Solon

Let me begin with a simple tale from the past and then slowly work my way to the heavy dissertation that my mind has prepared for my worthy gentlefolk. They say the statesman Solon was on a journey through Egypt when he arrived at Sais, that ancient city of the Goddess Neith, who legends say had spun a tapestry of blessings on its antique walls. Now the man was stretched thin with the travails of the travels and was in no hurry to place another step ere his parched throat had found sweet water. So he hurried to the temple of the Goddess where he met the Grand priest, of whom he importuned a pitcher of water to drink.

Now in those days, men who knew their letters were inclined to discuss the world and its will; Perhaps talk of natural philosophy as it was called back in the day. Whatever be the case morals were flung like cards on the table and every man went home supposedly wiser, or so it has been portrayed.

Anyway, the two men sat in the quiet of the sanctuary hoping that they could trade what words of wisdom they knew. The priest, in particular, was a masterful orator it turned out, with him transporting the twain to the old days of Pyrrha whose mother had opened the fabled box of misery and blight, and that old king Phoroneus who as the tales say had brought us fire. But the man’s narrative had space enough to include the tales of several other famous men and women who walked the world before the deluge with such precision and form that the marvelled Solon dropped to his knees as he attempted to count the generations of lore the priest had related. Seeing him bring forth his fingers like a tyke the old priest smiled and replied, “Oh Solon, you Hellenes are yet in the infancy of your mind. Count me one grey beard amongst you whose eyes can reminisce the old days and I shall have Neith bless them and yea.”

“I believe wise priest that not one of my fellow Greeks can look as far back across the yard as you did?”, Solon replied evidently struck by the man’s stateliness in the narration of the antiquities.

“The thing about wine or human thought for that matter,” said the priest raising a toast, “is with age it only gets better and more cured of blandness. And this is why I find your kind lacking in that treatment a thing of concern. I have yet to meet a Hellene who has his reaches far in the past. And truth is, I attribute it to the two elements, fire and water.”

“Fire and water?”, asked the confounded statesman. The priest smiled profoundly and nodded.

Solon found this statement very perplexing but knowing the man’s mettle he awaited in silence to be assuaged by some fine reasoning of his. “Your myth of Phaeton is the prime example for instance. The child of the Sun-god steals his chariot goes too close to the world and burns it in flames. It is an amusing tale as much as it is an analogy of the torment that the element brings.

And then there is the tale of Deucalion’s deluge. How he witnessed the age of Bronze wiped by the flood of Zeus. That is how water plays its part.

Now my ancient land is blessed with the Nile, so no amount of fire can ever harm its verdant banks. And neither does the land of Khem receive aught of rainfall so there lies no question of a flood. Thus antiquity lays bare all her secrets on our walls without having to fear the ravages of fire or water.”

And thus Solon was satisfied, but I was not. I understand that all these figurative talks have some nuanced meaning underlying them and it is of import that I dwell less on the verbatim and more on ideas and feelings it evokes in me, but truth be told I still felt a need to dive deep in this. So I decided to mull over the issue and arrive at what conclusions that were satisfactory enough to me.

Look, as far as I can gaze back the only thing that I have relied upon without a doubt of faith are the words that I learnt over the years. Somehow my dysfunctional existence was abetted by these monologues I had with myself for hours. In order that my soliloquies had some plinth to build upon I began to take the aid of old bearded men who had died ages ago, ere I was even there to witness the world. Now the thing about these ancient curmudgeons is that they were very particular about their rivets.

“Rivets?” You must ask confounded. Let me expand on that last line a thimbleful.

I shall begin by deconstructing everything that exists and then I shall unartfully do God’s job in a span of minutes. I shall however not bypass the fundamental inquiry which ontological inclinations make us do while also choosing to not be explicit about it.

Let us say truth is concrete. Let us assume likewise that while the antecedent immutable reality of truth (I shall explain it soon) has not been backed by sufficient evidence yet some form of an objective incorruptible entity must exist that shall both envelop all beings capable of thought and also hold strings of their fate. All the property that this entity hath shall be labelled truth. Also, this entity need not prove its usefulness since all its desirability is a quality intrinsic to it.

Where do I go from here?

Well, my options are narrow and as is known I shall try to emulate this truth, hoping that in seeking it I shall perhaps increase my chances at longevity. True that my senses are unsure as to why I must please the elements (which are naught but the attributes of the truth in question) but something intrinsic to me tells me I should. Something that is ingrained in the very fibre of my being and it tells me I must try to understand this truth because it is desirable anyway. Now as I have established the truth I am trying to understand, being immutable, is independent of my knowledge of it, neither has my awareness of it got anything to do with the purpose I have in mind for it since its immutability precedes my intention to know it. I seek it simply because I have to.

Now I am armed with two things to put into perspective the attributes that this entity holds, translating thus into how close a description I can form of this truth. It is with these two tools that I shall try to seek this absolute truth that is desirable to me. The first, my emotions are the product of my sensibilities churning in the machine that is my mind. The second the words with which I form the instrument of art with which I shall label things and discern the truth. These two fundaments shall help me build a scaffolding of thought that shall then branch and grow as my understanding of the antecedent immutable reality of truth begins turning concrete.

Further, there are two methods to understand these truths if art and words are to be considered. The first is through the study and development of the appendages of natural philosophy and the second through practical observations. I shall not dwell on which of these two methods should take a higher place in the pedestal of normative considerations since that in itself shall occupy the space of another article and therefore I shall focus on the utilities of the aforesaid.

So far I am doing great methinks, but some people shall still find a thing or two lacking in my machinery of discernment. Take Hobbes for example. The man wrote that our senses decay once the stimuli that causes movement within us is gone. This decay leads to what I would prefer terming as perversion. Thus truth shall always be distorted no matter how well I peel my eyes. This knowledge makes my scaffolding slightly weaker in itself and therefore I must rely on some alternative to strengthen it. As I have related to you before, the scaffolding of human thought is made of emotions and words(or art as some may put it) where the emotions form its matter and the words act as rivets that hold the structure together. The more the words, the more the props for a thought to form a neat picture that approaches truth, thus establishing why rivets were such a thing amongst the old men I mentioned of ere. But it goes beyond this.

If each man produces his own scaffolding of thought, combined they must form something even more remarkable and of grander scale. Imagine all these seekers of truth coming together with their own attempts at explanations of reality. But with their versions of truth, they also bring their perversions on the table making thus our reliance on the rivets even more pertinent. This relativism is in of itself a vast domain to ponder upon but I digress. Also, this compels us to share images of reality making us agree on some universals.

If I were to agree with Kant for a while concerning human reasoning, I shall be wont to expose myself to the idea that there are some universals which all our rational banter collectively agrees upon. We all agree that to kill someone who poses us no harm is a crime. Or it is wrong to, if not lie, spread misinformation. And there is a good reason for it. Everything that is man-made is said to be artificial. If I were to apply the same ideology to a colony of ant all the spit and slime that is used to build the anthill would be to the ant-Socrates an artificial construct. K-ant (apologies for this excuse of a pun) would then state, “It is imperative that some universals be agreed upon concerning all this artificial construct which the society of ants have built.”

It seems our spit and slime are the tales we use to build the human society. And to preserve its scaffolding certain universals have to be agreed upon. Which Kant artfully calls the categorical imperative. Upon these imperatives, the society of man forms his contract. Together the scaffolding of thought and these categorical imperatives create what we call a culture. An element of the culture is called a meme. And memes can be transferred by heredity just like genes.

In the vicinity lies my interpretation of the Hand of Sabazios. This odd-looking hand is an element of culture, a meme that was passed in the ancient world giving us wonderful stories and myths and gods and new words like Deus and Zeus. I cannot count how many Gods from how many more civilizations have been represented at some point of time by this hand. This hand dear gentlefolk is a strange element of culture that exemplifies how shared and small and predictable our existence is.

Speaking of small, predictable existence I must cascadingly ponder on how fragile our world is. Which brings into mind the two elements of destruction the priest spoke of, fire and water.

Phaeton’s fire is an appendage of that magnanimous element.

Phaeton the son of the Sun-god Apollo was wagered by his friends to prove that he was indeed the son of God. So he coaxed his father into handing him the solar chariot which he couldn't handle well putting every mortal in danger of burning by the sun’s glare. In the end, Zeus struck him with the lightning bolt that killed him.

Now here comes my interpretation. Apollo was the God of Wisdom in the ancient world, the light that enlightened, the bringer of reason. It was through him that truth was realized. And his son was a Demigod, a middle ground between God and man. And relying upon all that I have related so far it can be assumed that Apollo is truth and Phaeton our interpretation of truth albeit perverted. And Phaeton’s fatal gamble our attempt at emulating the truth even though we are aware of the failure that will eventually be our fate.

Thus Phaeton’s path is that of err and an internal mechanism of injury at that. I call it internal because this kind of destruction has more to do with the untamed emotions(the matter of our scaffolding of thoughts) with which we hope to admire and please the truth and imitate its perfection. This pathetic attempt at emulation is what leads to the destruction of the worlds we have so carefully built.

The priest next spoke of a deluge. The deluge which Deucalion witnessed from the mound. This is the destruction that happens from the outside. The story of the deluge is common to many cultures. God the imparter of wisdom has made humans who eventually become corrupt. Whatever they acquire inside their minds is corrupt. Their culture is corrupt. And thus God wipes the entire humanity out of the face of the earth with a flood. But this flood has more to do with the rivets than anything else if you ask me.

I have reasons to assume that when Zeus witnessed the Bronze age heading towards deprecation it was something he had anticipated from the start. Let us take the other instrument which man has to access truth. I always place faith in the art of natural philosophy since what it acquires even if by the method of empiricism is yet a contender to become concrete and near-perfect description of truth. But the fact remains that while natural philosophy in itself is an object without flaw the one who applies it is full of it.

It cannot be emphasized more how natural philosophy is still apathetic to the mould wherein all the scaffolding of the human thoughts are shaped. In its search for concreteness the props it secures is rigid and heading towards a direction which owing to its marked success at arriving near man’s desirable truth leads to nought but accumulation. This accumulation will soon manifest itself as a flood. A deluge that wipes the very thing that conceived it.

Thus the priest’s elements, these two appendages of destruction are in truth the very two appendages of the man whose search for truth eludes him further from the path of discerning the truth whose inherent appeal he is so unexplainably drawn to. And it is only from swinging to either extreme or avoiding them altogether that the walls in the city of Sais stood long enough for them to bear witness to the annals of history, with Phaeton’s fire and Deucalion’s deluge becoming nothing more than mere props to be spread via eloquent words and poesies.

Written and illustrated by Ashish Pai