Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis
Posted: September 23rd, 2009, 10:20 pm
The way I understand it is this: someone gets an idea—thesis—and this idea is disseminated and implemented for a time. Then someone gets another idea, which may or may not be in direct opposition to the first idea—a countering idea—but may simply be an alternative idea—antithesis. There then may be an ideological struggle, a “war” if you will, as these two coexisting ideas are tossed around within the culture. There need not be any real conflict. It may be more akin to a popularity contest, these two ideas coexisting until one supplants the other. A third possibility exists, however. Someone gathers together components of both ideas and forges a new idea which is like unto but not the same as either of the earlier two—synthesis.
Ever since I took History of Christianity in college, this has been my view of what Jesus did, whether he was a man who actually existed or a character in a fictionalized account. This has been my view of Christianity. Not the religion as it exists today, but the popular movement it was in its infancy. Christianity, for its first three hundred years, was not a religion per se. It was more like the underground drug culture which burgeoned in the Sixties. It was dangerous, illegal. You could be arrested for practicing it, deprived of property, liberty, even life. So when I say Christianity was a synthesis of existing thesis and antithesis, I don’t mean Christianity as it is known today. I mean Christianity as it was then.
It may be arguable which was thesis and which was antithesis, but even in Pontius Pilate’s day (a man known to have actually existed), there was a schism between East and West. There was an Eastern and a Western way of doing things, each based in an Eastern and a Western way of thinking, of conceptualizing the world we all live in. This schism predates Christianity.
In the East today as then, the mode of living is one of subsuming individual will within collective will. The individual is to realize his or her place within the collective and supplant his or her own wants and needs with those of the group. The caste system in ancient India is one result of this idea. The present non-innovative spirit in China is another. When personal ambition is culturally inhibited, both technological innovation and social mobility suffer. One is conditioned to accept one’s place, one’s station in life, and to leave it at that. Annihilation of ego is offered as a means of bearing this immutable reality.
In the West, another paradigm took precedence, that of individual will. Individual achievement—will; the Greek arête, or excellence—was paramount, and the group was seen to collectively benefit from such individual achievement. The collective was supplemented by the individual, rather than the individual supplanted by the collective. While there was a social hierarchy, there was no rigid caste system. One could climb the steps of the social ladder. Indeed, a slave in ancient Rome could be manumitted to free status and rise all the way to a seat in the Senate. Rather than being stifled, innovation thrived in such a climate. And while gunpowder and paper both were invented in the East, it was only their importation to the West that allowed for their present worldwide implementation.
So clearly there were two coexisting ways of thinking and being in the time of Christ. There was an Eastern way and a Western way, a thesis and an antithesis. The new idea put forth by Jesus and his early followers, it seemed to me as I studied, was a synthesis of these two earlier ideas.
I found evidences of this synthesis in my reading.
The Lord’s Prayer was one. In the New Testament this comes in the book of Matthew, chapter 6, following verses 5 and 6, in which Jesus admonishes his followers not to pray like hypocrites who do it in public so they may be seen, but to do it in private. He then goes on to say that when they pray they should say…and he recites the Lord’s Prayer. When I read this, I thought, “Here’s a guru giving his class their mantra.”
Another evidence was the way early Christians are said to have lived, in communal groups not organized along familial lines, pooling resources and incomes, calling each other brother and sister—living collectively, in other words—all while maintaining their own individual will through the idea of a personal relationship with God through Jesus. There were no priests or bishops in the early Church, no pope to appease or appeal to, no necessary intermediaries. It was all about you praying alone in your room, like meditating or doing yoga. And the fellowship, the living together part, originally that was all secondary. It was a collective expression of what you individually gained from your own unique experience of and relationship to divinity.
Both of these struck me as examples of synthesis: an amalgam of Eastern and Western ways of thinking and doing; of being, in other words.
So what went wrong?
Well, one can only speculate, but the short answer is politics.
The emperor Constantine seized on Christianity as the thing to weld together his empire, which was itself suffering an incipient schism, and the popular movement that was Christianity became a religion. Synthesis died on the vine, so to speak. The new idea became simply the newest part in the political machinery of the old idea, and the empire was preserved even to this day, albeit in a different form. Human culture reverted back to the same old thesis and antithesis, and we’ve been looking for synthesis again ever since. For the most part, at least.
But now there’s this new idea, this new thesis which isn’t synthesis at all. It’s really a new antithesis.
What is this new idea?
Non-thesis; no thesis; nothingness. There is no God. There never was a devil. God is the bogeyman and neither one of them exist. Somehow this is considered preferable; it’s thought of as progress, but it seems sort of retrograde to me.
Peace,
Barry
Ever since I took History of Christianity in college, this has been my view of what Jesus did, whether he was a man who actually existed or a character in a fictionalized account. This has been my view of Christianity. Not the religion as it exists today, but the popular movement it was in its infancy. Christianity, for its first three hundred years, was not a religion per se. It was more like the underground drug culture which burgeoned in the Sixties. It was dangerous, illegal. You could be arrested for practicing it, deprived of property, liberty, even life. So when I say Christianity was a synthesis of existing thesis and antithesis, I don’t mean Christianity as it is known today. I mean Christianity as it was then.
It may be arguable which was thesis and which was antithesis, but even in Pontius Pilate’s day (a man known to have actually existed), there was a schism between East and West. There was an Eastern and a Western way of doing things, each based in an Eastern and a Western way of thinking, of conceptualizing the world we all live in. This schism predates Christianity.
In the East today as then, the mode of living is one of subsuming individual will within collective will. The individual is to realize his or her place within the collective and supplant his or her own wants and needs with those of the group. The caste system in ancient India is one result of this idea. The present non-innovative spirit in China is another. When personal ambition is culturally inhibited, both technological innovation and social mobility suffer. One is conditioned to accept one’s place, one’s station in life, and to leave it at that. Annihilation of ego is offered as a means of bearing this immutable reality.
In the West, another paradigm took precedence, that of individual will. Individual achievement—will; the Greek arête, or excellence—was paramount, and the group was seen to collectively benefit from such individual achievement. The collective was supplemented by the individual, rather than the individual supplanted by the collective. While there was a social hierarchy, there was no rigid caste system. One could climb the steps of the social ladder. Indeed, a slave in ancient Rome could be manumitted to free status and rise all the way to a seat in the Senate. Rather than being stifled, innovation thrived in such a climate. And while gunpowder and paper both were invented in the East, it was only their importation to the West that allowed for their present worldwide implementation.
So clearly there were two coexisting ways of thinking and being in the time of Christ. There was an Eastern way and a Western way, a thesis and an antithesis. The new idea put forth by Jesus and his early followers, it seemed to me as I studied, was a synthesis of these two earlier ideas.
I found evidences of this synthesis in my reading.
The Lord’s Prayer was one. In the New Testament this comes in the book of Matthew, chapter 6, following verses 5 and 6, in which Jesus admonishes his followers not to pray like hypocrites who do it in public so they may be seen, but to do it in private. He then goes on to say that when they pray they should say…and he recites the Lord’s Prayer. When I read this, I thought, “Here’s a guru giving his class their mantra.”
Another evidence was the way early Christians are said to have lived, in communal groups not organized along familial lines, pooling resources and incomes, calling each other brother and sister—living collectively, in other words—all while maintaining their own individual will through the idea of a personal relationship with God through Jesus. There were no priests or bishops in the early Church, no pope to appease or appeal to, no necessary intermediaries. It was all about you praying alone in your room, like meditating or doing yoga. And the fellowship, the living together part, originally that was all secondary. It was a collective expression of what you individually gained from your own unique experience of and relationship to divinity.
Both of these struck me as examples of synthesis: an amalgam of Eastern and Western ways of thinking and doing; of being, in other words.
So what went wrong?
Well, one can only speculate, but the short answer is politics.
The emperor Constantine seized on Christianity as the thing to weld together his empire, which was itself suffering an incipient schism, and the popular movement that was Christianity became a religion. Synthesis died on the vine, so to speak. The new idea became simply the newest part in the political machinery of the old idea, and the empire was preserved even to this day, albeit in a different form. Human culture reverted back to the same old thesis and antithesis, and we’ve been looking for synthesis again ever since. For the most part, at least.
But now there’s this new idea, this new thesis which isn’t synthesis at all. It’s really a new antithesis.
What is this new idea?
Non-thesis; no thesis; nothingness. There is no God. There never was a devil. God is the bogeyman and neither one of them exist. Somehow this is considered preferable; it’s thought of as progress, but it seems sort of retrograde to me.
Peace,
Barry
