Contemporary Thoughts Concerning Ancient Governance

By James Greene

This book submerges the author and reader within a "contemporary" mode and mindset to provide exploration and perspectives on ancient wisdoms and governance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Greene
• Release date: Apr 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393349976

Book preview

1

Prelude

(Thoughts Concerning the Ancients)

Consider an ancient world—a vision of a long-ago people, attuned to nature. These decadent civilizations entailed an overt expression, an exertion of character and general attitude toward the reverence and continuation of fertility. This world was inhabited by gods and goddesses that animated and caused every instant, every moment, and was manifest in every natural event. We presume that such was the daily life of the ancient.

I was never fully satisfied with this assessment.

These somewhat oversimplified and generalized statements are so bland that there remains little substance to them. There isn’t any way to relate to a daily experience. There’s no way to fully grasp the ancient perspective of a people latched on to belief, no place to describe how someone can become submerged within the totalizing effects of society and culture. Nor can we speak of the imagination of someone fully harnessed and completely attached to a worldview.

Therefore, before I fully commit to the errors of historicism, I wish to propose an expansion and extreme interaction with Leo Strauss’s thoughts for a moment. He prescribed that we must look at philosophical works as if they all contain esoteric meaning.

Rarely do we find a philosophical notion that is overt and to the point or with such crisp clarity. If this were the case, it would not be concerned with thinking or provoking ideas at all—it would merley be translatable; it would be doing something in syncopation right alongside us. No thinking, no philosophy. It wouldn’t be initiating thinking in so much as unreflectively programming, or worse, it would be driving, manipulating, or modifying a pure mode of activity. It must, therefore, have a hidden meaning. There must be something lurking within its depths, like flowing rivers, streams, and oceans submerged within—dark and mysterious chasms below our feet.

Therefore, please allow me to entertain you with another way to look at it.

2

Garden

(Method, Technique, and Tactic)

A decision was made. This little one-acre yard needed a garden. Of course, the most appallingly awful place was selected. As I recall, if you were sitting on the back porch, it was at the left corner nearest to the fence, on a slope next to a line of several trees. This made tree roots fun to dig up and till over. Plopping a garden at the very corner of the property line was sure to spark interest and curiosity from the neighbors, but I was going to do it anyway. I was once told of residential laws that made it nearly impossible to evict someone who had established a garden on the premises. One way or another, we were going to make this happen. Before we could start planting, we had to till, then hoe, and after the planting, it was more hoeing and weeding after that, not to mention more hoeing. It wasn’t like I already had a full-time job.

I’ve grown accustomed to weird looks, those completely awkward or blank facial expressions, especially after I’ve said something outlandish or just talked too much. I was once blessed with the ability to take thoughts and instantly transform them into words. But it became rather difficult, however, at one specific moment.

I had been working at this garden thing all day. The hoeing, chopping on the ground, the pain, the sweat—my technique was entirely wrong. My hands were sore and blistered; my back was beginning to throb. But the strife, pain, and struggle cleared away my thoughts. I was simply doing; it was pure action. I dug a trench around the perimeter of the garden. I considered the abnormal and unusual slope as a means to irrigate. In my mind, I had some vague idea that this was going to work.

After catching my breath, I washed my hands and face with the water hose. I remembered drinking some of it and then sat down and watched the streams go into the newly irrigated ditches. It happened as the afternoon cooled and the sun dissipated behind the horizon. As the water began seeping into the earth, something inside me clicked—one of those aha! moments. I felt it—I could grasp it—at least until I tried to explain it out loud. Not often do words fail me. But this was a complete and utter fumbling and bumbling over words. The proper sentence structure was lacking. I don’t exactly recall the details of