Buddy said:
Maybe so. Indeed, Socrates was not blameless though (hell, nobody is) and your thoughts are certainly consistent with my feeling that Socrates was caught in the middle of something huge and on the move. Like a transition between the Mythos (mythological consciousness) as guide for civilization and a kind of crystallization of general philosophy into a more formal metaphysic. In the final "analysis" he committed the "crime" of not totally converting to this "new way of thinking", OSIT.
Thanks Buddy. You gave a neat, concise and elaborate exposition (in the aside also) of what I was merely briefly indicating.
Anyway, I've always thought of the blind men and their elephant tale as maybe
also a metaphor for the uncoordinated little i's which each in their own turn try to steal the show and dominate the narrative. Again in that case too there's need for cooperation, coordination and integration to reach a full and complete picture of what exactly it is they are sensing and bringing to the fore. Therefore it's a personal problem as well as a scientific one, I think.
Similarly, in every societal setting of any kind there exists comparable fragmentation --not only personal or in science, but throughout-- thus the need for establishing societal coherence in any way, shape or form.
In the mostly small hunter-gatherer groups the shaman provides this integration, s/he serves as a technician of Ecstasy with all that implies, and s/he is also the principal guarantor of continuity for the whole group over time, mainly as the living repository of all the cumulative knowledge and understanding ever available to the group. This position was vocational only and for several reasons inherently personally dangerous. Their worldview was mainly of a magical orientation as far as is known.
Early sedentary society --especially the ones with internal hydraulic despotism and/or outward imperial tendencies-- slowly but surely delegated this task of forming and maintaining coherence to a caste of priests or priest-kings in a hereditary position. Magic transmogrifies to myth, especially creation mythology. In the beginning magical elements are still very much alive albeit mostly in an ever degenerating form, until all that's left are formalist rituals without their former magical and spiritual content. Mythology grows into a formulaic doctrine which needs a 'church' to survive and thrive. On the personal level it needs as a counterpart an undercurrent of initiatory mystical societies of an intuitive nature.
Special attention may be given to those 'in between' societal organizations that are formed not as a result of conquest per se, but as freely constituted (con)federations of smaller groups of more or less equal strength, with an almost innate tendency to democracy or some other form of shared power. Notably seafaring nations seem to be prone to this organizational preference, e.g. Greeks, Phoenicians, early Carthage; in later times Dutch or Icelanders.
There's an interesting topic about some of that here by the way: http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,4451.0.html .
This variant included Athens during the period before it transformed its leagues of alliances with other citystates into an instrument of its own imperial domination over most others.
The problem with Socrates and Plato --in my view-- centers around the transformation of Athens from a leader of alliances (primus inter pares) with a more or less democratic signature allround i.e. internally and externally alike, into an imperial force dominating the whole of the Greek archipelago and the Greek colonies throughout the Asian coastline. Imperial powers need in stead of a mythology an ideology of metaphysical signature as a propaganda tool to establish and maintain their dominance. In a nutshell: Plato was willing to contribute to provide that, Socrates was not. On the contrary, I think!
Lateron in the age of full blown empires, mythology as such was slowly transformed into metaphysical religion of some sort or another, all the way up until the moment that empirical and experimental science was becoming elaborate enough to challenge first and overtake later that particular metaphysical worldview and also the societal task of establishing and maintaining coherence.
Which is where we are now, I think. Indeed, we now again are confronted with the problem that the ever increasing proliferation of specialized aspect bound subdisciplines in science as well as the evermore complicated societal framework both call anew for a centre of coherence and an integral narrative as a touchstone. Which is why, I think, some of the early 4Th Way authors erroneously envisaged a leading or even dominating role for the most inner group within the esoteric circle.
In short, once you understand the schematics of all such processes, you can find them playing out similarly again and again throughout history -- and nowadays even more so in the whole NWO story about American led full spectrum dominance over the entire world.
@the original poster:
Sorry for the derailment of your topic. This sometimes happens with no special intent of anybody involved.
