Chapter 11 – Historical World Views

Every society must work out and articulate a view of the physical universe, a way of seeing the world, a way that then becomes the base on which the society’s value system is to be built. This is no minor matter; while philosophers may dally over the questions in a theoretical way, real folk have to deal with life. They have to have some code in place that helps them decide them how to act. World view, values, and behaviours must form a coherent system under which each individual is empowered to make decisions and take action so the entire society can efficiently operate and survive in its always changing, always demanding environment.

All societies know this in some deep way. Societies up until our time have worked out their world views, values, and morés to the extent they have because people everywhere have always placed great stock in their society’s model of how the material universe is constructed, how it operates, and where it is going. They know implicitly that their worldview must be used as their guide when they are trying to decide whether an act that feels morally right is practicable. There is no point in striving for the impossible.

So let’s keep moving forward in this task of building a new, universal moral code, but let’s also move with all the prudence we possess. What is at stake is everything. Before we begin building this new system, we need to get our thinking into the necessary mindset by considering the most salient peaks in the histories of some of the societies of the past, in order to see how systems of world views, values, and behaviors coordinate and evolve.

  

                                                                G.W.F. Hegel

In this chapter, philosophy students will notice similarities between some aspects of my ideas and the philosophy of Hegel, and I admit freely that similarities exist. But I also have some major points of disagreement with Hegel, which I will explain along the way. For those readers who are not philosophy students, please note that I will give only a very quick version of my understanding of Hegel. If you find the ideas presented here at all interesting, you really should give Hegel a try. His writing is difficult, but not impossible, and it has also been interpreted by some disciples who write more accessibly.¹ But in this book, let’s now get back to our analysis of the world views, values, morés, and behavior patterns that are discernible in the history of some of the societies of the West.

  

                         BBC film director’s conception of Trojans dragging wooden horse into Troy

For instance, let’s consider the ancient Greeks, the ones who came long before Socrates’ time. They portrayed the universe as an irrational, dangerous place. To them, the gods who ran the universe were capricious, violent, and cruel, which also described the Greeks’ world view. Under this view, humans could only cringe fearfully when confronted with the gods’ testy humors. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Ares, Hades, Athena, Apollo, and the rest were all lustful, jealous, cruel, and unpredictable. Zeus, especially, had thunderbolts; Poseidon inflicted earthquakes; Apollo, plagues.

But as Greek culture advanced, this worldview evolved. By the Periclean Age, many Greek stories and plays portrayed humans challenging the gods. At the same time, the Greeks evolved their system of values toward a braver, smarter lifestyle. They began trying to explain the world in ways that left room for people to understand and manipulate at least some of the events in their world. Once their worldview included those possibilities, they began to create action plans that enabled humans to cause, hasten, or forestall events in the world. They tried out the daring plans; when some worked, more daring plans followed. (Edith Hamilton articulates these ideas well.²)

                                                                                                                                                   

                                                    Aristophanes, Greek comic playwright

It is important to see that human individuals and groups will normally not attempt any action they consider taboo. Ancient tribes who happened upon an action that seemed contrary to or outside of what was appropriate for humans in their worldview only grew upset and fearful. Whether the action obtained promising results or not, the only thing most of those people wanted to learn was how to avoid putting themselves in the same situation again. They sought to avoid it for fear of bringing the gods’ wrath down on them. Once in a long while, a genius might question his society’s worldview and even describe an alternative one, but he often paid dearly for such audacity—by being ostracized or put to death.

 

                                

                                                             Euripides, Greek tragic playwright

However, changes in a society’s worldview and then in the society’s values and morés can also evolve more gradually, helped by many lesser geniuses. By the Golden Age of Athens, writers, artists, and philosophers were attempting all kinds of things that only a few centuries earlier would have been unthinkable. Their worldview had evolved to allow for at least some degree of human free will. The works of Euclid, Plato, Euripedes, Archimedes, and Aristotle could only have been produced under a worldview in which a person could conceive of actions challenging the orthodox beliefs of the tribe and even the forces of the universe, even though the challenge might rarely succeed. At the same time, their neighbours, the Spartans, were evolving their destructive society, the perfect military state. The clash called the Peloponnesian War was inevitable, and Athens lost. A few years later, the Macedonians out-Spartanned the Spartans, and after another generation or two, the Romans ended the matter by conquering them all.

                                              Artist’s conception of a Roman warrior

Thus in Western history, the next important worldview is the Roman one. Operating under it, people became even more practical, more focused on physical effectiveness and power, and less interested in or even aware of ideas considered for their own sake. Among many of the early Romans, this feeling expressed itself in a hatred of all things Greek; the truth was that the Romans borrowed much from the Greeks, especially in theoretical knowledge, but they loathed having to admit it.

In their heyday, the Romans no longer feared the gods in the way the ancient Greeks and the Romans’ own ancestors once had. As the republic faded and the empire took over, the Romans turned so far from earlier thinking that they lost much of the Greek, especially the Athenian, capacity for abstract things—wonder, idealism, pure geometry, philosophical speculation, and flights of imagination. The Romans built their state on Athenian-style, democratic principles, values, and behaviors, but like the Spartans, they loved results and power, not speculation.

                                            Pont du Gard: Roman aqueduct in present-day France