Multiple theme lines through time

[Stein]

It's remarkable how many theme lines are repeated through time as one traces the most inspiring moments and pioneers for social justice and contrasts that with the parallel pattern evident in the most monstrous examples of psychotic cruelty and social injustice. No one has yet been ambitious enough to place all 18 of these episodes on the screen or the stage or in the opera house as a single staggering saga comprising man's inhumanity -- and generosity -- to man. But it could become one of the greatest stories that art has ever tackled. I don't pretend to being anywhere near an accomplished film director or playwright or composer! But in the hands of the right genius, the multiple strands that connect these 18 "acts" together could acquire enormous cumulative power in a single work. I guess I think of this posting as a bottle dropped in the sea on the very slim chance that someone with real genius might be intrigued enough -- and young enough -- to find enough sheer time to shape this whole enormous saga together as a single masterpiece and decide to pluck this "bottle" out of the "sea" of the Internet in order to breathe artistic life into it and send it forth.

1. In ancient Sumeria, Mesalim becomes a peacemaker for Lagash and Umma, even helping to nudge forward the process of establishing worship of Ningirsu in Lagash as an attempted safeguard for peace. But Ush in Umma breaks the peace through the first incursion into Lagash following the treaty. It and later incursions are successfully repelled, but then, Lagash too becomes corrupt, with the usurpation of the priest-king Enetarzi, culminating in the extreme cruelty of Lugalanda. It takes the reformer Urukagina to remind Lagash of what Ningirsu expects of Lagash in caring for its weaker citizens, including the relief of whole families virtually indentured through crushing debts. But the first successful invasion from Umma by Lugalzagesi puts paid to Urukagina's dream, with Lugalzagesi ruthlessly despoiling all of Lagash, after which Sargon in turn invades and conquers the entire region and then crucifies Lugalzagesi at the city gates. (Credit where credit's due: I just found out that one writer has already tackled this opening episode as a stand-alone story, and it's viewable at http://www.shaunagm.net/blog/?p=328 .)

2. Slavery is maintained in Egypt for the Jews, but Moses inspires his people by reminding them, as Urukagina had, that Yahweh hears the cries of the afflicted; and his people ultimately escape bondage.

3. Indian worship of Brahma as all-powerful is compromised by a hereditary caste system imposed by the brahmins, which only adds to the cries of the afflicted instead of alleviating them. Brhaspati, in resentment against all the brahmins stand for, then rejects the hereditary caste system and also jettisons not only the brahmin belief in the divine Brahma but also the customary obligations toward feeding the indigent and sheltering the traveler, instead emphasizing the claims of those deemed more practical and more powerful in the real world.

4. Echoing Urukagina, Solon, a Greek thinker, is also haunted by the plight of whole families in debt, which compels him to institute many reforms, once he's in power in ancient Athens. Although his enlightened rule is subsequently overthrown by tyranny, little does he know that his reforms serve as the inspiration for the delayed inauguration of the world's first democracy, a generation later, and also located in Athens.

5. Buddha then redresses the effect of Brhaspati in India by restoring charity as central, although still rejecting the hereditary caste system, while also accepting Brahma as his deity and a moral absolute, but not as a creator or having any omniscience.

6. During the same period, Confucius, in a way reminiscent of the previous peace efforts of Mesalim, tries to stop the continual feuding in China. He helps introduce "What I do not wish done to me, I will not do to others" into the social equation.

7. Brhaspati's ideas travel to Greece after its democracy has been restored. But Critias eventually overturns the democracy, applying the Brhaspati "program" of rejecting the divine and exalting the powerful. He initiates the first known peacetime extermination carried out as part of a calculated doctrine. Although Critias is eventually killed in battle, the posthumous backlash against him and all skeptics ultimately proves fatal to his estranged tutor Socrates, who, ironically, is a believer in the divine, unlike Critias, and claims direct experience of a divine voice in childhood, as well as being one of the few courageous enough to have personally thumbed his nose at Critias and his periodic state lynchings. This doesn't save him from state execution.

8. The latent ruthlessness in ancient Greece's otherwise enlightened culture is ultimately adopted by its conqueror, Rome, who crushes half the civilized world under its jackboot, including one outpost where a gentle rabbi tries to restore the compact of his ancestor Moses with the afflicted and is executed by the Romans for his efforts. Confucius's central tenet is recalled in Jesus of Nazareth's new take: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Jesus's unjust crucifixion at the city gates contrasts with the infamous Lugalzagesi's end. Some Jesus followers then claim to have seen him alive after his execution, and they inaugurate the Christian faith.

9. The legacy of Jesus of Nazareth is perverted by Theodosius 1, who changes his predecessor Constantine's hands-off policy towards alternate houses of worship and instead initiates wholesale destruction of such temples. He issues decrees making Christianity a state religion, with all other forms of worship criminalized, including traditional pagan rituals inside one's private home. He is also persuaded by Ambrose to go easy on a Bishop who's incited a mob to destroy a Jewish synagogue. His reign marks the introduction of the jackboot into the Christian tradition.

10. The somewhat checkered career of Mohammed, beginning in periodic raids and military clashes with various tribes, in which even helpless prisoners are put to death by the hundreds, culminates in a renunciation of all further violence, with Mohammed abruptly traveling through the whole dangerous region with no weapons at all in a dedicated attempt to establish peace among the tribes, in a manner strongly reminiscent of Mesalim and Confucius. Islam starts with Mohammed.

11. Pope Gregory IX makes the persecution of Jews official, institutes the Inquisition, and issues a declaration sanctioning slavery as Yahweh's plan, thus facilitating slavery's export well beyond Europe and ultimately into the New World in 1619. A doctrine of racism is then developed to justify the perpetuation of New World slavery for the ensuing two hundred years.

12. After all this, an eventual rejection of Western Christian institutions culminates in Lord Cherbury's Deism and the subsequent calls by John Locke for life and liberty for all. Soon after, a bitterly disillusioned clergyman, Jean Meslier, calls for rejection of any concept of the divine and the collective extermination of all priests and the entire nobility.

13. Locke's and Meslier's two different perspectives later play out on the political stage, first at the American Revolution against the British empire with Jefferson's adoption, partly inspired by the example of ancient Athens' democracy, of Locke's life and liberty for all, and then at the French Revolution with Robespierre's adoption of Meslier's exterminationist "program", although Robespierre, in rejecting Meslier's atheism, is almost as ruthless in cracking down on all atheists.

14. The concept of social justice eventually gains greater currency through the examples of the American and French Revolutions. Karl Marx calls for the emancipation of the masses against an impervious capitalist class. And Leo Tolstoy dedicates his final years to a philosophy of non-violence.

15. While both philosophies are well-intentioned, they eventually play out in the next century with starkly different results. The Marxist dream is subverted by Stalin and his gruesome gulags, but Tolstoy inspires the non-violent movement by Gandhi against the oppression of the very same British empire that Jefferson fought against.

16. Oppression by Britain and others over a defeated Germany sews the seeds for the horrors of Hitler's Nazism and the extermination of six million Jews. In the ensuing struggle against the Axis powers, Truman yields to the temptation of gratuitously dropping a second atom bomb on Nagasaki even though a final surrender by the last holdout, Japan, is now imminent.

17. Racism is still alive and well even after slavery's official demise, and it takes the non-violent example of Martin Luther King, Jr., following in Jesus's and Gandhi's footsteps, to break the back of the Jim Crowe laws. Similarly, after much suffering, Nelson Mandela, a victim of and a struggler against the racism of apartheid in South Africa, rises above the violence of his time and, once in power, forgives his oppressors, aiming to make peace between enemies, like Mesalim, as well as emancipate the afflicted from their suffering, like Urukagina.

18. However, Urukagina's nemesis Lugalzagesi, and Lugalzagesi's scorched-earth cruelty in Lagash, is recalled, when Osama Bin Laden, a follower of Islam who ignores Mohammed's ultimate legacy as a peacemaker, commits genocide in Pennsylvania, New York, Washington, Bali, London, Madrid, and elsewhere. He ends up gunned down by a detachment of Navy seals in 2011.

Following is a Dramatis Personae for the entire saga, indicating with pluses, equals and minuses which figures move humanity forward, which ones are mixed, and which ones move humanity backward:


Mesalim +
Ush -
Enetarzi -
Lugalanda -
Urukagina +
Lugalzagesi -
Sargon =
Moses +
Brhaspati -
Solon+
Buddha +
Confucius +
Critias -
Socrates +
Christ +
Theodosius I -
Mohammed =
Gregory IX -
Cherbury =
Locke +
Meslier -
Jefferson =
Robespierre -
Marx =
Tolstoy +
Stalin -
Gandhi =
Hitler -
Truman =
King +
Mandela +
Bin Laden -


Thoughts?

Cheers,

Stein

[Pappa]

Why those 18 in particular?

[Stein]

Why those 18 in particular?

Two reasons -- and I thought I made it clear:

They represent the very best and the very worst in humanity, and

There are uncanny parallels running throughout both groups -- our best and our worst -- that are good fodder for tightly constructed dramas/films/operas.

Stein