A police force of 300 Scythian slaves carried red ochre-stained ropes to induce the citizens who loitered in the agora of Athens to attend the meetings of the assembly. Anyone with red-stained clothes who was not in the meeting was liable to a penalty.
The retreat from the Ekklesia to the Agora is a sad, soul-ennervating trend. It is also a dangerous one. If the centre of our debate and politics and what it is to live in the just state is the Neo-Cortex, the Agora is the Limbic. The Agora is the Amygdala. The Agora is fear, because it is greed. Nobility isn't urgent and that's why it loses the fight against fear, against the primitive. So we now live in a time where mass-man, devoid of ideas, cannot stop a Joseph Smith-like fraud, a tin-pot demagogue, a billionaire who at seventy suddenly calls himself a working-class champion, from winning the chair of Washington, Lincoln and FDR.
It isn't that we are so far through the looking-glass. No. And it isn't that the intellectual has lost the debate to the brute, for what is argument against the cudgel. No. And it isn't that the electorate lacks the critical brain. No. It is that money has numbed our brains. Stimulation now comes from things, not ideas. Where once radicals fought for a new republic, searched to the high atmospheres of the self and mind for man's own destiny and drew up a new contract; we, now, invest our minds in the vapid, protean language of capital and purchase. Thinking man weeps - sad, elliptical, drawn-out tears. He sits, with his stinging eyes, sighing over the edge of the sea-touched cliff and hoping with bootless prayers. He knows they won't come to be. The Agora has won.
Or is the answer technology?
Perhaps. Perhaps if the computer matches and ascends beyond human capacity and cupidity. Are we in thrall to money and its superficialities merely because technology is too stupid and forces us down to its level? And so is there hope? Hope that one day technology will make us smart, will stimulate us away from the numbness of things and the fetters of money?
Or is technology always only to be an extension of man?
Revolution has always been scented with youth. Unfettered by the wims of the Agora youth has fought for the best, natively idealistic. Yet where are the young to fight the corruptions of the age? There are some, precious few. But the others are consumed, by things, by money, by the dominion of the market place, by the circus and theatre. By the titillations of the animal. They are taught that satisfaction is better than thinking. They are told not to have ideas, except the onanism of the credit card. They are told not to think but to consume. Always consume. They consider nature something that should produce for them. How then to expect radicals from this? Yet, why not? Nature always throws exceptions. There are some millennials who see the dark clouds gathering, who know their portent and who are prepared to die by their own ardor. This gives us great hope. Hope that man will look to conquer himself against the forces of greed, narrow interest and the diminishing returns of rising consumption and its rising entropy. For who in their conscience would not go to the stake for the good of the species? Who would not be a benefactor of the race, if he could so choose? Why should we surrender the fight to greed? For greed is nothing more than the primitive, the expeditionary force of the conquering primate stealing territory and goods; while thought and ideas are the light that shines in the thinking man's hand.
How much does a lie cost?
How deep are the pockets of liars?
How corrupt are the powerful?
How stupid are the people?
So truth and intelligence are the antidote. And populism and money, the arsenic. This should be in high contrast. Yet our phones and computers and our shopping malls are multicolored, they shade and lull into the sheep-mind. This world isn't for the romantic, the Byronic, the philosopher, the dreamer. Greed is the king and he was installed by cabal when our backs were turned watching the pretty fireworks. The Agora won. The Agora always wins. Only it doesn't if we first learn to conquer ourselves. It is a fool's creed that says, 'it'll all be fine.' Civilisations before us have been wiped out. There's nothing in history that shows things always working out. Why should they now? Do not slide blissful down the ignorant slide, with the casual impulse that 'they' know what they're doing. And that they will make sure the fun fair runs for perpetuity. This is foolish for this reason: Because 'they' are also numb, 'they' are also unstimulated, 'they' are also short on ideas. 'They' are the chef who refuses to eat his own food because he knows its bad. 'They' are also slaves of the Agora.
That is why thinking and art and the freedoms they produces are the balm. And literature is the one thing in our banal age that shines with the force of all its history behind it. And literature is the one thing that will outlive our banal age because it is loud enough to echo into future history. But let not hubris rush on. Man is capable of such high spheres, yet blood gushes and he swirls giddy. We used to believe in the greatness of man. But post-modernism, bless it's happy sweet death, sold us the lie to our disbelieving guts: That all things are relative. Yes, but some things recur, and they are pattern, they are truth. Yes, the cosmos is ever changing and evolving, yes the sun from one angle is different than from another, but you are an absurdist if you think there is no distinction between the pattern and the random. There must be a distinction for this reason: If there is none, nothing holds meaning, words have no meaning. If that is the case, then let our little species on it's small blue dot vanish. Let us not be. Let us anti-be. Let us be anti-existed from time. Either a thing holds value, or there is no value. Either a thing is, or nothing is. Either something is true or all things are lie.
And all the time, the Agora wins.
Then let us fight, let us write, let us dream. Let not the empires of the bloated corporate kings distract us. Let us be pirates and lords unto ourselves in the age of greed. We must merily set our sail for Atlantis and dam the storm, dam their navy, dam their arsenals. We will outfox them. We will vex their plans. We will survive in our sweet minority. We will surround the Agora in a rope of reddened ochre. And we will love and dance and kiss each other in the kindest fraternity.
The retreat from the Ekklesia to the Agora is a sad, soul-ennervating trend. It is also a dangerous one. If the centre of our debate and politics and what it is to live in the just state is the Neo-Cortex, the Agora is the Limbic. The Agora is the Amygdala. The Agora is fear, because it is greed. Nobility isn't urgent and that's why it loses the fight against fear, against the primitive. So we now live in a time where mass-man, devoid of ideas, cannot stop a Joseph Smith-like fraud, a tin-pot demagogue, a billionaire who at seventy suddenly calls himself a working-class champion, from winning the chair of Washington, Lincoln and FDR.
It isn't that we are so far through the looking-glass. No. And it isn't that the intellectual has lost the debate to the brute, for what is argument against the cudgel. No. And it isn't that the electorate lacks the critical brain. No. It is that money has numbed our brains. Stimulation now comes from things, not ideas. Where once radicals fought for a new republic, searched to the high atmospheres of the self and mind for man's own destiny and drew up a new contract; we, now, invest our minds in the vapid, protean language of capital and purchase. Thinking man weeps - sad, elliptical, drawn-out tears. He sits, with his stinging eyes, sighing over the edge of the sea-touched cliff and hoping with bootless prayers. He knows they won't come to be. The Agora has won.
Or is the answer technology?
Perhaps. Perhaps if the computer matches and ascends beyond human capacity and cupidity. Are we in thrall to money and its superficialities merely because technology is too stupid and forces us down to its level? And so is there hope? Hope that one day technology will make us smart, will stimulate us away from the numbness of things and the fetters of money?
Or is technology always only to be an extension of man?
Revolution has always been scented with youth. Unfettered by the wims of the Agora youth has fought for the best, natively idealistic. Yet where are the young to fight the corruptions of the age? There are some, precious few. But the others are consumed, by things, by money, by the dominion of the market place, by the circus and theatre. By the titillations of the animal. They are taught that satisfaction is better than thinking. They are told not to have ideas, except the onanism of the credit card. They are told not to think but to consume. Always consume. They consider nature something that should produce for them. How then to expect radicals from this? Yet, why not? Nature always throws exceptions. There are some millennials who see the dark clouds gathering, who know their portent and who are prepared to die by their own ardor. This gives us great hope. Hope that man will look to conquer himself against the forces of greed, narrow interest and the diminishing returns of rising consumption and its rising entropy. For who in their conscience would not go to the stake for the good of the species? Who would not be a benefactor of the race, if he could so choose? Why should we surrender the fight to greed? For greed is nothing more than the primitive, the expeditionary force of the conquering primate stealing territory and goods; while thought and ideas are the light that shines in the thinking man's hand.
How much does a lie cost?
How deep are the pockets of liars?
How corrupt are the powerful?
How stupid are the people?
So truth and intelligence are the antidote. And populism and money, the arsenic. This should be in high contrast. Yet our phones and computers and our shopping malls are multicolored, they shade and lull into the sheep-mind. This world isn't for the romantic, the Byronic, the philosopher, the dreamer. Greed is the king and he was installed by cabal when our backs were turned watching the pretty fireworks. The Agora won. The Agora always wins. Only it doesn't if we first learn to conquer ourselves. It is a fool's creed that says, 'it'll all be fine.' Civilisations before us have been wiped out. There's nothing in history that shows things always working out. Why should they now? Do not slide blissful down the ignorant slide, with the casual impulse that 'they' know what they're doing. And that they will make sure the fun fair runs for perpetuity. This is foolish for this reason: Because 'they' are also numb, 'they' are also unstimulated, 'they' are also short on ideas. 'They' are the chef who refuses to eat his own food because he knows its bad. 'They' are also slaves of the Agora.
That is why thinking and art and the freedoms they produces are the balm. And literature is the one thing in our banal age that shines with the force of all its history behind it. And literature is the one thing that will outlive our banal age because it is loud enough to echo into future history. But let not hubris rush on. Man is capable of such high spheres, yet blood gushes and he swirls giddy. We used to believe in the greatness of man. But post-modernism, bless it's happy sweet death, sold us the lie to our disbelieving guts: That all things are relative. Yes, but some things recur, and they are pattern, they are truth. Yes, the cosmos is ever changing and evolving, yes the sun from one angle is different than from another, but you are an absurdist if you think there is no distinction between the pattern and the random. There must be a distinction for this reason: If there is none, nothing holds meaning, words have no meaning. If that is the case, then let our little species on it's small blue dot vanish. Let us not be. Let us anti-be. Let us be anti-existed from time. Either a thing holds value, or there is no value. Either a thing is, or nothing is. Either something is true or all things are lie.
And all the time, the Agora wins.
Then let us fight, let us write, let us dream. Let not the empires of the bloated corporate kings distract us. Let us be pirates and lords unto ourselves in the age of greed. We must merily set our sail for Atlantis and dam the storm, dam their navy, dam their arsenals. We will outfox them. We will vex their plans. We will survive in our sweet minority. We will surround the Agora in a rope of reddened ochre. And we will love and dance and kiss each other in the kindest fraternity.
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