Picking up from yesterday’s writings, first a reminder that the TPPC acronym stands for ‘Time, Place, People and persons, Circumstance‘, as I have used in earlier entries. I now want to continue with the ‘structured authority’ concept introduced in the last paragraph yesterday.
Structured authority is omni present in our Western society in the form of the ‘Justice system’, our political system and by what is known as ‘law, order and good government’. These systems do not operate unchallenged even in our society today, as authority often gets challenged through our court system. Hence, authority is never unchallenged and needs to be maintained, must adapt and develop.
The idea of development references that our present system is the end result of a long process of ‘evolution’. This implies that humans started with a concept of justice and authority some time in the past. Each culture developed its own version of such a system, which functioned within the hierarchy of a state structure that was seen as given from on high.
Each culture developed its own version of such a system, which functioned within the hierarchy of a state structure that was seen as given from on high.
The highest authority in the Ancient states, such as Mesopotamia and the Egypt, was the High God. Today we call that religion, but the Ancient states simply saw that as their system of ‘law, order and good government’, with the higher power as the source of all authority.
Predating such ancient systems of authority was the casting of oracles, through which the will of the higher power was revealed. Difficult and potentially divisive decisions such as human sacrifice, were made through the casting of oracles by a shaman. His interpretations, as a person on the periphery of the community, was seen as the neutral voice of the higher power’s authority.
I suggest that we draw on the discoveries and the processes of those early human discoveries, as we make our own discoveries today in a process aimed at preventing the kind of bloodshed that occurs in our world today.
Applying the idea of functionality and that of the setting as defined by the TPPC parameters, we can make the following observations.
First we note the functionality of the authoritative structure. Both mentioned cases illustrate an authority that is once removed from the politics that plays within the community. This accepted position prevents disputing factions within the community from causing a dangerous split by disagreeing with the judgement’s results.
Second is the principle of time, place, people and circumstance [TPPC for short]. Through our modern researches in the fields of Archaeology, Anthropology and History, among others, we are able to come to a description of those four TPPC parameters. This assists us in understanding the discoveries made by those early societies in their process of managing and building their communities. An example of TPPC is that what we call religion now was just proper state authority back then, as mentioned above.
I suggest that we draw on the discoveries and the processes of those early human discoveries, as we make our own discoveries today in a process aimed at preventing the kind of bloodshed that occurs in our world today.
Is there something we could learn from those old boys? I ask!
<8:01pm~
