Dear Learners,
Book III 676
We can take that as settled, then. But what about ------ systems, how did
they come into existence? I think the best way is to see the origins is this;
to use the same method that we have always used to look into a state's moral
progress or decline.
The method is to take an indefinitely large period and study the changes in
it. It is surely a great amount of time that states have existed and men have
lived under some sort of organizing principle? Could such long complexity be
grasped? Not easily.
Surely thousands of states come into being during such a time frame while
equally vast numbers have been destroyed? Time and again each may have
adopted every type of system. And sometimes small states have become larger
and large ones grown smaller; superior states deteriorated and bad ones
improved.
So why do these changes take place? Perhaps understanding this will lead us
to understand by discovery how various systems took root and developed.
Great! Let's get down to it.
I wonder, do you give credence to the theory that the human race has been
repeatedly annihilated by floods and plagues and many other causes, so that
only a fraction of the whole survived? Yes, that is entirely credible. Then
let us picture one such, a flood. What special points can we notice about it?
That those who escaped must have been pretty nearly all hill shepherds - a
few embers of mankind preserved, I imagine, on the tops of mountains. Here's
another point, such men must have been unskilled and unsophisticated. In
particular they must have been quite innocent of the crafty devices that
city-dwellers use in the rat race to do each other down; and all other dirty
tricks that men play against one another must have been unknown.
And we can take it can't we that the cities were built upon the low plains
and those near the sea were destroyed root and branch? Yes, that seems so. So
all their tools were destroyed, and every worth-while discovery they made in
any field may well have been lost, for if their discoveries had survived
throughout at the same level of development as they have attained today it is
difficult to see what room there would be for new discoveries today. (The
implication is of repeated creative collapses in the system called nature).
Suddenly Daedelus, Orpheus and Olympus pioneered and Amphion too and many
other discoveries were made by many others. And all this happened only
yesterday so to speak. How tactful to leave out Epimenides
(He invented a magic brew) he was streets ahead of the other inventors. So
these men and women were left with fertile lands, some goats and cattle
despite otherwise terrible devastation. So out of these conditions our modern
life developed, states - political structures, technical skills, laws,
rampant vices and frequent virtue. This would have happened over a long
period of time? Exactly. I imagine though that though early hill shepherds
were all numbed with fear at the prospect of descending from the hills to the
plains. But what a pleasure it must have been to see each other, there being
so few at that time. However pretty much all the vehicles they might have
used to visit each other by land or sea had been destroyed and the techniques
to use them lost, so that I suppose they found getting together none too
easy, they suffered from a scarcity of timber, iron, copper and mineral
workings in general and had been lost to sight. Even so there was the odd
tool left somewhere on the mountains; it was quickly worn down to nothing by
use. Replacements could not be made until the technique of mining sprang up
again among men. (Does he mean learning?) How so? In the first place,
although this picture sounds dire, men's isolation prompted them to cherish
and love one another. Second, their food supply was nothing they needed to
quarrel about, no shortage of flocks and herds, a ready supply of milk and
meat, an abundance of clothes and housing, pottery and weaving required no
iron being Gods gift to mankind so that whenever such desperate reductions
took place he could still take root and develop once again. Because of all
this there was neither intolerable poverty, nor intolerable wealth and by
this the finer characteristics prevailed there being less envy and jealousy
among them. They must also have been innocent of the techniques of warfare
peculiar to modern city life - generally called 'law suits' and 'party
strife', in which men concoct every possible device to damage and hurt each
other by word and deed.
Well, that seems a very modern and refreshing view to my mind.
BOOK VII 788
(Certain readings of Maturana prompted me to include this.)
Of growth in general -- Well now, we observe, don't we that the earliest
stages of growth of every animal are by far the most vigorous and rapid? That
is why a lot of people actually maintain that in the case of man, the first
five years of life see more growth than the next twenty. That is true. But
we're aware that rapid growth without frequent and appropriately graded
exercises leads to a lot of trouble for the body? Yes, indeed.
And isn't it precisely when a body is getting most nourishment that it needs
most exercise?
Good heavens, sir, are we going to demand such a thing of newborn babies and
little children? No! -- I meant even earlier, when they're getting
nourishment inside their mother's body. What's that you say? My dear sir! Do
you really mean in the womb?
Yes, I do! But it's hardly surprising you haven't heard of these athletics in
the embryo. It's a curious subject, but I'd like to tell you about it. ---
Best wishes,
Andrew Campbell
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