From the age of Socrates (469-399BCE) though the age of Aristotle (384-322BCE). the political set-up all throughout the civilized Hellenic World was described through 2 sets of different paradigms.
The Socratic Age template was to simply divide the governments into “The Rule of the Few” (called Oligarchy or Social Oligarchy) and “The Rule of the Many” (called Democracy). Only citizens, exclusively male and of citizen age (usually 21 for voting and 30 for positions of Authority), had legal standing. (In Athens a foreign citizen or government had to hire an Athenian citizen to present his side of any case – civil or criminal.) Functional citizenship excluded women, foreign residents, children and, of course, slaves from full-citizenship civil rights.
[Nowadays, the last two generations victimized by over-priced and fraudulent PC Education operate as if slavery was invented by uniquely American White Racists in the USA more than two centuries ago and still requires another two generations of “Struggling for Racial Justice” before the unique moral ORIGINAL SIN of American Black African Slavery could possibly be expiated. In Star Trek, Captain Kirk had his “Prime Directive.” For two generations now (starting one generation after WW II), the Prime Directive of the Post-Modern (Utopian) USA, culturally and therefore politically governed by SOCIAL PROTOCOLS, is the heroically great “Struggle for Racial Justice.” (And subsequently the “Great Struggle for ‘KEYWORD’ Justice.” ‘Keyword’ has been creatively expanded from ‘RACE’ to ‘SEX’ to ‘LIFE STYLE’ to ‘NON-WHITE-EUROPEAN ETHNIC GROUP’ to ‘NON-JUDEO-CHRISTIAN RELIGION,’ etc., ad nauseam.
[This is our “Prime Directive” of political life eternally struggling for the ever-growing list of All Moral Social (Utopian) Ideals! Just as always “the philosophically-rooted faithful beliefs that inform and motivate people” uniquely in every age and every society may seem odd from a different historical viewpoint.]
Aristotle, sometime after he opened his Lyceum (both a school of Higher Education and a Research Center) in 335BCE, sent some of his students on a huge project to gather the historical record of all 158 known constitutional jurisdictions. He performed the true scientist’s first step of any open-minded inquiry. He tried to accumulate all the reliable and relevant data on the subject.
In 323BCE, Aristotle was charged with “Impiety” – the charge that Socrates had been convicted and executed for in 399. By 322, in exile in Euboea, Aristotle died of unknown causes.
Aristotle began this huge research project long before his basic lectures and textbooks were completed, including his regular writings on Politics (Political Science). No one really knows how much of these 158 histories went into Aristotle’s analysis of Politics.
Whereas in the Age of Socrates (and Plato too) the basic two choices for government were Oligarchy vs Democracy, in the view of Aristotle there were 4 identifiable categories of a constitutional political set-up.
Aristotle noted that Oligarchy and Democracy were possibilities (even though Democracy was rare and Oligarchy was much more common). But he also recognized that Sovereign Monarchy and Tyranny also existed. Macedonia (where his father had been the court physician and where his former student Alexander began his huge conquests of Hellas and Egypt and SW Asia – all the way to the Indian subcontinent) remained a Monarchy through Aristotle’s lifetime and beyond. Tyranny was much more common than politically active intellectuals were prone to acknowledge. (Plato’s association with Tyranny was personal, multi-faceted and substantial as well as most obviously theoretical and dramatically presented!)
Athens had been ruled by a very shrewd tyrant named Peisistratus (546-527BCE) well over a century before Socrates’ execution. Peisistratus retained the institutions and Social Protocols of Solon’s Constitution – only he kept them under totally coercive personal control like any Dictator. (Augustus followed the exact same Social Protocols when he turned the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. The Senate lived on, but fecklessly.)
The problem with these two templates of political organization is they are much too generalized to really make sense. One man – King or Tyrant – cannot do everything by himself. Minimally, every King or Tyrant needs a bodyguard for personal security and a paramilitary organization for enforcing Social Protocols of Behavior and Speech on the so-called citizens. There must be Defense and Offense or there is no government at all.
Every government is required to provide security, even for common citizens if it is a legitimate government, but always for the functional Elites (Social Oligarchy) at the top whether the government is legitimate or not. For example, society hires both Judges and policemen to operate a functional Justice System – but only those in the SOCIAL OLIGARCHY are entitled not only to personal security, but even universal courtesy – or else! (Hint: Judge = High Status; Cop = Low Status. Seems disproportionately and excessively out-of-balance to me!)
There is no paradigm in philosophy or political science that I have ever heard of that starts out with the recognition that every government has to provide both Defensive security and Offensive capability to the Authorities of the Society. Without the Defense, it would not survive. Without the Offense, it would be functionally feckless.
The point is there is always a Social Oligarchy with decision-making power over the Social Protocols of behavior and speech in every society. They are the Authorities of Society. Above all else, they determine the SOCIAL TABOOS (whether for a primitive village or a post-modern Nation-State). The most serious violations of Social Protocols of Speech and/or Behavior are the Social Taboos.”
In the age of Socrates (as well as Anaxagoras and Protagoras and Aristotle), the word we use to describe this Social Taboo is “IMPIETY.”
By the late-Medieval/early-Modern Times period ending with the European Religious Wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, the most serious Social Taboo would be referred to as “BLASPHEMY.”
During the Inquisition, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) were actually prosecuted a decade apart by the same “Politically Active Lawyer” who was also a Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. These petty politically active lawyer-politician assholes are always present in every era – only the rhetoric changes.
When Giordano Bruno was teaching mathematics in England, a future Archbishop of Canterbury used his extensive dramatic rhetorical skill (as the leading polemicist of his age) to “SMEAR” Bruno so as to advance his own career.
You know, the “successful careers” and “fulfilling lives” the Social Oligarchy (including their children and “brown-noses”) are entitled to – unlike your average common citizen (unless a successful “brown-nose”).
That is the distinction that makes this politically f***ed-up world comprehensible. The Social Oligarchy is filled with stupid and immoral individuals entitled to “successful careers” and “fulfilling lives.” The Social Oligarchy is the best Educated by the most prestigious Institutions of Higher Education and seem to believe they simply cannot explain the Whys and Hows that determine the Social Taboos and the Social Protocols to the common people.
They speak to the common people exclusively with Cliches, Generalizations, and Emotional Appeals. They do so because prestigious higher education today indoctrinates them with Cliches, Generalizations and Emotional Appeals. The concept of individual moral character distinctions does not enter into their ersatz scientific bullshit. The idea that true scientific inquiry requires logical methods and procedures and a complete set of reliable relevant data to arrive at a scientific judgment has turned from mandatory in Modern Times to optional in this Post-Modern bullshit world.
In the 1970’s and 1980’s and 1990’s, when I still consumed the so-called “News,” I found myself shouting at television or radio when “informed” of the latest “Scientific Study” which yet again has “proven that Capital Punishment has NO Deterrent Effect!”
An Educated Social Oligarchy that endlessly funds, approves, administers, performs, reports to the public on, and advocates such Irrational Utopian Delusions is not a Rational Social Oligarchy.
We are not ruled by a Rational Social Oligarchy. But we are most-assuredly ruled by a Social Oligarchy.
Public persuasion in the Post-Modern era has returned to the informal fallacies of Medieval scholastic politically-active bullshitting lawyers. The preponderance of today’s political persuasion fits two patterns right out of the Middle Ages.
Everyone is obligated to believe in and give voice to that which is disseminated as conclusions of inquiry by the “Experts and Authorities.” (And most especially by the “Best” and “Brightest” among the “Experts and Authorities.”) In Latin, the language of the Medieval world, this fallacy is called Argument ad Vericundium (argument from authority).
No one is permitted to entertain the reasoning of anyone who is demonized by the Social Oligarchy as an immoral character. This censorship would be referred to, in the Medieval world, as the fallacy of Argument ad Hominem (argument against the ‘man’). Whether you call it “demonization” or “smearing” or “mud-slinging” or “bad-mouthing” or whatever, it still is the Medieval version of Argument ad Hominem. The content of the arguments of such “Dissenters” to the “philosophically-rooted faithful beliefs of the Social Oligarchy” is not to be entertained by any rational individual, reasoning for himself. If the Social Oligarchy declares anyone (the 15-hour per week radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh being a prime example) as Immoral (and “Deplorable”), no individual need listen for himself and think for himself for only Social Taboo material can be found therefrom. No individual dare entertain such material and think for themselves! The admittance of same is license to all of the indoctrinated to ridicule and laugh at any such fool who dare think for himself.
Until Donald Trump’s campaign, I had not encountered anyone in national politics who actually negotiated his way around the Social Taboos and yet within the Social Protocols actually bring meaningful “Change” and “Progress” to the political system with 3 exceptions. Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA are the obvious first 2.
As for the third example, there was a brief cultural setback for the Social Oligarchy in a year (1994) that had every comedian in the world ridiculing what they called a “Contract on America.”
Election Day 1994 was a political inflection point for America. A talking-head, who I had watched perform “Special Orders” speeches on C-SPAN from the floor of the House of Representatives during the 1980’s, somehow managed to reverse 20 years of Democrat Party control of the House of Representatives. For 20 of the last 22 years, the Republican Party has controlled the House of Representatives. However, for the last 3/4 of that era, the Social Oligarchy has re-asserted control by having taken over the Republican Party itself and turned it into an ersatz opposition. The cultural inflection point reversed itself way back in the 1990’s.
This Rational non-Utopian View of Human Nature has long since been elbowed aside. The inventor of the term “Contract with America” was driven from elective office with a fraudulent PC Scandal that was dis-proven in law long after it achieved yet another “victory” for the Social Justice Idealists.
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Note: For those who have read previous posts on this site, my intention is to recapture my original ‘voice’ and return to the history of reasoning, scientific history, epistemology, etc.
Currently my thoughts have been diverted by this most important upcoming election for President of the United States of America which is a prime example of what I have written above. It is an example of the Oligarchy versus any independent candidate. It could mean a return to what Abraham Lincoln most eloquently described as “the government of the people, by the people and for the people.”
At this point in time, my primary fear is the Social Oligarchy will find a way to replace a losing Hillary Clinton with a massive fraudulent advertising, public relations and ersatz news media onslaught for yet another political asshole to continue the corruption of American moral standards and the destruction of the American Constitutional system.
My personal health has slowed down the pace at which I have been (and will be) able to post but I assure you that I will continue as long as I can.
