just thinking here…
we have the historical time frame from the fall of Greece to the rise of Rome,
but it can be thought of a different way… what if we can use that time period of
Hellenism, to mark out one viewpoint… we know that we can, pretty safely,
call it Greco-Roman because the Romans simple “borrowed” the Greeks viewpoint,
The Romans were not very original thinkers…so let us combine the two into one viewpoint…
the quite original name of Greco-Roman…now was the the start of a viewpoint or the
end of a viewpoint… given what we now of history, it seems more likely to be the end of
an historical viewpoint…and we know that the Greeks consider themselves to
be the children of the earlier civilizations, The Egyptians for example and others like
the Mesopotamia Civilization…so let us expand our understanding of Ancient
civilization… by saying that the Greco-Roman civilization was the end of a long
historical period… say, from the rise of civilization to the the fall of Greco-Roman times…
roughly 400 A.D and we can really tell that the mind set of one in 400 A.D is quite
different of one in 400 B.C…but what do we think happened between
the two… over 800 years between the Death of Socrates and St. Augustine?
I think that it was a long journey in a mind set or a viewpoint from the death of Socrates
and St. Augustine…in other words, we had a change in mindset over those 800 years…
it certainly wasn’t a hard change… one day having one mind set and another day,
having a changed mindset… no, to make that change in a society wide viewpoint,
does take hundreds of years…and it takes events along the way to make that
changes in mindset/viewpoints… for example one such change or event would be
the long century in Rome from the birth of Caesar in 100 B.C to the final rise of
Caesar Augustus in who began his Reign in 27 B.C…from the Chaos of that
century… of the many violent civil wars that almost tore that nation apart…
it could be said, that the rise and fall of Rome came about because Rome
never solved the problem of succession in their rulers…
anyway, you can trace the mindset/ the viewpoint of Rome still existing
during the years of Rome… but as events and time passed, one can see
that by 300 B.C, Rome had a different mind set, a different viewpoint
by 300 B.C…with continuing rise of Christianity … but what does that
mean? In other words, what does it mean that a religion that grew from
a few Jewish people in Judea over 400 years came to rule an empire…
think of it this way, with each passing person exchanging the old fashion,
Greco-Roman viewpoint which was the end of several thousands years of a common
viewpoint, into a new viewpoint, a new vision of reality… we can see that
with every single conversion of Romans to the new religion, was a change
in a mindset, a viewpoint… in other words, the old values and viewpoints
were no longer persuasive or compelling… they had lost their reason for existing…
when one viewpoint is exchanged for another viewpoint, there must be extremely
compelling reasons to make that change… when I changed from my original political
fealty from moderate democrat to anarchist… it requires a dramatic reason to
make that political change/ or viewpoint…I was radicalized by the 1980 election
of Ronald Raygun… I had seen what a disaster he was for California during his
years as Governor here…from 1967- 1975… I was in high school in 1973… and I saw
first hand his damage to the state… I have seen first hand what a radical change
in viewpoints/mindsets do and why they occur…the old beliefs no longer hold true…
that is the only reason why one would change a viewpoint or have a changed mindset…
if you lose the prior mindset or viewpoint, then it is easy to change one’s values or
mindset…so, the reason that millions of people changed their viewpoint
during that period over 400 years from holding pagan views to becoming Christians,
was a loss of the prior viewpoints… they no longer held any value and thus was easy to
change…so what we have is an example of a time period where the values/mindset/
viewpoint of an people changed… and we can then follow the viewpoint of
the next era from say, St. Augustine to the beginning of the modern change
in the mindsets of people, starting with the scientific revolution to
the various revolutions thereafter, the political, the social, the philosophical
and the industrial revolution…
so we can begin to identify the next set of changes in mindsets/viewpoints…
starting with the Scientific revolution which began say, 1550…but the
mindset/ the viewpoints of the age, holding to god, the church, the belief
in the monarchy… they were all viewpoints that had existed within
certain parameters since St. Augustine… 400 A.D…I hold that
we can say that from 400 A.D to 1800 A.D. the mindset/viewpoint
of the people in the west were basically unchanged…were there differences,
of course, but the framework was still the same…the Catholic church was still
quite present during those years and the monarchy, a belief in the King was still the
same…and the idea of Rank… of society being in a hierarchy, from the king down
to the peasants was still the same…everyone had a set place within the society,
and everyone knew that set place… until the various revolutions dislodged
individuals and society…which is the next phase… beginning from the scientific
revolution, again roughly 1550 and still going on…so in this we can begin to
compare our changing mindsets/viewpoints that began in 1550… to today…
with the changing mindsets/viewpoints of the long ending of the Greco-Roman
society… which basically lasted from 400 A.D to 400 B.C…or 800 years…
thus our changing society/mindsets/viewpoints began roughly in 1550 and if it
last as long as the change from the Greco-Roman to Medieval viewpoint, we will
be, finally, done changing our viewpoint, our mindsets in roughly 2350 A.D…
and how long will the next viewpoint/ mindset will last, I have no idea…
I won’t be alive…
so, my thesis is that we are right now, right here in the middle of
a worldwide change in our understanding, our viewpoints of
what we hold to be true…I am comparing our time period with
the changing time period of the years between 400 B.C and the final
ending of the changing mindset in 400 A.D… during those 800 years…
and we are roughly, depending on whether you mark the start at 1500,
the scientific revolution or as I mark it, the French Revolution, in 1789,
we are only 200 years into our long journey into the next phase of
our mindset/viewpoint… we may have roughly 600 more years to go, or
not…the coming wars of resources will dramatically change who we are
and what we hold to be true… they might, might hasten this change
in viewpoints/mindsets that I have foreseen…or delay it… I have no
way of knowing as I don’t believe I will be alive or I will survive the wars
of resources that is coming to planet earth…in fact, I suspect
that not one person reading this now, will be alive by the end of
the wars of resources…nor will they see the coming new mindsets/
viewpoints…
we are traveling from one set of views to another set of views…
where we will land, I have no idea and neither do you…
but the journey will be quite interesting as the last few years
are but a prelude to the coming change in our era…
we are making a transition from one viewpoint/mindset to another…
Kropotkin