"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." (Lord Acton)
Much of what we have been discussing in class regards hegemony and dogma. Hegemony - power over others - is the locomotive behind much of what humans do and have done. Dogmas become the train tracks upon which those locomotives travel.
One example would be the Divine Right of Kings. How did this philosophy come into being? Dogma and hegemony certainly had a lot to do with it.
Plato was the philosopher who talked about ideal, what he called the "Forms." He thought that contemplating ideals was more important than studying the reality around him, since reality was tainted by illusions. Our senses, for example, cannot always be trusted, so why worry about what comes to us via the senses? It is better, Plato and Socrates thought, to engage in dialectic (reasoned debate) to discover universal truths, awareness of ideals.
Aristotle, Plato's most famous student, disagreed that the Forms were more important than the real. He believed that empiricism - using sensory data, facts observed through experiences - was a much better way to learn about the world. He thought the Forms were good because they gave us examples of excellence towards which we could aim our lives. He did not, however, think that dialectic was enough. In his mind, if you want to know the world, roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty, and do experiments. Use the scientific method to learn about everything: plays, wild life, plants, cosmology - everything.
So, if you are reading carefully so far, the seeds of a dichotomy had already been planted during the Golden Age of Greece. On the one side, you had the non-scientific idealism of Plato, and on the other side his student became the champion of realism. When St. Augustine came along, he further cemented this division when he elaborated on the City of God and the City of Man. Plato became acceptable to learners because he talked about the perfect Forms, and "perfect" fits in well when people are talking about the City of God. How can anyone find something more ideal than Heaven? Aristotle and his empirical studies of the corporeal (the Earth) were unacceptable because he represented the City of Man, the material world. Aristotle, though he strove for perfection with his Golden Mean, knew that reality was far from ideal. It seems he was okay with imperfect, as long as one worked towards excellence.
Moving on, it is important to mention here that Emperor Constantine converted to Catholicism in the 4th century, the same century that Augustine wrote his ideas down. Suddenly, the immense power, war-like nature and opulence of the Roman Empire met with a religion that espoused peacefulness, loving of neighbors, turning the other cheek, the "meek shall inherit the Earth," etc. There is no way that these two huge sets of memes are not going to impact each other. Platonian memes threaded throughout these later Roman dynasties, while Aristotelean notions were put on the back burner.
There are many reasons that the Dark Ages occurred during the latter half of the first millennia. One that cannot be fully discounted is that people of that time were living according to a different set of memes than the ones that dominated during the Roman Empire. Many people chose simple, peaceful and holy lives over luxury, materialism and conquest. They saw many of the elements of Earth as being tainted with imperfection, even evil, so they instead focused on the perfection of the City of God. Their lives were very much like the way we understand the lives of current people who live in the Third World, the undeveloped countries on the planet. These people were not suddenly stupid, too idiotic to think and invent new technology. They simply chose to live according to a new set of memes.
In the midst of this time period, a deal was struck between Charlemagne and Pope Leo III. Charlemagne offered to protect the papacy and the Church, and Pope Leo, in return declared Charlemagne to be official, God-appointed and anointed leader of the empire. It was not the first time in human history that it was assumed a leader was a representative of God or the gods, but it was one of the first times it happened in the Christian West. That was in the year 800 CE. Remember that our American forefathers were fighting a God-appointed king in 1776 and beyond. Talk about your long-term deals. The Divine Right of Kings is a doctrine still followed in some parts of the civilized world today.
It is not much of a stretch to see that this marriage between royalty and religion solidified the control that certain people and certain families held over other people. Their only reason for being kings was because they were fortunate enough to have been born to kings or other powerful people. The only reason this system lasted is because the common people bought what the kings, queens, dukes and earls were selling. What was the motivation for selling these memes? Power. What were the train tracks that kept that locomotive going so long? Dogmas, unquestioned beliefs that were kept even after evidence called them into question.
By the time the Revolution happened in the America, the leaders of the new nation had broken the stranglehold that these beliefs had on them, released themselves from the tracks of dogmatic thinking. God had not changed His mind and suddenly decided that people should all be in democracies. No, a few people had rejected the memes of the powerful and changed society to a new set of tracks.
How strong can an idea be? It can take thousands of years to break its hold on the minds of people. If we are not careful, people who seek hegemony will create new tracks on which we will run for their benefit. Perhaps we are on them right now?
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