Written by Van Bryan, Contributing Writer, Classical Wisdom
Sometimes, late at night when we can hear the ocean outside our window, we wonder what the ancients would think of us…
Would they be proud? Amused? Perplexed?
Surely, we imagine, we won’t repeat ALL the mistakes of our classical forebearers.
Somebody must have read Aristotle, Cicero, or Thucydides.
As we’re fond of saying… no disaster has been so disastrous… no calamity so calamitous… and no idea so idiotic that somebody didn’t give it a whirl over the millennia.
Somebody must have surmised that there are lessons to be learned from people who lived thousands of years before our “enlightened” time.
But no…
We seem determined—hell, eager! —to stumble headfirst into the same quagmires of classical antiquity.
The old saying is that you must learn history or else risk repeating it.
What they won’t tell you is that those who do learn from history have to stand by while everybody else repeats it.
The latest throwback comes in the form of ostracism-by-tweet.
That’s right. The grand old classical tradition of banishing your fellow man for no real reason is back. And in a big way!
You know it as “cancel culture.”
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Let’s first look at how the ancients did it.
Ostracism in the Ancient World
In Aristotle’s Politics, he tells us that ostracism was originally instituted as a means to allow the common people to check the power of the political players.
It was a way to give claws to the hare when he was going up against a lion.
…democratic states have instituted ostracism; equality is above all things their aim, and therefore they ostracise and banish from the city for a time those who seem to predominate too much through their wealth, or the number of their friends, or through any other political influence.– Aristotle (The Politics, Book III)
The procedure was rather simple. Plutarch tells us, in his Life of Aristides, that an ostracism vote was held once a year.
The citizens were allowed to write the name of any political figure on a shard of pottery. Should anyone’s name get 6000 votes, then that person would be banished from Athens for ten years.
What… we may wonder… were grounds for ostracism?
Must your fellow citizen commit a high crime?
Perhaps treason? Or murder?!
No… not really.
“I just don’t like the guy” was sufficient grounds to banish a man from the hallowed walls of the polis.
Aristotle suggests as much when he writes…
[Ostracism] has not been fairly applied in states; for, instead of looking to the public good, they have used ostracism for factious purposes.
That’s right, dear reader.
Ostracism was often used as a means to banishing your enemies for not toeing the line.
Fun fact: Socrates could have likely “chosen” ostracism over death during his trial in 399 BCE.
The philosopher was accused of “corrupting the youth” and “believing in strange gods.”
He was found guilty by his peers. But an interesting nuance of classical Athenian justice demands that the defendant and the prosecutor both suggest punishments in the event of a guilty verdict.
Socrates’ accusers chose death.
Socrates could have chosen—and likely would have been granted—ostracism.
But no.
He offers a grand feast and celebration as his penalty. In essence, it was a giant middle finger to the validity of the proceedings.
And given those choices, the Athenians choose death.
And that brings us to the 21st century…
#Ostracismculture
You might imagine our amusement when we first learned of “cancel culture.”
Yes, dear reader, ostracism is back. But put away those shards of pottery. Instead, hit the retweet button!
It’s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation.
Imagine how many people the classical Athenians could ostracize if they only had Twitter!
Are you believing in strange gods, dear reader?
Are you corrupting the youth with your “open debate”?
What scourge might you bring upon our glorious city with your… ugh… tolerance of opposing ideas?
We simply can’t risk it. Out you go.
You may already be familiar with the recently ostracized. But if not, allow us to bring you up to speed.
Taibbi again:
[F]rom a UCLA professor placed under investigation for reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” out loud to a data scientist fired* from a research firm for — get this — retweeting an academic study suggesting nonviolent protests may be more politically effective than violent ones![…]In the most discussed incident, Times editorial page editor James Bennet was ousted for green-lighting an anti-protest editorial by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton entitled, “Send in the troops.”
#Ostracisimculsture has gotten so bad that a slew of troublemakers got together to sign “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.”
I quote from the letter [emphasis is mine]…
The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.
What a time to be alive for those of us with a classical background and a sense of mischief.
We chuckle. We guffaw. We laugh heartily…. and then we sob.
Re-killing Socrates
Have we learned nothing from our ancestor’s mistakes? Are we so eager to set fire to the intellectual scaffolding built over millennia?
Socrates was dubbed the wisest of all men by the Oracle at Delphi, but not because he knew the most.
Rather, the only thing the old teacher truly knew was that he knew very little… perhaps nothing at all.
Hence the now-famous phrase: All I know is that I know nothing.
From here, the Socratic tradition would teach us that we should accept humbly the limits of our knowledge.
We should doubt every certainty… question every unchallenged dogma…
And we should strive —sometimes awkwardly—towards understanding by way of contemplation, discussion, and introspection.
The crowning achievement of the Socratic tradition was an emphasis on, and appreciation for, good-faith inquiry.
Wisdom is the only way to the Good.
And the only way to wisdom is to probe seriously, sometimes contentiously, into the questions of life.
But, no…
We live now in an age of saints. We are surrounded by enlightened soothsayers, untouched by sin or doubt.
Every moral truth is already known.
Every tepid question is taken as an affront.
And every gadfly is swiftly put to death.
We seem eager to kill the Socratic tradition just as they killed the old man himself millennia ago.
What would the ancients think of us?
We don’t know…
But somewhere in a far-off land, Socrates is rolling his eyes… and cursing under his breath.
[Featured image comes from WSJ.com]
4 comments
Socrates was an insufferable brat armed with superior intelligence and ego to match. His ego led to his demise. He thought none would dare to kill him. Let them eat cake or so he thought. His abused pupil Plato sought sanctuary in an all powerful state and Plato’s pupil Aristotle recognized the slavery a stae might provide and taughtbthat damnger to an eager Alexander.
I couldn’t agree more. Try googling, Bari Weiss’s Resignation Letter from the New York Times, for an example of ‘cancelling’.
Thank you, M/M Van Bryan, for an informative essay on the ‘cancel culture.’ I now appreciate the nihilism and buzz words while I see the practice in action. Further, I understand now the full implication of Tribalist’s newly popular practice from an ancient perspective.
My request is that you write Part Two of this essay that predicts the end game of this craze de jure (e.g., how can modern minds already mutilated by John Dewey possibly become more crippled than they already are?) And what does that mean for those of us who view the world via a historical perspective?)
Cecil R. Williams
This world, due to the influences of religions like christianism and islamism, which are based on belief would’ve worked well in a world where everyone was a child.
They are actually very repressive and suppressive by their ‘totalitarian’ natures and are patriarchal hierarchies, like one’s socialisms that didn’t serve the world very well…
Systems like these are detesting doubters and those who are formulating new ideas because these are signs of growth and people maturing, or growing up developing independent thoughts.
It seems that it’s a tendency with people to want to interfere with the potential and the personal growth of others because if too many people grow up and mature than the gods will fall…
This world is therefore in a constant struggle against its own growth and advancement because of all sorts of gods, beliefs and imaginations that will dissappear like a morning-mist before the first rays of the sun one day when this world reaches a tipping point when full modernity can no longer be held back…
All these ostracisms are actually just penalties to punish people who are attempting to evolve to maturity… and they’re proofs that there are too many idiots in the world…and that is why democracy, also, isn’t going to work in the long run… A ‘qualified’ form of democracy where one must ‘qualify on some set standard’ to vote is actually the only workable form of democracy…
Pieter J (PJ)
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