High Culture

As I may have mentioned, I am presently listening to Gibbon’s 127 hour “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” [which, by the way, provides quite early on example after example of why our Founding Fathers feared a powerful standing army.  I’m up to about 250 AD, and the last 15-20 Emperors were both made and in most cases killed by the army, in nearly all cases more or less because they were not able to extort enough money] and contemplating that even most of the Roman relics are lost to antiquity.  The temples were sacked, the sculptures and other pieces of art destroyed, and much of the writing and daily culture subjected to time.

The Romans were of course brilliant engineers.  And I think even a cursory reading of military history makes it clear that engineers tend also to be great warriors.  They build better weapons, develop better tactics, and better undertake the logistics which alone make warfare–especially at a distance–practicable.  Some of their aquaducts are still in use 2,000 years later.

But if we posit that the purpose of life on this Earth is to grow spiritually, we must ask what all of this means.  They amassed great material wealth, but they squandered it on sexual licentiousness, debaucheries of all sorts, and vicarious cruelties, as in the hunting of animals for public spectacle, and gladiatorial contests.  Of “Panem et Circenses” they had plenty.  Of genuine spiritual insights, there appears little.

He deals with the Germans (and other “babblers”, as we might translate the Greek “barbarian”) in very general fashion–necessarily, of course, due to the paucity of records, and the utter lack of a written language on their part–but being me I got to dreaming and wondering.

What if in 200 AD an enlightened tribal chief–say in present day Estonia–discovered a miraculous set of practices and beliefs which uniformly raised the spiritual level of all those who practiced them to great heights?  What if this great tradition reigned ascendant for 250 years until everyone in that tribe was slaughtered by a competing set of babblers?

There would be no record.  No stupas or temples.  No written record.  Nothing.  All this despite that fact that this was, in fact, “high culture” by what I would consider the only rational standard.

What if Indian culture in North America 1,000 years ago was suffused with the most brilliant, subtle, and effective spiritual beliefs and practices, but only among the nomads?  We would have no way to know.

How much of history is unwritten?  Can we not assume most of it?

As a general rule, what is called “high culture” by historians is nearly exactly synonymous with a culture which was militarily aggressive, successful, and ruled in an hierarchical fashion by a ruling elite, whose very existence is to my way of thinking antithetical to genuine spirituality.  No good person wants to rule or direct the activities of anyone else.  It is antithetical to personal growth, to spiritual growth, to coming closer to what I might term the great Generative Spirit.

Goodness is personal gradualism.  That may be a definition I want to retain.

To the extent I have a distinctive talent, I think it is being able to view large subjects with new eyes.  I feel very little emotional connection to Zen, so I will not call it Beginner’s Mind, but perhaps an open mind will work.  It is so very hard and so very unusual to see what is in front of you without first and only seeing it through the eyes of those who have come before and told you what to see, and how to see it, and implicitly threatened you with social exclusion for failing to comply.

I suppose that is my other talent: I really don’t care about the opinions of others.  I have Kiplings “If” on the wall of my bathroom, where I see it every morning, and I really do think I can listen to the opinions of others, but still go my own way.

I wish there were more like me.  What an interesting and genuinely diverse world it would be if everyone took the task of seeing as a matter of great importance, and a matter of personal not social responsibility.

Our great nation is being destroyed before our very eyes, and the masses seem to be preoccupied with boating and barbecues. But thus it has been before, many, many times.  There is nothing new under the sun.

I will offer a ludicrous and absurd idea I have of myself–of my personal craziness:  I feel I have been on this Earth many times, trying to do good, but this is the last time.  All patience must have an end.

Will we be spiritual beings or animals?  Will life or the machine prevail?  The question remains open.