Power Bases and The New 6

John the Baptist: Good people sit and argue, and how they argue and learn!

– The Mandaean Book of John

***
Antonio Salieri (remembering seeing original copies of Mozart’s music): I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink strokes at an absolute beauty…

[To God]: From now on, we are enemies. You and l. Because you choose, for your instrument, a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy …
and give me for reward only the ability to recognize the incarnation.

– Amadeus (1984)

It seems that, to understand how the human race got to where it is today, I ought to tie the metaphysical/mythical and historical to physics as I understand it. I found an article which claimed it would reveal “All You Need to Know to Get Started on Particle Physics,” but it was still pretty over-my-head. With a little piecing together using what I remembered and culled from various sources, including (for what it’s worth) Wikipedia, I think I came up with a coherent idea that has enough information for our purposes.

We know the four forces, but we can break them down further while keeping them better organized by condensing them to two – bosons and fermions. Bosons are forces that can interact with other forces, while fermions can only interact with “their own kind.” Each of the four that we know have manifestations in the former group:

Strong nuclear particles are “full vector” – they spin at a regular angle to the strongest attracting object, a spin to which physicists assign a value of one. These particles are called, “gluons.” Electro-magnetism, when it’s being observed, takes particle form and has a spin at “half-integer” value. These particles are called, “photons.” Weak nuclear particles are “intermediate vector” – they have less spin than strong nuclear, and they have far greater mass than electro-magnetic particles. This mass and low spin causes decay (radiation).* There are two types of these particles: charged (W± ) and neutral (Z). Scientists can only speculate on the cause of gravity, and use a hypothetical unit for this force called a “graviton,” to which they posit a spin value of two. Physicists assign numbers to the first three categories based on how much freedom they have to interact with other types of particles. Strong nuclear has the most – SU(3), then electro-magnetism – SU(2), then weak nuclear – U(1)**. It looks like scientists can’t assign a number to the hypothetical gravitons.

There are basically two kinds of Fermions – Quarks and Leptons. The former are “colored,” Leptons are not. Both are subdivided into types that, for whatever reason, physicists call “flavors.”

Quark flavors are: Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, & Bottom. They make up either “Hadrons” (more commonly known as Protons & Neutrons,) Mesons, or Quark–gluon plasmas.

Leptons only have two “flavors” – Charged or Uncharged. The former – all negatively charged – are Electrons (which have the least mass and sometimes are bosons,) Muons (which have the longest life,) and Tauons, or Taus (somewhere between electrons and muons). The latter, Neutrinos (made from breaking down electrons, taus & muons,) are uncharged.

For the visually-oriented, like myself, I made a chart:

Bosons
Which of “The Four”	Standard Unit of Freedom	Name of Boson Particles, Spin Value, Other Info.
Strong Nuclear (The Integral)	SU(3)	Gluons. Full vector (spin 1 [at a regular angle to the strongest attracting object])
Electro-magnetism (The Temporal)	SU(2)	Photons. (sometimes spin @ half-integer value, but depends on whether observed)
Weak Nuclear (The Sensual)	U(1) Electroweak force: SU(2)xU(1)	W± (charged)/Z (neutral). Intermediate vector (less spin; cause cancer thru radiation [decay]) Higgs Boson & Goldstone = super weak (no spin), fast decay
Gravity (The Potential)	N/A	Gravitons. (spin 2)
Fermions Can only interact with their own type
Quarks (“Colored”) Combine to form Hadrons: Baryons (Protons, Neutrons,) Mesons, & Quark–gluon plasmas	Flavors: Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom
Leptons (Not “Colored”)	Flavors: Negatively Charged: Electrons (least mass); Muons (longest life); Taus (between E&M)
	Uncharged: Neutrinos (from breaking down Electrons, Taus & Muons)

I want to end by pointing out why I used the Amadeus quote at the top – We described “The Sensual” as the primordial sense of limits and the feeling of frustration/antagonism at the base of our universe. Seeing the Weak Nuclear as the force most constrained from interacting with other forces validates my intuition of identifying it with this sense. The below scene from Six Feet Under illustrates that this “decaying” force exists in even people of good faith who love each other.

* There are two kinds of particles (as I understand it, man-made) with no spin – These are Higgs-Boson (1964) and Nambu-Goldstone (1961).

** There is a formula for a force called, the “electroweak force” – SU(2) x U(1). I’m not ready to explore what the purpose is for some of the distinctions and formulas I’ve included in this post, but I thought I should include them later reference. – Viola

Power Bases and The New 3

“Growing up isn’t so much. I’m not a man, and I can do anything! You can’t.“

– Charlie X to Captain Kirk, after making Yeoman Janice Rand vanish – Star Trek TOS

My last post established that the Aryans had moved The West to demote The Temporal in its pantheons. I then looked into where this people had originated. The first paragraph of Wikipedia [(as of 12/8/23, 9:36am EST,)] on the Sintashta culture tells us that this it…

...is widely regarded as the origin of the Indo-Iranian languages[1][2][3] (Indo-Iranic languages in non-ambiguous terms[4][5]), whose speakers originally referred to themselves as the Arya.[6][7] The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials, and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of the technology, which spread throughout the Old World and played an important role in ancient warfare.[8][9][10][11] Sintashta settlements are also remarkable for the intensity of copper mining and bronze metallurgy carried out there, which is unusual for a steppe culture.[12] Among the main features of the Sintashta culture are high levels of militarism and extensive fortified settlements, of which 23 are known.[13]

Returning to the system that began this series, we can thus establish their military (Sensual) power base in their extensive fortifications and the innovation of chariots; and …

That a large part of their economy (Potential) base was in their mines. Further down, the Wikipedia article notes that their economies “heavily exploited domesticated cattle, sheep, and goats alongside horses with occasional hunting of wild fauna”.^[14]

Their politics (Temporal) base can safely be called hierarchical in the importance to them of the military and in the “extravagant sacrifices seen in Sintashta burials…Higher-status grave goods include chariots, as well as axes, mace-heads, spearheads, and cheek-pieces.”

Their culture (Integral¹⁵) is somewhat more difficult to ascertain, looking at the controversies surrounding even the meaning of one of their most important God’s names.

I found that Antoine Meillet (according to Encyclopedia Britannica, “one of the most influential comparative linguists of his time,”) had interpreted the name of this deity, Mitra (one of a proposed dyad, Mitra-Varuna), as “contract.” I saw this god in Britannica’s entry for Ancient Iranian Religion described as an “ahura,” a “lofty sovereign deity,” closely associated with the highest god, and who presided over covenants. This would seem to confirm Meillet’s translation. However, Wikipedia dismisses this translation based on the work of French comparative philologist and mythologist Georges Dumézil. Although he has no individual entry in Britannica, his Wikipedia entry is quite long and complimentary, despite that he has been accused by many people of “crypto-Fascism.” I’ll put the rest of this controversy into a footnote^[16] to avoid getting off track here.

I just want to finish by emphasizing the importance to these Aryans of mining. This blog has discussed this form of extraction often – its physical destructiveness as well as its effect on dialogue and growth. I should mention here that the Romans, whom we designated in the last entry of this series as the “people supposed to know,” were great innovators in mining.

This is a page (I count 13, though pages are unnumbered,) from the first issue of Alan Moore’s brilliant text, Promethea. The student in distress is researching for a paper about a the titular character, who had appeared several times throughout literary history.
I’ll link a website about this issue here.

¹ Mallory, J. P.; Mair, Victor H. (2008). The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 9780500283721.

² Anthony, David W. (2007). The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-05887-0.

³ Lubotsky, Alexander (2023), Willerslev, Eske; Kroonen, Guus; Kristiansen, Kristian (eds.), “Indo-European and Indo-Iranian Wagon Terminology and the Date of the Indo-Iranian Split”, The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited: Integrating Archaeology, Genetics, and Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 257–262, ISBN 978-1-009-26175-3, retrieved 2023-11-16.

⁴ Rowlett, Ralph M. “Research Directions in Early Indo-European Archaeology.” (1990): 415-418.

⁵ Heggarty, Paul. “Prehistory by Bayesian phylogenetics? The state of the art on Indo-European origins.” Antiquity 88.340 (2014): 566-577.

⁶ Schmitt 1987: “The name Aryan is the self designation of the peoples of Ancient India and Ancient Iran who spoke Aryan languages, in contrast to the ‘non-Aryan’ peoples of those ‘Aryan’ countries.”
My Note: This footnote had no reference or outside link, but I Googled and found a link. – Viola.

⁷ Anthony, David W. (2007).

⁸ Chechushkov, I.V.; Epimakhov, A.V. (2018). “Eurasian Steppe Chariots and Social Complexity During the Bronze Age”. Journal of World Prehistory. 31 (4): 435–483. doi:10.1007/s10963-018-9124-0. S2CID 254743380.

⁹ Raulwing, Peter (2000). Horses, Chariots and Indo-Europeans – Foundations and Methods of Chariotry Research from the Viewpoint of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. Archaeolingua Alapítvány, Budapest. ISBN 9789638046260.

¹⁰ Anthony, David W. (2007).

¹¹ Holm, Hans J. J. G. (2019): The Earliest Wheel Finds, their Archeology and Indo-European Terminology in Time and Space, and Early Migrations around the Caucasus. Series Minor 43. Budapest: ARCHAEOLINGUA ALAPÍTVÁNY. ISBN 978-615-5766-30-5

¹² Hanks, B.; Linduff, K. (2009). “The Sintashta Genesis: The Roles of Climate Change, Warfare, and Long-Distance Trade”. In Hanks, B.; Linduff, K. (eds.). Social Complexity in Prehistoric Eurasia: Monuments, Metals, and Mobility. Cambridge University Press. pp. 146–167. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511605376.005. ISBN 978-0-511-60537-6.

¹³ Semyan, Ivan, and Spyros Bakas, (2021). “Archaeological Experiment on Reconstruction of the ‘Compound’ Bow of the Sintashta Bronze Age Culture from the Stepnoe Cemetery”, in EXARC Journal Issue 2021/2, Introduction. https://exarc.net/issue-2021-2/ea/reconstruction-compound-bow-sintashta

¹⁴ A. R. Ventresca Miller, A. Haruda, V. Varfolomeev, A. Goryachev & C. A.Makarewicz (2020): “Close management of sheep in ancient Central Asia: evidence for foddering,transhumance, and extended lambing seasons during the Bronze and Iron Ages,” STAR: Science &Technology of Archaeological Research, DOI: 10.1080/20548923.2020.1759316, p. 2.

¹⁵ This is the member of The Four I hadn’t described in my last entry. I’d start with “The Divine Feminine, Reimagined.” – Viola

¹⁶ The linked discussion of linguist Antoine Meillet’s interpretation of Indo-European god Mitra as the personification of contracts has five references, but all of them (as do many other references in this article) go to “Mitra-Varuna Georges Dumézil.” The bibliography of Dumézil works provides two titles, – as far as I can tell, neither specify “Mitra-Varuna,” and one of these books is in French. Looking on Google and Jstor, I haven’t yet found any translation (at least, in English,) of Meillet – or anything by his defenders – that presents his arguments about Mitra, just arguments against it by authors predisposed to argue with him.

As to Dumézil, his page’s section on criticisms of him appears to mostly accuse his accusers. The main source defending Dumézil is Covington Scott Littleton, member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Indo-European Studies, a journal founded by, among others, white supremacist Roger Pearson. The article references another founder of this journal, University of Texas Professor Edgar Ghislain Charles Polomé, as well as an editor, Dean Arthur Miller (author of The Epic Hero, a book which might suggest glamorization of the warrior class.)

An ambiguous source is Bruce Lincoln. Early in Dumézil’s article, he seems to be defending Dumézil, whereas further down, it is suggested Lincoln attacked him from “a Marxist perspective.” Oddly, Lincoln’s entry (as of 12/10/23, 6:47am EST) shows no indication that he was a Marxist: from the Maria Carlson article linked in the Wikipedia entry, Lincoln’s work seems have presented Dumézil’s work through numerous perspectives, finding it a major promoter of Aryanism as against “the other” – groups that this people had displaced. (2/25/24, 7:38am EST: Even more oddly, the article tells us not to cite it without the author’s permission – with any luck, my link will still lead to it when this entry is published.)

If any of my readers want to do further research on this issue, I’d be interested in their findings.

Power Bases and The New 2

Zeus smiled, that the [infant Apollo] so quickly came to ask for worship that pays in gold. He shook his locks of hair, to put an end to the night voices, and took away from mortals the truth that appears in darkness, and gave the privilege back again to [the child god], and to mortals confidence in the songs of prophecy at the throne visited by many men.

– Chorus, from Iphigenia in Tauris, written by Euripides between 416 BC and 412 BC¹

My last entry spoke of how a Wikipedian suggested that the former Soviet Union was being “eugenicist.” This suggestion, and my reading of Trotsky’s monism, brings me to a website that I’ve used often on this blog: Cogniarchae. Although I will continue to use insights I find there, I feel I should warn my readers that this page is promoting Aryans as “Übermensch” – in its view, however, Slavs are the true Aryans. I would say, in bringing attention to overlooked Slavic contributions to world culture, that the site is right for the wrong reasons. In fact, this website’s promotion of Slavs reminds me of what “Shots in the Dark”² wrote about men in the televised frontier. Cogniarchae implies that Slavs “…were not just in control; they were responsible for all accomplishments and, indeed, all significant actions.”

To establish the cultural factor as one of the essentials of national power bases, this series has to analyze how our idea of patriarchy has manifested throughout history³. I think the three roles in a patriarchal structure that I named in my “4 ‘D’s’ of Neoliberalism” entry can be of use here: the “Person Supposed to Know,” (PSK) the “Person Supposed to Believe,” (PSB) and the “Person Supposed to Feel (PSF).”

Research for my series on Bohemia pointed to the “Ubermensch” (according to most readings, Germans) as “people supposed to believe.” Romans, in their praise for them, and the Roman Catholic church, in its protection of them after WWII, would be the “people supposed to know.” To reclaim and hold on to their “people supposed to feel,” these patriarchs have labeled various groups as “Untermensch” ever since: Jewish people as well as Gauls, Slavs, and beyond.

Interestingly, the three categories seem to conflate the patriarch of what I consider The Four – The Temporal – with The Sensual⁴ (PSK) and/or The Potential (PSB.) This “Original patriarch,” represented by the Greeks as an aspect of Zeus, seems to have been absorbed in both Indian and Roman mythologies. In the Rigveda (1500-1000 BCE,) Indra ended up taking the place of Brihaspati. As to the Romans, as we saw in our Bohemian series, they modeled the inviolability of their city, as sacred to Jove, on the inviolability of Delphi, as sacred to The Sensual, jealous Apollo, rather than to Jove’s counterpart, Zeus.

To give justice to the subject of this demotion of The Temporal, we need to begin with the first Indo-European migration – to Anatolia. This land mass, now mostly the domain of Turkey, had been the home of numerous advanced civilizations before the Aryan invasion migration. We’ve touched on some of these civilizations on this blog in its “Alternatives to Cancel Culture” series – among them, the proto-city of Çatalhöyük and the city of Ebla, as well as on Thrace and the Hattian and Hurrian people.

My research indicated the common worship in this area, since Neolithic times, of a storm god whom the Hattians called, “Taru,” a god to which his worshipers often sacrificed a double-axe (called a labrys) and a bull – a god which was prominent there during the “Age of Taurus”: This deity had been worshiped in the proto-city of Çatalhöyük (a large dwelling consisting of a labyrinthine network of rooms) as early as the eighth millennium BC.⁵ This form of dwelling and worship easily led to the Greek myth of The Minotaur. An ancient city that also worshiped this god (under the name Hadda⁶) was Ebla – a city with four gates, each named after one of its major deities. This city was destroyed around 2,000 BC, when the Third Kingdom of Ebla arose, ruled by an Amorite king. According to Wikipedia, “During the third kingdom, Amorites worshiped common northern Semitic gods; the unique Eblaite deities disappeared. Hadad was the most important god, while Ishtar took Ishara’s place and became the city’s most important deity apart from Hadad.”

I can’t, however, find any distinction between Hadda and Hadad, both of them being variations of Taru. I do note that city’s final destruction was by the (Aryan) Hittites.⁷

A couple more things I want to note before ending this post:

1. Zeus and Jove, who are associated with the number four, are also associated with storms, the planet Jupiter (as is the Indian god, Brihaspati,) and bulls – Zeus took this form when capturing Europa, and Jove, or “Jupiter Dolichenus,” drives a yoke of bulls;

2. Excavations at Çatalhöyük, according to Wikipedia, found that “Some skulls were plastered and painted with ochre to recreate faces, a custom more characteristic of Neolithic sites in Syria and at Neolithic Jericho than at sites closer by.”⁸; and

3. During the switch from the Age of Taurus to that of Aries, the Aryan peoples invaded India, and Ramessesi became Pharaoh of Egypt.

“Set Theseus Fights With the Minotaur Statue,” from Etsy

¹Dates according to Professor of Greek Matthew Wright

²“Shots in the Dark: Television and the Western Myth” in Montana The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Spring, 1988), pp. 72-76 (5 pages)

³ The link goes to the “Outgrowths of Essential Concepts” entry in this blog, the post that has a brief overview of the history of (my idea of) patriarchy. – Viola.

⁴ The Sensual is a complex concept, thus the many links. I would start with my series, “The Question of Evil,” here. For The Potential, I would use the link I gave about The Four above.

⁵ Renfrew, Colin (2006). “Inception of agriculture and rearing in the Middle East”. Human Palaeontology and Prehistory. 5: 395–404

⁶ Archi, Alfonso. “Studies in the Pantheon of Ebla.” Orientalia, vol. 63, no. 3, 1994, pp. 249–56. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43076169. Accessed 5 Dec. 2023.

⁷ The disappearance of the two most important Ebla male gods, Kura and Hadabal, is also interesting with respect to our topic, as is the number of controversies and confusions around their functions.

⁸ The significance of this point may become clearer later, but the world’s move towards Monotheism (later to Monisms, such as Social Darwinism — Please see my brief history in “Outgrowths from Essentials,” linked above) began with Judaism, and the “ownership” of the location of Jericho is disputed to this day. I should say here that Wikipedia gives an ambiguous citation for this point, and it doesn’t look easy to access the source that appears most likely. I have, however, saved a PDF of the page with this quote. – Viola

Power Bases and The New

Hogwarts School Deputy Headmistress McGonagall: When I call your name, you will come forth, I shall place the sorting hat on your head, and you will be sorted into your houses. Hermione Granger.

Hermione: Oh, no. Okay, relax. [She goes up]…

Sorting Hat: Ah, right then…hmm…right. Okay…Gryffindor!

[(Cheering from crowd.) Hermione jumps off with a smile.]

McGonagall: Draco Malfoy.

[Draco saunters up proudly. The tattered hat nearly freaks before touching down on Draco’s head.]

Sorting Hat: SLYTHERIN!…

McGonagall: Susan Bones.

[A small redhead goes up…]

Sorting Hat: Let’s see…I know…Hufflepuff!

McGonagall: Ronald Weasley.

[Ron gulps and walks up. He sits down and the hat is put on.]

Sorting Hat: Ah! Another Weasley. I know just where to put you…Gryffindor!

[Ron sighs. (Cheering from crowd.)]

McGonagall: Harry Potter.

[Everything goes silent. Harry walks up and sits down.]

Sorting Hat: Hmm…difficult, very difficult. Plenty of courage I see, not a bad mind, either. There’s talent, oh yes, and a thirst to prove yourself. But where to put you?

Harry (whispering): Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin.

Sorting Hat: Not Slytherin, eh? Are you sure? You could be great, you know. Its all here in your head. And Slytherin will help you on your way to greatness! There’s no doubt about that! No? [Harry whispers: “Not Slytherin…anything but Slytherin.”] Well, if you’re sure…better be…GRYFFINDOR!

[(Immense cheering from crowd.) Harry goes to the Gryffindor table.]

– Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

After having read my last entries on the mythology of the Old West, with their references to The Cold War, a friend of mine let me read a paper that he had written in early preparation for his master’s thesis. His paper discusses three “pillars” of the power bases of nations: the military, the political, and the economic. I found this an interesting way to analyze history itself, if we add one more essential (“pillar” suggests too inert a quality) – the cultural.

One example of a cultural factor in The Cold War was the Soviet idea that they were creating a “New Man.” The Wikipedia entry on this ideal was written almost exclusively by authors who oppose it. The entry further took just enough of a Leon Trotsky quote to make it look as if the author was endorsing eugenics. Although I have my own reservations about Trotsky’s book, however, the quoted text, “Revolutionary and Socialist Art¹,” contains nothing that suggests this measure – whereas, three years after Trotsky’s book was published, US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote the Court’s decision for Buck v. Bell, a decision that declared forced sterilization constitutional. Moreover, although subsequent rulings undermine Buck v. Bell, the Supreme Court has never expressly overturned it – and we know, since Roe v. Wade was repealed, that those who seek to control reproductive rights can revoke them despite decades of precedent.

Be that as it may, I believe that Trotsky’s mistake in formulating this ideal is that he based it on monism (an orientation he admits in this chapter and which our blog has argued against often) and that he misunderstood “the unconscious.” Slavoj Zizek, who’s work has always involved addressing the issues of psychology and human progress, has published a new book which clarifies his positions on these issues.

I think these themes – the “four power” essentials and the aforementioned ideal – informed by the insights of Zizek’s new book, would be a fruitful subject for a new series. The below Harry Potter scene should put across the sense of the four as well as that of ideals:

¹ Chapter 8 of Literature and Revolution (1924). So far, at least (11/30/23, 2:48PM EST,) the Wikipedia entry on this book clarifies Trotsky’s stance. – Viola

1/’24 Interdependence day/Hunter Gracchus 2

Daphne calls it joy
to roam within the forest’s deep seclusion,
where she, in emulation of the chaste
goddess Phoebe, devotes herself to hunting;
one ribbon only bound her straying tresses.

– Ovid, Metamorphoses

[Juno] took the bow from [Phoebe’s] shoulders, and laughed as she beat her with it about the ears while Diana wriggled and writhed under her blows. Her swift arrows were shed upon the ground, and she fled weeping from under Juno’s hand as a dove that flies before a falcon to the cleft of some hollow rock, when it is her good fortune to escape. Even so did she fly weeping away, leaving her bow and arrows behind her.

– The Iliad: Book 21, Homer (Samuel Butler translation from Wikisource)

As my last entry shows, doves and their connection to the woman “with loosened hair” from the Kafka story have some supernatural meaning. We have shown a mythological connection between Aphrodite/Venus (one of whose symbols is a dove) and Phoebe/Diana. Symbols in literature being notorious for morphing, I think it’s important to examine the mythical themes and tropes in the narrative thoroughly. This entry thus might be pretty tedious and even seem random for those not interested in far-flung connections, especially since readers will probably need to return to my earlier writings linked below to see the relevance of these correspondences.

As mentioned in my last entry, I re-read my own “Alternatives to Cancel Culture,” series. The last entries of this series bring numerous myths from different cultures together, connecting them to a preliterate ritual of the apparently peaceful Hattian culture. I’ll try to piece together what our story seems to be saying about this correspondence. I think we can find the base of this connection in the Asia-Minor goddess, Cybele, who is mentioned in almost all of the last posts in the “Alternatives” series. She is associated with the goddess Phoebe/Diana, and I found some interesting correspondences when looking through my copy of the above-quoted poem.

Another connection regarding doves is in the Noah’s Ark story in Genesis, and Metamorphoses, near the beginning, also offers a version of the Flood Myth. Speaking of Arks, I think it is significant that the protagonist of this story is fated to travel through the world on a boat – the character designating his importance by saying, “..,.everything is going in circles around me, and it’s better for me to ask, even when I know everything.”

Such boat-related importance, combined with the aforementioned quote, corresponds to the symbolism of the mast/Pole star/axis mundi: (One of?) the first reasons for identifying the pole star must have been to help sailors navigate. Regarding the oldest star map found, an example of the astral Axis mundi was thought to be a mast. Another term for the “axis mundi” was “world tree.” In the first book of Metamorphoses, Daphne’s father, a river god, turns her into a tree to help her escape from the lustful god, Apollo. Apollo had fallen in love with her from having been shot with Cupid’s arrow, thus he honors the tree which she had become, making it a symbol of victory and greatness, especially in art. (Apollo was a musician and head of the muses as well as the oracle of Delphi.) Daphne had been a follower of Diana, his twin. We have discussed Apollo’s perverse jealousy of her in the aforementioned series. Diana was primarily the goddess of hunting. Could the fact, mentioned twice, that Gracchus was wrapped in a woman’s shawl imply an identification between him and this goddess?

The name “Gracchus” is strangely Latin for a hunter from the black forest. I find it interesting that it is the name of a Roman general who had commanded slave troops, slaves who were freed after defeating Macedonian forces. Such a name brings us back to the Roman expansionist policies and the citizens’ admiration for similarly warlike Germanic tribes, policies and partiality I brought up in our series on Bohemia. These associations further call to mind the Thracian (Slavic?) rebellious slave, Spartacus.

According to Wikipedia, Spartacus’s revolt was the third and last of the “Servile Wars,” and the only one of these “that directly threatened the Roman heartland of Italy. It was particularly alarming to Rome because its military seemed powerless to suppress it.” It ended 13 years before the ambitious Julius Caesar launched a campaign against the Gauls, a campaign that enabled him to begin the official switch of Rome from a “Republic” to an empire.

This post is also long, and the last two paragraphs return us to the Bohemian series I have been working on, so we’ll continue this discussion there.

Meanwhile, I thought my readers might like the below Life of Brian clip, in which a prisoner tells the titular character how much he admires how Romans bring order to the empire.

4th Jan. Interdependence day/The Hunter Gracchus

[I]n a certain sense I am alive … My death ship lost its way; a wrong turn of the wheel, a moment’s absence of mind on the pilot’s part, the distraction of my lovely native country, I cannot tell what it was; I only know this, that I remained on earth and that ever since my ship has sailed earthly waters. So I, who asked for nothing better than to live among my mountains, travel after my death through all the lands of the earth.

Franz Kafka, “The Hunter Gracchus“

Although I already used Kafka’s 1917 story for Yule, its careful depiction of an innocent’s ignoble fate compels me to pay it more attention for today’s holiday.

The narrator gives us a detailed description of part of a sleepy imaginary town named “Riva.” (I found no translation of the word, but there had been a band by that name formed in Zadar (then Yugoslavia, now Croatia) in 1986. The uncanny enters subtly, as the author mentions a bark “silently making for a little harbor, as if borne by invisible means…,” a bark on which men in dark coats are carrying a bier. Kafka drives home the uncanniness by mentioning – three times – that no one seems to notice the newcomers. Then, “the pilot was … detained by a woman who, a child at her breast, now appeared with loosened hair on the deck of the boat.” The author now tells us that the arrival is noticed. First, a little boy opens a window, then quickly shuts it; next, a flock of doves “assemble” in front of the house door through which the carriers and their bier vanish. After the woman flings grain to these doves, a man in a hat tied with a funereal band of crepe shows up, and knocks at the door. After this gentleman enters and walks by some 50 deferential little boys, the boatman descends the stairs and conducts him to the room where the body has been taken. The boatman motions for his assistants and the children to leave, and, at a glance from the gentleman, himself leaves. The body immediately opens his eyes and talks with the unsurprised gentleman, who introduces himself as the burgomaster of the town. We learn that the man we had thought dead is the titular Hunter, and that the Burgomaster had been told of his arrival and identity by a very large dove, who instructed him to “receive him in the name of the city.” Gracchus then tells the gentleman his story, of having died while hunting and of being taken to the boat that should have taken him to “the other world.” The boat unaccountably lost its way, a mishap for which Gracchus blames the pilot. The Hunter recounts his original eagerness to get to the next life and the frustrations and tediousness of his fate. “I am always in motion. But when I make the supreme flight and see the gate actually shining before me I awaken presently on my old ship, still stranded forlornly in some earthly sea or other.” The Burgomaster empathizes, and asks if the Hunter is thinking of staying in Riva, and Gracchus answers that he doesn’t think so … “I am here, more than that I do not know, further than that I cannot go. My ship has no rudder, and it is driven by the wind that blows in the undermost regions of death.”

Decoding a text from such a foreign source feels impudent on my part, but I’d like to share some thoughts.

The Hunter had lived “hundreds of years ago” in the Black Forest, an area that had once been named for a Celtic goddess associated with Diana. In line with our present series, Wikipedia’s entry on the name says, “According to Tacitus’s Germania, Abnoba was the name of a mountain, from a grassy slope of which flows the source of the River Danube.”

What might be important is that there were other Celtic and Slavic goddesses associated with this deity – perhaps enough to merit their own Wikipedia page – that are not mentioned in the Diana entry. This blog has a number of references to her, identifying her with The Integral and her twin, Apollo,* with “The Sensual/The Shadow.” The pair has complex symbolism reaching back to the prehistoric era, a pair that interact with a manifestation of Jove/The Temporal in the Hattian ritual of “Tarhunna vs. Illuyanka.”

But where does Hannahanna, The (Hattian) Potential/mother goddess, fit into this? Kafka’s story mentions a woman on the bark with a child at her breast, a woman who detains the boatman. She seems to control the doves, one of whom the Burgomaster reveals as the bird who instructed him to welcome Gracchus. It seems the more I think about this story, the more complicated it gets… Since this entry is getting fairly long as is, I should continue in another post.

*To begin to unravel these complexities, I’ll link the fullest list of my correspondences of “The Four” here. Since it also seems relevant, I’ll remind my readers of a discussion we had here regarding father of Italian literature Dante’s calling on Apollo in The Divine Comedy’s section on Paradise. Lastly, I want to note that Kafka’s story was written during the first half of 1917, and not only that World War I began with an attack motivated by a Slavic attempt to free Bosnia and Herzegovina from what had been part of the Holy Roman Empire that we had been discussing, but that the first Russian Revolution was in February of that year. The below picture and quote from Doctor Zhivago should give a sense of what the revolutionaries were fighting.

Komarovski (Lara’s “guardian”/“lover”): There’s another kind [of man]. Not high-minded. Not pure. But alive. Now that your taste at this time should incline towards the juvenile is understandable. But for you to marry that boy would be a disaster. Because there’s two kinds of women…[Lara covers her ears, he forces her arms down.] There are two kinds of women and you – as we well know – are not the first kind. [Lara slaps him, he slaps her back.] You, my dear, are a slut.

Lara: I am not!

Komarovski: We’ll see. [He grabs her and attacks her.]

The above photo is in several places on the internet as of 8/29/23. I tried to paste the url from two of them, but was not allowed, even from a “free” social encyclopedia. I believe, since one of the places that displays it is Alamy, that it is in public domain, especially since it was in a movie poster. I therefore saved a copy on my hard drive and uploaded it. If it disappears, I’ll have to find another pic, though this one expresses the theme best. – Viola

Zen Buddhism 2

“[George] had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so,
the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George
from taking unfair advantage of their brains.”

– Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., “Harrison Bergeron”

My first entry on Zen Buddhism showed correspondences between the four polarities of this discipline and the main concepts of my own philosophy. Before searching for more commonalities, I think now would be the time to discuss a metaphor I’ve developed about these poles and how it organizes the way I look at my own life.

Philosopher Mortimer Adler’s book, Desires, Right & Wrong,* points out the distinction between the “summum bonum”/highest good and the “totum bonum”/total good. In my system, The Principle, “self-conscious dialogue and growth therefrom,” is the former, and “The Four,” the latter – We could think of “The Four,” which encompasses all the essentials and their outgrowths described in my September/October series, as a moral compass and The Principle as the “north.”

As I thought about this metaphor, I saw my brother Will’s treatment of me throughout my life in a new way. First there is the bullying, especially in disrupting my attempts to organize and educate myself – in the way he tore my schedule off my wall and ripped it up and in trying to cultivate in me a distaste for reading philosophy by badgering and tricking me into (and gloating over my) reading a passage about the benefits of torturing a helpless dog (both anecdotes here.) Then there is the shaming and ridicule, especially of my attempts to find a useful role model. Note how, when I told him about Queen Victoria’s pledge to be good, he mocked it – and repeated the mockery decades later (In fact, as I also wrote, he would argue that “evil” was a compliment.) His repeated shaming of my interest in Ayn Rand’s work (from the first time I heard of her, having just borrowed her most popular novel, until well after I admitted the flaws in her work) was even more extreme. Third is his constant need to confuse me while investing me in “winning” debates – These anecdotes here. Of course, there was also the actual sexual abuse and torture described in the link I just provided as well as here, and his use of our younger sister to counteract my attempts to regain my dignity described here. There was also the attempt to discredit me to my teacher and parents, “setting me up” for punishment, described here, and for scapegoating by my fellow students, also in that entry as well as others previously linked. Such abuse not only made me extremely shy, but gave me a verbal tic that would occur whenever a memory of shame or anger (often the means to set me up for more shame) occurred. This tic further made it hard to get close enough to anyone for them to find out that I had it, and even would constantly interfere with my memory and other thought processes themselves (“Harrison Bergeron”-like.) In essence, he was attempting to destroy my spiritual/moral compass as well as my intellect. After I looked at his actions this way, however, I realized that I had always found ways to reclaim, repair, and refine this compass. This realization, and my bringing it to the fore whenever a shameful or angry memory resurfaced, has in large part quelled the tic. I thus feel compelled to learn more about the healing spiritual discipline that inspired the metaphor and to share it with my readers.

*Macmillan, 1991, Page 78.

Zen Buddhism

Thinking about this blog’s Essential Concepts series, I realized that, though they were “pagan” and I referenced a Hindu holiday, their presentation remained basically “Western.” I believe that Whitehead, one of the main influences of this philosophy, was inspired by Buddhism. In light of this influence, I researched the type of Buddhism that I understand most resembled this set of concepts.

First, I saw that, logically enough, the “elements” were the same five as those of Hinduism¹. These are the same four as are associated with the “West” plus one other, which Wikipedia names, “aether” or “void”. Examining this “fifth element” (particularly the way it is described as one of the Japanese Buddhist Godai,) I realized that it was another aspect of “The Potential,” an aspect which explains the description I had given of this element here: “one of the two most basic aspects of the universe, aligned with what the Upanishads refer to as the ‘feminine’ ‘Prajna – all powerful … the source and end of all.’”

Second, “The Four” as I conceived them correspond with the set of four polarities in Zen Buddhism. These polarities are:

Buddha-nature and Sunyata. According to the Wikipedia entry (as of 7/18/23, 9:38):

The doctrine of the Buddha-nature asserts that all sentient beings have Buddha-nature ... the element from which awakening springs. The Tathāgatagarbha Sutras ... state that every living being has the potential to realize awakening. Hence Buddhism offers salvation to every-one… (Scholarly citations removed.)

As to Sunyata, as Zen (Mahayana) Buddhism conceives it…

...In the worldview of these sutras, though we perceive a world of concrete and discrete objects, these objects are "empty" of the identity imputed by their designated labels.2

Taken together, these ideas correspond well to “The Potential,” the polarities being “Prehension” and its outgrowth, “Radical Contingency”.

The World as Absolute and Relative:

The poem, “Song of the Precious Mirror Samadhi,” expresses the meaning of these poles, and how they interrelate, as a process with five ranks, or stages. As I understand the passages quoted in the “five ranks” entry of Wikipedia, the process of “Peer Review” would correspond to the Relative pole, and “The Great Conversation” would constitute the Absolute pole. A post I wrote to a message board in 2018³ suggests another way to put this concept – that the only absolute of the “universe [is that it] is a creative process,” and that even the gods, as “fellow sufferers,” can separately give only their relative perspectives. As the awareness of limitations I would categorize these poles under “The Sensual.”

Transmission of Enlightenment as Esoteric and Exoteric: The Wikipedia entry quotes Jørn Borup’s (2008) text, Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism: Myōshinji, a Living Religion, that “the emphasis on ‘mind to mind transmission’ is a form of esoteric transmission, in which ‘the tradition and the enlightened mind is transmitted face to face’…[while] exoteric transmission requires ‘direct access to the teaching through a personal discovery of one’s self.’” These concepts fall under “The Integral” and correspond to “Interdependence” and “Primates,” respectively.

Lastly, Enlightenment as Sudden and Gradual: The Wikipedia entry notes that in Peter N. Gregory’s (1991) text, “Sudden Enlightenment Followed by Gradual Cultivation: Tsung-mi’s Analysis of mind,” Gregory claims that “sudden awakening points to seeing into one’s true nature, but is to be followed by a gradual cultivation to attain Buddhahood.” I see these concepts as “Temporal” and would count our “Principle,” “Self-conscious dialogue and growth therefrom,” as “sudden,” and the three “Primary Ideals,” Emotional Management, Critical Thinking, and Empathy, as gradual.

I’ll end by saying that “Spiritual Discipline” overlaps both The Integral and The Temporal categories.

From Tumbler through Pinterest

1 Buddhism, having started in India, incorporated The Hindu elements.

2 Kalupahana, David J. A history of Buddhist philosophy, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited 1994, p. 160-169

3 The message will be under “Viola” on the page. Apparently, the “Find” option of the drop-down menu is now unaccountably combined with “edit.” (Do these edit options even work for a web page? Do people, such as bloggers, who might want such options, need to get them from the drop-down menu?)

Outgrowths from Essential Concepts, 2

My last entry covered outgrowths from all of my Essential Concepts except one – Spiritual Discipline/Religion. The post on these essentials mentioned that such a discipline keeps people together and motivates them through, among other things, art forms and practices, and the post linked to a myth as an example of shared art. A form of practice would be shared celebrations – a practice that can bring joy and solemnity to a spiritual discipline. I have been celebrating the neopagan “wheel-of the-year” holidays as a way to pay tribute to The Four and to connect my practice to consciousness of the Earth and its seasons. The solstices, equinoxes, and the four cross-quarter days that fall between them give each of The Four two holidays of their own. I’ll start this entry with a list of each of them and how I connect them to each element/deity. As with all the entries in this series, I’ve tried to make the summaries sufficient in themselves to explain them and why I made my particular choices, but I also provide links for those who want to go deeper. I’ll start by putting the descriptions of the eight major holidays here. I’ve connected:

• The solstices of Yule and Litha to Air. As it is traditionally an element of the intellect, I believe it corresponds to the development of meaning in what we, as sentients, endure. I designated Yule as a time to examine one’s own life (history) and Litha to share such introspection and resulting discoveries with a loved one. I’ve written more information on these “temporal” holidays here.

• The equinoxes, times of speedy changes in the sun’s movement, to Fire. This element can be seen as a metaphor for science, as a way of “breaking down” knowledge. I thus designated the holidays Ostara and Mabon as times to broaden my understanding of “pure” and “practical” science, respectively¹. I’ve written more information on these “sensual” holidays here.

• Two of the cross-quarter days, Imbolc and Lughnasadh to Earth. This element is traditionally connected with a “mother goddess.” February’s Celtic holiday of Imbolc (adopted by the neopagans) is associated with the birth of spring lambs, so it works well with this theme. This time is also marked in the Hindu religion as Maha Shivaratri, a solemn festival for “remembrance ‘of overcoming darkness and ignorance.’” Thus, as I use the holidays of the Celtic “father” gods of Yule and Litha (the Holly King and the Oak King) to examine my own life (history), I take time on these days to examine my world’s and nation’s history. The February holiday would be the more solemn holiday, while Litha, the holiday of “first fruits,” would be a time to celebrate art history. I’ve written more information on these “potential²” holidays here.

• The others, Beltane and Samhain to Water. This element, in contrast to fire, is associated with keeping things together. Beltane, as International Workers’ Day, seems a good fit. Since we use the “fire holidays” to broaden our understanding of science, it’s appropriate to use these to deepen our appreciation of the arts. I chose Beltane to celebrate music, prose, theater and poetry, and Samhain to celebrate dance, graphic and plastic works, spectacle (magic, film, video,) and hybrids. I’ve written more information on these “integral” holidays here.

Soon after I came up with the above forms of celebrations for these days, I got ideas for crossover holidays halfway between each of them, drawing energy from pairings of the deities celebrated on either side of them. The first one occurred to me after I read an essay by Helen Keller, which reminded me of her powerful autobiography. The memoir form falling between art and introspection, I put it between the two holidays that celebrate these activities. I wrote this entry³ on November 25^th of 2020, so I named this holiday “Thinksgiving.” I designated the Thinksgiving that falls on May 26 as a time to explore memoirs of particular discoveries or journeys.

Before I continue, I should point out that I have different names for The Four, names that represent the ideas of this blog better than those of the traditional elements do. I call the water element “The Integral,” the fire element “The Shadow/Sensual” the earth element “The Potential,” and the air element “The Temporal.” I’ll quote the explanation from this entry:

Imagine how boring absolute chaos would be. This chaos, or “lifeless and dull [Being]” of my myth, is “pure” power, or “The Potential”. Such “purity” affords it neither thoughts nor feelings. We can think of three primitive reactions to this Potential, a concept I identify with gravity and the “earth” element.

The first, as [my myth] says, is boredom … certainly an agent of change. As I have written in my “[sequel” to “Countering the Four D’s],” such change is time itself, or “The Temporal.” As this post elaborates, I associate time with the speedy electro-magnetic force and the “air” element.

Next we can imagine a sense of limitation – and its accompanying frustration – (of even the most primitive consciousness) at both the sameness of this Being and any change that The Temporal effects that it cannot. Such frustration is the “shadow” of the previous two concepts, which shadow I call “The Sensual.” I have associated this shadow with the weak nuclear force and the “fire” element.

Lastly, we can imagine loneliness at the aforesaid divisive forces. … Such loneliness, driving “The Integral,” can be the strong nuclear force, which we can represent by the “water” element.

I provide a fuller list of correspondences here.

Getting back to other three crossover holidays:

• Apparition Day. I wanted a day for exploring peer review of art. This idea occurred to me in December of 2020, and I chose April 10, “between the Sensual holiday of Ostara and the Integral one of Beltane. It falls on the day Anglicans commemorate the life of William of Ockham, which day works well, due to the philosopher’s original approach to abstractions.” I named it for “this coincidence, and for the subject’s falling between the shadowy area of science and the practice of art.” When the date came around, I had been exploring a video interview of Chris Hedges, which gave me the idea to add philosophy as a subject for peer review, and I moved review of art up to October.⁴

• Speculation Day. Discussing the time falling between holidays dedicated to The Potential and The Sensual, the one celebrating history and the other science, I thought it would be appropriate to use these days to appreciate the rich theme of science/speculative fiction. I declined to limit either August 26^th or February 24^th to any particular form of these texts.

• Interdependence Day. Reading the book, God in Pain, co-authored by Slavoj Zizek, gave me the idea for the final holiday. From my brothers’ ritual abuse of me through my experiences with Al-Ateen through my attraction to the atheist ideas of Nathaniel Branden and the strange reaction I got from trying to appreciate this author on his message board, I’ve always had an extremely ambivalent relationship with religion and its opponents. These on-line experiences, exasperating as they often were, brought me an awareness of the centrality of dialogue to the human condition. The concept “interdependence” thus became central to my philosophy, to such a point that I can often overlook it when discussing this philosophy. I thus gave the last two holidays the above name. On these days, January 12 and July 10, I try to broaden my understanding of history in art and history in religion, respectively.

My next entry will further explore the concept of Interdependence, which I had overlooked until now.

¹ Contemplating the ideas of this blog, I decided the “pure” vs. “practical” science distinction is false, and have removed this limit from choosing which discoveries should be discussed in which of these sensual/shadow holiday entries.
– Viola 3/15/24

² I never wrote an entry dedicated solely to The Potential, but the best short description is in this message board post, where I list it as one of the two most basic aspects of the universe, aligned with what the Upanishads refer to as the ‘feminine’ ‘Prajna – all powerful … the source and end of all.’ I have a bit more of an overview of this deity in my series on “The Promise,” but this entry from my Whitehead series seems more appropriate as a description.

³ Although I’ve never provided a full, systematic list of these crossover holidays before, I have been sharing my celebrations for a couple years now, and you can find them all under the “Symbolic Order” menu at the top of this blog.

⁴ I had originally scheduled the October Apparition day for the 12th, but ended up using the 10th – apologies for any confusion this has caused or may cause.

For the Visually-Oriented:

Holiday	Date	Elements	Growers’ Names
Yule	12/21	Air	The Temporal
Interdependence Day 1	1/12	Air & Earth	The Temporal & The Potential
Imbolc	2/2	Earth	The Potential
Speculation Day 1	2/24	Earth & Fire	The Potential & The Sensual
Ostara	3/20	Fire	The Sensual
Apparition Day 1	4/10	Fire & Water	The Sensual & The Integral
Beltane	5/1	Water	The Integral
Thinksgiving 1	5/26	Water & Air	The Integral & The Temporal
Litha	6/21	Air	The Temporal
Interdependence Day 2	7/10	Air & Earth	The Temporal & The Potential
Lugnasadh	8/1	Earth	The Potential
Speculation Day 2	8/26	Earth & Fire	The Potential & The Sensual
Mabon	9/22	Fire	The Sensual
Apparition Day 2	10/10	Fire & Water	The Sensual & The Integral
Samhain	11/1	Water	The Integral
Thinksgiving 2	11/25	Water & Air	The Integral & The Temporal

Alfred North Whitehead, Pt. 12

The last chapter in our book focuses on how all the scientific and technological advances of the modern world require the very humanistic studies that they have helped to undermine. Reading it reminded me of a scene from the 1985 film, Real Genius, where Chris, a brilliant senior in a science and engineering university, helps a very young, equally intelligent, but overwhelmed new student:

CHRIS (discussing a hermit living in the steam tunnel of the university): Turned out that in the Seventies he was the number one stud around here. Smarter than you and me put together. So brilliant, so sharp, so advanced, so long.

MITCH: What do you mean?

CHRIS: He graduated. Went to work for some chemical company. One day someone told him he was making stuff that was killing people. I think it was his mother. He freaked. You see, he was totally unprepared for the real world. He had no philosophy. He thought science was the answer for everything.

- Script by Neal Israel, Pat Proft, and PJ Torokvei

Whitehead drives home this point eloquently: “Just when the urbanisation of the western world was entering upon its state of rapid development, and when the most delicate, anxious consideration of the aesthetic qualities of the new material environment was requisite, the doctrine of the irrelevance of such ideas was at its height.”

He then focuses on what later philosophers Jose Ortega y Gasset and Mortimer J. Adler were to call the “barbarism of specialization”*, a specialization Whitehead attributes to professionalism and the prosperity gospel. Such barbarism, Whitehead asserts, leads to a culture in which members ignore both their relation to the environment and the intrinsic worth of the environment. He emphasizes the danger of specialization in a democratic society, since its leading intellectuals “see this set of circumstances, or that set; but not both sets together. The task of coördination is left to those who lack either the force or the character to succeed in some definite career.”

He advocates for education that, in addition to developing critical thinking, cultivates both “sensitiveness,” or “apprehension,” and “initiative” or “impulse.” Our author adds, “Sensitiveness without impulse spells decadence, and impulse without sensitiveness spells brutality.” He champions teaching the arts as the way to develop both of these qualities.

To make his case, Whitehead returns to our status as complex organisms, with an “enduring pattern” that “retreats” into the “life of the spirit.” He explains, “The psychological field, as restricted to sense-objects and passing emotions, is the minor permanence, barely rescued from the nonentity of mere change; and the mind is the major permanence, permeating that complete field, whose endurance is the living soul.” Through the changes that the “minor permanence” endures, “the freshness of the environment is absorbed into the permanence of the soul. The changing environment is no longer, by reason of its variety, an enemy to the endurance of the organism.”

Great art, as “something which adds to the permanent richness of the soul’s self-attainment,” thus…

...justifies itself both by its immediate enjoyment, and also by its discipline of the inmost being. Its discipline is not distinct from enjoyment, but by reason of it. It transforms the soul into the permanent realisation of values extending beyond its former self. This element of transition in art is shown by the restlessness exhibited in its history. An epoch gets saturated by the masterpieces of any one style. Something new must be discovered. The human being wanders on. Yet there is a balance in things. Mere change before the attainment of adequacy of achievement, either in quality or output, is destructive of greatness. But the importance of a living art, which moves on and yet leaves its permanent mark, can hardly be exaggerated.

Our author thus warns against the “gospel of uniformity” and celebrates the higher animals’ “power of wandering.” He infers, “Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration.” He emphasizes the need for such wandering, as technological progress makes “the transition through time, from generation to generation, a true migration into uncharted seas of adventure.”

Whitehead ends by summarizing the history of science he had shared as “epic of an episode in the manifestation of reason. It tells how a particular direction of reason emerges in a race by the long preparation of antecedent epochs…” He passionately advocates for “a renewed exercise of the creative imagination” and concludes that the influence of the great conquerors in history “shrinks to insignificance, if compared to the entire transformation of human habits and human mentality produced by the long line of men of thought from Thales to the present day, men individually powerless, but ultimately the rulers of the world.”

I think the below piece sums up the spirit of this chapter nicely. (On Youtube, the lyrics show up; for some reason, this feature doesn’t seem to transfer to this blog.):

* The link goes to a blog entry I found when searching for this phrase. The entry also mentions theologian Francis Schaeffer as one concerned about such specialization. I remember “the barbarism of specialization” having been referenced in a book as a well-known concept, but I searched it in Wikipedia, and got no results, not even under any of the three philosophers to which the linked entry refers.

“The Revolt of the Masses,” the text for which Gasset invents that phrase, was first published four years after our book. – Viola