On Zacharia, the "Appolonium" is a:
"'...center of learning, research, philosophy, arts. They do not call it a university because it has no teaching function. Being what they are, Zacharians require no schools except input to their homes, no teachers except their parents or, when they are mature, knowledgeable persons whom they can call when explanation is necessary.'" (p.403)
That sounds like a good aspect of Zacharia. I hope that the whole of society will be raised to that level in the future.
My daughter, Aileen, when young, read about Greek mythology. She asked me, "Why didn't Hercules fight at Troy?'" I replied, "I think you'll find he was dead by then. He was an Argonaut. Generally speaking, the sons of the Argonauts fought at Troy, then that was the end of the Heroic Age." She read more, then fed back to me, "He wasn't dead. He'd gone to Olympus as an immortal!" A perfect teacher-pupil relationship, I thought.
A guy wallpapering a room in our house asked me, from his stepladder, "Paul, why were the Buddha and the authors of the Upanishads Kshatriyas, not Brahmins?" I thought that there was a period of social peace so that not only priests but also rulers and warriors were able to give their attention to philosophy and spirituality. (That is what can happen when you hire a decorator in a University town.)
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Unless the entire human race is genetically engineered to be like the Zacharians, most human beings will NOT be philosophers, aesthetes, scholars, scientists, or artists. And I think it is unrealistic and seriously counterproductive to wish men and women were not as we see most of them to be. Think of the situation seen in "Quixote And The Windmill." That is more likely to be what we may get.
And I seriously doubt many of the warrior caste contemporaries of Buddha gave much of a darn about philosophy and spirituality!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I should have said a small minority of kshatriyas but that's enough.
Paul.
Sean,
I also think that cultural changes can make big differences to what we think of as human nature.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
As regards your two points: ONLY a small minority of the warrior caste, and I remain SKEPTICAL of dreams about the malleability of human nature. It's hard enough for people not be TOO bad, never mind approaching Utopian perfection!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I was brought up one way. My daughter and granddaughter have been brought up differently. I can see big differences between us.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But not in the ways that makes all of us HUMAN in the first place.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But those are very general. Humanity extends from (insert the name of a saint) to (insert the name of a mass murderer).
Paul.
Warrior classes are a fairly recent, post-Neolithic development. In pre-State societies, usually every male (or every free male) is a warrior; less often women too, or some of them.
Even in fairly advanced barbarian cultures, like the Germanics who invaded the Roman empire, this remained true for most. The most advanced of the Germanic barbarians had, at most, a smallish group who worked as the full-time or nearly full-time bodyguards of kings and nobles and formed a cadre in time of war.
The less advanced tribes (like the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons (who were outright savages little exposed to Roman civilization) had much less of that.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Two saints I've thought of were Padre Pio and St. Theresa of Calcutta. And the monster I thought of was the cannibal and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
Mr. Stirling! And we some of those cadres in Anderson's HROLF KRAKI'S SAGA, in the household guards of King Hrolf and King Adhils.
A
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