I like SezMe's suggestion that I try to find a place where I can place my whole series for viewing as a single unit and just link to that in the OP of a separate thread. If I find a place where I can deposit the whole series, that option would be very attractive.
In the meantime, I'm proceeding with Plan A, unless/until I find a place for the whooooooooooooooole thing.
Enclosed is the third installment.
Cheers,
Stone
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[enclosure]
Chief Milestones in Social Reform
My own take is that there is some degree of evidence for any number of things that may be unlikely. But the question in each case is, Is it strong evidence or poor evidence? Not all evidence is automatically strong. At the same time, even if evidence is poor, it can still be counted as evidence. Just evidence for ... what? If certain evidence is duly weighed by peers and found to be lacking in buttressing one particular argument -- argument A -- that only means that that evidence is poor in sufficiently buttressing argument A. It is still useful in buttressing argument B, particularly if argument B convincingly disposes of argument A. It is simply that it is evidence that has been misinterpreted to mean one thing when it more likely meant another. So it is poor evidence in what it may be used to argue for. But it is still evidence, since it is evidence for something else that is being overlooked. That's why it still constitutes evidence. If it's not strong evidence for one thing, it makes sense to determine what it is indeed strong evidence for. One simply interprets it differently than at first. After all, evidence, whether poor or strong, doesn't simply go away -- unless you're George Orwell or Josef Stalin or David Irving, of course. Does it make sense to just dismiss evidence out of hand without proper scrutiny? Of course not. It is still useful evidence down the road for arguing B, even if trying to argue A with it has not panned out.
Now, I'd guess that moral/ethical codes are an inevitable development for any intelligent species that's also dependent on socialization of any kind, the way humanity clearly is. That guess alone got me interested in turn in all countercultural manifestations throughout the ages of socially frowned on expressions of solidarity with the helpless and the left out, as well as non-violence, as a way forward when a society reaches an impasse. Here's a rough rundown of the chief milestones in humanity's attempts at improving stability and community:
1. Mesalim of 3rd-millennium-B.C.E. Sumeria hearkens to the centrality of peace as the spine to all social values (and he institutes the worship of a deity, Ningirsu, who's conceived as a powerful god who safeguards all peace treaties);
2. Urukagina, the Sumerian reformer, presides over the establishment of protections for the treatment of the socially downscale and the introduction of the concept "freedom" ["amagi", the first known introduction of this term] (and he reconceives Ningirsu as the safeguard of "the widow and the orphan" [the first known use of this turn of phrase], thus instituting a new form of worship);
3. In Exodus, God's exchange with Moses introduces the notion that those who are afflicted and oppressed deserve the most respect and consideration of all (and Exodus signals the worship of a new god, Yahweh, who has "surely seen the affliction of my people .. and have heard their cry .. And I am come down to deliver them" --- in contrast to most other gods of that period who safeguard the mighty instead);
4. The I Ching introduces the fundamental concept of Yin and Yang ([the writer is thought by some to be a certain Wen Wang] --- this text also introduces something called "Tian" [loose translation: "Heaven"] as a metaphysical bulwark of all that is);
5. Hesiod, nicknamed "hearth-founder" for the first conscientiously designed Constitution in the Western tradition, institutes the groundbreaking Constitution of Orchomenus (and he also introduces into literature the classic picture of the cosmos as conceived in ancient Greek tradition, with its pantheon of gods like Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, and so on, as spelled out in his Theogony);
6. The writer of the Tao-te-king, called Lao-Tzu, establishes conventional wisdom as automatically suspect and the powerful's use of the jackboot (so to speak) as intrinsically antithetical to all nature (and this text also introduces a new form of worship, Taoism, which worships the Dao as [paraphrase] "the mystical source and ideal of all existence: it is unseen, but not transcendent, immensely powerful yet supremely humble, being the root of all things")
7. Buddha/Siddhartha, the originator of the sermons in the Digha-Nikaya, the earliest Buddhist text, introduces the utter repudiation of any and all violence whatsoever and a rejection of a caste system and of any system that imposes any types of discriminatory levels on the human family at all (and these sermons also re-conceive a new Brahma, a deity now "free of anger, pure of mind, free of malice, without wealth and free of worldly cares", capable of union with and inspiration of a sequence of "messengers" who "regard all with mind set free, and deep-felt pity, ... sympathy, ... equanimity");
8. Confucius/Kong-fut-ze introduces the primacy of reining in the arrogance and violence of those in power, at a time when civil violence threatens to destroy all of China for good, advocating a new-minted reciprocal and considerate reform in political life instead, thus shaping the extraordinarily peaceful and stable culture of the Han dynasty (and he also introduced the concept that all moral strength comes ultimately from "Tian", a new wrinkle on the "Tian" of the I Ching);
9. Socrates introduces ethics itself as the most important element in humanity's existence, together with a claimed capacity for anyone, from freeman to slave, to grasp it and master it better through continually sharpening self-knowledge (and he also introduces his conviction that he can sometimes hear God's own voice, when being dissuaded from a course of action that would not be right);
10. Christ/Jesus, as described in Josephus, Tacitus, the Mishnah, the 7 authentic Paulines and the Synoptic Gospels, introduces service to all and living purely for others, even loving one's enemies, in expectation of the last being first and the first last (and these texts also revive a Yahweh concept that is oriented toward the poor and the vulnerable);
11. John Locke introduces the primacy of personal validation using the senses and repeated experiment as the way to knowing, thus introducing Empiricism as the foundational outlook of modern man, alongside the importance of life and liberty as paramount to a just society (and he also, it's sometimes forgotten, is one of the chief expounders of Deism as a way out from organized religion and a new way of understanding God);
12. Baha''u'lla'h introduces a nuts-and-bolts path to total world peace in our modern world, and the first conception, within a combined political/theological context, of our globe as a single village long before other politicians ever take up this idea (and he also re-introduces the modern world to a then-new conception of deity as the inspirer of a sequence of "messengers", thereby introducing a new form of worship, Bahai).
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