Equality and History
In the interests of discussion concerning the election and some ideas that get bandied about here from time to time, I thought I’d post one of my very favorite quotes. This comes from a wonderful book about the Heroic Myths of the Greeks, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso. I recommend this to anyone struggling with mythology and origin motifs and the history of so many things Hellenic we take for granted. Anyway, this quote is one of those “obvious” things we usually forget about when dealing at a fever pitch with, you know, equality.
Equality only comes into being through initiation. It does not exist in nature, and society wouldn’t be able to conceive of the idea if it weren’t structured and articulated by initiation. Later, there comes a moment when equality is geared into history and thence marches on and on until the unsuspecting theorists of democracy imagine they have discovered it—and set it against initiation, as though it were its opposite.
