living honestly with oneself - so that not one act could remain concealed from the severe judgment of others' conscience. Thats what he chose to do to his very last moment - live honestly with himself, even if that meant he had to show a finger to the very foundations of his society - right in its face. So he was fully prepared for his tragic end. In fact those who gave him the poisonous cup in the end, regretted having executed him almost immediately after that. They realized that they had lost something precious - their ability to probe and question their own reality. But they're forgotten now. What remains is his legacy as the founder of the anthropological principle in classic philosophy, his immense influence on a number of thinkers and ideologues of political and social thought - whether you like their beliefs or not. And most importantly, he elevated the role of rationalism and the scientific method which Aristotle developed to perfection later.

I think you should definitely read the Aristotelian dialogues.

As for the life cycle of empires (http://community.livejournal.com/talk_politics/871907.html), well. A lot could be said, and there could be various interpretations about the reasons for their birth and demise. But its true that the economic interest has always been at the bottom of it all.

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I may swallow my disdain with the ideas and I'll read them.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

scientific method which Aristotle developed to perfection later.

I liked your post in general, except the last part I quoted. Aristotle's ideas about motion were way off, and he could have discovered this if he had only bothered to do experiments to see if observation agreed with his theory.

The scientific method didn't come about until Galileo's time.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Lets say that he introduced the scientific/empirical method (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method#Aristotelian_science_and_empiricism). Deal? :)

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

I certainly wouldn't call what he introduced the scientific method.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. How about a scientific method. Of some sorts. Perhaps, maybe, possibly.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

I could go with that.

I like this:

Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy",[6] the "father of modern physics",[7] the "father of science",[7] and "the Father of Modern Science".[8] Stephen Hawking says, "Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei)

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

He was certainly an all-round man. Similarly to Aristotle and Leonardo.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

And yet, he wasn't a rock star from mars. Win!!!

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Damn U!

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Aristotle's big contribution is using a system of classification.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

More accurately Francis Bacon's time :P

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The way I look at it, the Greeks then didn't see much to choose from with Delian League "freedom" v. Spartiate "slavery." Athens was nicer and richer for its citizens, but Sparta, thanks to an entire peninsula turned into Helots was both the real-life Domination of Draka and poorer yet more egalitarian than Athens. What's forgotten about the Graeco-Persian Wars is that the Ionics were vassals of the Padishah, and their revolts were being propped up by the Poleis, when Xerxes decided he had enough of that bullshit and he wanted to invade.

Even more ironically the Persians won all the ground battles, but lost that war at sea.

I would note that Athens and the Delian League do not meet modern standards, but then almost nothing would before the Age of Mass Politics. And as deeply and bitterly flawed as the Poleis were, they were immensely better than the Diadochi states that succeeded them.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Also, Athens and Sparta were not the only Poleis to go a-colonizin'. The Ionic Greeks began as that, but their Phalanges weren't really suited to go up against Persians on an open battlefield and so they became vassals. The southern coast of what's now France was also colonized, as Marseilles of the present-day (Long live the Revolution!) was Classical-Age Massalia, the most distant Greek Polis, and a colony of one of the forgotten smaller Poleis.

The entire southern part of Italy differed as greatly in Classical times as it does in the present day, but because northern Italy was over centuries turned into a center of Roman culture, while Southern Italy and Sicily became known as Magna Graecia because there were so damn many Hellenes there. That colonization had a lot to do with inherent structural limitations of the Poleis finally resolved by the formation of the Diadochi states. The Poleis could only be yea large, the gigantic autocracies founded by Alexander's Generals could be rather larger.

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the insights. Sparta also won all field battles and then lost to the Corinthian league mostly by sea. It only comes to show the significance of naval domination, especially in a very insular country.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Especially when that region is mostly-aquatic and filled with an abundance of islands in the first place. It helped, however, that like the Romans in the First Punic War the Greeks designed their ships with rams so they essentially fought land battles at sea. In that case, the Hoplite was by far better in close-quarters than the average Persian sailor.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

The perils of Democracy were well known to the intellectual elites who founded the US. This is exactly why they formed a Federated Republic as a opposed to a strict Democracy.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

And yet this didn't prevent them from getting a de facto oligarchy in the late 20th - to early 21st century.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Eh, I think if you really look at it, there's never been a point where the USA *has not* been Oligarchic. For good and evil it's too typical a New World society not to have one.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Obviously, a number of people (http://community.livejournal.com/talk_politics/913930.html?thread=69993226#t69993226) would keenly disagree with you.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Those people, of course, are wrong. Unfortunately American Exceptionalism tends to be applied when it's inapplicable and ignored when it is applicable.

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Another proof that correctness and wrongness is in the eyes of the beholder. :-)

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Not my invention. Thoughts of someone smarter than me but I cannot remember who exactly.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

That's just because of staleness. If things had been shaken up on schedule (around the 1960's) then it might have been different.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Ending Jim Crow didn't shake anything up?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

No, I don't believe that was anywhere near a fundamental realignment of the country.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Nah, it only ended legally enforced terrorism across the entirety of the old Confederacy and parts of the North, as well as committing the government to well and truly ending that bullshit for good. Absolutely not a shake-up in any sense of the term.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Not in the sense I'm talking about, no.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

My question is what "on schedule" means.

And sonny boy, if they hadn't done that you wouldn't be able to elect Republicans dogcatcher in Bumfuck, Missisippi to the present day. And all those Democrats would have been old white people braying about State's Rights and that honorable perpetrator of Fort Pillow.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

"on schedule" means what Thomas Jefferson meant by "...time to time..."

The rest of your comment isn't relevant.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I think that Bobby Jindal, Nikki Haley, and the black guy holding Thurmond's old seat might disagree with that notion. Certainly Republican Presidents would have been much rarer.

And frankly there has always been jack and shit chances of a successful revolution in the United States of America.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Even the act of having one, successful or not, shakes things up enough to be useful.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Unless you're Jefferson Davis or Louis T. Wigfall....maybe. As I recall the attempted revolution we tried here 150 years ago cost us some 230,000 killed, an entire infrastructure built over 30 years wiped out in four, and led to the embarrassment that was the South failing to use the size of the region successfully to wear down the North. The Civil War certainly did prove to be a revolution, I just don't think Jefferson Davis expected the revolution to be the kind it proved to be.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

I don't see how that disproves the claim that things were shaken up a bit even though it failed.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

You didn't consider the end of Segregation, a system that had been intact for almost 100 years to qualify as "sufficiently shaking it up" even though that (mostly) peaceful transition was actually far more enduring than the changes provoked by the Civil War. Are you or are you not accepting the Civil Rights movement as a revolution?

If not, why is the Civil War one but the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s that dismantled the libertarian paradise that was the Jim Crow South not one?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

You didn't consider the end of Segregation, a system that had been intact for almost 100 years to qualify as "sufficiently shaking it up"

No, I consider it not a revolution, therefore it's not part of the consideration.

Are you or are you not accepting the Civil Rights movement as a revolution?

That was why I said there wasn't one on schedule, because that ended up not turning into a revolution. If it had, we might have been better off in the long run.