Wow, gotta love Carleas site, post just wiped.
Okay. Basically, you we have everything that deals with Dharma in the west, to a much higher degree if anything, but never really adopted Karma due to advances made by the west early on.
These advances were
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Theory of Muses (Mt. Helicon if your interested in the origins). This evolved into Hermetic theory in Alexandria, and Kaballah’s Seriphot. Part based on dissection, emperical observation, alchemical deductions.
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Theories of Vices and Virtues. Earliest reference I know comes from Oddessy, in reference to a slave, but the guy is barely categorized as a slave. He appears more attached to the household, unable to leave, yet fully integrated into the family. During Indian Wars, children in America would bebfully adopted by Indian Families, just prohibited from leaving. If there was a demographics collapse (or just a pressing need for colonists, every successor state to Alexander needed colonists from Greece and Macedonia regularly, by the thousands, slave or free) people would be brought in, tied to the land but otherwise free. They were even known to war to capture people for this very reason. Its very difficult to apply a Master-Slave consciousness on this, merely making a note for the Nietzscheans viewing this. The Odyssey era was a dirt poor primitive bronze age society… but that’s our first evidence for the word, as we inherit them today.
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Integration of theories of Pure Ethics with Theories of Learning and Merit, that tried unsuccessfully to integrate these two systems. The modern university system and alchemy in late antiquity are both directly descended from this. Doesn’t seem obvious today, but that’s by design. If you go back to the early roots of the separation of the Mechanical and Liberal Arts, it is much more blantant… the divisions Plato’s School, and much more importantly the Aristotelian and Stoic schools, more or less ensured we would heavily emphasize Dharma like ideas, usually but not always (some of Chanakya’s ideas a obvious exception) more advanced than found in India due to our emphasis, while Karma just whithered. It wasn’t because of Judeo-Christian Monotheistic values, but due to the explorations of Stoicism and Aristotle’s school.
Christianity inherited the Stoic conception of vices and virtues, but while we took a theological approach to them, we never set them in absolute stone, not even with eventual products like “The Seven Deadly Sins”. Our theologians, just like the Stoa prior, constantly adjusted the concepts. You won’t find two theologians who completely agree in this area, and rare you’ll find them saying “accept the vices and virtues on faith my son”. It goes against the very point of them… we each empirically figure them out, they are a psychological matrix, part definition, part actions that we learn to integrate into themes. There really isn’t mystical about patriastic statistical data handed down from one priest to the next over a couple thousand years of continuous confessions. Though each priest enters into it anew, like a new born baby, seminaries and arch bishops hand down a wealth of insight and theory, that comes from practical experience and trial and error.
A example, there is no rule in the Bible that says “Don’t stick objects needlessly up your ass” but Christians know generally not to do this. How? Some comes from a general sexual prufidh nature that says Lust = Vice, but I’m certain a few medieval men came to concessions a bit panicked, unable to get it out, and the science of proctology nary in existence. Doesn’t take deep insight to reinforce a concept of vice to this on the available empirical data. You don’t need great theological awareness to grasp Lust is a vice, Restaint is a Virtue under such cases. Contradictions of course pop up… no people if no lust, can people lust after virtues? If your this deep into the debate, your quite welcome to engadge into the philosophy of it on a hypothetical basis. I would just recommend against preaching the Satanic message of modern Neo-Pythagoreans like Satyr or Jakob who systematically violate every virtues and embrace every vice in search of their superhaman capacity… eventually something really big is gonna get stuck in your ass from taking a conjecture too far. We hadvearly Christian sects that did this very thing, I think one was calked the Melissinites in Asia Minor… these things tend to end poorly, and doing absurd acts to yourself in moderation, as is often quoted on this forum to do all things in moderation, is no guarantee for safe outcome. I would counsel as a counter to practice reason and avoid stupidity, especially in regards to your excitable private parts. This would fall under vices and virtues. Nothing particularly Christian or Monotheistic about that insight, doesn’t guarantee you a path to heaven. Just makes sense, both in a Doxa, Endoxa, and Orthodoxy way of looking at things, as well as in the clear light of philosophical reason. Fits all four schools swell. What the Themalites on this forum doesn’t.
The division of liberal and mechanical arts began prior to the division of alchemy from the university system. The division began in the late Roman era, as a new method for teaching. Prior to this, you had temple schools teaching whatnot (your guess is as good as mine) and philosophical schools tutoring the rich, and street teachers teaching students for pay basic learning. It was eventually noticed the people interested in mechanics aren’t as interested in liberal arts, so divided them. Each form of knowledge built and complimented the other. This theory has concepts related to Karma, but lacked a sense of moksha, of release, reincarnation… you built yourself up instead to ever higher capacity… why?
Well, you gotta go back farther, to ancient Greek Stoic ideas about virtues. Virtues and vices than, as now, are cause andbeffect based. Someone could better themselves, because it’s based in physics (not karma). Your looking at Platonic concepts of Physics, ordering the universe. A city state was built around virtues, still had vices, they could exist independent of men, yet still be a part of men… how far in either direction men held to this dualism I can’t say, I see evidence in both directions…The Stoics for example, worshipped Love… love was their ultimate Virtue, something in them, so psychological too, but did they have a Cartesian Dualism? I would have to go region by region, age by age to be certain. I know we can, so won’t say they couldn’t… but medical concepts in this era sucked hard so I won’t push them into modern categories either, saying they all felt this or that way universally. It looks like there was a lively debate, and some disagreed as to what exactly was love in all cases, and they certainly dropped some of their more overtly oedophilic and homosexual assumptions later on.
For them, vices and virtues ordered society. Take Fear… it was a vice. Why? Due to the primitive constraints of their statecraft and military system.
They had walled cities, a παριβολω wall slapped around a area of habitual, stronghold residence (usually) for the population. Everyone was in a unit, or linked to a unit somehow. It was low population, highly mountainous, low crop yields, often had to import food from overseas. Their sense of victory was about as immature as it gets, revolving around head on collisions, and this decided via sacred treatises who got territorial rights… so few states explored using terrain and complex tactics… spaetants figured out how to break units up to allow for gland and rear attacks, but couldn’t compute archery and darts, irregular combat on complex terrain… and Greece is almost completely complex terrain. Their goal was to fight a battle, win, erect a Trophy… similar to Fetishes in Benin, on the battlefield, while singing a whole lotta hoopla. This guaranteed their rights, and amazingly other states usually accepted this bullshit. Irregular warfare on a hillside could rid a army pragmatically, but didn’t get you a macho, universally recognized trophy.
So states emphasized straight on attacks, and the main counter to hysteria and fear was pedophilic, homosexual relations in the ranks, so men felt more attached to one another in a era when esprite de corps wasn’t well understood, and using ever heavier armor… which put a strain on production… and since it was the Romans, not the Greeks who introduced the Fabrica… armor factories, you had to have standing to have armor in said society.
So what’s the end result? The main tool was calling fear a vice. Speeches against it, social antagonism against it. They had very primitive formations back them, commanders had few options.
Under Christianity, it got chucked. It wasn’t a vice. Why? Christianity wasn’t a polis, had no army. It was a religious movement, one persecuted and martyred regularly. Emperical data suggested even the very best could bebfearful, and it was a stepping stone even to virtue, by overcomming it for a higher virtue.
But Christians usually aren’t pacifists, do belong to polis, and have fear as a vice on a secular, civil level. A Christian soldier shouldn’t be fearful in Roman times. In US times, we came full circle and fully expect everyone to be fearful. Every military formation is exactingly designed to compensate for fear. If men go running scared, it’s not their fault. Its bad tactics.
But at no point is fearbseen as unreal in any system. It was very real in every era, a vice to this day in regards to statecraft, but we have a much broader situational approach to it now. I only know of one guy being prosecuted for desertion from my old unit, and it’s Bergdahl, and the reason isn’t (officially) cowardness. I saw lots go AWOL… many returned. One got shit in the neck… nobody blames him for being scared. Another was raped, nobody will prosecute him for than. We don’t hold to ancient prescriptions for vices and virtues, but we can fully calculate them none the less, they are usually psychological networks in the mind.
Ill finish this tonight, gotta go.