In these pages we have written often about the fundamental difference between the Western world view and that of the Eastern realm, and by extension between the Platonian and Aristotelian philosophy. East and West Rome of course, are both defunct, political entities, but its basic fundamentals live on in what is now the Germanic/Anglo-Saxon sphere and the cultures of the Greco-Roman cultural realm. History aside, we will go into the details shortly. The simplicity of the concept and its momentous implications are well worth going into at some length. We chanced upon a living example that illustrates these differences perfectly. When someone tells you that a coach "is pulling the best out of a player", how do you envision this happening?
Nov. 27, 2010 Greek state TV program Stin Ygeia Mas: Kotsiras sings Mikis.
Most Westerners will come up with a description of how the coach gave the player a serious talking to with motivational devices, or he made the player the subject of some psychological program. Or perhaps he bullied him into a better performance. The actual process takes place in the player's mind, that drives his physical performance. That would be the Platonian approach.
The Aristotelian world view will lead to quite another picture. In the video we see Greek singer Yannis Kotsiras tell the story how the great composer Mikis Theodorakis told him he had chosen him to perform his seminal work, "Axion Esti", an oratorio based on the Nobel awarded poem by Odysseas Elytes (more).
Unfortunately on the great day of the performance the singer fell ill for some reason. But the show must go on! In the video he is showing quite literally what he thinks happened to him that fateful day, what he envisions Theodorakis did to him so that he could perform.
"He put his hand in me, like this, and pulled my voice out of me".
Make no mistake! There is no abstraction, metaphor or allegory here. He is also not referring to mental or psychological processes. There may have been a few words of encouragement, but that is not how the singer experienced it. The Orthodox world by the way has quite a different anthropological approach to human physical and mental functions.
What happened here is the following. In the world view of Plato which has become the standard in the Western world over the last 2,000 years, the universe is divided into two dimensions: the perfect but immaterial world of concepts or ideas, versus the imperfect visible reality.
These two dimensions are separated by a invisible curtain which may be drawn back by some advanced people, but most of us remain in the imperfect world of material shadows. He illustrated that with his experiment of the allegorical cave.
In Plato’s exercise prisoners are chained in a cave, facing a wall on which shadows are projected by puppets behind them. The prisoners mistake these shadows for reality, unaware of the true world outside the cave.
March 17, 2015 TED-ed: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave - Alex Gendler.
Mark how elitist this idea is, full of contempt for the common people who are too stupid to understand reality (sounds familiar?). But put a pin in that.
Plato's assumptions about reality are reversed: shadows become 'true reality' and reality itself becomes a phantom experience. What's worse, it has taken Western religions to such abstract levels, that most do not even qualify as such anymore.
The other philosophy by contrast, that of Plato's follower Aristotle, has remained the standard of reality in the Greek enculturated world for over 2,200 years. It sees the world in the opposite manner.
In Aristotle's world the unseen, immaterial dimension and the seen material world of atoms and molecules are one and the same, an inseparable, integrated whole.
This integrated whole is reflected into the way the singer perceived what happened when the composer 'pulled his voice out of him'. There is no separation here of a material body and an abstract psychological process.
You could argue this is not anatomically correct. But that is beside the point. This is the meaning the singer took from the experience rather than separated physical and mental processes.
At this point it is not hard to see how Eastern Europe and the Western hemisphere live in two different universes that seem literally lightyears removed from each other.
Persons living in these fundamentally different worlds would necessarily come to varying conclusions about how to handle reality and how to solve problems.
What happened in the West -- and this also explains the current class war between the elites and the working class -- the level of abstract thinking, particularly in the (post) academic world, became entirely separated from those living and working in material reality.
Those living and working in the material world, either in construction related fields, or farmers who depend on real phenomena as soil and season, or any other reality-based professional, can't afford to live in ideological abstractions, because mistakes can't be deleted or wiped under the rug. Their mistakes are fatal for their profession in reality!
Unlike those who are working in abstractions behind desks in huge glass palaces paid for by tax payers, or in ivory towers, or behind lecterns, who are in grave danger of losing sight of reality.
Entire generations have by now have grown up in safe, risk averse, abstract environments, shielded from any dangers that are inherent to living in the reality of the material world.
If nothing is real, how can you expect problem solving capabilities of a people that have become so isolated from reality that the concept of good and bad (as in relation to being conducive to a good result) means nothing to them? You can't!
The path to the denial of anything being real takes time, in fact, it takes centuries of 'Enlightened Liberalism' to get the view that basically everything is unreal, just a concept in a persons mind and relative in the final equation.
I don't want to be pessimistic here, but it is clear that living in this false reality is fraught with all kinds of dangers. At first, progress will stagnate, then increasingly more serious mistakes will happen, the elites become incapable of assessing situations, realities will be denied and ignored, as nebulous ideas are being pursued as if their lives depended on it. Until the unthinkable happens and the entire mirage dissolves into nothingness.
The political re-alignment that is taking hold with the ascendency of the working class, Trumpian MAGA movement, may well be the lifeline the Western hemisphere needs to save itself from the abstract rule of the decadent elites and their ideologies.
Well, I just needed to point that out as a refugee from a Western country that has been on this subject for the better part of two decades. I am currently in the envious position of being able to look in from the perspective of the outsider.
Programming note
I would gladly have provided here the playlist of Theodorakis' oratorio, 'Axion Esti' as performed by Yannis Kotsiras which has since become the new standard; were it not that I scheduled it for these pages as a concert for Pascha. In the bleak of winter something beautiful to look forward to in spring! Our cultural plans for Christmas we are keeping a secret for now.
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