An Autistic World (1)
Copyright Fernando Gomez de Avila 2010
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“Never mind the manner, which may or may not be good; but think only of the justice of my cause, and give heed to that: let the judge decide justly and the speaker speak truly” -Socrates-
CHAPTER 1
BANK OF AMERICA
In September of 1999, a lawsuit was filed by the Utility Consumer’s Action Network, against Bank of America, acting on behalf of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, both in San Diego, U.S. The lawsuit alleged that Bank of America engaged in unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent business practices by disclosing consumer’s personal, private, and confidential information to third parties without consumer’s consent or without making proper disclosure. Particularly, it charged that the Bank disclosed the Social Security numbers, account numbers, and other sensitive data from about thirty five million current and former Bank of America customers, to telemarketers, direct-mail marketers, and other vendors in return for millions of dollars in fees and commissions. The information was released despite assurances in the Bank privacy policy that it will keep the information provided secure and confidential, only sharing customers data for legitimate business purposes.
A settlement was proposed between both sides, for those individuals that were affected between September 9, 1995 and May 31, 2007, based on saving costs of uncertain trials and appeals, after nearly eight years of litigation. In that settlement, Bank of America would provide $10.75 million to be spent on waiving fees for certain products and services, agreeing to contribute an extra $3.25 million to privacy related programs, including $1.5 million for nonprofit groups that seek to protect consumer’s privacy. The lawyers in this case would get millions.
I believe that in July 2007, Bank of America sent a form with an insert to every customer. When I received mine in the mail, I was surprised because I didn’t know anything about the lawsuit. This legal notice, by order of the court, was directed to inform past and present customers about the settlement and its causes, leaving an option for the people that didn’t agree with the settlement. I read the notice, and I was perplexed, not only due to the information that it was revealing, since I was completely unaware, but because of the confusing way in which the notice was written.
It gave me this impression:
-First: This is a paper that you should toss in the garbage as soon as possible, disregarding its content.
-Second: If you decide to read this piece of crap, you will loose valuable time because you are so stupid that you won’t understand a single thing.
-Third: If you decide to spend some time reading what it says and you do not agree with the settlement, it would be a waste of your energy, because everything is under our lawyer’s control and whatever you say or do, will be irrelevant.
-Fourth: If you do something about it, you may get in trouble. It would be a lot better if you take your kids to the park, so they won’t have to visit you in jail.
-Fifth: If you think that this notice is unjust, and unfair, and you decide to claim benefits in a class action settlement, you are an idiot.
From about thirty five million current and former Bank of America customers, only about fifty objected to the settlement. I was one of them.
A few months later, the judge declared in court that the grounds for the actual settlement were valid, since the possibility of being right from the point of view of the objectors, was so infinitesimally small, compared with the overwhelming abstention produced by the rest of the customers.
In my modest opinion the most surprising aspect of this lawsuit, wasn’t that Bank of America disclosed the Social Security numbers, account numbers, and other sensitive data from about thirty five million of its customers, which it denied, but what amazed me was the ambiguous answer from those customers to the settlement. If we could tell the founding fathers that many of their descendants wouldn’t object to the possibility of some bankers sitting in a room in some building, trading the most valuable information that a bank could have, which is the information related to its clients, who after a hard day of work deposit their trust and their money into the bank’s hands, without the chance of severe punishment after exposing the facts in court, they wouldn’t had believed us.
Times have changed and the sacred relation between most banks and its customers has been reduced to mere data. As this example shows, with the help of that notice in the mail, the immense majority of individuals didn’t think that confronting the settlement was a good idea, they probably assumed that their role was an unimportant, insignificant part of a big puzzle. The fact is that it’s not good business for the bank or for the customers to have a meaningless relationship. Somehow, that connection must be improved in the future, and technology could help to close the gap if we find the will to do it. Otherwise, we better change the US Constitution and start thinking about a more realistic approach, adjusting the words “We The People,” for more adequate ones like “We the Numbers.”
CHAPTER 2
THE GROCERY STORE
Imagine means to open our minds and think. Imagine going to the grocery store. Imagine that you get a basket at the entrance; walking through gleaming, unpolluted, immaculate aisles, where meticulously arranged products have been placed on the shelves, under the unostentatious presence of very soft music that reaches your ears like a spring rain falls from the cloudy skies and gracefully touches the grass of a silent valley. Imagine choosing some items in this perfectly organized world, placing them in your basket: Cereal, soap, bread… Then you direct yourself towards the cash register in order to pay for this sterile experience. There an apparently dull woman scans with a repetitive motion of her arms, the groceries of a tall man that seems to respond to her questions. For what ever reason, you get close to hear what they are saying, and in doing so, you leave your basket on the counter-top to be checked-out next. That behavior would not be considered polite or even respectful, but she knows that in one way or another, almost everybody does it. Excuses are plentiful; she experiences them every day; like space and time constrains, curiosity, or maybe the fact that back there, in the cool aisles, people walk up and down without much to say, looking motionless at the pictures of cans and boxes.
“Thanks for the warning. Is there anything I can do?,” the tall and resolute man enquired, like a newborn gladiator.
“I don’t think so,” she replayed unperturbed to his empty generosity. “But, be careful outside, you never know what kind of creeps may be driving in the parking lot.”
Imagine now that your time has come; that you are next; that you are somehow curious and you want to know what in the world they were talking about. It may appear to you a bit superfluous, vain, almost an annoyance to your comfortable, smooth, unobjectionable experience as a shopper; as an individual with an apparent simple goal, but as the woman knows, chances are that you will rearrange your mind quickly. You will unconsciously accept that you have to spend “x” amount of time wondering what you need, what you can afford, what you think you want, by letting her know that she is there and she has something to say, and you have time to listen, to absorb, like a trapped mouse, like a docile dog.
“Hi” you say, maybe expecting a smile, a human expression.
“They hit somebody outside, in the parking lot and ran away.” The woman responds to your salute in a manner that resembles a foot crushing a fat insect; splashing guts, brains and a green substance all over the floor.
Imagine that you are surprised; that you try promptly to remember whatever you understood from the previous conversation, which is not much. Then, pulling yourself together under the watchful eye of that woman, reassembling some words in your head like an inspiring magician, you respond to her with an anticipated, expected question.
“What happened?” you inquire because she must know. She is there, calmly screening bar codes, adding products to the list you sooner or later will have to pay, will have to take home, placing them back in shelves and drawers, giving you a sense of accomplishment, fulfillment, and safety.
“Two guys hit a woman with their car.”
“Is she OK?”
“I think so. The police are looking for them. They abandoned the vehicle and ran away.”
“I hope they catch them.” You say a little irritated.
“Another lady saw them running up the hill, across the road. I guess they don’t know that the building on top of the hill is the State Training Center for police dogs.”, the woman insinuates with a hint of a smile.
“Is it?”
The last item from the basket is been scanned. Then, she prints the total amount for you to pay. “Yes, few people know that.” She says disregarding your presence; like wiping you in the rear to get rid of you, so she could focus her attention on the next customer.
Imagine grabbing two or three plastic bags with the products you have bought inside and deliberately cut off from the conversation, you walk away from her, perceiving on your way out an unsatisfactory void in yourself. You look back, and you hear the woman asking a question to the next customer. “Did you know that they train police dogs across the road, on top of the hill?”
“Really!,” the customer answers.
“Yep. Very few people know about it.”
You stop in an instant, and you realize that the clerk is revealing to the next person slightly different gossip from the one she just told you. It is a continuation resembling chapter from a progressive tale. You may feel surprised and annoyed at the same time. She is trying to fill the hours of her monotonous job with many broken events, feeding to the customers that happen to walk in front of her, a series of episodes from a story that she probably heard who knows where. She is trying to buy time, and you, like many others, fell on her careful braided net.
CHAPTER 3
WHAT WE DO, IT IS WHO WE ARE
I feel that our society shares many similarities with the previous chapter, if we compare it with the common perception that people obtain from their daily circumstances. Have you ever thought that you are unable of getting the entire picture of what’s happening in today’s world? I believe no one escapes the paradigm. We, as individuals of a free society, are not in command of all the information that we perceive and aspire. Yes, we can choose what we want to hear, see, or feel, but the sensation of missing key data is present at all times, and as we know, the incapability of acquiring every detail can cause a human dilemma. We must make a choice between two schools of thought. The first one is based on our capability to stay and obtain as much information as possible. The second one is founded on our ability to move on; to risk the loss of crucial details, and consequently to forget.
Since the beginning of time, every man has had to deal with those two choices. When is it appropriate to stay? When is it suitable to leave? At what point is it adequate to say enough is enough? These and other similar questions arise from the same controversial dilemma, shaping a great deal of our lives. Curiously, I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of us leave most of the critical decisions to a third party, after all, the world around our bodies also influences our minds. Otherwise, how could we understand the inside without the outside? How could we make a decision without accepting that, even for a split second, most of what we do and what we say, is subjected to an exterior effect?
In the mind of a physicist the definition of force is recognized as an influence that causes motion on a body. The word “motion” has a clear time and space essence; but the word “influence” appears problematic, if we consider ourselves as merely individuals forming part of a society. In other words, it is commonly understood that a society is the sum of conditions and activities of individuals that together function as an independent entity; but the effect those individuals have between themselves provides a core of characters that do not necessarily reflect independence or freedom. Yet the outcome differentiates one society from another, like multiple families made-up of children from different partners.
The effect somebody exerts over another individual carries the weight of our civilization. That influence reflects an infinite combination of forces between ourselves, and most of those are directed to achieve the survival of each individual person, developing distinctive single trends on our way which help us to interact with each other. The word “motion” implies displacement. It suggests attraction or rejection from point A to point B, giving to our lives the necessary time and space to try to comprehend who we are. Without movement it would be impossible to distinguish one individual from the other, and that can drive us mad. What we are able to do, it is who we are. We know that since we are born, but often our connection with the world limits our desire to achieve our goals. In a mass society, like the one most of us live in, the interaction of people is exponentially exacerbated by the quantity of numbers. Generally, in our world, a person is able to achieve something if the rest of the community allows it. We prize individuality, but at the same time we are obligated to walk restrictive paths.
Man has had to deal with restrictions and limits, with motions and desires, since the first communities were developed millions of years ago. What an individual wants must be in accordance with the principles of the environment in which he lives. Otherwise, the environment could turn against him. This problem has being pursuing Man for ages, and connects with the dilemma indicated previously. Should a person change the circumstances where he lives to achieve his goals? Or, is it better to leave, to change our surroundings for a more suitable environment?
CHAPTER 4
THE MASS SOCIETY
A mass society thinks, behaves, and feels like a small child. It changes only at its own pace. Usually it doesn’t have conscience, guilt or remorse. Often it cares only about itself. It is egoist, capricious and self-interested on its own survival. When it moves, it behaves like a bulldozer, clearing everything in its way. Why…? Pure gravity. The weight of its body makes it difficult for any force to change its conduct. The influence of the individuals who form its volume frequently appear light, and helpless, so when the surrounding environment changes, the mass society lacks the ability to adapt to its time and space. A chain of events proportional to its size, or an exceptional incident, could in fact produce some motion, leaving a trail of sticky slime behind, but seldom listens to a particular soul.
Safety is what drives people to accept the rules of a mass society. The bigger the mass, the less chance that an individual has to be harmed by the world outside. The result is a constant acid reflux on the stomach of that perpetual immature giant, always trying to extinguish the will of rebellious subjects with their apparent insignificant issues.
On a close examination, we can observe that our sole appearance is transformed through the reflection of massive numbers of people performing like mirrors, which distort the final image that makes the mass social community. We are as individuals the sum of the matter that produces this abysmal creature, there is no way to go around that, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the creature by nature has to be awful. It just seems to me, that as a viable community, we must confront what makes this mass society so unbearable, particularly when so many citizens appear left aside.
To make changes one needs to know beforehand what the problem is; and in order to resolve the problem, first one needs to be prepared to make changes; to improvise. To me the easiest way to resolve any fundamental doubt, is to place it in some context, some time-space relation, which would facilitate the observation of the problems in question. So I will start by choosing a colorful example. I will analyze the origin of a bullfight.
CHAPTER 5
THE BULLFIGHT
The common understanding is that a bullfight is a morbid show, where a bull is killed in the arena by a matador and his crew for, let’s say… some macabre and public satisfaction. Many would see the origins of such fiesta as an anachronistic tradition of sacrifice that has evolved through hundreds, or maybe thousands of years, into an organized and systematic murder of beautiful and powerful bulls, with the intent of redeeming in modern times the spectators from an ancestral, uncivilized brutal past, where blood and dust were mixed to appease the surrounding natural Gods. Others would consider a bullfight simply as a manifestation of an obscure sadistic human desire, which has evolved into an uncivilized circus of reprehensible individuals, that obtain pleasure by inflicting deliberate cruelty to defenseless animals.
In my humble opinion, the origins of a bullfight are completely different. I see a man, and I see a bull, and I see a fight for survival. The key to finding the source of a bullfight, is the acceptance of being surrounded by Nature, acting as the catalyst that precipitates change, in which Man will struggle in order to break the chains imposed by the natural world. The result is the public manifestation of coordinated movements, improved by the pass of centuries, where Man is not afraid to show to the world that, for a short space and time, He is able to control the events; that He can manage Nature under certain rules, and under the watchful eye of Death. Man takes calculated steps towards that goal, but also takes risks. The bull represents Nature. The matador represents us.
If we produce an artificial world where Nature vanishes at the speed of light, the bullfight has no meaning. When Man used to live in daily contact with the natural world, which isn’t that far ago, Man needed that symbolic metaphor to make him forget that He is always one step from becoming a servant; a slave. The true roots of the bullfight is fear. The public in the tribune wants to experience that fear, because deep inside they know that without fear there isn’t hope for the communal survival. Fear is what spurs the cognition of our surroundings; it’s what reminds us that we must fight if we want to change the outcome of our lives.
The bull must die; but it must die under certain rules. Rules not inspired by Nature, but created by Man. They must represent an order; a specific set of principles that make clear to everybody that watches, that the death of the bull wasn’t an accident; a matador’s stroke of luck. Those principles are the people’s visual assertion that if a society plays by the rules, it can accomplish its goals.
In today’s world, the continuous and relentless assault of Nature by the mass society, with its insatiable appetite for devouring all that resembles wildlife, produces a paradigm of irresponsible transformation, occupation, and furthermore destruction, to satisfy its needs. We know that, we see it every day, but most of us are unable to do much about it, because the survival of our existence depends on this Frankensteinian attitude derived from the insensitive actions of a large group of people. Under these circumstances, to be sensible, to be conscious and aware of our surroundings requires courage because sooner or later we are forced to confront our impotence in order to deal with the problem, and since the mass society does a pretty bad job disguising the sad reality, the natural inference is that the mass society is trying to convert each of us into zombies. That fact is a far cry from the essence of a bullfight; where the bull, the matador, and the witnesses must recognize and give space to each other to make perfectly clear that there is a consequence to each action, to each movement. I found captivating the “corrida” as a representation of that consciousness involving a large amount of people in the plaza. Underneath of what appears to be a bloody spectacle, resides a pool of hope for the community; because the crowd is constantly reminded about a reality based on limits; and if those limits are not respected, someone may end up paying a very high price.
The force necessary to move people in the plaza, from a state of indifferent apathy, to an active condition of conscience and awareness, is demonstrated in the actual fight. The confrontation between bull and matador exerts an influence on the crowd who reacts accordingly to the circumstances in the arena, where Man and Nature compete for their own space to survive; and in the process, awakens the crowd’s mind. The satisfaction that the public feels emanates from recognizing the existence of those two elements; not from eliminating one of them. If the crowd wants to experience the same enjoyment in the future, it must acclaim openly that a bullfight does not survive in a vacuum; that both Man and Nature, require a previous existence outside the plaza’s walls. That is what a mass society is incapable to accept due to its lack of self criticism, and its perpetual denial of any kind of borders.
The individuals from a mass community are faced with diminishing choices, since most of us can’t escape the reach of its tentacles. We have evolved from being at Nature’s mercy, to be slaves of our own group success. As single entities, we are puzzled by the dynamics of that change and its consequences. We strive for some sort of equilibrium between both conditions, because deep in ourselves we know that Nature is going to prevail in one way or another, and chances are that we won’t like the outcome. Nevertheless, the mass society remains stubbornly oblivious to that effect, ingenuously idiotic towards what may become its final demise; replacing what Nature is, for what Nature should be, and feeding us the results with a smile and a helpless apology. The bull has been transformed from a brave and independent animal, to a docile creature ready to be slaughtered at any time, without opposition or will.
Man has an incredible capacity for adaptation, but simultaneously, has a mighty desire for change derived from its circumstances. Tradition is what has kept alive the bullfight throughout history. Man has held on to this event because he found it important to celebrate the struggle for survival; handing down to new generations a series of rules and behaviors that have changed with the passage of time, but remain constant about one thing; someone has to go down into the arena, face the bull, and kill it in such a way so the public can corroborate human skill and imagination and avoid getting injured in the process. The risk is carefully weighed, nothing must be left to chance; even superstition and religion plays their part in the event. In the afternoon, when the sun is still high in the sky; the plaza presents itself as a vortex of time and space that links a distant past with a common present.
The following question arises from the center of the vortex. Is knowledge an essential part of that celebration? Or, do the spectators go to see a bullfight due to a secondary reason, like entertainment, enjoyment, etc.? In order to answer these questions, we must concentrate our efforts to decipher the confusing meaning of knowledge.
CHAPTER 6
KNOWLEDGE
A Spanish proverb says that the Devil knows more for being old than for being a Devil. It is ordinarily believed, that to be in possession of knowledge, means to be certain of the truth, facts, and experiences, which a person is aware of due to acquiring information. Likewise, we say that a person is intelligent when he perceives the meaning of the truth, and manages to juggle in his mind the information quickly towards a specific end. If we follow the common understanding of these words, we can deduce from the previous sentences that there is a close relation between knowledge and intelligence. That puzzles me, because in my experience the result of connecting the meaning of those two words, is far different from what I could expect.
Imagine that knowledge is the basket where we place the items that we have chosen from the shelves in the grocery store, and intelligence is what we do with those items once we get home. What we do, and how we do it, is intrinsically related to our experience made up of observation and participation on past events. If we want to make an omelette, we better break, beat, and fry the eggs, in a particular order learned previously. That learning process presents itself as an upside down pyramid from the beginning of our lives until we reach our deaths. From the openness of our youths, we establish connections with our surroundings in a network of limited knowledge, but supported by practice and repetition. Inside the inverted pyramid that we build through our lives, we set up steps and ladders that connect our experiences based on a wide range of influences that determine our actions. Thus, understanding becomes a process, a set of movements between different points in our minds, usually conducted at the speed of light. The more complicated a thought is, the more steps are required to achieve our goal, presenting us with two options: one, is to simplify our way up the ladder by linking fewer steps that contain more information on the subject, utilizing our imagination. The other option requires speed and stamina to reach our objective as quickly as possible.
The space located between two different steps is what gives them their significance. Without it, neither of them could be comprehended, like the liquid in a bowl of soup, the space retains the substance of our lives. Since early childhood, we reject that space because it requires effort to overcome it, and that effort depends on the replenishment of our energies, which we must find elsewhere. In other words, as a person that is looking for a job would say, it takes work to find work.
The common understanding is that full knowledge of a subject is acquired in the process of exerting a difficult mountain climb, where reaching the summit represents the final enlightenment. More often that not, the opposite is the norm. For example, imagine walking down a path on a steep canyon, observing the wonders of nature around us. The walk is easy, and the observation of our surroundings produces a pleasurable experience, gathering a bounty of new facts and events. But when we reach the end of our path and it is time to go back, we realize that the descent was deceitful to our senses, that our lack of awareness towards the future has placed us in a very troubling situation. The ascent would be much harder that we thought, because the energy that we need has been expended previously on a misleading idea, not taking into account the location of our own limits. Most of us encounter enlightenment at the bottom of the canyon, using our will and sheer strength, as the main engine to get out of our miseries, leaving knowledge for future endeavors.
The struggle of recognizing that our ignorance is the main force that inspires our unexpected knowledge along most of our brief lives can be overwhelming. How else can we understand something that for whatever reason we didn’t know existed previously? Wanted or not, we must deal with the spaces found between our steps and the best way that Man has discovered to do so, is by repeating the event as many times as necessary to overcome fear, and subsequently paralysis. That doesn’t appear very smart. I mean that it is confusing to admit that the basis of our intelligence resides in how well we are able to deal with those voids, mostly by repeating the event and experimenting with the results, not in some sort of abstract juggle of concepts and ideas. Therefore, it is unavoidable that truth could emerge far off from an intelligent person, since fact can be obscured by ravishing fiction.
There are two more ways to save our lives from a grieving purgatory. One is trust and the other one is instinct. Trust is based on blindly accepting that once upon a time someone else confronted the same problem, providing us with his personal solution. Instinct is the natural response to some event that unconsciously our bodies decide not to forget. Either way represents a fraction of what we may consider our existence; since sooner or later we must confront the elephant in the room to shape our own personalities and find solutions that satisfy our particular souls.
The previous consideration based on accepting that the foundation of our knowledge and the fundamentals of our intelligence appears at its core to be a definite repetition of experiences, takes away a great deal of cleverness and ingeniousness from the individual. The word “repetition” removes with a swift blow the outer layers of brightness and skillfulness that we have placed around our lives, to provide us with confidence and self-esteem, shielding us from what we really are, simple and limited human beings.
In the arena, knowledge presents itself as the main asset to the celebration of any bullfight. Thanks to the repetition of a series of calculated steps, rules, and the constant reminding of risk, the public can follow the events all the way to its origins, where Man made a decisive stride towards his independence from Nature.
If there is any hope for the planet’s largest societies, it must reside on awakening the conscience of the individuals that form its mass, by acknowledging their dreadful behavior, and by reminding them frequently that the outcome of repeating stupid mistakes on a large scale is not necessarily a smart idea. But is the mass society stupid?
CHAPTER 7
STUPID
Newton’s second law of physics states (in other words) that the influence necessary to cause a positive movement on a body should be equal to the entire mass of the body multiplied by the speed in which this body adjusts to its natural space. We know that generally the mass society exerts a low speed of adaptation to its environment, so we could deduce that the necessary force which should be applied to avoid falling into the abyss, must be directly proportional to its mass.
The previous paraphrase of Newton’s formula, doesn’t include secondary effects such as greed, corruption, jealousy, or any other human trait that may interfere with the natural assimilation process of new frontiers. These secondary effects are responsible for the internal forces that produce an incoherent momentum of transformation and relentless change. Up to now, in most instances, Man has preferred to eliminate Nature, rather than to modify his own behavior.
There are plenty of examples in History where a community of people have met their ruin by not being conscious of their impact in the land that provided them with the means of survival. Probably some of the members in those communities were aware that their conduct was producing irreparable damage in their environment, but they couldn’t do much to avoid being pulled under the influence of their peers. As often happens, misleading ideas diffused by a few uninformed, or not well intended people, can spread like wildfire over the society. Like a plague, fear, panic, and ignorance, can take over every aspect of a threatened community‘s daily life. Possessed by an infectious illness that overwhelms the senses and reduces the chances to fight back, the individuals often repeat the same mistakes, the same errors, the same commands, without a hint of imagination, planning, or procedure in sight; corroborating to themselves that they too drank from the same poisoned cap. Why? Mostly for human affection, since previously they also sustained themselves by sucking the milk of society’s breasts, helping each other when they needed it, and protecting each other when danger knocked at their door.
The word “stupid” claims unintelligence or a slow pace of connecting distinct thoughts together in order to achieve an specific goal. Small children are not considered stupid just because they can’t quickly connect distant dots. Without apparent knowledge, they teach us that first they need a reason. The bridge that connects stupidity and reason appears to be knowledge, mostly based on repetition and practice. Underneath the bridge, foolishness is always present like an alligator swimming on murky waters. If the mass society is considered stupid, it’s due to its lack of skills or most likely, its lack of will to cross the bridge. Apparently, it’s afraid to reach conclusions about itself; to change; acting like a spoiled boy that keeps arguing with his parents, giving all sorts of excuses to avoid cleaning up his bedroom. But is it possible there may be a different explanation? Is it possible there is something fundamentally wrong at its core; that the mass society is physically or mentally handicapped, disabled? If that is certain, can we accept it as individuals forming part of a large community? To answer those questions we should travel back in time and rediscover the truth about a chicken debt that has remain unpaid by society for a little over two thousand, four hundred years.
CHAPTER 8
THE CHICKEN DEBT
The revolution came and went. Men fought bitterly to the end defending their points of view and their interests. Athens never had such an unpalatable meal on its mouth before. Its government was in danger of being erased from history, years earlier the Spartans got rid of it on a swift invasion. Athens had lost its splendor as the center of a universe of alliances between city-states, usually sprinkled along the golden shores of the Mediterranean sea. On the winning side, corrupt and inefficient politicians, generals, and an array of well-established citizens were holding on to a tradition of superstition and mistrust that produced a society governed by an army of shifters, dealers, and merchants ready to exchange any hint of morality for a good profit. On the loosing side, a troop of idealists, mostly young fellows that found enough reasons and arguments to confront the crude reality of a decaying nation, submerged in chaos and absurdity.
In the eye of the hurricane, a bald-headed philosopher called Socrates was convicted by the winning party of corrupting the minds of future generations of democratic citizens. These citizens, after following his reasonable advice of questioning practically everything, didn’t wanted to convey the senseless message imposed by the society’s ruling majority, and on their own decided to change it with unfortunate results. Socrates was found responsible of inciting the revolution and was judged by the same crowd of people, that he had condemned in the past for being ignorant, foolish, and violent. In his Apology, he defended the freedom of thought and expression, morality, and self wisdom, which in the crowd’s view left him with two choices: to withdraw openly the beliefs that he had embraced during the course of his life and then leave the city, or to die. Socrates choose the virtuous option sealing in great manner the destiny of Athens.
So resigned to his fate, he accepted their decree and gracefully drunk the hemlock. His last words were to a friend:
“Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?”
“The debt shall be paid” said Crito.”
Crito may very well had paid Socrates debt but we haven‘t paid our debt to Socrates. He supported a state of virtue and justice where the citizens were informed of the advantages of finding and defending the truth over their own personal interest. To him, the community must strive to be righteous towards the individuals that form its body, and it mustn’t censure or scorn those that could help. To achieve that end, Socrates states that: “The easiest and noblest way, is not to be crushing others, but to improve yourself.”
Across history, societies have painfully learned part of his lessons, particularly in Occident. Still, there is a great deal of improvement to be made. The nature of man repeats itself in each democratic society showing the same characteristics over time; like a tragic play were the same actors change their masks to convey an old message. Socrates understood the necessity of having influential citizens away from the sphere of politics, as well as he understood that many citizens lack the wisdom to participate in important state decisions because they are more interested in filling their pockets than they are in searching themselves.
Socrates owed a cock, but we still owe him the recognition that the virtue of a community resides in the humility of the individuals to acknowledge their limits. Like a brave bull that is not afraid to look at the matador’s cape, his last thought was to remember his moral commitment to his friend Asclepius. To Socrates, keeping his word was more important than confronting his death.
It appears clear to me that our society is not only physically handicapped by the size of its mass, as its legs seem incapable of sustaining its own weight to cross the breach towards reason, but it is also morally deprived of the indispensable will to do it. The good news is that the same disadvantages could be discovered in small crowds of people and if we refine our observation, these disabilities could also be noticed in a single individual.
Thus, if we trail our deduction back to its origins we should see that the given solution is to improve the physical condition and the spiritual capabilities of the majority of the members that make-up the society’s body. But does that mean that some of them must be removed to carry on society’s common quest for survival? Could our citizens live with that decision?
CHAPTER 9
ELIMINATIONS
Yes, they could live with that decision as they often have. Stirring History’s hundreds upon hundreds of examples we can observe three main types of eliminations of individuals. The first type is based on physically getting rid of them through wars, executions, and murders. The second type centers on finding them a place as far away as possible. The third type is founded on ignoring their needs and their existence. Nature has always had its part in the elimination but looking at the current population explosion, we can verify that it isn’t yet playing a decisive hand.