We Are All Greeks Now
Right now, I’m steaming across the Mediterranean aboard the Royal Princess with a group of investors, adventurers and Spiritual Wealth readers.
We’re smack in the middle of our “Cradle of Civilization” tour to Greece, Turkey, Israel, Egypt and Rome - and having a large time.
We kicked things off in Athens last week, touring the city and its ancient ruins, consuming heaping portions of souvlaki and Greek wine, and realizing just how far the greenback goes in a euro-based economy. (Not very.)
We’ve all seen, heard, learned (and eaten) a lot. But if there is one overwhelming impression, it is the enormous debt of gratitude we owe the ancient Greeks. More than 2,400 years ago, they founded Western civilization.
How so? Modern drama, poetry, literature, competitive sports, politics, architecture, and philosophy all evolved from Greek ways. Their way of life, their emphasis on reason, their ideals still shape every aspect of life in the West.
Rational inquiry, individualism, private ownership of property, the idea of a middle class, civilian control of the military, political freedom, equal justice before the law, constitutional government, even democracy itself - these are all Greek inventions.
The Athenians discovered a new way of looking at the world. Observation and experimentation trumped tradition and superstition. Ideas were investigated and tested, not merely accepted as received wisdom.
(The Greeks had a vivid and well-developed mythology, of course. But there
was no state religion, no official doctrines, and no powerful priestly caste sanctioning views or punishing heretics.)
Ancient Greece was filled with discoverers and innovators.
- Thales of Mileters strove to understand the natural forces that regulate the universe and gave birth to the scientific method.
- Pythagoras proved that the universe operates according to mathematical laws.
- Archimedes calculated the value of pi - the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter - and demonstrated the principle of leverage. (”Give me a place to stand,” he famously said, “and I will move the earth.”)
- Euclid wrote treatises on geometry, optics and music theory.
- Ptolemy attempted to diagram the heavens, laying the foundation of modern astronomy.
- Socrates, Plato and Aristotle founded Western philosophy with their sophisticated inquiries into metaphysics, epistemology and ethics.
Alexander set out to conquer the world and created the largest empire in history up to that time. His conquests, of course, were really nothing more than one immense raid for plunder. But he was the great disseminator of Greek culture.
And that turned out to be a good thing.
The Greeks invented the idea of freedom. Historically, personal freedom belonged solely to royalty, aristocracy, or the strongest male warriors. The Greeks expanded personal and political freedom to the majority.
As Pericles wrote, “In Athens, we live exactly as we please.” This notion existed nowhere else in the ancient world.
True, the Greeks owned other Greeks as slaves. Women were denied basic rights. And political freedom was limited to male citizens. But remember, this was the ancient world. It was a start.
Perhaps the defining feature of Athenian culture was intellectual freedom. The Greeks were the first to idealize the development of the mind, not for the good of the government or the state but for the benefit of the individual.
Everything was open to argument and discussion, including religion and government. Their curiosity, relentless questioning, and intellectual rigor led to enormous achievements in logic, physics, mathematics, rhetoric and analysis.
The ancient Greeks made rational inquiry - rather than the pronouncements of authority - the royal road to truth.
Empirical research and the application of mathematics liberated us from myth and magic, leading to unimaginable progress in science, technology, engineering and medicine.
Today, we bemoan our fast-paced, technology dominated lives. But no one wants to return to the era of chronic pain, early death, malnutrition, disease, superstition and everyday suffering that was our ancestors’ destiny, and the fate of billions in the Third World today.
Yes, there have been countless contributions from other cultures along the way. But it is the Greek legacy of reason, investigation and individual freedom that led to the remarkable ascendancy of the West. As the British poet Percy Shelley observed, “We are all Greeks.”
Man does not live by bread alone, of course. It was both the Greek emphasis on reason and the Judeo/Christian emphasis on ethical monotheism that gave the Western mind its distinctive shape.
A world where science, technology and our fellow human beings were freed from moral constraints would not be one worth living in.
To investigate this chapter in our development, however, we must turn from ancient Greece to Jerusalem. Fortunately, that’s just where we’ll be tomorrow.
I’ll pass along my observations in my next letter…
Carpe Diem,
Alex
