The Psychosocial Mechanism of Stupidity

The Psychosocial Mechanism of Stupidity

What is stupidity? It is the learned corruption of learning. At best, learning about our surroundings and ourselves is an imperfect process anyway. At worst, it is rendered difficult, impossible or self-defeating by stupidity, which promotes maladaptive behavior by denying us information about our environment and our effects on it.

In general, learning is directed and controlled by a 'Schema'a master cognitive plan by which each person organizes information. It is both a mental set which provides a context for interpreting events in the perceptual field and a program for behavior. Schemas are good, if they are appropriate and adequate, or bad, if they are inappropriate or inadequate for the situations and problems at hand. Stupidity is a matter of unnecessarily modifying a good schema to its detriment or unnecessarily adhering to a bad one to one's own detriment. We commonly do both, since we are all emotionally involved with our schemas to the extent that we identify with them. Thus, a person may change his to suit his self-image while being reluctant to alter it simply to bring it into congruence with information from the environment.

Basically, a schema is a system of belief, and all people need something in which they can believe. Often, this is a religious belief system based on faith in supernatural powers, forces or beings and is accompanied by equally strong beliefs (i.e., 'Secular religions') in human institutions and individuals. Whatever the basis of the schema, it rationalizes the believer's relation to the world while defining what he considers to be proper behavior in it. Invariably, each schema is accompanied by an ideologyan intellectual, logical expression of the beliefs. The irony of the human condition is that a person's behavior is so often inconsistent with his specific ideology, particularly in matters of importance.

This self-deceptive aspect of human nature is due to the role the schema plays in binding groups of people together. The schema is not only a behavioral/belief system for an individual; it also acts as a unifying force for society. However, stupidity is induced when linguistic values, social norms, groupthink and the neurotic paradox promote a positive feedback system which takes schematic behavior to extremes unjustified by and often at odds with external conditions.

Language functions not only as a communication system for a group but also as a value system which defines the mental life of the members and thus is a prime contributor to stupidity. On the positive side, language obviously makes it possible for people to discuss problems, processes and phenomena of which they are consciously aware. On the other hand, language also (and much more subtly) affects the process of perception and makes it so ambiguous that people can accept clear discrepancies between their beliefs and actions in many important, ego-defining situations. To wit, Crusaders killed in the name of Christ, and businessmen work in the verbal context of capitalism to enlist the aid of government when free competition hurts their specific interests. With perception rendered so ambiguous and subjective, stupidity is invited, if not actually promoted, as people usually can find some verbal framework in which they may rationalize their behavior and some scapegoat or excuse to explain away their failures.

Thus, it appears that the verbal nature of our schemas shapes human perception by blurring the boundary between unwelcomed fact and desired fancy. Perception is actually quite an active process in which the perceiver selects certain aspects of his environment as worthy of his attention. Many important events may be simply ignored because they are not deemed significant or interesting. On the other hand, as we see as much with our minds as with our eyes, we are fully capable of perceiving conjured fantasies of events that did not happen and things that do not exist. Further, if and when an actual event is perceived, it can be distorted, with details added or omitted to suit the psyche of the observer. Finally, and most important of all, raw sensory data are coded, reorganized and given meaning according to the perceiver's particular value system. Ergo, what any person perceives is very much affected by his own experiences, attitudes, motives, psychological defenses, etc., all of which are shaped very much by 'Categorizing' according to verbal values.

We each really build our own reality by this process of sorting out perceptions into categories. These are our own schematic constructs based on our specific language group. These constructs then determine each person's psychological world, the rules of tongue used to assign percepts to the given categories and the hypotheses created to explain how various events and objects perceived relate to one another.

While linguistic systems act as screens or sieves between people and their environment, they promote cooperation among group members by fostering common perceptions. At the same time, they promote intergroup conflict as different languages lead to various perceptions and cognitions in different societies. Thus, language is an obstacle not only to objectivity but also to cooperation among diverse groups. Worst of all, language keeps people from understanding what they, themselves, are doing.

People commonly have dysfunctional beliefs because their conscious schemas are shaped by the verbal values of their reference groupi.e., their nation, religious organization, professional association, etc. With everyone using the same biased language, it is unlikely that members could develop original, self-correcting ideas. Hence, it is difficult for an insider to form and usually stupid of him to offer an objective, critical analysis of his reference group, whatever it may be. Any attempt to do so would most likely be regarded as heresy and the critic shunned or dismissed as a threat to group integrity. (In fact, the only thing more aggravating to a group than a critic is an idealist who lives up to its stated creed.)

Usually, people cannot be objective about themselves or anything else since they use their group/language values to judge their world. If people are anything, they are judges, and their perceptions of things and events are judged good or bad according to the standards formulated by their given social experiences. To the extent that conformity is induced by both language and norms, objective criticism is inhibited and stupidity induced when people strictly adhere to forms of thought and behavior which are irrelevant to the problems at hand or self-defeating for those involved.

One human universal is that every group is endowed with attributes which members regard not only as positive and praiseworthy but self-justifying and self-glorifying. Individual members develop these by internalizing group norms through socialization. In fact, it is through this process that a group is formed, thereby giving individual members a sense of belonging. Dress, manners, gestures and many other forms of learned social behavior tend to promote a sense of group unity and identity by encouraging conformity among members. In addition, examples of 'Success' by high ranking members, verbal dicta and formal corrective measures all inhibit deviation from group standards. Possession of qualities defined as 'Good' makes a member a 'Good person'. (On the other hand, negative qualities are commonly attributed to outsiders and members of out-groups according to the degree of competition between the groups.)

The development of the cognitive norms of socially approved ideas and shared illusions that interfere with critical, analytical thinking can also promote group cohesion. However, when this process goes to the extreme, reality testing is suspended and the condition of 'Groupthink' leads members to overestimate their collective power and righteousness. They tend to consider themselves invulnerable to any of the dangers inherent in their activities, and they become excessively optimistic about results they expect from actions they contemplate. In such instances, there is a strong probability of risky adventures being attempted with complete confidence of success. Although such an attitude may be advantageous to some groups, like military units in combat, even this is not always the case: The Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba in April, 1961 remains the archetypical example of this phenomenon at its worst.

People indulging in groupthink find themselves not only invincible but invariably right according to their own standards. This presumption of inherent morality usually means that no one in the isolated group will question its basic beliefs. Thus, members are likely simply to ignore ethical and moral consequences of their acts, since they assume they are right and what they are trying to accomplish is obviously good. Of course, if actions against an out-group are under consideration, the enemy is stereotypically viewed as evil, weak and stupid and is accordingly referred to in disparaging terminology.

Basically, groupthink is a way for closing the minds of members of a cohesive unit. Policies are rationalized rather than scrutinized; data conflicting with such policies are ignored rather than evaluated; warnings of impending or possible failure are dismissed rather than discussed. By such means, the group schema is maintained intact, which is obviously the most important thing of all. Whether or not behavior is appropriate or successful is a distinctly secondary consideration to the maintenance of group image and ideology.

That image, ideology and a sense of esteem as well are all promoted by pressure toward uniformity within the group. The group censors itself by suppressing deviations from the prevailing consensus and minimizes expression of doubts. The result is an illusion of unanimity, with judgments apparently conforming to the majority view. Dissent is considered disloyal, and direct pressure may be brought to bear against any member who seriously questions any of the group's stereotypes, delusions or policies. In addition, self-appointed 'Mindguards' may shield the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared misconceptions or placid complacency about their own effectiveness and righteousness.

The imposition of unwanted, negative perceptions upon groupthinkers (or anyone indulging in behavioral fantasies) often produces the condition of 'Cognitive dissonance', with the disturbing data being misconstrued or misinterpreted if at all possible so as to save the schema. If failure cannot be denied, blame is likely to be affixed anywhere but where it belongsusually as far down the chain of command as possible. The failure of generals during World War I to learn the obvious lesson that the day of frontal assaults was over is a classic case in point: They insisted the tactic was basically sound; it was always execution that was faulty.

In this context of an inability to learn, life may be viewed as a dynamic imbalance. Social life, particularly, is often a compromise state between goal achievement and group survival. Either may be sacrificed for the other but usually with results deemed stupid by anyone judging according to the criteria of the function sacrificed. For example, government agencies are notorious for taking on lives of their own at the expense of efficiency. As a bureaucracy grows and becomes entrenched, its ability to respond effectively to its environment is reduced, and although growth of the agency is regarded as a sign of success by the civil servants in charge, the accompanying inefficiency is regarded as stupid by citizens trying to get action.

Judgment is shaped not only by the viewpoint of the perceiver but also by the time scale used to evaluate effects. In this context, stupidity's most reliable ally is the 'Neurotic paradox'a self-destructive learning pattern which occurs when an act is reinforced with an immediate short-term reward although its long-term consequences will be maladaptive. A drug addiction is a classic example of this phenomenon: Getting a fix is an immediate reward and will keep the user hooked, although it is clearly in his long-term worst interest. Thus, his immediate judgment is that getting the fix is necessary and, in that sense, good, even if he knows it is working toward his eventual demise.

Since judgment is so subjective and made from an arbitrarily, subconsciously selected perspective, people usually fail to see themselves as doing something stupid while engaged in behavior detrimental to their own interests. They persist in such activity because they have a schema which defines success in terms of the behavior undertaken while it simultaneously inhibits percepts of undesirable negative consequences. Contrary to prevailing psychological dogma, feedback from the environment does not necessarily lead to adaptive behavior (i.e., adjustments most likely to produce positive results) because it is first screened by the perceptual defense system. During this process, incoming information is likely to be dismissed or misinterpreted if it conflicts with and cannot be adjusted to fit the existing belief system.

It is important to bear in mind that such self-deception in moderation may be an effective defense mechanism which promotes self-confidence in an individual and cooperation within a group. It is only when it goes to excess that it tends to become stupidly maladaptive, but it is precisely this which is made probable when a behavioral or cultural trend develops into a self-rewarding, positive feedback system. When this occurs, a pattern of activity becomes rewarding in and of itself regardless of its extrinsic consequences. Behavior may then go to an extreme because it is reinforced by the schema, which functions as an intrinsically gratifying, internal reward system for such conduct. If at all possible, such self-reinforcing behavior is imposed on external conditions, and in the absence of critical self-examination, members of a group can thus become victims of their own excesses as inner directed behavior runs out of control and becomes disruptively self-defeating.

Hence, as a learned corruption of learning, stupidity must be seen as not only an inhibitor but also an inventor of feedback. Some stimuli, lessons and thoughts are blocked, while an active imagination may create pleasing perceptions that are misleading and which promote activities that may be maladaptive. The net effect of all this is to detach the mental world from the external environment, and as we all suffer the resultant imbalance on occasion, stupidity must be considered a normal psychological condition which has gone to one of two extremes. It may be due to a deeply ingrained, inflexible maladaptive schema, or it can result from an overactive fantasy which produces imaginative thoughts that are flexible to the point of creating misperceptions. In either case, the resultant mental set is a function of our biological heritage and cultural environment.

The Biocultural Basis of Stupidity

The interference of learning with adaptation through further learning is not a uniquely human problem. It is found, for example, among earth worms, which can be trained to turn away from an 'Electrode alley' in a T-boxan experimental construct in which the animal reaches a choice-point and must go to one side or the other. Having learned to avoid the side with the electrode, a worm will at first have difficulty learning to turn the other way when the electrode is switched to the previously 'Correct' side. In this case, what the animal had learned clearly interfered with its ability to adjust to altered environmental conditions, as it had to overcome the original lesson before it could form a new, effective schema.

Among both insects and birds, mimicry is perpetrated on unwitting hosts which have difficulty learning to discriminate between their own kind and impostors. Limitations on the ability of some social insects to learn make them perfect hosts for inquilinesparasites that are dependent throughout their life cycle on their hosts. These penetrate the alien society by means of physiological and behavioral mechanisms which have developed, through convergent evolution, the identifying traits of the host species. Thus, they are accepted because they provide the few key stimuli their hosts recognize as defining membership in the group.

Of course, the failure of the hosts to reject the invaders might be due more to a genetic limitation on their ability to perceive and learn than to a purely learned inability to learn. Although some animals (and humans) cannot learn certain things, they are not necessarily, ipso facto stupid. The range of their biological programs to react to environmental contingencies is somehow restricted, be it due to genetics, learning or any compounded combination of phylogenetic and ontological factors. Thus, while genetics may limit such organisms' abilities to learn, that does not qualify as stupidity, according to our definition.

Since vertebrates have more streams of information by which they can check phonies than do insects, most do not usually host mimics. However, some birds are victimized by parasitic mimicry of their eggs. For example, cowbird eggs are tailored not only to a particular host species but to the local population with which the cowbirds live. Among host species, there is considerable variation in tolerance to cowbird eggs, with 'Discriminator' populations rejecting any cowbird egg that is not closely mimetic and 'Nondiscriminator' populations accepting eggs of various sizes, colors and patterns.

In a general sense, the mammalian learning 'Strategy', if you will, is more open than the more structured and intrinsically limited learning fields of other classes of organisms. Certainly, the learning process in mammals is directed more by experience with the environment than by a tight genetic program and thus usually promotes adaptation to short-term changes in their immediate surroundings.

Still, this is not always the case. In water-shrews, for example, learning can lead to some bizarre results. These creatures certainly challenge the basic principle that learning is adaptive because their distinctive behavioral characteristic is the inflexible tenacity with which they cling to any habit once formed. Perhaps it might be said that learning would be adaptive if it continued and thus permitted continual adjustments to changing conditions, but in this regard, water-shrews are archetypically stupid. Once one has learned a pathway through its environment, it will persist in its locomotor pattern although the path may have been altered significantly. (E.g., if it learned to jump on a stone at a certain point, it will continue to jump there even if the stone is removed.)

Thus, the shrew disregards its senses when it encounters a change in the environment which cries out for an alteration in behavior. Once a habit is ingrained, it inhibits the acquisition of more and better knowledge. This dominance of an established motor habit over perception is a remarkable peculiarity of the water-shrew, whereas the shaping of percepception by cognitive habit is more common among the more intelligent mammals.

The ability of animals to adapt behavior to perceptions of an environment which exists only in their minds was suggested by B. F. Skinner's 'Superstitious pigeons'. When reinforced at random, these birds came to make idiosyncratic movements as if by doing so they would elicit a reward. A better example is the 'Raindance' of Jane Goodall's chimpanzees, which fairly invites the explanation that they are threatening that son of a baboon in the sky that makes it rain. Of course, they might just be venting their frustrations at being made miserable, but their aggressive displays certainly suggest a mentality capable of creating and acting according to myths.

Hence, there may really be nothing unique about human stupidity. Ac-cording to one view, we are, in this regard, only quantitatively but not qualitatively different from our fellow creatures. That is, we are not just as stupid as other animals but more so.

In fact, we are quantitatively excessive in one basic psychological capacity relating to stupidity, and that is the ability to learn. We have developed this ability we share with so many species to such an extent that we are in this respect biological extremes. With our equally excessive and exceptional imagination apparently the only limit on our capacity to conjure up lessons, we seem to be able to learn anything at allwhether it makes sense or not. Ironically, the power of the human mind to invent supernatural explanations for natural events is matched only by our curious inability to couple the simplest cause-effect relationships. The current worldwide need for birth control is but one handy example of this latter phenomenon: The inability of civilization to face up to this matter officially and do something effective about it is just typical of the stupid way people have failed to deal with problems throughout history.

Thus, we may be something other than just excessively stupid animals. According to a second view of human evolution, the new element in the human equation which makes human stupidity and indeed humans qualitatively unique is language. As we have noted, it is language which intensifies group identification, promotes self-deception and limits our ability to cope with ourselves. History shows a dreary succession of civilizations arising, growing, flowering and dying with each failure being displaced by another while the method of failure apparently remains remarkably constant: Biased value judgments disrupt interaction with the cultural and natural environments until the Establishment collapses and is replaced by a new but equally biased system. Most of the time, leaders could not cope with their most fundamental problems because they did not even recognize them as such. The suggestion here is that they did not do so primarily because of the way language shaped their schemas and defined their perceivable world.

If we owe our general humanity (i.e., our propensity to err) to verbalization, we owe our specific identity to socializationthe learning process which trains us to fit into a particular way of life. In this regard, human societies have two basic problems: 1.) people who fail to fit into the established organization, and 2.) established organizations which fail to reorganize according to changing needs of people in a changing world. In both cases, stupidity usually plays a decisive role.

Considering the evolutionary pressure in favor of success, bright people and efficient organizations should have survival advantages over others. If this is true (and perhaps it is not, as the standards for measuring brilliance and efficiency are not at all clearly defined), the question that must be asked is: How is it that we still have as much stupidity in the world as we do today? There are two obvious and easy answers: Nature and nurture. That is, we both breed and cultivate stupidity.

Genetically and culturally, there has always been a tendency of groups to sacrifice quality and even genius in favor of the cooperative spirit and group cohesion. As humans evolved in social groups rather than as individuals, cooperation of members within a group and of groups with each other was (and remains) essential. If intellectual life was compromised in the cause of cooperation, then it was because the net effect was advantageous for society.

There are two amazing things about the evolution of civilizations. One is the great variety of them which have developed, if not flourished: Almost any kind of cultural system can exist at least for a while if it can maintain a minimal level of internal consistency. The other is that the vast majority of these failed from internal malaise or external competition. Ironically, failure from both causes can be attributed to the fact that culture is a positive feedback system, with each specific civilization lacking internal checks on its own development. Thus, collapse occurs when a culture becomes 1.) fatally inconsistent with itself, 2.) consistent to the point of rigidity or 3.) eliminated through dire conflict with competing systems.

On the other hand, a cultural movement may flourish if such competition is balanced. For example, in the United States, big labor checked big business, and both prospered and promoted Americanism. Nationalistic ambitions in turn are usually checked by those of other countries. Thus, biocultural life seems to follow its own version of Newton's Third Law every force begetting an equal but opposite force. If this is true of human affairs, a certain amount of confrontation if not conflict is inherent, necessary and perhaps (if non-violent) even good.

In fact, we are biological anomalies in that we have largely replaced interspecific competition with intraspecific (i.e., cultural) competition. As a result, there is no other species we need fear as much as ourselves. The major question facing us today is whether the pattern of replacing one human cultural variation with another will continue. If it does, we might despair over the passing of a particular cultural group, especially if it is our own. However, if it does not, it will not for one of two reasons: Either we will eliminate all cultural life completely, or we will find a way to live with ourselves.

There has long been a hope that scholarly research would help us learn about ourselves so that we could find a way to live together. Indeed there have been many efforts made to identify a definitive form of behaviora uniquely human universalwhich would provide a basis for understanding human nature, but so far, the best we have come up with is language, which we define as the way humans communicate. Piles of amassed data show no simple, non-lingual, behavioral constant across cultures. If anything, humans display endless variations in the ways they deal with and discuss basic biological problems (e.g., raising young, gathering energy, etc.) according to environmental contingencies and linguistic constraints.

Although stupidity is not uniquely human, understanding our verbally based brand of it might help us cope with ourselves and perhaps avoid some of the psychological and philosophical pitfalls which have plagued us in the past. Certainly, we can begin by acknowledging that stupidity has been our constant companion throughout history. Thus, anyone studying it in a historical context should learn something fundamental about the human experience and gain some insight into the human mind.

The first thing the student of stupidity learns is that, along with our purely biological needsfood, water, etc., we need a schema which provides a program for behavior. The second is that we also need an ideology which explains the nature of the universe and our relation to it. The ideology is a conscious, organized expression of the verbal facet of the schema and forms a cognitive bridge between religious beliefs about the supernatural world and secular ideas derived from coping with the mundane problems of life. These beliefs and ideas need not necessarily be factually based; nor need they be logically consistent with each other, and indeed they seldom are. Their function is to promote group cooperation as people interact with their natural and cultural environments.

The problem with and for the ideology is that it is not experience per se but the schema that comes to define life by shaping perceptions according to its own irrational nature. This often means that unpleasant facts are not treated as information but as sinsbreaches of faith in the belief system. In real life, most political/economic systems do not have to make sense nor even be systematic: The important thing is that they function. Surely, any objective, outside observer committed to a logical analysis of events could not help but be bewildered by the development of modern governments and economies, for example. Nonetheless, as long as the people living with them believe in them, they (both the people and their nonsystematic systems) may survive and even flourish, at least for a while.

During their existence, 'Establishments' are usually quite anti-empirical and unscientific in their adherence to obsolete or even incorrect theories about what they are doing. Those in power tend to be conservative meaning they honor the ideas with which they grew up and perceive the world in terms of the values which took them to the top. Basically, leaders want to retain their power and are loath to acknowledge the existence of any problems they cannot solve without changing. Thus, their own continued predominance defines the context in which problems are considered. Throughout the ages, the eternal, ultimate political problem has been and remains that of controlling those in control, and the perennial abuse of power has invariably rested on the resistance of the mighty to any change in their point of view.

The failure of anyone to modify perceptions according to new combinations of developing environmental variables often leads to the extreme imbalanced condition everyone else recognizes as stupidity. This would happen even more often than it does except that most 'Perceptual systems' are checked by conflicting systems. Thus, youthful enthusiasm is checked by parental guidance; corporations are checked by government, which is checked by the people or other governments, etc. On the other hand, stupidity is induced when systems which should check each other become mutually reinforcing. The arms race was a striking example of this process, as two systems, which would have confronted each other in ages past, stimulated each other to excesses in the development of their military establishments. Only as recently as December, 1987, did the signing of an arms control treaty designed to restrict our capacity to annihilate ourselves interject an element of sanity into this double helix of inspired madness which had its origins in our common past.

Pre-Western Stupidity

The story of civilized stupidity began with civilization. From the beginning, it has been a story of maladaptive, pretentious claims to eternal grandeur with each case becoming something more than just a tragedy for those involved if it also became a lesson wasted on those who followed. Usually, the specific examples repeated a generally cyclical pattern of conquerors becoming civilized and weakened by easy affluence and internal strife until they were conquered in turn by later bands of invading nomads. Old rulers and ruling classes would thus be replaced by new versions without anything fundamental changing, and then the process would begin again. So were the Sumerians swallowed up, their genes dispersed through interbreeding and their languages lost as they gave way to the Semites who gave way to the Aryans, with the Persians dominating until the time of Alexander (ca. 330 B.C.).

Those Sumerians founded western Asia's first known empire in the Euphrates-Tigris valley about 8,000 years ago. It lasted about 4,000 years so they must have done something right, and if stability were the sole criterion of success, it was among the most successful empires ever. During much of this time, however, it was divided into city-states which anticipated those of Greece (and the military tradition of Western states generally) by warring upon each other because there was no one else around to fight. For thousands of years, intra-imperial battles raged, and the only people to conquer Sumerians were other Sumerians. As in Renaissance Italy, the chauvinistic separatism of the cities of Sumer stimulated life and art but also led to civic violence and fratricidal strife that weakened each petty state and finally destroyed the empire. In this way, the Sumerians slowly wore themselves down and out until eventually they were replaced by the Semitic peoples.

Thus, in the early history of Mesopotamia (the Land Between the Rivers) began the struggle of Semites vs. Non-Semites. Since the dynastic clashes between the city-kings established at Semitic Kish (4500 B.C.) and Non-Semitic Ur (ca. 3500), the conflict between these peoples and cultures has remained one of the bloody themes in the story of the Near East. Contemporary statesmen committed to settling such a long-running dispute would do well to bear this in mind and modify their ambitions accordingly.

We might also note that in this early stage in the development of civilization, there was not yet a clear distinction between religion and politics. In fact, government was bound up with religion in the person of the patesi, meaning 'Priest-king'. Within this context of religious politics, an occasional reformer arose to oppose domestic oppression. Most notable among these was patesi Urukagina of Lagash (ca. 2900). He railed like a Luther against the exactions of the clergy, accused them of corruption, denounced them for their voracity, and charged them with over-taxing the workers. He had some success combatting bribery of officials and protecting the helpless against extortion, but neither the reforms nor the liberty he boasted he had given the people outlasted him. All was ended by Lugl-zaggisi, who invaded Lagash at the height of its prosperity, overthrew Urukagina and sacked the city.

With the passing of Urukagina, the priests recovered their power, as they would do in Egypt with the passing of Akhenaton, and abuse and corruption were restored as official norms. Such iniquities might best be viewed and accepted as the price of mythology. People apparently need myths, and if the priests were overcharging for inferior products as they presumed to provide this eternal and unfathomable necessity, then that just makes them seem all the more like our modern day myth mongers.

By 2800, the growth of trade made the pettiness of the patesi and municipal separatism impractical. Empires were thus effectively generated very much in the way that developing commerce would break down the provincial isolation of medieval Europe and pave the way for nationalism some 4,000 years later. The reigning Sumerian despot subjected the various cities and their patesi to his power, but he lived in a Renaissance atmosphere of calculated violence. Always with him was the gnawing fear that someone might apply the Golden Rule of Imperial Succession and dispatch him by the same means he had used to gain his power.

About 2400, Ur-engur brought all of western Asia under his pacific authority, proclaimed the first extensive code of laws in history and announced 'By the laws of righteousness of Shamash forever I establish justice'. It is with both relief and gratification that we learn justice was established forever more than 4,000 years ago. Despite all the legal righteousness of Shamash, the regal justice, peace, prosperity, leisure and glory enjoyed under Ur-engur endured only until 2357, when the city of Ur was invaded and sacked by some not so peaceful, prosperous and leisurely neighbors.

Around 2350, a Semitic people under Sargon I built a kingdom at Akkad, 200 miles north-west of the Sumerian city-states. Sargon modestly called himself 'King of Universal Dominion' as he ruled a small portion of Mesopotamia, and historians have since called him 'The Great' because he invaded many cities, captured much booty and killed a lot of people on his way to conquering the Sumerians. He never did live up to his self-proclaimed title, but in trying to do so, he established the first 'Great' empire in history by extending his domain from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. However, his empire may have been more vast than great as at the close of his fifty-five year reign, it was in revolt.

The Sumerian culture survived Sargon, but the importance of Sumer was more in its formation than its extended demise. As one of the first if not the first civilization, it was a civilization of firsts. For the first time on a large scale, people indulged in the civilized sins of slavery, despotism, ecclesiasticism and imperialism. The natural inequality of people was supplemented by cultural inequities and iniquities which provided comfort for the strong and labor for the weak. Yet, it lasted until Hammurabi, King of Babylon, rose to power.

Babylon was a theocratic state always under the collective thumb of the priests. There was a solemn union of church and state, with the king invested with royal power by the priests and acting as an agent of the gods. Of course, this arrangement was one of reciprocal, mutually reinforcing advantages. On the one hand, the supernatural aura about the throne made potential rebellion less probable because it was a civic impiety which was not only illegal but heretical. On the other, tax money was collected in the name of the gods and found its way into temple treasuries. In fact, the church became even richer still as it amassed dividends the uneasy wealthy shared with the gods.

Beyond mere wealth, however, the religious Establishment had an edge over the temporal tyrants in that it was founded on the tradition of divine permanence. Kings came and went, but the 65,000 gods were eternal. Al- so, the council of priests had a corporate perpetuity that made possible the long-range planning and patient policies which still characterize the great religious institutions of the modern era.

Nevertheless, Babylon's most famous name is that of its founder and greatest secular ruler, Hammurabi. He reigned for forty-three years (1729 -1686) and is still remembered for his code of laws which was inspired, according to the prologue, 'To cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak,to enlighten the land and to further the welfare of the people'. In the epilogue, he claimed to have established prosperity for his people for all time. If Babylon was not quite the Heaven on earth he intended it to be, it did in his time reach a level of material civilization which, according to Christopher Dawson, has never been surpassed in Asiaexcept, according to Will Durant, maybe in Persia, India and/or China. Morally however, many of the ideals embodied in his Code were never realized in Babylon and remain, to our shame and embarrassment, unfulfilled throughout the world today.

Part of the reason the ideal state envisaged by Hammurabi was not realized in Babylon may have been that the Code represented a commitment to the principle of equal justice qualified according to social class and sex. More likely, its realization was inhibited by the fact that the secular, legal Code was officially complemented by a conservative religious philosophy designed to promote civil obedience and faith in the Establishment. According to going explanations, of which royalty approved, evil was good in dragsome part of a divine plan invisible to humans, who were simply to believe and obey. Eventually, faith and courage would be rewarded and enemies somehow punished by gods who were standing by to heed calls for help.

Actually, the reality of Babylonian life not only contrasted sharply with secular ideals but seemed to be running counter to the theological explanations as well. As noted by an anonymous observer, who probably will not mind being paraphrased: 'Men exalt the work of the great murderer. They disparage the poor who have not sinned. They justify the wicked. They drive away the just. They help the strong steal from the poor. They strengthen the mighty. They destroy the weak.' If it sounds as though civilization has not changed much in the last 4,000 years, it is because in some fundamental ways it hasn't. The modern priests of our secular religions (the media moguls who would have us believe in and buy into the Establishment) still side with the largest fortunes (the corporate sponsors) as did the priests of power in Babylon.

Despite all the apparent injustices of Babylonian life, and even though prosperity eventually waned and Hammurabi's ideals faded into the distance, it is not really surprising that the people remained faithful for so long to a religion that gave them so little consolation. True believers simply had no option but to continue humbly to seek favors from the biased gods and to heed devoutly the powerful priests. There certainly was no way for anyone to challenge the haughty, who had an arrangement of reciprocal support with the mighty. The only way the validity of any belief system can be checked is through knowledge, and personal experiences of the citizens notwithstanding, the only knowledge officially recognized in Babylon came from the priests through divine revelation. Not surprisingly, this invariably validated the established system.

Nor is it surprising this knowledge produced myths which justified and explained the system. Mesopotamian myths differ somewhat as to how the gods created man, but it is clear that when they became dissatisfied with their handiwork, they sent a flood to destroy him. It must be some consolation to our God to know that occasionally the Babylonian deities also did something stupid, and this was a case in point. No sooner had they unleashed the flood than the gods wept and gnashed their teeth at their divine idiocy. 'Who will make the offerings now?', they asked. Fortunately for them and us, Ea (the God of Wisdom yet), out of pity for humanity, had saved one coupleMr. and Mrs. Shamashnapishtimwho built an ark, survived the flood and made an offering to the surprised and grateful shortsighted gods.

Such legends aside, the general effect of theology on the early cultural life of the pre-imperial city of Babylon was that of intellectual stagnation. This was particularly true, for example, in medicinea field in which the priestly influence which held back science was reinforced by superstitions of the people, who demanded supernatural diagnoses and cures. Sorcerers and necromancers were more popular than physicians, and through their influence on the people, they encouraged irrational medical practices. Hence, disease in Babylon was due to sin and was usually treated by incantations, magic and prayers. Such drugs as were used were designed to appease or disgust the demon possessing the patient.

By the time of Hammurabi, however, physicians had separated themselves from the clergy, and the medical profession was legally established with both fees and penalties fixed by law. A patient would thus know in advance just how much he would have to pay, and if he was poor, fees were lowered to match his means. In cases of malpractice, doctors had to pay damages, and in extreme cases, a bungling surgeon could have his fingers amputated so that he could not bungle again. This lesson was certainly not lost on other surgeons of the day as it was on later, more civilized and squeamish societies.

Medical liberation notwithstanding, the priests generally reigned supreme in Babylon, and to put their influence in a positive light, it can be said they provided an element of cultural continuity to society while promoting a decent docility among the lower classes. However, the upper classes seemed beyond the reach of religion particularly in the latter days of the empire. As cultural stagnation led to civic corruption, Babylon surrendered itself to revelry, drifted into its notorious decadence and became the sink of iniquity which was to serve the ancient world as a scandalous example of luxurious laxity and shocking immorality.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, the long-enduring stability/stagnation complex which characterized the most successful ancient civilizations found expression as the vital cultural principle of repetition. Egyptians possessed no dynamic sense of progress but were content to apply certain formulae as called for by a constant environment dominated by a perpetual sun, endless sand and an eternal river. Officially, they were dogged record keepers, and these records were invariably couched in conventional terms which were used over and over again to describe things done over and over again.

Even private correspondence became reduced to bland and blank formality, so the overwhelming impression of Egypt is that of impersonality. Egyptians had no desire to express originality or individuality but aspired to behave as much like each other and their dead ancestors as possible. Their major philosophical preoccupation was to ignore time and live outside it. Further, they lacked curiosity and never speculated about themselves or anything else. This makes them strangers to us in that not only did they not answer the questions historians ask about their dynasties they did not even ask the questions.

Our answers indicate that in predynastic, fifth millennium Egypt, there werewhat else?two warring states. In Upper Egypt (i.e., the headwaters of the Nile or southern Egypt), the king wore a white crown while in the Delta, the king wore a red crown. The warring factions were thus referred to as 'Whites' and 'Reds', and it is somewhat humbling to think that 6,500 years ago, the Nile may have echoed with the Egyptian equivalents of 'Better red than dead' and 'Better white than right'. In one of those rarities of historyan extended period of peace, the kingdoms coexisted for nearly 1,000 years until about 3300, when hostilities were resumed. Finally, the Uppers got the upper hand and Narmer (alias Menes) unified the two lands and became the first king of dynastic Egypt.

In the next millennium, Egypt nearly wrecked itself building the pyramids. As symbols of Egypt and monuments to stupidity and death, they remain unsurpassed. Around 2650, Cheops raised the Great Pyramid, which was originally about 500 feet high and weighed more than five million tons, with most of the stone being lugged into place by human muscle. The ultimate significance of this and the other burial piles was that they left Egypt exhausted and wasted as if devastated by war.

In the second millennium, Egypt was confronted with the reforming impulses of Akhenaton (1370-1352). He recognized as the sole god of Egypt, Aton, the creative principle of the sun, rather than Amon-Ra, the spiritual fountainhead of his own dynasty. Although to know Aton was to enjoy gaiety and intellectual freedom, Akhenaton proceeded against Amon-Ra with all the fury of a joyless bigot. Actually, this self-destructive theological rage was a thinly disguised attempt on the part of Akhenaton to break the iron power of the priesthood at Thebes. However, the attempted reform failed, and the king capitulated because he had clearly underestimated both Amon-Ra's popularity among the people and the power of the priests, who held the dynastic purse strings.

Non-Western Stupidity

While we focus here on stupidity, we must acknowledge in passing that, like the Sumerians, the ancient Egyptians must have done something right for we can pick up the story of their descendants in our own era. This is no mean tribute to the capacity of the Egyptians to survive, as their culture was contemporaneous originally with that of Sumer and later with that of Babylonboth long since gone. What they did right was find a cultural balance with their natural environment. However, the development of a concomitant sense of complacent, eternal equipoise in ages past may have contributed to their later subjugation by successive waves of aggressive Moslem and Western elements in their human environment.

By the middle of our own millennium, the condition of Egypt had become one of Egyptian tragedy and Turkish stupidity as it was then the Turks who were the dominant force there. The Ottoman-Mamluk rulers shared the same religion as the subject people but usually spoke a different language, so the ties of the rulers to the people were rather weak. In fact, the peasantry was simply considered a resource to be exploited. During the heyday of Mamluk rule (which lasted in toto from 1250 to 1517), the merchant class contributed enormously to the wealth of Egypt. However, toward the end of the fifteenth century, state intervention blunted merchant initiative and Egyptian commerce declined.

In the nineteenth century, Turkish governors pursued a goal of an export-oriented economy relying on a large influx of foreign capital. By 1875, the borrowing of money at increasingly onerous rates led to the desperate, foolish sale of Egypt's shareholdings in the Suez Canal Company to the British for only $20 million. For a short-term fix, Egypt thus lost its influence over and the extended benefits from its greatest international asset.

In this century, the quest for sustained economic development carried Egypt toward a fascistic policy of governmental planning as the state assumed an ever expanding role in the fiscal management of the country. In 1956, Gamal Nasser indulged in a self-defeating fit of patriotic bravado and nationalized foreign firms, thereby driving out much needed capital and technical expertise. The economy did develop slowly under him, but Egypt's resources were hard pressed and the gains threatened by an expanding population.

Like Nasser, who could not carry out his long-term theoretical plans in the short-term practical world, Anwar Sadat could not cope with long-term problems, like population growth, nor effect the long-range government investments needed to raise Egypt's standard of living. He was simply too idealistic and found that even his greatest short-term triumph making peace with Israelalienated both his supporters (the army) and his enemies (religious extremists). His assassination made him a martyr to liberalism in a land resistant to change.

Actually, the sacrifice of dynamics and the individual reached a debilitating extreme not only in Egypt but also in India. There, the commitment of fatalistic Hindus to a condition of national nirvana allowed a Moslem conquest and domination which lasted a thousand years. This conquest was probably the bloodiest in history until World War II and illustrated that the delicate balance of civilization may easily be thrown off at any time by barbarians invading from without or attacking from within. In this particular case, the Hindus permitted their strength to be wasted by internal division and war. Further, they had adopted religions like Buddhism and Jainism, which unnerved them for the tasks of this life. Most important of all pragmatically, they failed to organize their forces to protect their borders, cities, wealth and independence.

Within the general context of Indian apathy and indifference to survival, a feudal civilization was built in Mewar and some other states by warlike rajasIndian samurai, if you will. From about 600 to about 1600, these feudal lords defended themselves and all of India as best they could, while they could, from would-be invaders. They regarded war to be the highest art, but their pride was also their tragedy as the same spirit which for a while enabled them to prevent an invasion also kept their little states divided and weakened by strife. This was a classic case of a people who could survive anything but themselves. Their militaristic schema defined their existence but created dissension and led to their demise, so all their bravery came to less than naught. Thus, Indian militarism presents a story of contrast: When it was absent, it was a fatal defensive weakness; where it was present, it was a fatal divisive strength.

For about three hundred years (ca. 700-1000), growing Indian opulence invited conquest. Hordes of Huns, Afgans and Turks hovered on the frontiers just waiting for national weakness to admit them. After a few hundred years of raidingtime enough for the Indians to have organized to defend themselves effectively against this clear and ever present danger, the real conquest began in the eleventh century with a devastating Moslem invasion that lasted for centuries. In fact, if there was stupidity on the part of the invaders, it was that they destroyed so much wealth they could have used to their advantage.

If India was a land divided by warring states before the Moslem invasion, since that time it has been a land divided by battling religionsparticularly Islam and Hinduism. The resultant strife and bloodshed seems just that much sadder when one reads the religious ideals expressed by Kabir, a medieval poet. Devoid of dogma and infused with a profoundly religious spirit, he blended the best of both creeds into one with no distinctions on earth and one God in heaven. Unfortunately, his death in 1518 demonstrated his failure, as Moslems and Hindus disputed whether his remains should be buried or burned. Although his words passed largely unheeded into Indian oral tradition, they did inspire the creation of two sects which today remain jealously separate while they both worship the doctrine of the poet who tried to unite Moslems and Hindus: One sect is Moslem, the other Hindu.

As subjugated Indians sought consolation in religion, they were predisposed to accept Christianity, which happened to be compatible with many ethical precepts that they had honored for centuries. In fact, Christianity might have led to a higher standard of loving not only in India but in the world in general had it not been for the character and behavior of Christians. The contrast between their precepts and practices left many potential converts skeptical and satirical because often the missionaries could hardly be heard above the roar of Western cannons.

When they were heard, missionaries did have some difficulty spreading the Holy Word in India because Hinduism had many more and better miracles to offer than had Christianity. Hindus were not much impressed by someone being raised from the dead, and the Europeans' claim 'But this really happened' must have left them completely nonplussed. Hence, missionary work was somewhat limited by one of Christianity's strengths in that, despite all its miracles, it is better suited to use by rational beings than any other major religion but is also less appealing emotionally to potential converts steeped in superstition.

Actually, it has been through secular rather than sectarian education and technology rather than theology that the West has had its greatest impact on the Orient. Clearly, the major impact of Western ideas on Indian thought came not from religion but through liberal education. The English taught colonials British history with the intention of creating loyal subjects but unwittingly inculcated the idea of democracy and the ideals of liberty and equality in the minds of their students.

Railroads, telephones and mass media have likewise produced extensive cultural changes throughout the world. If India was reluctant to embrace industrialization, it was not only because British machines reduced Indians to poverty (while high calibre guns taught them humility) but also because of the very nature of Indian society. The caste system, which developed in and for a static, agricultural civilization, provided order but gave no opening to ability, let alone genius. It furnished neither stimulus for invention nor encouragement for enterprise. It has been undercut by the Industrial Revolution, and although it hangs on, in most Indian factories today, employees work side by side regardless of caste.

In contrast to the traditionally religious culture of India, that of China has always more philosophical and intellectual, based more on sages than saints and directed more toward wisdom than goodness. To the Chinese, the ideal is not pious devotion but mature contemplation. Most honored is he who acts in silence for true wisdom is expressed better by example than by words.

When traditional Chinese wisdom was expressed in words, it was generally consistent with the minimal standards of Buddhist ideals. Formally, there was no functional knowledge, as material possessions were valueless and empty nothingness the eternal ideal. Like Rousseau, Lao-tze (ca. 550 B.C.) wrote with more idealism than realismwith knowledge tempered by hope. In the way that urbanites romanticize nature and Jesus idealized people, Lao sweetened everything. Actually, however, sweetness was usually set aside, and the pragmatic Chinese were more likely to outwit or confound their opponents than serenely ponder philosophy.

This discrepancy between formality and function was enfranchised by Confucius (551?-479?), the Chinese philosopher par excellence who synthesized a religious philosophy of morality. The chaos of his time seemed to him a moral disorder caused by a weakening faith in ancient ways and the spread of skepticism. His remedy was a moral regeneration based on a sound family life which would lead to an ordered state. In his simple mind, knowledge would lead to sincerity, which would lead to orderly desires, which would lead to regulated families, which would lead to a successful state. As a pat, logical train of thought, this is hard to beat, but as an accurate, descriptive analysis of life, it is impossible to accept.

Confucius was, if anything, too much the philosopher, as he let his quest for a perfect system of morality mislead him into visions of inhuman ideals. Knowledge does not necessarily make people more sincere and better and may even make them phonier and worse if they merely use their knowledge to achieve subconscious, petty ends. Further, this is all the more likely in people who do not make a deliberate, fair effort to obtain objective information about the effect they are having on their environment and couple that with an effort to have a 'Good' effect. Where biases remain in the perception of 'Good', knowledge itself does not improve people: It just makes more probable the realization of their goals, whatever they are.

Unfortunately for China, Confucian scholars became enraptured with their ideal view of human nature and formed an anti-intellectual bureaucracy hostile to free and creative inquiry. Thought stopped as philosophy became divorced from reality and the Confucian classics came to define orthodoxy. From 1200 to 1900, when Confucianism officially molded the Chinese mind, the Chinese were forced to learn without the benefit of a functional system of thought. In the absence of a condoned schema which related to worldly events, they developed a general, undefined system of values which became too practical, too sensible, too prosaically sane and totally beyond discussion, analysis or reform. Thus, it was partially because Confucius was so completely successful in his abstract way that China had to undergo a revolution.

In contemporary China, Confucianism is clearly out and science in. This represents a triumph for both pragmatism and philosophy over the mental state which treated them as separate and unequal. The basic shift in attitude toward a modern functionalism was expressed by historian/philosopher Hu Shih early in this century when he openly scorned the 'Spiritual values' of Asia and opined he found more worth in the reorganization of government and industry than in all the 'Wisdom of the East'. Mathematics and mechanics are both popular now in a land which underwent a Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment and Revolution and produced an Oriental Napoleon all at once.

As a revolutionary culture restrained only by the political leaders' desire to retain power, contemporary Chinese society has been built on the fault between the modern and traditional minds. The Chinese are imitating foreigners, whom they despise. They were forced to choose industrialization over vassalage, so they surrendered their own standards and accepted the worst of Western cultureparticularly in architecture and musicalong with its technological necessities.

Until the Industrial Revolution, Easterners could not comprehend the zest of the West for life. They saw only superficial childishness in business and ambition, much as Westerners saw only inertia and stagnation in the East. Now, while the East is moving to adopt Western technology, we remain adamant in our refusal to look ultimates in the face. Perhaps it is time we ask ourselves 'Why?'

II. Greek Stupidity

There are three contemporary attitudes toward ancient Greece: One is indifference toward anything that happened that long ago; a second is reverence (which became widespread during the Renaissance); and the third is condemnation of a culture which retarded the development of science and inhibited progress in Western Civilization for centuries. In adopting the third of these attitudes here, we must beware our own modern tendency to equate technological development with progress. Actually, if there is any consistent theme throughout Western history, it is the underlying failure of knowledge in general and scientific knowledge in particular to promote moral development and improve people and the way they relate to each other.

While we will emphasize the shortcomings of Greek thought and the debilitating influence it had on the Greeks and those who followed them, we should be able to muster enough respect to give them the credit that is due. They did make some real contributions to intellectual life with their discoveries of mathematics and the art of deductive reasoning. Geometry, particularly, is a Greek invention, and nothing serves better to exemplify the static nature of the Greek mind. In the broader context of logic in general, the one-sided genius of the Greeks appears clearly in the way they reasoned deductively from apparently self-evident truths rather than inductively from observed facts.

Ironically, the Greeks' strong point was also their weak point in that their inventive genius in philosophical abstraction was basically the obverse of their impracticality in responding to the problems confronting them. For example, they conceived the grandiose idea of democracy but failed to unify their city-states in a cooperative effort which would have worked to the mutual advantage of all.

Generally, the world of the Greeks was as small, orderly and statuesque as they could make it, and for all their genius, everything Greek remains comprehensible in a glance. Their political ideal was the little polisthe statuary city-state. Their gods were superlative shapes rather than omnipotent forces. Their religious services were formalities of piety not expressions of soaring emotions. Their great ethical systemsStoicism and Epicureanismidealized steadiness, with the goal being to limitdesires rather than fulfill them, and such desires as existed were for order not excitement. Their science was one of form not energy. Their mathematics was geometric not dynamic. Their painting, having no horizon and no perspective, expressed no sense of either space or depth, and their architecture was based on the post.

We must bear in mind that the Greeks functioned in a world of severe technological and cultural limitations. There was neither water power nor wheelbarrow, banks nor Bible. Still, Greek stupidity cannot be properly attributed to such limitations or the absence of such items. It was shaped primarily by the interaction of 1.) the city-stateparticularly its divisive role in Greek history; 2.) slaveryparticularly as it divorced 'Doing' from 'Thinking'; and 3.) philosophical thoughtparticularly deductive logic and Platonic ideals.

The self-governing city-state was both the greatest political achievement of Greece and a fatal limitation in that it proved to be a pragmatic barrier to the development of Greek thought and identity. It was considered the ultimate form of political life because it embodied the Greek ideal of a compact little static world impervious to outside influences and secure against reality. However, it was also incapable of growth or development as a political entity, so each was limited to making treaties and quarreling with its neighbors. Further, as all aspired to absolute sovereignty, they perforce failed to cultivate any enduring political union which might have promoted the framing of a common legal system to settle interstate disputes or the building of roads to facilitate transportation.

Plato estimated the ideal size for a city-state to be between 1,000 and 5,000 citizens and thought such a state could hold its own against similar rival states, which it probably could. He worked all this out a century after the Persians had crossed the Hellespont in the belief that the age of world empires was passing away when, in the West, it was just beginning, but if he was mistaken in this regard, he was not alone. Even as Alexander was rendering the city-state obsolete, Aristotle could find no merit in any other form of polity so he joined his mentor in hailing it right up to the days of the Macedonian empire.

On the other hand, there were some with a breadth of vision that was wasted in their time. For example, Herodotus (485?-425) wrote a history of the Persian invasion and called for a united Greek effort for revenge, but it would be over one hundred years before his idea bore fruit in theexploits of Alexander. Until that time, there was no concept of a Greek policy or future because there really was no Greece. There were numerous city-states, like Athens and Sparta, etc., whose residents proudly emphasized their differences while vainly distinguishing themselves collectively as 'Hellene' from all other peoples according to Herodotus's criteria of shared blood, language, religion and customs. In response to the external threat of invasion by Persia in 490 they attempted to convert this sense of 'Greekness' into something like a functional, unified entity, but that attempt failed politically even if it eventually succeeded militarily.

Thus, what we today call Greek Civilization was really a collection of rather independent political states. Each was characterized by its own particular brand of religious and patriotic devotion with the intensity of this identity complex varying considerably among them. At one extreme, loyalty ran counter to the ideal of individual liberty to the point of repressing anything but pure equality. In Ephesia, for example, anyone who raised himself above the mean was treated according to the democratic philosophy: 'We will have none who is best among us; if there be any such, let him be so elsewhere and among others'. In an equally oppressive manner, personal liberty in Sparta was restricted to a degree found in our own century in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. At the other extreme, freedom flourished in Athens to the point that strident aristocratic individualism and enterprise eventually destroyed liberty.

The great leader of Athens in this era was Pericles (495?-429), who was simply too good for the common man. Like an earlier-day Lincoln, he combined a canny political ability with a deep passion for lofty ideals (and an un-Lincolnesque love for beautiful things). A true leader rather than a dominator, he set loose the genius of those around him, but like many other great men, he was discordant with his times and was finally turned loose by the boorish citizens who were resentful of his righteous purity, unappreciative of the beauty he created and uncomfortable in the presence of such excellence.

Really, this battle between democracy and virtue was hardly necessary since the Golden Age of Athens was base enough to make even the most inveterate Yahoo feel at ease. Libel, slander and scandalous greed masked as patriotism were all as common then as now.

The problem with Pericles was that he was an honest demagogue who somehow rose above the rampant pettiness in his environment, so whether it was reasonable or not, he had to go. As he was personally unassailable, he was attacked through his friends: Thus, for example, Anaxagoras, whom Pericles had welcomed to Athens, was forced to flee for having suggested the heresy that the sun and stars were not gods.

Personalities aside, in some ways, Periclean Athens was comparable to nineteenth century England. It was a democracy administered by aristocrats. Even more to the point, its imperialistic behavior abroad finally embroiled it in a devastating war as the selfish individualism of Athenian aristocrats led to the Peloponnesian War (431-404) through commercially ambitious enterprise unbridled by any moral or political ideal more noble than self-aggrandizement.

As we will see later in the Fall of the Roman Empire, the demise of Athens was inherent in its rise: By policing the avenues of international trade in the Aegean, Athens made the other city-states its subjects. Increasingly, the commercial hegemony of democratic Athens came to be based upon force applied to the subject states, which became first aggravated and then rebellious as their own wealth and pride grew. This interaction became a mutually reinforcing positive feedback system with insistence by Athens and resistance by most every other polis leading to a deterioration of interstate relations and finally the extreme of war.

Unfortunately, just as the commercial aristocracy of Athens was free to indulge itself to the detriment of all Athenians, so too were the city-states free to make war upon one another. It was indeed Greece's great tragedy that there was no higher law, unifying force or moral sense acting to restrict the liberty of the states so as to prevent the suicidal Peloponnesian War, which left Sparta victorious and Greece vanquished.

As we shall often note, the outer political history of worldly power is commonly filled with deceit, violence and cruelty while the inner cultural world of thought, feeling and character remains somewhat removed from the demands of pragmatic concerns. Thus are the actions of political leaders shaped by a clash of precedents, definitions and ideas from the past with contemporary realities while intellectuals busy themselves shaping schemas which will limit and confound future leaders. Such was certainly the case in fifth century Greece where statesmen and warriors struggled within the framework of city-states to find a Greek solution to Athenian hegemony while abstract thinking reigned extreme: To wit, in a counterreaction to civic chaos, idealists like Plato led not Greece toward an orderly Empire but the Western world into a sterile commitment to deductive logic.

Ergo, our traditional reverence for the Greek philosophers is truly inappropriate because it was they who, in fits of logic, turned Greece and the West away from science and analytical thinking about the real world. Only very slowly over the past four hundred years have we managed to overcome the debilitating legacy of Greek thought and replaced the Athenic belief in deduction from assumed axioms with the contemporary belief in induction from factual data. However, if the Greek love affair with logic is condemnable for its notable excesses, it is also comprehensibleif we bear in mind that the existence of slavery predisposed Greek thinkers to embrace any philosophical system which emphasized pure reason. While the city-state provided the context for Greek stupidity and fixed its range, slavery shaped it and defined its character.

As a basic condition of Greek life, slavery was profoundly and fundamentally immoral in that it shut off sympathy between classes of human beings. Nevertheless, most Greeks could not conceive of their lives without it, and although some noted philosophers tried, only Plato succeeded. Carried away as usual by his clear, extreme ideals, he would have abolished slavery. The Stoics and Epicureans condemned it as unnatural, but as it was too strong an institution to be upset, they decided it did not affect the soul and thus could be ignored. To the matter-of-fact Aristotle, and to most practical people as well, abolition was inconceivable: Certain people were simply labeled 'Natural slaves', and that settled that.

Not only was slavery as morally reprehensible as it was securely entrenched, it was an intellectually limiting institution which prevented the leaders of Greek society from learning about the real world. Today we honor more those who do than those who think because our society has been made more by men of action than by philosophers, but in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., gentlemen and plutocrats had other standards. They idealized the disinterested, dignified seeker of academic truth and formed among themselves a society of equals who lived on the labor of their social inferiors, meaning the doers. Chief among these were the slaves, and it was inconceivable to cultured, upper class men of leisure that they could learn anything worthwhile from mere artisans, craftsmen and other such workers. Thus, the Greek intelligencia was predisposed to dismiss the scientific mode of thought which developed in Ionia in favor of the theoretical approach to philosophy developed by Pythagoras.

Before the beginning of this story of the mind versus the senses, soothsayers and oracles were considered repositories of wisdom and, when consulted, were expected to provide sage council and advice. This was basically an extension of parental reverencethat is, when tribal elders could not decide what should be done, they consulted those who had died. As Greece evolved, priests came to form a class of specialists skilled at divining 'Themis' (i.e., the Will of God).

Philosophy, as distinct from theology, began in Greece in the sixth century. Just as the Greeks' prime contribution to political theory was that they invented it, so too their prime contribution to natural philosophy (i.e., science) was that they started itwith their specific contributions being most significant in the fields of mathematics and astronomy. It is certainly fitting that they excelled in geometry, as they were at their intellectual best when contemplating ideal forms and thus fairly revelled inthis imaginary, abstract, static world of cognitive perfection. As for astronomy, their basic approach was to get the heavenly bodies to conform to geometric patterns and laws, and in this regard, they were so successful with the Ptolemaic system that thinking about heavenly motion ceased for almost 2,000 years.

Still, the greatest tragedy of Greek culture was that science began, developed and flourished in Ionia (on the western shores of Asia Minor) and then was aborted in favor of deductive logic and Platonic ideals. The inception of science can be traced to the Milesian (alias Ionian) school of philosophy, which was created when Greek minds came in contact with the Babylonian and Egyptian cultures at Miletus, a city in Ionia. Until its subjugation by the Persians in 494, this was culturally the most important place in the Greek world. Thereafter, it was superseded by Athens so, sad to say, it was more important for its brave beginnings than its enduring legacy.

From Egypt and to a lesser degree Babylon, Ionians derived a few rules of thumb in mathematics and some records of astronomical observation. However, in these ancient civilizations, science hardly extended beyond mythological interpretations of the universe which were handed down by priests and served mainly political purposes (i.e., they promoted social stability, as modern religions still do). Thus, although the Milesian school was created by contact with these cultures, its significance was not so much in its role as an entry point for Eastern ideas but for the way it overcame them.

In all ages, there are technicians who manipulate materials and things much as priests manipulate prayers and people. The originality of the Ionian thinkers was that they applied the modes of thought derived from these technical fields to the interpretation of natural phenomena. This was a revolutionary cultural innovation, and it might have been better received had these fledgling scientists not ridiculed established myths as they presumed to explain the world and universe by interpreting 'Things above' according to their experiences with 'Things below'.

Although such tactlessness undoubtedly hurt the cause of science, the way to naturalistic explanations of natural events itself had been paved by the casual attitude of Ionians to religion. This, in turn, was due to the fact that Miletus was a rich commercial center in which prejudices were softened by contact with many cultures. Thus, the Ionians were relatively independent speculators and proposed scientific hypotheses usually devoid of anthropomorphism and unaffected by a need to subscribe to popular morality or to find answers which were considered culturally correct. If this made them somewhat indifferent to common sensibilities, they didat least ask good questions, meaning questions whose answers inspired further questioning, research and learning.

Of all the questioners of the Milesian school, Thales (636?-546?) was probably the most important. His science and philosophy were crude, but he was disposed to temper the rash hypothesizing typical of Greeks with empirical tests. This way of answering made the Milesian era Greece's greatest age intellectually as it was a time when thought was wedded to observation and stimulated rather than repressed further thought.

After the fall of Ionia, Greek thought first decayed and then became effete, and the general cause for this gradual decline into intellectual sterility was the preoccupation of philosophers with Man rather than the universe. This self-centering of the human mind on itself and its prowess found early, extreme expression in the Pythagoreanscontemporary competitors of the Milesians who equated knowledge with numbers. Then came (among others) the Idealists, like Parmenides, who paved the way for the AtheniansSocrates (who reduced philosophy to a quiz game about ethics), Plato (who rejected reality in favor of ideas) and Aristotle (who reveled in systematics and respected facts).

Pythagoras flourished in southern Italy from 540 to 510 and was intellectually important when he was both wise and otherwise. He was a mystic and magician who founded mathematics (in the sense of demonstrative deductive argument), and his influence on philosophy via mathematics was as profound as it was regrettable. In fact, he owed his influence and success to the philosophical emptiness of his system in that his approach was more appealing to the Greeks than was that of the Ionians precisely because it was more religious than scientific.

Unlike the Ionians, the Pythagoreans did not try to describe the universe in terms of the behavior of material elements and physical processes. They described it exclusively in terms of numbers, which provided the form for reality if not the matter as well. Thus, a point was related to One, a line Two, a surface Three and a solid Four. According to them, points added up to lines, lines to surfaces and surfaces to solids, although this is not strictly true as a point (one) and a line (two) would add up to a surface (three). Nevertheless, the number Ten was sacred because it was the sum of the numbers out of which the world was built.

As the numerical philosophy of the Pythagoreans triumphed over the natural (i.e., scientific) philosophy of the Ionians, explanations of events in terms of mathematical relations came to predominate over those based on physical processes. It is important to note that the Pythagorean system was victorious over science not because it was better but because it was more appealing to the leaders of Greek society, and it was more appealing to them primarily because it was more abstract than factual. This wasnot only a drawback in that it implied people could learn more about the universe by drawing pictures in the sand than by observing and analyzing natural phenomena: It was a real loss because the mathematical approach was so completely plastic that it was easily adapted to conform to and/or condone any given theological or ideological preconceptions.

Of course, Pythagoras managed to make numbers into his own personal theology. God was perceived as a divine geometer with a mild addiction to arithmetic, and mathematics was considered the sole source of eternal and exact truths. This led Pythagoras to the supersensible ideal universe of perfect forms and away from the real world of imprecise observation of imperfect objects, and to the extent that Greek philosophers followed him, they also became unconcerned with and indifferent to irregular reality.

Ironically for Pythagoreans, their greatest discovery proved to be their undoing, as their theorem about the right trianglethat the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sidesled to the discovery of irrational numbers. Their existence meant something in the world of numbers could not be expressed by numbers so not only was the Pythagorean world incomplete, but it never could be complete as defined by itself. Thus, even the theoretically ideal world was imperfect.

Ironically for everyone else, Pythagoras both established pure reason as the source of ideal knowledge and corrupted it by giving it a distinctly moral purpose. What began as magical mathematics became moral mathematics as the mysterious religious elements of the Asiatic tradition were dropped in favor of ethical implications. It is this which distinguishes the theology (and thought) of the West from that of the East, but it left Greek (and subsequent) philosophers with the problem of formulating a logical, eternal ethic upon which they could construct a metaphysics which was both rational and moral. While there usually was some degree of internal consistency in the would-be eternal philosophical systems thus developed, they were invariably suited at most to the developer and his world, so normally their only pragmatic value was that they made their devotees feel smug about themselves.

For Greek thinkers, however, the quest for a reasonable morality was overshadowed by the romance they had with pure thought. The essence of this was Pythagoreanthat the eternal world revealed itself to the intellect alone rather than through the senses. Unlike the empiricist (who is the slave of his material) but like the musician (who is the creator of his material), the mathematician can create a perfect world of ordered beauty. Thus, reason alone should theoretically suffice to reveal pure knowledge, and if the thought in which the Greeks indulged was not as pristine as they believed, it was tainted only by the omnipresence of and need forsome kind of moral order. Nevertheless, in their belief that they were dealing with pure, uncontaminated ideas, they were carrying on the tradition of Pythagoras, and Parmenides and Plato (both of whom idealized logic) were inheritors as well as perpetuators of that legacy.

As the champion of pure reason, Parmenides (ca. 500-450) had few equals. He attacked the research method of gathering data through the senses and relied on reason exclusively. Consistent with his love of logic, his was a static universe in which not only nothing did change but nothing could change. Needless to say, he was opposed to the Ionian 'Doers', who were actively engaged in altering nature at every turn. He considered any alleged change as a misperception due to a trick the senses played on the mind, but he never did explain how he knew that permanence was not a misperception perhaps caused by his belief in it. He summarily dismissed all experience as illusionary, and although he did make a good argument for his case, he obviously could have no evidence for it because the whole gist of it was that evidence was unobtainable. According to him, thought was at variance with or at least totally independent of experience, which it (i.e., he) both condemned and rejected. As a living triumph of fancy over fact, he bordered on the edge of reasonable insanity by managing to persist in a way of thinking which was continually refuted by his actual daily contact with the real world.

The chief losers in this unfortunate and unnecessary battle of reason versus reality were the Athenian philosophers and everyone who followed their intellectual tradition. Athens came to be the heir of the triumphant Pythagorean doctrine of logic over life, and wearing the mantle of pure rationalism, philosophers there took the first steps down the path that led