Part II: A history of liberal and conservative thought continued:
Let me preface this by saying these are my ideas, so I do not have to restate that every time. I accept the entire treatise as being my subjective thought.
So using our dictionary definitions, let us examine human thought from the beginning of recorded history. The oldest known writing was Homer 700 to 900 BC. We have no known writings which predate 900 BC. By the way, I would classify Homor as a moderate-lol.
All of the belief systems, and thought, held by tribal communities at the time were conservative by definition.
The first liberal to come on the scene was Confuscious 550 BC (google him). Considering how little he had to work with I would classify his remarkable insights up there with Leonardo De Vinchi, Newton and Einstein and many of the ancient Greeks.
For all of the rest of the world, at that time, however, people still lived conservative lives obeying whatever conservative social/ religous dogma their respective societies believed. There were no liberals or existentialists at that time to my knowledge-lol. Although I suspect many humans suffered with their liberal ideas, but were too scared to ever mention them on penalty of death e.g. heresy.
Moving to 400 BC we run into the first large scale liberal human society, and one of the greatest intellectual societies, to ever exist. The ancient Greeks: Plato, Arisotle, Socrates, Plino, Thracymacus and one could write a list of thousands.
Their entire society was based on the socratic method:
Soc·ra·tes (sok'r?-tez') Pronunciation Key
Greek philosopher whose indefatigable search for ethical knowledge challenged conventional mores and led to his trial and execution on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth. Although Socrates wrote nothing, his method of question and answer is captured in the dialogues of Plato, his greatest pupil.
The Romans destroyed 99% of all of the writings of Greece, burning all their libraries and almost all of their writings. Very little survived, but what did, was not duplicated again for over 2,000 years. However even the few ideas which did survive were so powerful, like their math and logic, ensuing conservative societies were forced to use them, albeit bastardized to their mores and norms as they were.
After the destruction of the Greeks, and for the next two thousand years conservative thought ruled the world absolutely! Liberals were pretty much killed on sight-lOl. And during those two thousand years only a few writers and thinkers even matched the hundreds, indeed thousands of liberal ancient Greeks. Like Galilao and Copernicus. And we know what the conservatives of the time did to them!
The Greeks knew the world was round and calculated its circumference to within 25 miles. Their discoveries of math and logic would not be matched or surpassed until Newton, Einstein and Godel.
As mentioned, after the destruction of Greece, liberal thought was lost, and for the next two thousand years conservative thought, worldwide, once again was pervasive and unchallenged.
So With the loss of the Greeks, all the lights of knowledge and liberalism went out for 2,000 years.
Historians call this: "The Dark Ages"
To be continued |
