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Immortality: From Ancient Greece to Modern America

By Alexandra York

August 19, 2023

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Preface: Many Americans fight bravely in word and deed to retain our rational life-serving values while others work diligently to intensify suicidal programs such as child indoctrination, amplified racial-ethnic resentments, and increased deep-state fraud which will aid all would-be despots both within and without in their endeavors for domination. Our greatest eminent threat, then, is our own corrupt domestic government aided by duped or dumb Americans and smart-subversive elites everywhere, so these must be our immediate targets for counterattack.

Given the above-mentioned dangerous and perhaps fatal threats against America’s independence and even survival, in this essay I revisit the thoughts of Socrates on immortality of the soul as being gained by living a life of virtuous moral values. He ponders this (for him) timely subject with friends and pupils while awaiting the sunset that will by tribunal decree cause him to drink the poisonous Hemlock brew thus ending his own earthly life. Combining the thoughts of that great philosopher with my own definition of a secular soul as the primary “animating principle”—derived via the Latin anima definition—from which all other values emanate in humans, I then symbolically extend that definition to address the “soul” of America as a country embodying its own animating principle, which is known worldwide as “liberty.”

In conclusion, I put forth the proposition that even if those of us who do battle to save our country (and the Enlightenment values that created it) fail in our fight and America perishes as a nation, the ideas that gave it birth as the only philosophically rational, consciously designed country in human history can achieve immortality and live on. This may be accomplished, I maintain, if Americans in general but especially those in certain professions with great direct influence on others become vociferously vocal and mightily active in preserving and passing on a legacy of virtuous values that can be reborn in another time and place. This must not be perceived in any way whatsoever to be a pessimistic view as might be supposed at first glance, but it is a realistic one that needs to be contemplated. And if worse does come to worst—which is seriously possible now—in the end, the ideas presented herein would be optimistic, indeed, for the future of humanity itself as rational, civilized, and humane.

 

Conversation between Socrates and several of his friends on this last day of Socrates’ life revolves around the nature of the soul and immortality.

Ancient Greece, 399 BCE: Before he imbibes the fatal hemlock poison (immediately after sunset), conversation between Socrates and several of his friends and pupils on this last day of Socrates’ life revolves around the nature of the soul and immortality.

As the world’s first moral philosopher, Socrates’ specific descriptions of an afterlife of the soul—he believed there was one—are not relevant, here, but his emphases on virtuous moral values to achieve a glorious immortality are.

We know from his earlier defense speech before the tribunal that he views himself as virtuous because he vigorously claimed his own allegiance to truth and moral values as being opposite from the lying and cheating politicians, poets, and artisans whom he has personally interviewed during his lifetime.

On this fateful day of death, he continues to amplify his idea of virtue as the only ethical path to immortality.

Thus, on this fateful day of death, he continues to amplify his idea of virtue as the only ethical path to immortality by musing that 1) the swans. . .when they feel that they are to die, sing most and best in their joy that they are to go to the god whose servants they are (Apollo, God of Truth), 2) we also must remember harmony does not die with the death of a composer, and 3) the sting of a bee does not die with the death of the bee.*

These visually intriguing metaphors are both suitable and memorable when considering moral values as the only virtuous path to immortality either of humans or (by symbolic stretch) a nation. By employing them to address present-day challenges in America, we may use the same metaphorical logic to focus on the truthful “singing swans” of our own time, the past composers of our harmonious constitutional liberty, and the methods for leaving a sting upon the would-be tyrants who now dare to inflict a series of deliberate deathblows to the prize of the Enlightenment—The United States—and bury this country into the Darkness of ignorance and oppression.

If the tyrants are successful, the only immortality to be gained for this historically unprecedented social experiment of We the People as sovereign and superior to a subservient government will be the endurance of the harmonious and rational ideas upon which this nation was founded.

Why propose considering some sort of afterlife for rational ideas? Because those of us who battle intellectually to retain our freedoms now may lose the present ideological war, and America as a unique culture and country may perish as did magnificent ancient Greece. It will be of some comfort, then (as Socrates found in his solace of contemplating an afterlife) if the battle becomes truly deadly, to understand that the ideas we fight for cannot die. Once identified, evaluated, conceptualized, and put into action all ideas may go dormant, but they never fully die. So, although we mortal freedom fighters will surely perish, the ideas we fight for today—liberty and individualism—can become immortal. Once any Genie—good or evil—is out of the bottle it cannot be returned to confinement, so, too, the Genius of Enlightenment ideas and the ensuing birth and existence of America is real and cannot be pushed permanently into a Dark Age.

Because humans have the faculty of free will and the ability to reason, formulate, and understand the value of liberty and individualism and develop a physical manifestation of those values in “corporal” form (a country practicing them), the ideas, then, can be recaptured and reborn in another form at another time. War, tyranny, and enslavement, for example, have existed since prehistory, and we have seen those examples of dastardly human behavior repeat themselves in various guises over and over again throughout the ages, including today. From this existential evidence, we rightly can anticipate that Enlightenment ideas—reason, individualism, freedom, verifiable science, secularism—turned into behavior that honors liberty and individual rights played out in real life by the United States of America may indeed repeat itself in other venues as well.

Still following Socrates’ lead, then, we can identify the Truth of rational Enlightenment ideas as constituting the virtuous American soul that can become immortal.

This view is to be considered metaphorically as a means by which an individual’s earthly presence can “live on” into the future thus attaining immortality.

This view is not to be taken literally as if the soul is a physical substance in one form or another but, like Socrates’ view, is to be considered metaphorically as a means by which an individual’s earthly presence can “live on” into the future thus attaining immortality. My own secular spirituality thesis is based on rational (virtuous) values which are in sync with Socrates’ criterion for virtues because values are concepts integrated into a principled human mental system that establishes a basis for thinking-feeling processes and behavioral patterns.

In my book Soul Celebrations and Spiritual Snacks (Crossroad Press, 2019), I introduce the subject of souls and differentiate between the definitions of a religious soul and a secular soul thus:

“Technically, whatever one’s worldview or belief system may be, there is no entity within us that is actually a physical soul; the concept is a mental construct invented to describe what could be termed the “center” of a human being. Most religions hold the soul to be ephemeral ether of some sort that leaves the body upon death (as in the last breath exhaled) and goes to an afterlife, is reincarnated into another entity, or undergoes a transmigration of some sort.

“For guidance on definition of a secular soul for our purpose here we need look no farther than the Latin word for soul: anima. This implies that the soul is the seat of an individual’s animating principle, the fundamental core or central element that constitutes one’s primary identity or Self. As humans, our primary attribute that permits acquisition of an animating principle is the faculty of volition—free will—which allows us to choose our values and our actions. This is not to imply that humans do not have any basic instincts such as desire for nourishment and procreation but to emphasize the fact that even these can be subjugated by choice. Thus, we can say that the definition of a secularly oriented soul is a self-selected (or passively accepted) core value that “animates”—activates into aliveness—all other emanative or resulting-out-of values. This characterization of soul does not separate it from the sensory world but integrates into it, thus allowing an experience of spiritual oneness with the universe and with being—with extant reality and living within it—a perfect union of existence and consciousness here on earth now. All of us (religious or not) have values (self-selected or not, rational or not) that constitute our personal identity and influence every choice we make each day of our lives.

“. . .an intriguing, self-revealing exercise to explicitly identify our primary animating principle is to reduce our personal value hierarchy down to a single concept—the fountainhead from which all other values flow. Suggesting this to friends and colleagues, I have heard words such as “Independence, Relentlessness, Curiosity, Honesty, Hope, Justice, Original, Reason,” and “Fortitude.” My own prime value is “Truth.” Whatever the answer to this question, all unimpaired humans are born with the faculty of reason, so we each have the ability to consciously choose the values that define us as unique individuals according to our own particular philosophical system if we will but do so.”

Harking again back to the ancient Greeks and now addressing their general, overall belief that the physical cosmos itself has a “world soul” and staying with my definition of a secular soul for human beings, we can propose (again metaphorically) that like a human being a country also can have a “soul” that centers the fundamental animating principle by which that country defines itself. As Americans, it is unambiguous that the fundamental animating principle from which all other values flow for citizens is Individualism because the rights of the individual are naturally endowed and protected by our written constitution. We then can extend that identification to propose that the animating principle (the soul) of America as a nation—our collective “body”—is Liberty.

From these positions we can put forth the proposition that select individuals may embody and disseminate rational (virtuous) values during their lifetime in such a manner that those values constituting their personhood may not perish along with the demise of their physical bodies but may become immortal by living on in others whom they influence and who will live on after them. From a worldview position, we can also put forth the proposition that America as a country “embodying” the animating principle of liberty necessary for individualism to be the animating principle of the populace may—as with humans and their legacies—survive to live on in other forms thereby also becoming immortal.

There are four professions for humans to achieve the survival of both life-serving and (unfortunately) life-destroying values: philosophy, parenting, education, and art. Philosophers may pass on good or bad thinking about reality—metaphysics—and the human means to know reality—epistemology—and the moral-behavioral values supporting the best manner for humans to live profitably in this world on to intellectuals. Parents may pass on good or bad knowledge, skills, and moral-behavioral values to biological offspring. Teachers may pass on valuable or destructive knowledge and skills to students—moral-behavioral values are not the purview of educators. Artists may pass on beautiful life-serving or ugly nihilistic (anti-) values by imbuing them in aesthetically arresting physical manifestations such as painting, sculpture, literature, music, and architecture—we also can include scientists into the artistic realm, for as creative sources like artists they pass on life-enhancing or life-destroying values via their physical inventions. In each of these cases individuals are communicating values to physical entities: humans and art/inventions.

It is these individuals who can become the swans who sing out joyously about individualism, liberty, and the harmonious constitution composed by our Founding Fathers, and who also can point the way to fighting against those who would enslave us by championing values that cannot be forgotten because they are virtuous, thus leaving the sting of Truth to haunt America’s would-be tyrants.

Professionals such as sports or entertainment figures may pass on knowledge and skills, but because the professional activities themselves do not embody or express values there is nothing virtuous to pass on to anyone. The only reason these professions need mention at all is because they produce individuals who rank among the highest-paid moneymakers and provide celebrity recognition in our modern American culture thereby gaining influence as tastemakers. These professionals, however, are not known for their valuable or virtuous opinions, and most (not all, but most) of those who do spout ideas are decidedly self-inflated, usually inflammatory, and socially destructive individuals. Add to the “star” influence in the entertainment industry the regrettably significant media folk who for the sake of their own power-or-fame lust not only fail to contribute to a value-stimulated legacy but also aid government and global elite would-be tyrants who are trying to rob us of our freedom loving heritage and shackle us with the chains of collectivism now while we are physically alive.

In stark dissimilarity to most of the aforementioned famed influential but (usually) destructive American tastemakers today, other advanced-for-their-time historical periods such as ancient Greece, Imperial Rome, Medieval Europe, the Italian Renaissance, the European Enlightenment, and America’s founding, for example, produced celebrity professionals who did impart virtuous life-serving values and garner the most admiration: philosophy and democracy, republicanism, knowledge, artistic creations, scientific inventions, reason, individual worth, and a world-altering document to protect the sovereign rights of every individual in an unprecedented historic manner. During the Dark Age of Europe’s severe decline there were still advances; for example, ancient Greek and Roman manuscripts were coming to light via Islamic scholars and Byzantine refugees, bringing fresh ideas into intellectual centers of the Catholic Church and instigating the initial philosophical awakening that led on up to the Renaissance and the ensuing Enlightenment period that brought reason and individualism to the fore. Even at that stagnant time humanism was on the move again as young Medieval-period men traveled all over the continent just to learn under the tutelage of philosopher-teachers of high level such as Petrarch and Aquinas. Now, stop to compare those students’ healthy epistemic thirst for life-serving knowledge and their Enlightenment-bound teachers to today’s spoiled and mentally soiled university students led unwittingly into physical bondage by their indoctrinating Socialism-bound professors who teach them to avoid rational critical thinking and accept the anti-human ideas propagated by those who would enslave them without blinking an eye for their evil treachery.

What to make of all this? We have singled out the individuals who can become the swans to sing of the true life-serving values enshrined in our Constitution and have made America the most exceptional country in the history of humankind. Let us reiterate, then, that the Founders of The United States of America—the composers of our Constitution—plus rational philosophers, parents, teachers, and artists-scientists of the past and those of our own present-day America have been and are currently the primary individuals to achieve a sacred secular immortality via the direct passing on of rational life-serving values (ideas), which are virtuous. Let us also understand that (most) sports and entertainment tastemakers, power-fame lustful media personnel, global elites, and power lustful politicians are, today, the life-destroying threats to our historically freedom-loving society. So, the battle lines are drawn between people who support either liberty or subjugation.

Going deeper than the active civilian and political “warriors” in this ideological war, however, we must consider the state of contemporary American culture as a whole. A culture is far more than the various types of people who inhabit a country. It is a commonly accepted national identity by the general public encompassing history, education, art, science, health, leisure, relationships. . .everything constituting the core values of any country.

If we look honestly at the current state of all these different aspects of American life, we must conclude that our country in general has become shallow in spirit (largely) because of the populace’s addiction to technological devises and their ignorance or rejection of rational life-serving values because of passive or hedonic pastimes. This lazy and nonconceptual behavior, of course, leads to emotional susceptibility rather than intelligent responsibility on the part of the bulk of the citizenry and results in social disorder rife with mental aberrations, crime, and corruption—the predictable results of moral ennui.

On top of all this general-cultural-public apathy, the net effect the idea-based war is having on the disgruntled-for-whatever-complaint among us is encouraging agitators to take to the streets in actual physical violence and destruction while the informed and alert citizenry is divided into diametrically opposing factions, one side supporting individual rights and national sovereignty and the other side demanding group privileges and collectivist (even global) government dictates.

The opening stanza of one of William Butler Yeats’ poems comes frighteningly to mind:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity. **

If the above description of America’s culture crises is as valid as its political crisis, then philosophers, parents, teachers, and artists-scientists who today pass on virtuous life-serving values must become the swans who not only vociferously sing out rational truths but also become vigorously active in order to support individual autonomy and combat the shallowness and scarcity of rational values evident in our culture as a whole and promoted especially by those in powerful elite entertainment-media-political professions along with educators at all levels from pre-school through K-12 formal schooling (public or private) and finishing at the universities.

It is no longer enough in this chaotic cultural environment for good and rational value-oriented philosophers, parents, teachers, and artists-scientists to pass along life-serving values only to those with whom they come in direct contact. As our Founding Fathers took public action—a physical revolution—to release the colonies from the yoke of England, so we now must take public action—speaking out and actively challenging those who would dictate our words and behavior—to release ourselves from the yoke of an oppressive domestic government that would establish a political tyranny and is dangerously close to succeeding. Such rational and life-serving individuals now must become audible, visible, and courageous enough to combat the forces that would destroy this country and the liberty that defines it.

If we do not restore America to ideational health—liberty—the country will perish just like our human bodies. If, as proposed, we view a fundamental animating value as the soul of a human individual and we also view a fundamental animating value as the soul of a country, then individualism is surely the “animating principle” for American citizens and liberty is clearly the animating principle of the United States of America; therefore, any form of political collectivism (socialism, fascism, communism, globalism) will kill the body and soul of America at the same time it shackles the bodies and demolishes the souls of our populace. This demise of advanced social structures happened to all great civilizations throughout history, and America’s social structure is desperately ill right now.

Nevertheless, as earlier postulated, even if this great and exceptional country perishes physically, the ideas of individualism and liberty can still have an eternal afterlife thereby becoming immortal. As Greece perished physically but left us its soul of philosophy, and every advancing civilization thereafter left behind to us a worthy legacy, so it follows that if those of us who see the evil at work upon our individual rights and social liberty now become vocal and active against our oppressors, even if America perishes as a nation we can leave its soul of liberty and our own souls of individualism flourishing in the minds of others; thus, as noted, liberty may flourish in different places (perhaps “countries” established in outer space) in the future. Even though the body of America—the country—may die, the soul—liberty—can live on to honor individualism and create liberty elsewhere. In this regard, we are aligned with Socrates in the consolation that in the event of our own or our country’s death, our souls—ideas of liberty and individualism—can depart our bodies and go on not to a mythical but an actual here-on-this-earth (or elsewhere in the physical universe) afterlife of their own.

This is precisely why it may be helpful to think metaphorically of America’s citizens and of the nation itself as having “souls” that may achieve immortality. We would be blind not to see that our liberty and our individual rights are being viciously trampled in broad daylight now. Power is an intoxicating brew, and too many “leaders,” “elites,” “educators” and “tastemakers” are already drunk yet wanting more. This is true not only at federal and famous levels but also at state and local levels as well; tiny tyrannies exert so much control we cannot build a simple deck on our home without permission. Going to rallies and keeping up with informed news are not enough. Speaking up at Town Hall meetings, and religious or PTA gatherings must be as important as speaking up at the dinner table. The predators high and low are emboldened by silence and obedience. Friends may be lost and families disrupted, but much more will be lost and disrupted if we do not actively resist.

As the chains of the American government tighten around us and the communication industries cheer the political jailers on, as stated before, it is We the People as rational philosophers, parents, teachers, and artists-scientists who must now become the swans who sing loudly and clearly for the true joys of freedom against those wielding the chains, so at least some young people will hear ideas that may help others however far in the future to build again for liberty and individualism. Thus, our ideas—our values, our souls—both as individuals and as a country may achieve immortality, and this thought should give us courage to aggressively wave the flag of freedom in the face of those who are burning it. If we as rational individuals do not sing out and become active, then we are enablers for those who would enslave us. We may not be able to stop would-be tyrants, but we surely do not need to aid them by surrendering to silence and submission.

“Onward and upward for liberty and individualism” must be the clarion call to save our physical future. There is still time to succeed. But if we fail and lose the physical war of freedom vs. slavery, it may at least be satisfying to know that we fought the battle heartily and bravely. We can be proud, then, that we “singing swans”—in Socrates’ words—leave behind to our heirs the harmony of America’s liberty ringing on even though the constitution composed by our founders may vanish, and to tyrants of every kind we leave the sting of our damning truth-telling bites to inflict pain on them all because history has proven that no idea can die; therefore, rational life-serving ideas may live on to first haunt and eventually destroy those who would destroy them now.

Like the great Greeks who invented democracy and the Romans who invented the republic, death will come to Americans who fight to preserve the ideas of liberty and individualism invented by our constitutional forefathers, but immortality is ours if we will but fight today to make our souls—the animating principle of individual sovereignty—worthy of eternal life tomorrow.

 

*Phaedo: On the Immortality of the Soul. Plato

All Socrates’ quotes used in this essay were translated by Harold North Fowler, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1966.

** From The Second Coming, contemplating the global catastrophe that killed millions of people during WWI and predicting that civilization as we know it is about to be undone.

 

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