The Sophists: The Roots of Modern Media
They say history repeats itself. It's easy to visualize the cycle as a circular timeline upon which we walk, trapped in an endless revolution. What one must take into account, however, is that we come back to these events for introspection and reformation. The cycle is a spiral — not a circle. The cycles repeat themselves so that we may form deeper and deeper relationships with ourselves and reform 'what it means to be human' as we swim through the ebbs and flows of time.
I believe we are currently swimming through a 'time-wave' set in motion about 2400 years ago in Ancient Greece. You see, the ancient philosophers contended with a society much like our own.
Ancient Greece, around 400 BC, was a clusterfuck of conflicting imperatives. Much like today, it was a time of crises and transformation. The culture was struggling to survive its own birth in an atmosphere of deceit and hyperbole. Wealth, military force, public favor and economic or social power were being concentrated into the hands of the few. The elite were keen on orchestrating public spectacles — that is, distracting the populous with hypnotic narrations and performances. Countless amounts of money and favor were poured into entertainment, specifically to illicit emotional responses from the crowds, i.e. anger, lust, laziness, helplessness, enthusiasm, egoic grandiosity, etc.
Sophists and Rhapsodes
Those who performed feats of oration and wisdom for public spectacle were known as 'Sophists', and they went hand in hand with those who practiced performing arts — the 'Rhapsodes'. Now, the sophists were a particular bunch of silver-tongued devils. Paid to serve their clientele, the sophists were wordsmiths capable of impressing people with the arts of language. They were there to fascinate or compel eager audiences who ‘hung upon their every word’, or as lawyers and advocates for those who, having deprived themselves of humanity or honor, required defense. They worked their lips for profit and attention, or even adulation. Such ‘mouthpieces’ are are seductive ‘by purpose and nature’, and are expert with the production and delivery of ‘powerful’ clichés that easily beguile the ignorant and those incapable or too overwhelmed to detect the empty void inside their produce. They can make a tragedy into a comedy, and a murder into a cause for jubilation.
Many sophists are trained experts in sophisticated (lit. ‘wisdomicated’) speech whose roots are manipulative and professional; rather than heartfelt or trustworthy. Nearly all politicians are as they long were, sophists. But in Athens, a skillful sophist could be hired by anyone for any purpose whatsoever. A Citizen who had raped the minor daughter of a slave in public could employ a Sophist to casually spread compelling stories, each one unique, to various people throughout the marketplace, and these phony eggs would soon hatch maggots that exploded throughout ‘the social network’. Soon, our villain would be well known to be ‘a true hero’, and those he had victimized would disappear or be cruelly defamed.
As for the Rhapsodes, many of these are blameless, and some, indeed, heroic. Essentially, they were performing artists, actors, singers of tales and such. But there are a number of sub-species of rhapsode that were and are today blatantly corrupt or malignant; they who intend to produce and leverage strong emotions in people whose lives and relationships are deprived of them — on command.
Ancient philosophers were weary of these degenerative forms of entertainment and wordplay, and recognized the dangers they presented. The insights developed within the ancients Agoras, open and inclusive assemblies where free thinkers gathered to seek the truths of existence together, differed from the feats of oration and wisdom performed for emotional response. Ancient philosophers recognized these hyperbolic counterfeits for what they were, and also that those who propagated them were the natural opponents of truth and wisdom.
The True Philosophers
Philo: to adore and be for. Sophia: wisdom, insight, truth and learning. To be a philosopher is to be one seeking to see, to learn, to truly understand.
The philosophers in Athens at the time of Socrates were unique men and women, children, and were often simply ordinary people. The word means something like ‘to be for truth and insight’. This is not a status or a title (though it may be used this way); a philosopher ‘comes to life’ where and whenever someone is seeking an experience of learning and insight, understanding or awareness. And with this comes an adoration for and recognition of the nonordinary nature and experience of Truth. Not as a possession or achievable goal… as a living direction for travel — toward and into, as and for.
So the philosophers were not any kind of church, school or a social group, but rather, they were people of all races and classes who were seekers of learning, understanding, communal intelligence, and excellence. As relatively few of them could be dominated, corrupted or bought, they were valued as fountains from which waters unpoisoned might be drawn. Indeed, after Athens executed Socrates for causing trouble in the power structure, they made him a God.
Here we must distinguish between the purposes that imbue our innate and passionate thirst for learning (and wise correction) against its many pretenders and opposites: stimulation for the sake of deception or entertainment, intoxication, mimicry and simulation, recreation, display, coercion, deception, hyperbole, and other undesirables. In these distinctions we may observe the crucial ‘difference’ between the true expression or resemblance of our humanity or intelligence… and most or all of common idea, language, ‘art’, thought, commerce, and opinion.
And from this emergent dichotomy, our modern crises stem... Those who speak for duplicitous or invented purposes ‘have a tongue that lies professionally’. Our cultures are ignorant of this matter; and are inclined to celebrate its avatars; and we are thus subject to the endless emergence of deadly repercussions that would in any even modestly intelligent culture be both unthinkable and impossible.
