Socrates' limits

I was looking at Craig Murray's biography and I was thinking: So, he is a former British Government official, who declares that the British Government is the devil.

And then I was thinking: Well, criticism is good. and after that: Is he aware of the preconditions of his own ideas?

Socrates only died, because he was unwilling to leave his country. But then again: Could Socrates have gone to the Scythians, for instance?

It isn't as clear as that these days, but it is still clear enough that you couldn't just go anywhere.

After Justinian kicked him out, Damascius ostensibly went to the Persians, but in reality through them to his own people, the Arabs. A good comparison to Murray's Scottish separatism, although nothing comparable will come of it.

That's a special case, you hail from a province and you trust your people the most. Yet it is uncertain, what your people would maintain, once they became independent.

These days however, the intercultural comparisons are more important even in matters of so called independence, for in reality they are matters of changing alignments.

But there's an interesting phenomenon these days, if we consider the growth of the European Union, for instance, what exactly is it that new members align themselves with?

Obviously, to the man who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, the West is one thing. And the local representation of the West is the European Union.

Is there one thing however? There certainly are unique institutions and unique contracts: unique laws. But a culture doesn't grow out of its artifacts, artifacts at best steer an organic development like between colonists in a new land, but it is the new land itself, which through the necessity to unlock it, creates the development.

Let us consider the veracity of this: When I'm in a new land, I'll look to the deeds of my fellow colonists, and because the land is new, there will be plenty of deeds to observe, and from this I gather an idea of the nature of the movement, of which I am a part. It is actually like with all motion: It is inferred from an analysis of change. And that's why artifacts don't grow into living cultures on their own: Only action has a direction, with which one can align.

Of course, the law may demand specific actions, establish duties, but humans have been on this planet long enough to know that the only thing that counts is to what end laws are being formulated and that that end is being shown by the direction of the accomplishments.

So the thing of which we ask, whether it is one, is this: the movement of the West.

The West is moving towards ever greater literacy, ever fewer fatalities from diseases, ever greater productivity and so on - just like the former East did. Understandably, the direction has to be defined more precisely, to allow for the alignment of people who were formerly aligned with the other, yet indiscernibly different, direction.

And if you ask yourself: Is that kind of progress enough for your aspirations to take root in any system that guarantees it? Unless you are a scientist in one of its fields, I don't see how.

No, there are in reality many small turns that our peoples have honoured through the centuries that are vital to the trust that we place in their movements. And thus there are many directions, in which the West moves.

And to be perfectly clear: If the governments of the European Union decide to vigorously move in one direction, that doesn't mean that the European Union moves in one direction, but only that there is now even one more direction in which the West moves, namely the European administrational one, which, in terms of unity, would at best serve to create one unified countermovement, but in terms of calamities that is of course not the best case scenario.

Also, union in need doesn't equate union in peace. People have memories and can adjust their behaviour to the times.

I said it before: During the age of colonialism foreigners could at least learn the virtues of their betters, these days they are hidden and decried, yet of course vital as ever. It is a nasty game, whose perceived value is that it allows the appearance of a unified movement where there is none.

We are dealing with people, who think that the cloak of unity will create unity through alignment, not realising that the cloaked unity is too vague to allow for any alignment with it.

And all it does is to postpone the political answer to incongruent alignments, what quite obviously puts strain on every single direction, but the outcome isn't grinded powder, but fiercely bouncing rubber balls, for the simple reason that one may change one's direction, but not the fact that one follows some direction.

The truth is that this crisis will allow to forge new directions as stable ways out of it, but for reasons not mentioned here. That little chaos brewing, which I have described above, would not suffice.

Which brings me back to Craig Murray. On what rock would an independent Scotland stand?

And it also brings me back to myself: On what rock do I stand?

I stand only on the rock of people, who consider man to be ethical and endowed with the sense of what's ethical by God. To other people I can no more talk than Socrates could talk to the barbarians of his day. And if the people who honour the Holy fell, everything that is of any concern to me would fall as well.