Contributed by special correspondent Evening Pilgrim

On November 4, 2006, four days before the mid-term elections, the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco sponsored a daylong event in the form of a discussion focused upon the idea of Democracy “as it originated in ancient Greece and as it now appears in America.” One of the key participants, Paul Woodruff, PhD, is author of First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea. In that compact essay, Dr. Woodruff presents several observations that many Americans may find surprising. For example:

Democracy was an experiment undertaken by a number of Greek cities in the 6th through 4th centuries prior to the “Christian Era.” Much of what is known about that experiment comes down to us through works composed by residents of the city of Athens. Those works fall largely into two categories – plays and philosophical discourses.

The population of Athens during this period was composed of two primary groups – the poor and the wealthy. The poor tended to favor democracy, and the plays of the time were the medium via which they talked among themselves about it. The wealthy tended to favor oligarchy (rule by a small group of powerful people), and philosophical discourses were the medium via which they communicated among themselves their critiques of democracy.

Athenian plays of the period generally portray the comic or tragic goings on in neighboring, non-democratic cities. While the philosophical discourses skewer Athenian democracy and highlight its inadequacies. In other words, the Athenians themselves did not hand down to posterity a self-portrait of their democracy. Rather a likeness may be sketched from the cautionary tales of its plays, which describe what went wrong elsewhere, and its tolerance of robust internal descent and criticism expressed through philosophical discourses.

In First Democracy Dr. Woodruff also describes the practice of religion in Athens, and asserts that that practice was the essential context within which Athenian democracy emerged. Advocates of a strictly secular America may find such an assertion off putting. But Woodruff refines his contention by distinguishing between Athenian religious practice and Athenian religious beliefs. Specifically, Woodruff argues that it was primarily what the Athenians did together communally that fostered a democratic orientation, not the beliefs they held. To illustrate this point, both in his book and in his presentation during the November 4th discussion, Woodruff explained that Athenian men were compelled by time-honored custom to participate in the city’s annual religious festivals. Elements of those festivals appear to have had a lot in common with contemporary performance pieces in which song, dance, politics, social commentary and dramatic exposition intertwine, often with stirring effect. At such festivals all were equals – rich and poor – alternately performing in a chorus, and observing others’ performances.

To convey the unifying impact of such collective participation upon Athenian men, Woodruff explained that late in the democracy experiment a civil war erupted in Athens between the democracy-favoring poor and an army assembled by the rich. Eventually it became clear that the rich would be defeated, and it seemed likely that they would all be killed. But during a lull in the fighting one of the soldiers on the democratic side called out to the opposing force, “Brothers, must we fight on? Have we not danced together?” Those words were the beginning of reconciliation. Both sides renounced the conflict, and the war ended.

Woodruff asked those attending the discussion on November 4th if there are occasions when Americans dance together. Is there a unifying communal experience that can be invoked as a reminder of what we share, even in the face of fierce conflict? It proved a challenging question. Though it rankled, rituals associated with consumerism were begrudgingly acknowledged by a number of those present to be a glue holding Americans together.

A suggestion was offered that perhaps, rather than some collective activity in the past, what is common to all Americans is the mortality unavoidable in each individual’s future. It was a notion that did not seem to resonate with most participants in the discussion, possibly because the universal nature of mortality renders it non-specific to American experience.

Also, little enthusiasm was evidenced for considering the possibility that the contemporary “American way” includes an habitual distancing from human suffering. In this regard, it may be of some significance that the discussion participants appeared to be, one and all, professionals of comfortable means. In other words, the homeless, and others largely disenfranchised from American political life, were not present. That omission caused this correspondent to speculate that participation in the thoughtful and well-intentioned discussion by so limited a segment of the economic spectrum might represent in miniature a vital flaw in the current state of American politics overall. Specifically, those whose basic human needs are not being met are excluded from the American political processes, and their voices are generally also excluded from political reform efforts. This irony was emphasized by a passage Woodruff shared from Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata illustrating contributions to national self-understanding that can be made by populations excluded from official discourse.

Woodruff explained that in Greece at the time the play was written, women seldom ventured from their homes. Rather their days were spent weaving cloth. The central plot of Lysistrata is that the women have decided they will not have sex with men again until the men renounce war. When a man demands to know what makes the women think they have pertinent insight into how political affairs should be conducted, one of the women explains how she would run a city.

You simply wash the city just like you wash wool. First, you put the wool into the tub and scrub off all the crap. Then you lay it out, take a rod in your hand, and whip out all the burrs and thistles – all those that have gathered themselves into tight knots and are tearing and tangling the wool of State. Tease them out. Rip their heads off! Then comes the combing. You put all the wool together into one basket. All of it! Friends, both locals and resident aliens. And allies, and anyone who is good for the State. Drop them all in there. And don’t forget the citizens in the colonies. Consider them all part of the same ball of wool, and from it weave a cloak for the people.

Oxford University Press, 2006