Relative paradigm shifts are occurring all the time as the natural consequence of the evolution of the history of humanity and because they occur over many decades they are slow and often subtle. I say relative paradigm shifts because I am not talking about anything as profound as Simple Reality; nevertheless those shifts do often involve the same principles that would accompany a shift from P-B to P-A. Our focus in this essay will be on the emotions, beliefs, attitudes and values that form the operational structure of each of the two paradigms. Notice how each paradigm drives a different set of behaviors. The same fundamental reality was true over two thousand years ago as it is today; i.e., a community’s narrative determines the identity of its members which in turn drives their behaviors.
We are going to compare the Hellenic Greeks (5th century B.C.) to the Hellenistic Greeks (323 B.C.-146 B.C.) looking for a worldview shift that reveals itself in the emotional expression, beliefs, attitudes and values of Greeks contained in the same cultural paradigm but several centuries apart. We will also call upon the observations and ideas of Dr. William Fleming, cultural historian and author of Arts and Ideas (1968).
The first principle is one of taking part in the creative process as an individual as opposed to being content to experience life vicariously as a spectator as many people do in America today. “Spectatorism” is disempowering in that we as humans are meant to create our own reality not watch life go by from the sidelines. In large part it becomes a matter of being an amateur (taking action for the love of it) vs. professionalism (taking action for the money or material gain). In the earlier Hellenic centers, poets, playwrights, and musicians were mainly skilled amateurs; even in sports the emphasis was on active participation. In the Hellenistic period, however, a rising spirit of professionalism is noted in the fame of individual writers, actors, virtuosos, and athletes, with the result that people became passive spectators rather than active participants. Dare we say it?—the advent of the couch potato.
In a matter of a few centuries we can see that the worldview and identity of the Greeks was shifting with a marked change in behavior. In the culture that gave birth to the principles of democracy, with each citizen taking an active part in the government of the city-state, there occurred during this time a general withdrawal from public affairs. This, in effect, denied the social responsibilities of citizenship and encouraged escapism and extreme individualism. What was emerging was an increased egotism or self-centered expression of the false self.
In American culture today with a disappearing middle class and an ever increasing income gap between rich and poor, we find the stability of society threatened as control of the government continues to be concentrated in the hands of the oligarchs. It may be hard to believe, considering how the greed inherent in the materialism of our culture has become so dominant, but it was not always so. Poverty had been deemed an honorable estate in ancient Athens where rich and poor lived as neighbors in modest homes.
The relatively healthier Hellenic paradigm continued to break down over time as the false self of individuals gained more influence and attitudes, beliefs and values changed. Hellenistic thought entered on a new emotional orientation. Instead of looking for the universal aspects of experience that could be shared by all, Hellenistic philosophers held that each man has his own feelings, ideas, and opinions entirely different from those of others. In this every-man-for-himself attitude, each must decide what is good and evil, true and false. Not looking for what individuals had in common but instead what differentiated them emphasized the illusion of the existence of the “other” and resulted in an increasingly fragmented society. This fragmentation within the Western world at large would be accelerated in the 19th century with Darwin’s ideas surrounding “survival of the fittest” in evolution and ideas surrounding the operation of Social Darwinism within human communities.
The principle of simplicity that characterized Hellenic society also began to fade as individual survival strategies were given more emphasis in the Hellenistic worldview. The increasing complexity and quicker pulse of Hellenistic life weakened the belief in the underlying unity of knowledge and abiding values that produced the poise of Hellenic figures [in sculpture] and the impassive calm of their facial expressions. Perhaps we have here the foreshadowing of the “speeding up” of human activity, multi-tasking and what today we could call the tyranny of technology.
Hellenistic philosophers also began to abandon faith in their natural intuition and yielded to an empiricism that was concerned more with science than wisdom [and] laid the philosophical basis for a scientific materialism. The striving for power, material wealth, and pleasure were, of course, present in the Hellenic Greek, it was just gradually becoming more dominant in the identity and behavior of the Hellenistic Greek.
Seeing this paradigm shift in an historical setting helps us understand what a paradigm shift looked like and also helps us understand that although such shifts are not created consciously, we can come to understand the basic components that would enable an individual or society to exercise control of such a shift if supported by a plan such as Simple Reality. The ancient Greeks were being swept along by the currents of history and their own human nature which they did not understand. We no longer have such an excuse.
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References and notes are available for this article.
For a much more in-depth discussion on Simple Reality, read Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival, by Roy Charles Henry, published in 2011.
