The day when the masters of the world will start to change our genes

Preface

In 3500 BC, a revolution took place in Egypt, the invention of writing. Writing is considered to separate prehistoric time from historic time but it is also to associate with the appearance of statism and large imperial state. From its origin, cultural law has regulated human tribe. Cultural law was a necessity to regulate individual status in the community and to decide efficiently. Cultural law can only be spreaded by debate or direct parent to children education and communication and so have little possibility to spread out of the tribe, village or the cast. The invention of writing changes the logic. You can write it, copy it and so spread it and so spread it to a larger territories. But, it had also a terrible political consequence. It has started the divided the society into two distinct groups:  some individual are the writers, and others the readers. I will concentrate the first part of the book to explain that all our political history can be explained by the struggled between writers class and readers class. In fact, this key division can be taken as the origin of nearly most political problems, which has taken place since the Egyptian. The writers try to hold their position and some of the readers want to enter into the influential group. I do not mean that some writers did not want and try to genius improve the law. I mean since the age of the writing, most of politics is focus on this struggle. It is in very far contrast with the tribal situation under the custom. The custom can change through debate, which usually ends up by a near consensus in favor or against the change. In the oral law political system, every individual need to have a brain at least to have a deep understanding of the law so as to debate it, but in the law writing system, the writer should have a self autonomous brain but the reader might rather need an antenna as trying to understand the law might need to develop an opposing opinion and anti social attitude against the social orders.

I will focus my history of politics not on what we today call politics but religion. The concept of politics political science are democratized itself relatively recently at the end of the middle age.  In fact, politics is in far evolving under the name of religion. And furthermore, most of the political belief of today can be rooted to the religious time:

-         Russian communism to the Byzantine Orthodox Christian empire,

-         French socialism to Catholicism,

-         American liberal capitalism to Protestantism and Calvinism,

-         Chinese and Japanese state managed capitalism (or so called by the Chinese government: market communism!!!!) to Confucianism,

I will demonstrate that most of the dynamic of political evolution is the change in the way to communicate. Each time that there is a technical change, the balance between writers and readers change and the system evolves. Those change are:

-         Manuscript writing,

-         Printing,

-         Radiodiffusing

-         Television

And finally Internet

The Internet revolution will be a radical one and it would end up by the illegalization of the writing law toward the electronic law. The electronic law can offer equal chance to any individuals to debate and change its content.  It is a radical equalitarian perspective, which would bring us to the same level of equity than primitive tribe under the oral law.

The last topic is human genetic manipulation. The coming potential human genetic manipulation will lead to the sharpest political struggle that has even happen and a final clash between the readers and writers. The outcome is far from previsible. It can lead to the appearance of an electronic democracy so as everybody has an equal political right to access to the process to vote the law.  But, the opposite scenario is also possible. The writer class can start to use its access to genetic manipulation in order to change the political behaviour of the reader. For example, it can reduce the IQ of the reader member to increase its dependency to the writer and so prevent the coming of the electronic democracy. It would be the complete realization of the brain/body state structure. The writer class will really have big brain and the body, a kind of antenna brain dependant of the television.

This struggle has indeed started. In USA, readers took the initiative to have law forbidding the disclosure of all state genetic experiment and have equal access to use of genetic technology.

In France, it is exactly the opposite. Genetic experimentation is under the control of “wise” men nominated by the president of the republic and submits to state secrecy. Concurrent private research is completely forbidden. France politician announced that research have to reduce genetic anomalies including mental one. China has gone further in declaring favourable to a state program of eugenic policy through genetic manipulation.

Finally, this book will revolutionize political science by development of a new approach: evolution of politics by the natural selection of belief. In fact, this approach is just an application to the recently develop meme theory. This approach will not forget the impact of distribution of personality in the determination of the political efficiency of a society. Personalities will be defined by a genetically dependant behaviours which can be transmitted from an generation to the others. This second Darwinist approach will rather explain why political culture never changes fast.

(*) From the French mendiant, which means beggar in English, the one who makes its living by talking.

The origin of politics: The birth of beliefs

From the origin of our species, human species has developed ways to act collectively in a common cause. According to Anthropologist, human being have evolved since the proconsul 15 millions year ago in small groups from 10 to 150 individuals. In the African savanna, the average size is around 30 individuals. The number is limited by the amount of food available at a walking distance and so it is dependent of the environment.  But, it has been proving that a human brain is capable to handle up to 150 friend or relatives. In a larger group, it is impossible to know each other well enough to develop a trustable relation. The fact has been verified in religious community or small enterprise. The political process has to be formalized in a different way in order to prevent inefficiency or corruption. But, as a rule, the human mechanisms to decide effectively the admission of a reject of an individual to the group, does not work anymore.

The fact that human species evolved in communities means that the competitive pressure force individuals to have differented from each other’s. A small group is more capable to succeed in their environment if they have individual with different sensibilities and different talents. Some might have a strong analytic brain, other a strong body and a high speed, and some other high diplomatic and communicative skills. The most basic of genetic differentiation between human is the sexual differentiation. Despite controversial and politics in the 1960, the sexual orientation is completely controlled by genes. Genes also guarantees that male and female abilities are different. Men have to hunt. They need more physical strength. Women have to educate children so they need higher communicative skills. However, at this point of the analysis, it is not needed to have an opinion about the fact either our behaviours is conditioned by nature or nurture. The book of Matt Ridley, “The agile gene” will serve as a base to present the opinion of the scientific communities on the topic. The point is that you do not have any human communities of human clones. The nature had worked that each communities have individuals with radically different personality and capabilities. These differences of personality create a lot of political conflict and the necessity to compromise with the personalities of others individuals. And, most of our political skills came  through evolution from those highly politicize tribe. Our genes giving us the common benefit of our differentiate and the capacity to compromise with others personalities.

But to come back to our tribe, the problem of converging toward common law between individuals with various personalities and getting consensual agreement is extremely challenging. We all have the same personalities. We will be easier to agree toward a common solution and politics would be reduced to rivalry. Debate is also time consuming and might in many scenarios be impossible to organize. For example, if you start to debate to answer to an attack of another tribe, you are likely to go extinct. So, our tribe had to adopt a convergence strategy. The first solution is to have an individual to decide for the group in face a danger: the leader. The second is to have an oral law supported by beliefs.

The problem of the appearance of an oral law is a complex one. A rule can be understood as a program. And a program is the execution of a series of instruction (if … then… else) and the purpose of the oral law is programming the social behaviors of the community. The oral rule will regulate the process to nominate a leader, marriage, disease and the advantage of programming over debating. The debate is institutionalized and civilized under a framework of laws and so it is speed up. Oral laws will so reduce the time cost of debating and the risk of physical conflict during debates. The next advantage is the capacities to teach a political heritage to the next generation and to improve the law system from one generation to another by assuring a continuous evolution.  Then, how can you easily remember the oral laws and teach it to children. Simply by creating religious belief to explain and defend the legitimacy of the law to children. The beliefs are created during debating session by transforming previous stories or previous experience. Some ancestor of the tribe will being gods, son of gods and further simply messenger of gods in the sense that they had improved the law structures of the tribe.

Now, with that all beliefs are not politically efficient but in a tribal word, tribe competes against each others and most tribe will be destroyed by the one with the most efficient political beliefs. So, the next question is “What is the most efficient political belief?” It also depends the law of competition or I should say the three laws of competition:

-         facist competition,

-         productivist competion,

-         mendiocratic competion.

-         Facism is the power of the best killing talent (known as the rule of Jungle),

-         Productivism: the power to most productive,

-         Mendicacy (*) is the power to best communicating talent (*)

The three laws came from the fact that there is two basic mean to get your food for your family to produce it or to take it from another producer. There is than two way to rob your food by killing or frightening to kill or convince to give. The first way is the facist way and the second way is the mendiocatric way. Now, the reader will notice that productivism and fascism are worded currently used in politics in the current political debate and Mendicacy is a personal invention. Does it mean that Mendicacy does not exist ? Certainly not, all political society gravitates under this three laws of competition and are a combinaison of this three laws. But, the tendancy since the beginning of the writing law, the historical move has been from facism to a mediacry. And in our modern world, the best killer are in jailed and the most commutative gather most of the political power and the wealth. Why did the concept never been invented ? Simply because a concept is invented by politically powerful opponent to the Mendicacy. And as most of the modern society are a kind of Mendicacy, all politically powerful individual are living by what they say and by having their position to force individuals to listen the them ? They have the right to talk and to be listen on a specific point. Others individuals are only listeners. There is no point for them to try to prove their capabilities. Nobody will even be interested in their potentially superior capacities.

Now, if we analyse the source of politics. We can see that the base of political power is productivism. The power to who can produce something and had produced something. I include in this category the business company who had something to sell or the worker who can produce in future. In non free market society, the business community can develop their power around a Mendicacy. The right to sell is reserved to a limited number of individuals, the business community will have seen the competitive evolving toward a mendiocratic orders. Business men will try to be the one who speaks in order to be the one who sells. The system of lobbies is an example. A limited number of politician got a buying power so companies and companies try to have a privileguas access to them and so are involved into a mendiocratic competition.

The facism competitive is based on “I can kill you so you have rather to give me to live”. This competitive logic is also based on the capacities to intimidate wealth producer and to force them to give away their political strength to the profit of the facist politician. Mendicacy is not based on the intimidiate of the producer but on the capacities and the position to convince the producer to give away their political strength to the profit of the mendiacratic political. So, the situation is one source of political strength: productivism and two pararasites mendiocracies and facism. The two parasistes will grow up to the point to reduce the producer to nothing (slavery system). The business community has a political base on the two leg of productivism and Mendicacy but we hold more there power on Mendicacy. Then, Mendicacy will compete with facism and the results of these competitions will head up by the revival of the productivism competitive logic to the benefit of the producing class. I will demonstrate in the first part of this book.

The last point to considered is “what is the purpose of politics ?. I will define it by taking acting collectively. All the point of politics is to be capable to have a group of invididuals to achieve common goal. And so, you should first consider first how individual achieve something. They can act in following a program and a set of instruction that they have decided in advance or iteratively. When an individual have some ideas of what to do, it will formalize an action plan and react according to it. In this case, it took time to slowly consider each of its acts. But, an unprepared individual can also act without having programmed itself by a spontaneous decision. Preconsider decision has been done with the possibility to search information to take the right decision. But, in front of an unknown event, we have to be spontaneous and we can not rely on a preprogram. The tribe have also this bimode: the possibility to program the behavior of the tribue by the law or to act spontaneously under the direction of a leader. This bimode lead to dilemma. Who should be on the top ? A leader who can even make new law without debating or the law which limites the power of the leader. The first mode makes the society potential to have a fast evolving law. This fast evolution might unfortunately not be kept from one generation to the next. The second one had the problem, have the problem that human society have a lot a trouble to organize efficient and fruitful debate. In fact, most of political debate took place on the form of religious speculation and argumentation. The change of religious belief is usually motivated by a legal inefficiencies and trigger the creation of a new constitution.  In larger communities, most religious beliefs stay the same and so did the law. The possibility to have a democratic religious debate become impossible in a large communities and it creates a situation with a large pool isolated individual with a disagreement with the common law, potentially rebellious anarchisant. Some of those rebels organized in opposing group which eventually in some took the power, establish a monarchy above the law. This pattern will in fact explain the history in term of revolution.  A monarchist revolution succeeds to a revolution toward the law. When human got a king, they want a strong law above the king to protect them from the king. When they got a law, they want a king to change the inefficient of the law.

Pharaon: totalitarian revolution;

Mose decalog and the republic roman: legal revolution

Caesar, Constatin and the “living” law Jesus Christ: totalitarian revolution

French, Suisse, English and American revolution: legal revolution

Communism and fascism: totalitarian revolution

Face of communism and liberalism/democracy: legal revolution

French V republic of General De Gaulle: Kind of elective monarchy called republic parlementaire far less democratic than the III and the IV republic.

The birth of the writing law

The biggest political revolution occurs with the invention of writing which occurs around 3500 BC in Egypt years but its real use of writing in politics occurs around 1800 BC with the code of Hammurabi in Babylon (modern Iraq). The Hammurabi was edicated by a god king and not the supreme creator of the universal. The problem with a god king is that he got a higher god above him: the supreme creator of the universe and so there is an higher code. The idea is not new as most of the tribe believes that the core law has been created by the highest code: the creator. And so, the next political struggle become mainly stuggle between gods. Most of gods create laws, but we should select the right god to have the right laws. And in 1500 BC, Yahwe bornt and its prophet propandandist maybe mythologic but probably historic Moses. In the view of Mose follower, they venerate the creating god and others venerate existing demon who try to spread their law to abuse humanity. It is not yet a question of monotheism: true god against idole. It is a struggle between the creator and demonic gods. The political war becomes a fundamentalism based on the belief that failing to select the right god and right law lead to the extinction of the tribe. And, it is exactly what occurs, Mose follower submit or exterminate rivals follower of rivals law. The struggle is not a single event in history. It has occurs in many part of world. The struggle of Rome against their rival was the struggle of Roman gods and law against the rival laws and the victory of Rome.

But, it describe the fact that the kingdom of writing law creates modern state divided into two class the writing (of the law) class and the reading class. It is so the start of Mendicacy where the writing class that I will know calls the mediatic class dominates the reading class, which I rather call the listening class.

And this pattern of division between two distinct classes has last from the beginning of the use of writing and it will end with the replacement of the writing law by the electronic law. The usage of Internet to make the law offers the possibility a strict equality to change the law whenever he is living and so the move to a perfect democracy. In the past, near perfect democracy could only exist in city-state with a large political assembly because democracy means gathering everybody in the same location to vote to debate the law. In modern country, this was not technically possible so each independent countries got a capital where the law is debated and live the mendiocratic class and provincial city where most of citizens belong to the listening class. In a mainly mendiocratic society,  business people should try to take part to the Mendicacy to be authorized to grow up and so they also rather live in the capital. The worker has rather to move away from the province toward the capital despite high living cost. Country with huge capital are usually a political struggle under the Mendicacy logic (France, England, Japan) and country with a lot a medium size city have a political struggle equilibrate between two logic  Mendicacy and productivism (Switzerland,  USA, Germany,…). The difference is that a productivist (called capitalism or liberal system) logic competitivity is possible if the most mendiocratic competitive culture tolerates it to the point that an individual could socially and politically succeed without relation with the mendiocratic class and so succeed geographically far away from it.  It is still rarely the case. In most country, you have to be a member to the mendiocratic class to succeed and so you should live where the law are debated: the capital to exchange your view and establish relations with the law debaters.

You should notice that writing law did not succeed everywhere. Indian cast are an evolution of the tribal system. Each cast have there own law and their favorites gods. The cast system has the british called it, is in fact a global understanding between all cast to fragment the economical sphere in order to be able to have each cast their own law and the democratic right to debate. I have spent a long time in India to learn meditation with a guru. The first thing I have noticed is the superior argumentating skill of Indians. My Indian Guru Om Prakash teaches me that the art of debating is to create word to fight against word of others. If you let your adversary, creates the words who give him a social advantages. It will move up in the political layer (and not social layer) and so you will go down. Every debaters try to create words to push up their arguments and the first way to debate and  vote equally for each words to use. For example, marxism and now alter mondialism win the ideological war because they impose the world capitalism. Capitalism came from the indo-european 9000 BC year old caput (chelter head). The capitalism system starts in 9000 BC with the agriculture and the creation of a cheptel capital to modern day market finance. So, anti-globalism explains that capitalism is bad by describing the Indian local economy who has usually no currency and bank and is based on barter to explain us that Wallstreet market is bad in showing Indian countryside. Does it means that we have a single economical system called capitalism: not at all. But, if you succeed to dominate the debate by pushing your word capitalism, it end up to be the same in the brain of the listener. To Indian, we have two completely different economical systems: rural India barter economy and wall street. As the things are completely distinct, it is forbidden to argue about Indian barter economy to criticize Wall Street Market economy.

The first rule that Indian teach me if there is no debate about the word to use. There is no debate at all and so no democracy at all. I will so up to now take care to create words that look to me efficient to stress the point of view of the listening class and put it along the the word created by the mendiocratic class to politically equalize the two political classes.

Indian develops meditation technique which are based on empty the brain from “political” concept and give you the capacities to go behind conceptualization and to come back with a police men in the brain which will analyze concept by concepts in order to save you from the political brain washing of the mendiocratic class. If an individual is pushing up his vocabulary, he is winning the debate.

It won’t be a surprise that India is now the largest democracy of the world despite that most culture bible based country dominated by the fundamentalist of the writing law are not. India just move from inter cast fragment micro democracy to a national democracy. It is no also surprised that Indian guru impressed and targeted politically weak european and north Asian, by there superior mastering of philosophical conceptualization. Westerner and north Asian has evolved through 2000 years of political domination under two different politically efficient religion: christianism and confuscianism and so have lost the mental capabilities to debate by lacking its usage.

The Indian approach of democracies is in complete opposition to French approach. The French King Louis XIII has created the French academy around 1620 during the monarchy to control the French language. Today, the French academy francaise controlled the vocabulary used in the French language. Words of English origin like walkman or email are suppressed and replaced by French equivalent: baladeur and couriel. The state controlled linguistic approach is not without influence on the french political debate in the 2000s. The French situation will be however evaluated latter.

A last point is that many culture resists to the oral law. For example despite using writing skills in calendar and accounting, the celts forbid the development of writing law. The choice was done by the Druid to force the transmission by memory from person to person. The idea is that you cannot really sure to really understand if you learn form book. So, it is better to have a teacher teaching directly. The druids acts as judge and priest and meet annually to debate about laws.

Athena democracy against the facism Sparta

Antic city-state gravitates between two centralization principles a man or a law or two competitive logics: Mendicacy against facism. The third one, the productivism seems completely absent of the political struggle. I did not find any individual politically successful due to his personal agricultural or artisanal productivity. Super productive individuals were in fact called slave and live at the bottom of the political scale. They are listener and killed if they do not listen and start to talk too much.

Athenian democracy appears around 500 BC Athena had a strong military force due to its farmer-military-citizen ready to fight for their democratic right. Athena stop two militaries invasion from the Persian empire.

The Athenian democracy is remarkable by the size 30000 of the 300000 Athenian had the right to debate laws. Usually, 6000 citizens effectively took place in the debate, which means that entrepreneurial, commercial, artisanal and possible farmer had the capacities to take part in the debate.

Athenian remains in the history by their high achievement in term of conceptualization. In fact, most of the concepts used in the antic world and the modern world came from the Athenian. They creates the concept of history, physics, atom, democracy, philosophy, … they innovate massively in mathematics and in medicine. This high level of conceptual capabilities is the sign of a highly engaged and debating society. Concepts are created by individuals and spread through debate before becoming politically active. Then, concepts make the debated more efficient and increase the capacity of city-state to innovate and to decide about the launch of national projects.

But in 404 BC, the Athenian democracy has been however destroyed by a city not also without interest Sparta in order to study facism political tendency and introduce the most successfully politic state of the western antic world: the Roman republic. Sparta has two elected kings for 1 year and so there are not really king and equilibrate each other. The Spartan laws were oral laws and debate special policy maker, the gerousia, a council consisting of 28 elders over the age of 60, elected for life and usually part of the royal households. High state policy decisions were discussed by this council who could then propose action alternatives to the Damos, the collective body of Spartan citizenry, who would select one of the alternatives by voting. The Demos comprised the citizizens with military training most of the Spartian male. The spartian society did not produce anything and were so a pure facist society. Sparta had a small population of 10000 military males. Sparta submits in its vicinity a far larger population of 200 000 helots which assures the agricole activity. The helots has to provide 50 % of their output to the Spartian state but keep the property of their land. Spartian had a tradition to make a yearly campagn against Helots to preserve their submission. The Spartiate is a pure facisted in a sens that they were unproductive. The fact that the products was robbed from the Helots make its easier to make the more egalitarian state in term of redistribution of the output. Political initiatives should have rather been of limited: war or not. It should so have been relativily easy to converge. Military efficiency means that Spartan were unified under the feeling of solidary and the shame of fear. Despite its very small size, the Spartian state was the military power of greece. It is the only state were 100 % of the population has the same jobs: military. As Spartan did not need to have any productive incentive, egalitarism redistribution was the most beneficial and natural social system. Sparta  last a long time till its avoid war, and just show its strength but in 430 BC. Sparta starts war against Athena and ultimately submit it.  However, its military population reduces and Sparta did not have the demographic base to quickly restore its strength. If you have 100000 citizens including 10000 military.  Losing 4000 military in war was not a big deal at a population growing 2 % a year, you will go back to 10 000 years in around 2 years. But from its initial base is 10 000 reduced to a base of 6000, it will take log(10000/6000) / 2 % =  25 years.

Athena was well advance on their time. Most of the concepts uses in the western science came from the Athenian. Athenia had a better balance of power between the three competitive of facisme, Mendicacy and productivism than any other state. This balance had leaded to a lot of political initiative to citizens with others interest than military. The business community and farmers had a real political influence on their world.  But, as a political system Athena failed and was defeated by a super facist State Sparta. It leads to the conclusion that the society can not balance on mediocratic or productivisms competition if the facism competititive logic is not civilized by a world social contracts.  

And so, one super facist state has to defeat all his enemies under his rule in an empire covering all his known world to become able to set a new moral rule to move political competition towards the productivism and mediocratism.

When a republic submits all monarchies

The roman republic appears 509 BC by an overdrown of the Monarchy and it by far the the successful political structure of the ancient world. It ultimately end up by the facism competitive logic to start to move the competitive logic with the emergence christianism towards mediacratic competive logic. The roman republic was cimented by the hatred of monarchy and so the exitive was under the hands of two consules elected like in Sparta for one years. The roman citizen were divided into two classes the wealthy patrician who held the place in the senate and debated the law and the plebeian who elected representive to defend their interest named tribunes. In 287, the plebein obtain the right to vote laws by plebiscites. The eager of roman farmer/legionary citizen to protect their freedom against Monarchies, was the base of the military strength of Roma. The roman republic conquiert all Italy and develop a western empire after its victory of the carthage in 146 BC. The roman republic starts to conquiert an empire mainly to protect its freedom and then to rob and reduce to slavery other people population. One of the caracteristic of Roman fascime is an explosion of the institution of slavery. Despite Sparta, Rome successful accessimilate population in the italian surrounding by giving them special political. The roman army becomes composed of legionary of non roman stocks more attach to their general than the republican institution. This lead to several overthrough of the republican institution by Sulla in 80 BC, Julius Caesar in 49 BC and finally Octave Augustus which establishes the imperial institution in 27 BC. The law were replaced by imperial orders and ratified by the senate. Octave Augustus develop a network of governors to administrate the province and a large bureaucracy. Those governers where from modest origines and so reliable to the emperor. The victory of the roman republic leads an end of the fascism competitive over a large territories and so the mendiocratic competive logic develop. The emperor was the source of power on the political power develop in the vicinity of the emperor. On constrast, the emperor has difficulties to know what exactly go on in his empire and had to rely on his governors and huge bureaucracy to get inform. 

In his book, The Fall of The Roman, chapter: The limit of the empire, the historian Peter Heather illustrate the political situation of the empire by the anecdote of the lepcis scandale:

 IN AD 373 OR THEREABOUTS, the commander of Roman military force, in North Africa (in Latin, comes Africae), one Romanus by name, was cashiered for provoking some of the Berber tribes settled on the fringes of the province to rebel. Theodosius, the field marshal (magister militum) sent to deal with the emergency, found amongst Romanus' papers a highly incriminating document. It was a letter to the cam commander from a third party, which included the following greeting from a certain Palladius, until recently a senior imperial bureaucrat: `Palladius salutes you and says that he was dismissed from office for no other reason than that in the case of the people of Tripolis he spoke to the sacred ears [of the Emperor Valentinian I] what was not true." On the strength of this, Palladius was dragged out of retirement from his country estates and frogmarched back to Trier. Lying to the emperor was treason. Rather than face interrogation, which in such cases routinely involved torture, Palladius committed suicide en route. The full story slowly emerged.

The trail led back to 363, when Romanus had first been appointed. The countryside around the town of Lepcis Magna in the province of Tripolitania had just been looted by Berber tribesmen from the neighboring desert hinterland, and its inhabitants wanted Romanus to retaliate. He duly gathered his forces at Lepcis, but demanded logistic support to the tune of 4,000 camels, which the citizens refused to provide. Romanus thereupon dispersed his soldiers, and no cam­paign was mounted. The outraged citizens used their next annual provincial assembly, probably that of 364, to send an embassy of complaint to the emperor Valentinian. Romanus tried to head things off at the pass, getting his version of the story to Valentinian first via a relative called Remigius who was currently magister officiorum (some­thing like the head of the Civil Service, one of the top bureaucrats of' the western Empire). Valentinian refused to believe either version at first telling, and ordered a commission of inquiry. But it was slow to get moving, and in the meantime further Berber attacks prompted the townsfolk of Lepcis to send a second embassy to complain about Romanus' continued inactivity. Hearing of yet more attacks, Valentinian lost his temper, and this is where Palladius enters the story. He was chosen to conduct a fact-finding mission, and was also given the job of taking with him gifts of cash for the African troops.'

Following the emperor's orders, Palladius travelled to Lepcis and discovered for himself the truth about what Romanus had - or rather, had not - been up to. At the same time, however, Palladius was doing deals with the commanders and paymasters of African army units, which allowed him to keep for himself some of the imperial cash in his care. Everything was set up for a meeting of minds. Palladius threatened Romanus with a damning indictment of his inactivity, while Romanus brought up the small matter of Palladius' embezzlement. In a devil's bargain, Palladius kept the cash, and, back in Trier, told Valentinian that the inhabitants of Lepcis had nothing to complain of. The emperor, believing his time had been wasted, unleashed the full apparatus of the law on the plaintiffs of Lepcis. Palladius was sent to Africa a second time, to preside over the trials. With so much at stake far the judge, there could be only one outcome for the defendants. So a few witnesses were bribed, and agreed that there had never been any attacks; the loose ends were neatly sewn up, probably in 368, and one governor and three ambassadors were executed for making false statements to the emperor. There the matter rested until Palladius' letter to Romanus came to light six years later. Two surviving ambassadors, who'd had the sense to go into hiding when sentenced to have their tongues cut out, then re-emerged from the woodwork to have their say. The affair duly claimed its final victims: Palladius, of course, and Romanus, not to mention the magister officiorum Remigius, and the false witnesses.

At first sight, there might seem nothing out of the ordinary here: negligence, embezzlement and a particularly nasty cover-up. What else would you expect of an imperial structure caught in a declining trajectory towards extinction? Ever since Gibbon, the corruption of public life has been part of the story of Roman imperial collapse. But while the fourth-century Empire had its fair share of corruption, it is important not to jump to conclusions. In sources of the time you can easily find examples of every kind of wrongdoing imaginable: from military commanders who artificially inflate manpower returns while keeping their units under strength so as to pocket the extra pay, to bureaucrats shuffling money around between different accounts until it becomes `lost' in the paper trail and they can divert it to their own purposes.' But whether any of this played a substantial role in the collapse of the western Empire is much more doubtful.

Uncomfortable as the idea might be, power has, throughout history, had a long and distinguished association with money making: in states both big and small, both seemingly healthy and on their last legs. In most past societies and many present ones, the link between power and profit was not even remotely problematic, profit for oneself and one's friends being seen as the whole, and perfectly legitimate, point of making the effort to get power in the first place. When our old friend the philosopher Themistius started to attract the attention of the emperor Constantius in the early 350s, Libanius, a friend who taught rhetoric and was a great believer in the moral values of a classical education, wrote to him: `Your presence at [the emperor's] table denotes a greater intimacy ... anyone you mention is immedi­ately better off, and ... his pleasure in granting such favours exceeds yours in receiving them.' For Libanius, Themistius' new-found influ­ence was not a problem: quite the reverse. In fact, the whole system of appointments to bureaucratic office within the Empire worked or, personal recommendation. Since there were no competitive examinations, patronage and connection played a critical role. In more than one speech to different emperors, Themistius dwelt on the topic of 'friends', an emperor's immediate circle who were responsible far bringing to his attention the names of suitable appointees for office. Certainly, Themistius wanted these friends to have powers of discern­ment, so that they would make first-class recommendations; but he had no desire to change things in any structural way. Nepotism was systemic, office was generally accepted as an opportunity for feathering one's nest, and a moderate degree of peculation more or less expected.

And this was nothing new. The early Roman Empire, even during its vigorous conquest period, was as much marked as were later eras by officials (friends of higher officials) misusing - or perhaps one should just say `using' - power to profit themselves and their associates. According to the historian Sallust, writing in the mid-first century BC, Roman public life had been stripped of its moral fibber with the destruction of Carthage, its last major rival, in 146 BC. In fact, though, the great magnates of public life had always been preoccupied with self-advancement, and the early Empire had been no different. Much of what we might term `corruption' in the Roman system merely reflects the normal relationship between power and profit. Some emperors, like Valentinian I, periodically made political capital out of cracking down on `corruption', but even Valentinian made no attempt to change the system.' To my mind, it is important to be realistic about the way human beings use political power, and not to attach too much importance to particular instances of corruption. Since the power-profit factor had not impeded the rise of the Empire in the first place, there is no reason to suppose that it contributed fundamentally to its collapse. In the Lepcis scandal, Romanus, Palladius and Remigius overstepped the mark. Looked at more closely, Lepcisgate offers us something much more than a good cover-up.

IN THEORY, the emperor was the supreme authority when it came to issuing general legislation, and in individual cases he had the right to modify the law, or break it, as he chose. He could condemn to death, or pardon, with a single word. To all appearances, he was an absolute monarch. But appearances can be deceptive.

Valentinian, a long-time soldier before his accession, had first-hand experience of supervising the Rhine frontier; based at Trier, he was close enough to investigate promptly any untoward incident. But a problem arising in Africa was a very different matter. The first Valentinian knew of the Lepcis episode was the sudden arrival at his court of two diametrically opposed accounts of it, one brought by the first legation from the provincial assembly, the other from Romanus via the magister officiorum, Remigius. Trier placed Valentinian about 2,000 kilometres away from the scene of the action. As he couldn't leave the Rhine frontier to investigate one relatively minor incident in a rather obscure corner of North Africa, all he could do was send a representative to sort out the facts for him. If that person fed him misinformation, as was the case here, and ensured that no alternative account reached the imperial ears, the emperor was bound to act accordingly. The essential point that emerges from Lepcisgate is that, for all an emperor's power, in both theory and practice, Roman central government could only make effective decisions when it received

accurate information from the localities. The regime of Valentinian liked to style itself as the protector of the taxpayer from the unfair demands of the military. But, thanks to Palladius' false report, the emperor's actions in the case of Lepcis Magna had entirely the opposite effect.

A leap of imagination is required to grasp the difficulty of gathering accurate information in the Roman world. As ruler of just half of it, Valentinian was controlling an area significantly larger than the current European Union. Effective central action is difficult enough today on such a geographical scale, but the communication problems that Valentinian faced made it almost inconceivably harder for him than for his counterparts in modern Brussels. The problem was twofold: not only the slowness of ancient communications, but also the minimal number of lines of contact. The Lepcis problem was exacerbated not only by the snail's pace of such communications as there were, but also by the sheer paucity of points of contact: two in the first instance (the ambassadors, plus Remigius representing Romanus' view), supple supplemented by a third when Valentinian sent his fact-finding mission in the person of Palladius. Once Palladius verified Romanus' view, that was two against one, and Valentinian had no additional sources of information. In the world of the telephone, the fax and the internet, the truth is much harder to hide. Beyond the immediate vicinity of his base on the Rhine frontier, Valentinian's contacts with the city com­munities that made up his Empire were sparse and infrequent.

Insight into the problem is provided by another extraordinary survival from the later Roman Empire: papyrus documents preserved through the centuries by the dry heat of the Egyptian desert. (As fate would have it, most of the archive ended up in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, a city famous for its rainfall.) These particular papyri, purchased by the great Victorian collector A, S. Hunt in 1896, come from Hermopolis on the west bank of the Nile at the boundary between Upper and Lower Egypt. One key letter got separated front the rest, ending up in Strasbourg. When identified as part of the same collection, it became clear that these were the papers of a certain Theophanes, a landowner from Hermopolis and a fairly high-level Roman bureaucrat of the early fourth century. In the late 310s he was legal adviser to Vitalis who, as rationatis Aegypti, was the finance officer in charge of the arms factories and other operations of the Roman state in the province. The bulk of the archive refers to a journey

Theophanes made from Egypt to Antioch (modern Antakya in southern Turkey, close to the Syrian border), a regional capital of the Roman east, on official business, sometime between 317 and 323. The papers don't provide a narrative of the journey - we can only guess what the aim of the mission may have been - but something in its own way more valuable: packing lists, financial accounts and dated itineraries which, between them, bring Roman official travel vividly to life.

Being on official business, Theophanes was able to use the same public transport system that carried Symmachus to Trier, the cursus publicus, which comprised neatly spaced way-stations combining stables - where official travellers could obtain a change of animals - and (sometimes) travel lodges. The most immediately striking documents are those dealing with Theophanes' itineraries: daily listings of the distances he managed to cover. Having begun the journey to Antioch on 6 April at the town of Nikiu in Upper Egypt, he eventually rolled into the city three and a half weeks later on 2 May. His daily average had been about 40 kilometres: on the first part of the journey, through the Sinai desert, he made only about 24 kilometres a day, but speeded up to about 65 once he hit the Fertile Crescent. And on a breakneck final day into Antioch, scenting the finishing line, his party covered over a hundred. The return journey took a similar time. Bearing in mind that Theophanes' official status allowed him to change horses whenever necessary - so there was no need to conserve equine energy - this gives us a benchmark for the bureaucratic operations of the Roman Empire. We know that in emergencies, galloping messengers, with many changes of horse, might manage as much as 250 kilometres a day. But Theophanes' average on that journey of three and a half weeks was the norm: in other words, about 40, the speed of the oxcart. This was true of military as well as civilian operations, since all the army's heavy equipment and baggage moved by this means too.

The other striking feature of Theophanes' journey is its complexity. As might be expected, given such rates of travel, only the top echelons of the Roman bureaucracy tended to travel outside their immediate province - hence, lower-level officials wouldn't know their counter­parts, even in adjacent regions. Egypt, for most purposes, ran itself, so Theophanes didn't usually need to know people in Antioch, and neither, for that matter, did he know people anywhere else en route. Vitalis armed him, accordingly, with letters of introduction to everyone local communities were left - as the municipal laws we examined in Chapter 1 imply - to be autonomous, largely self-governing communi­ties.' Keep Roman central government happy, and life could often be lived as the locals wanted.

This is a key to understanding much of the internal history of the Roman Empire. Lepcisgate illustrates not so much a particular problem of the later Empire, but the fundamental limitations affecting Roman central government of all eras. To comprehend the operation of government fully, the logistic impossibility of day-to-day interference from the centre must be considered alongside the imperial centre's absolute legal power and unchallenged ideological domination. It was the interaction of these two phenomena that created the distinctive dynamic of the Roman Empire's internal functioning. Given that it was administratively impossible for central government to control everything, anything to which it did add its stamp of authority carried an overwhelming legitimacy, if put to the test. What tended to happen, therefore, was that individuals and communities would invoke the authority of the centre for their own purposes. At first sight, this could suggest that the imperial finger was constantly being stuck into a whole host of local pies, but such an impression is misleading. Outside of taxation, emperors interfered in local affairs only when locals - or at least a faction of local opinion - saw an advantage to themselves in mobilizing imperial authority.

We have already seen this pattern at work in the early imperial period. As the Spanish inscriptions (pp. 38-9) show us, Roman-style towns existed right across the Empire as a consequence of local com­munities adopting municipal laws drawn up at the centre. In particular, the richer local landowners had quickly appreciated that securing a constitution with Latin rights was a path to Roman citizenship, which would qualify them to participate in the highly lucrative structures of Empire. The story had its shadier side, of course. A grant of Italian status was so valuable to the leaders of the community involved that they were willing to do whatever it took to win the privilege, often by courting patrons at the centre who would put in a good word for them with the emperor of the day. This kind of relationship between centre and locality was the bedrock on which the Empire was built."

The historian Peter Heather describes us the political situation of an empire which has growth up to protect a huge number of its subjects from the risk to be raid by foreign enemy but he is now facing the problem of the blindness of his decision center (the brain) who relies exclusively of the information from the local authorities to decide. We have a brain where the eye and hear can change the information according to their own need.

However, the Roman Empire as the Chinese empire in the East has created a situation where most of the citizens do not live anymore with the fear of being killed, or plundered. It is a far contrast from the preceding period where Roman where in the constant fear of being attacks by Gauls as it had happened in 387 BC.

Brennus (or Brennos) was a chieftain of the Senones, a Gallic tribe of the Adriatic coast of Italy, who in 387 BC, in the Battle of the Allia, led an army of Cisalpine Gauls in their attack on Rome. It has been theorized that Brennus is actually a title rather than a name.

The Senones captured the entire city of Rome except for the Capitoline Hill, which was successfully held against them. However, seeing their city devastated, the Romans attempted to buy their salvation from Brennus. The Romans agreed to pay one thousand pounds weight of gold. According to legend, during a dispute over the accuracy of the weights used to measure the ransom of gold Brennus demanded, he threw his sword upon the scales and uttered the famous quote "Vae victis!", which translates to "Woe to the conquered!". (Source Wikipedia.org)

Before the roman empire, every generation could expect to be invaded and plundered at least twice in their life time. They had so to be able to train themselves to face a permanent risk of war. In the conquest of Gauls, Ceasar expands by diplomatically facing Helvete than German invasors and justity the presence of the Roman army to the Gauls by securing their territories from a foreign threat.

The Roman empire has changed this politic logic. The facism logic is institutionalized by a network of tax collector who get a commission on the taxes they collected from the empire. The roman legion which break down revolts usually fiscal and protects the border. The tax collector are supported from the legions. Most of the taxes are centralized on Rome and then dispatched back to the province to support pay legions. In this centralization tax mecanism, the emperor and Rome hold the power by being the center where the taxes are concentrated, the army recruited and then dispatched. It is illegal for a provincial governor to recruit his own army to assure the defence of the province. So, as the incident of Lepcis demonstrates the decision to dispatch an army has to come through Rome.

An exception occurs in 58 BC, when pro consul Julius Caesar becames governor of Gauls cisalpine and uses locally collect taxe to raise four legions to start the War of Gauls against the Helvetii which starts a migration to settle in Gauls. The recruitment through local taxes was illegaled and Ceasar had to justify it by the Helvetii threat on roman alliis. Even so, Ceasar got numeruous enemy who believes that Caesar wants to establish a tyranny. In 49 BC, Caeasar finishes to conquer Gauls, but he had to dispatched his illegal army to face a trial in Rome and risking exil or jail.  Caesar did not dispatched his self recruit army and moved to take Rome with one of his legion after crossing the Rubicon. His legionaries confidents on their tactical superioties of their general or willing to secure a land for their retirement decident to follow their general against a rebellion against the Roman republic. The big civil war last up to the Battle of Munda in Spain  in 45 BC. And, Caesar did end the republic roman by being nominate life dictator in 44 BC.

This concept of centralized taxation is still the rule in modern state. In France, an experimentation has been done by forcing companies to pay a taxe directly to University with the right to select the University. The idea is to give a political power of companies over the University system to force Universities to adapt to the business needed. In the area of networks, you can imagine a complex fiscal network from wealth producer: citizens or companies paying their taxation directly to the administrations, schools, army, hospitals with the intermediary of agency and the capacities of the tax payer to negotiate the right service for the right price. It was the case in many primitative society and despite being inefficient to maintain a strong army to face an invasion, it was rather socially stable. People accepts to pay taxes because they need the service but they also to have a power of negotiation to adopt the service to their needs and budgets. But unfortunately, it stops to be so 2000 years ago, when the Roman emperial  power understood that the base of their power is centralized taxation. At the end of the roman empire, this taxation would end up at around 60 % of the agricultural output and justify by the Persian Sassanide threat on the East Border in nowadays Syria and Iraq. Taxation becomes the tools of transfer of power from the citizens to the central of government. At this time, it is not yet necessary to justify and moralize this transfert of political power. The facist order roman legion give a good reason to pay: pay your taxes or be crucified.

In this roman society, the facist competitive logic has been legalized and so stabilized. Inside the roman world under the rule of one emperor, there is no political group or ambitious individuals, which is also to strengthen his political position by fact of law. So, the only way for example to increase his self political power, it is through the mediocratic logic. Most roman citizen of the empire will so past administrative exams to enter in the administration to serve the emperor or others civil servants around the emperor. The emperor hold his power by collecting the taxes and its redistribution so it should satisfy the most civil servant by offering a life long situation and fire him  in case of disobedience. This position will create individuals highly politize which will face situation in which they will have to balance their social position against their conscience. To keep their job and for the safety of their families, they will have to forget their conscience to the efficiencies of the imperial system. This is the first point of the powerful cultural revolution of Christianity.

The Christian political revolution

The emergence

In AD 311, more than 350 after the foundation of the empire by the emperor Augustus, the emperor Constantine the Great autorizes the proliferation of Christianity through the Edict of Milan. Christianity has a religious dispise by Roman citizen, the move of the emperor towards mark a major change in the political values of the subject of the empire.

At the end of the republic, most of the upper class Roman declares themselves follower of the stoicism hellenistic philosophy.

Stoicism teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions; the philosophy holds that becoming a clear and unbiased thinker allows one to understand the universal reason (logos). A primary aspect of Stoicism involves improving the individual’s spiritual well-being: "Virtue consists in a will which is in agreement with Nature."^[2] This principle also applies to the realm of interpersonal relationships; "to be free from anger, envy, and jealousy",^[3] and to accept even slaves as "equals of other men, because all alike are sons of God."^[4]

Stoicism's prime directives are virtue, reason, and natural law. Stoics believe that, by mastering passions and emotions, it is possible to find equilibrium in oneself and in the world. Greek philosophers such as Zeno and Cleanthes, and later Roman thinkers such as Cato the Younger, Seneca the Younger, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, are associated with Stoicism. Stoic philosophy is often contrasted with Epicureanism.

The Stoic ethic espouses a deterministic perspective, in regards to those who lack Stoic virtue; Cleanthes once opined that the wicked man is "like a dog tied to a cart, and compelled to go wherever it goes."^[2] A Stoic of virtue, by contrast, would amend his will to suit the world and remain, in the words of Epictetus, "sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy."^[3] For positing a "completely autonomous" individual will, and at the same time a universe that is "a rigidly deterministic single whole".

Stoicism became the foremost popular philosophy among the educated elite in the Greco-Roman Empire,^[5] to the point where, in the words of Gilbert Murray, "nearly all the successors of Alexander [...] professed themselves Stoics."^[6]

The political basis of stoiscism is to strengthen the individual by being capable to adopted the full control of himself. The religion was extremely suitable to a warrior society which had to take a point to the individual sacrifice for the common cause and the benefits of the common cause. Stoicism could be compared to today Zen Buddhism which can be understood as the philosophy of Samurai. The samurai would search for a perfect control of themselves to succeed in combat.

The roman of the republic look down Asian for their taste for good meal, their epicurism feminism character and their wickness at fight. Julius Caesar was venerate by his legionaries for dorming on the floor in his tents during cold winter and risking his life during the fight. It is an attitude of stoicist roman general. It was not the attitude of Asian king to improve the moral of the soldier by sharing their destinies.

How at the start of the empire, Roman starts to have a taste for good meal, to be indiferent for politics and to accept the imperial institution. The move of the empire was the start of a cultural swift in the western roman world.

Before Roman were involved in politics and ready to fight to maintain their individual political power but at the start of the empire, Roman starts to like Asian (Greek and Egyptian) meals, and have a more. The institution of slavery took a major proportion at the end of the republic. During the 70 BC slave rebellion of Spartacus, Italy is reported to have 1 millions slaves for a population of 7 millions. This new population was imported from abroad through warfare and during successive generation were slowly affranchised. The roman citizen also was given to more and more people leaving in all the corner of the empire. So, we assisted to the growing political significance of a population trained to be submitted to the authorities had a very different values system than the combative roman republican.

The first century AD marks a spreading of Asian cult like the egyptian deis Isis or the persian god mithras. Most asian country lives under Monarchy and so spread religious value supporting Monarchy. The emperor Augustus establishes his imperial cult as a immitation of the god king pharaon. Like most god of an agricultarian society, Augustus pretend to be bornt the December 25^th from a virgin enfanted by the god Sun. The imperial cult starts by the initiative of Anatolyan greek and spread easily and fast in the Eastern part of the empire. The roman aristocracy in the western part attaches to the lost republican values accepts the emperor on the base of the benefits he gave them and not the imperial cult. Those benefits were games, free wheat and an administrative career in the imperial bureaucracy.

In this context and from the lowest part of the society a new religion appears: christianism. Christian did not a chose a super man as a son of god but one of them , Jesus of Nazareth, a man crucifies as a rebel leader by Ponce Pilate under the accusation of King of the Jews. Jesus is a man who shares their hardship and so inspires them compassion not only for Jesus for themselves. In choosing this new god, most Christian does not look to acquired superior capabilities to succeed better in their ambitious; they chose to be part of a community, united under a common moral code.

The conversion of Constantine

What did Constantine find in Christianism ? Constantine is a succesful military general, fighting and winning civil against other emperor, assassinating  Maxentius, his wife and his son, does not have any psychological character of a believer even less of a converter. There are some studies about the psychology of converts mainly on Asian converters in Korea and China. The ratio of converter is usually 3 women for one man. These ratio is corroborate by some study of Christian Community by an inventory of donnation. A christian community in Tunisia prove to have 3 times more women than man. Between male newly converter in new asian communities, you will hardly find an male individual with an ambitious character like Constantine. It does not mean that Christian children born from Christian can not be ambitious. The act of free conversion necessitated a reject of the current values and a search for new values. To be bornt in a religion and staying in the religion of your parents is a completely different process that will should be study in the chapter concerning genetics.

Constantine does not have any reason to enter in a Christian community. He does not have any attraction for the Christian fraternity. He found a religion which was one of the largest of the empire (from 2 % to 10 %). At the time of Constantine, the province which has the largest Christian population was the African and the Asian. The Celtic northern province was indeed very little Christianize.

But furthermore, he finds a body of citizen in search of a brain. And, Christianity should be understood as a social process evolution towards a society where the largest part of citizens accept that decision concerning their destiny of the one of their children will be taken by very  few of them.

Look to the concept in the gospels of Mathew. 5, Jesus taught the beatitude, a glorification of submissive characters of the disciple

[3] Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
[4] Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
[5] Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
[6] Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
[7] Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
[8] Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
[9] Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
[10] Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
[11] Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

Jesus reaffirme that the Kingdom of God is not for the ambitious and the successful but for the one who did not grow up and stay passible like a child.

[1] At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
[2] And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,
[3] And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
[4] Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
[

Matthew 19

[13] Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them.
[14] But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.
[15] And he laid his hands on them, and departed thence.
[16] And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?

The parabole of the god shepherd in the latest of the gospels, written when Christianity starts to be a separated religion, is even more revelatrice:

John 10:1-21

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.

Mattew 9.35

[35] And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.
[36] But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.
[37] Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few;
[38] Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.

Believers are considered to be a sheep, who needs to accept the authority of Jesus to stay in the path. The sheep, who believes that he can find the path by himself, will be eaten by the wolf.

The process is having disciples accepting to put themselves down to deny their own capabilities, is extremely unconventional and up to now I did not find any example in any others institutionalized religion.  In China in 450 BC, Confucianism inforced a brain/body system by completely different kind of arguments. Confuscius  justify the necessity a decision center on the person of the emperor. He will then explain the limitation of the person as the reason of the imperial wrong doing. And then, Confucius concludes that coordination of China gave to Chinese subject have more benefit to obey collectively the commands of the emperor than to follow his own and individuals choice. Confucius like most spiritual leaders never put down his disciples by refusing them any right of judging and understanding the action of the emperor. On the opposite, Confuscius asks them to use their wisdom to take over any rebellious tendency and accept by wisdom and not by faith the necessity of a national brain.

In the roman republic and so in Sparta, the idea that some individuals should become the brain of others has been accommodate by the limitation of the consulship to one year and the impossibility to be eligible before 8 years. The restriction offers the possibility to most of the political efficient individuals to become the brain at least one year in their life. The idea of a brain/body political structure has been accepted but not the specialization into brain citizen and body citizen. It is not this alternative that Constantine and the father of the Church have decided but a radically new one: some are by god elected (anointed one) to be the brain and the others should deny their own mind by the power of the faith.

If you are some experience of Asian pagan religion as Buddhism and Hinduism, you are surprised by the absence of sermon. Pagan religions are based on rites and sacrifices in order to stay humble and submit to divine power. Judaism has developed a new religious practice: the teaching of the laws. As Judaism is the first religion based on a writing law, the teaching of contents the Bible to an illiterate population has necessitated the creation of an infrastructure: the synaguoges network. Christian inheretes of this infracture but to the old testaments, they add their own texts: teaching of Jesus in the gospels and the teachings of Paul in the epitres which are highly criticized of the Pharisian (Jewist) fundamentalist position. On the opposite, Christians churches have a lot of freedom in the interpretation of the laws which leads to the success of the new religion and the creation of numerous heresies.

So, entering in the Christian world, Constantine discovered a unique religion in the sense that he got a communication network to the faithful and the possibilities to discuss about the contents of the doctrine. Constantine took part in the organization of synagogues and selected and influences the writing of the most active churches priest. This scenario won’t last in the Catholic Church but it would last up to 1553 in the orthodox Byzantine Church where the bishop stay submitted to the emperor in term of political propaganda. With his Christian alliance, Constantine got the possibility to talk to his subjects and expose the imperial political position.  It should be noticed that it is a unique phenomena in the antic and medieval world. You will not find any political power capable to influence the thinking of the subjects. In most of the pagans’ world, priest does not provide most teachings and are extremely independent from the temporal power, In the case of the Roman Empire, Constantine started a political revolution. The people of brain got a voice to talk to the people of the bodies. The empires will functionate with a kind of nerve network. The only missing point is the capacity of the bodies to transmit his feeling to the brain.

This process is And it will find some

The political value of the Christian scripture

 To listen the words of Jesus or to become Jesus

At this point, we have to emphase a contradiction in the development of Christian model. The gospels insists on the salvation by the faith, the fight against the devil of the mind and the obedience without questioning to the Brain(Church), which let a critical question. Who are the members of the brain? Are they hypocrites who pretends to be believer in order to access to power or another kind believers with a different interpretation of Christianity than standard believers?

This contradiction can be resolved by the well known biological effect XXX, Every children have a period of high perceptibility when they obey to who feed them. A canary duck will the first creature he will see at his birth, potentially a human being or his mother. The process is fast apprentissage process for one generation to the other in order to facilitate cultural transmission.

Human children have a high period of influencability around up to 10 years. During this period, children will construct their personality against the understanding of a real person or created one. It is the age where Children boy are attracted by super hero. Child boy have a competitive temperament and wants to know to ideolize successful male in order to fixe their personality. The father might play the role but in atribue, it is probable that the most venerate hunter was the idole.

Christianity like many religion decide to use this biological process in the build up of children characters and have Jesus as a new model. The personality of Jesus has detailed in the goispel, is a personality of a leaders and not of a submitted. Jesus is rebellious against the priest in the temple and never comprise on his core belief. Jesus is said to have an high debating skills and capability against the pharisians and break down their arguments. He imposes respect by his magic powers. He does not fear to die for his cause. The Jesus characters is a character of a strong leaderships with in plus a strong marketing and campaigning capabilities. It is not so uncommon that many Christian does not learn in the gospels submission and obedience but on the opposite leadership, marketing and campaigning.

The natural genetic characters of the child will so condition the child to two opposites direction: to be a leaders like Jesus, or an obedient faithful shep. We have so a perfect educational system to divide humanity into two groups: the member of the brain and the one of the body.

The persecution of paganism

Constantine converts to Christianity and his death bed and so had been a major actors in the establishment of the Christianity by his relition with the Christian scholar Eusebius and the convocation of the first council of Nice in 325 which established the nature of Jesus: god or men. Jesus became a god and so the emperor could obtain his right to rule through the church.

"Resplendent in purple and gold, Constantine made a ceremonial entrance at the opening of the council, probably in early June, but respectfully seated the bishops ahead of himself."^[4] As Eusebius described, Constantine "himself proceeded through the midst of the assembly, like some heavenly messenger of God, clothed in raiment which glittered as it were with rays of light, reflecting the glowing radiance of a purple robe, and adorned with the brilliant splendor of gold and precious stones."^[18] He was present as an observer, but he did not vote. Constantine organized the Council along the lines of the Roman Senate. "Ossius [Hosius] presided over its deliberations; he probably, and the two priests of Rome certainly, came as representatives of the Pope."^[4] “Eusebius of Nicomedia probably gave the welcoming address."^[4][19]

The council of Nicea was a first major step in the fixing of the doctrine to make it polically usable. 301 bishops have been gathered to vote and the process, which lead to more synods, and councils become a feature of the church. The necessity politic forbid ambitities of the bible which could be used by political adversary to critize the imperial politics. And so, heretics who hold different view of the Christian faith, should be persecuted and eliminated in order to avoid to lose political efficiency by the existence of divergence opinion. On the others hand, pagans and jews would also be less tolerated but there is far less evidence of active imperial persecutions against both groups than against Christian heretics.

In 379, Theodosius, the first converted young Christian came to power and starts political persecution against paganism . Theodosius bans pagan sacrifice in 388. In 391, the eternal fire of the Virgin was disbanned and the Roman temple of Vesta closed. Theodosius cancelled Olympic games. The effectiveness of the action against paganism is questioned. Christian got the monopoly to obtain high office in the administration. So, convertion to Christianity became an obligation to the upper class in order to maintain their social status. The time of Thedosius marks the entering of numeruous Germanic barbarious tribe into the empire. Despite having an impressive army of 400 000 solders, the empire prove surprising ineffitive to defeat the Goths which might have no more than 25 000 soldiers. This military ineffectiveness is relatively surprised considering that the smaller Roman republic could previously defeat far greater barbaric threat coming also from the North of Europe  like the cimbri and Teutons  of more than 120 000 combattans in 101 BC at the battle of Vercellae.

Theodosius participated in actions by Christians against major Pagan sites: the destruction of the gigantic Serapeum of Alexandria and its library by a mob in around 392, according to the Christian sources authorized by Theodosius (extirpium malum), needs to be seen against a complicated background of less spectacular violence in the city: ^[11] Eusebius mentions street-fighting in Alexandria between Christians and non-Christians as early as 249, and non-Christians had participated in the struggles for and against Athanasius in 341 and 356. "In 363 they killed Bishop George for repeated acts of pointed outrage, insult, and pillage of the most sacred treasures of the city."^[12]

The persecution against pagans might also be due to ineffective of the collapse of the roman army which might stay passive in reaction to attacks againt pagans but still protected christians. Brigans and barbaruous invaders proclamming themselves chritians robbed, and looted selectively pagans  and let Christians in peace. In this context, many pagans should to convert to christianity for the sake of their famillies. The pagan gods were now called demons and the convertion was the only way to secure your souls from the action of those demons by the acquiering the protection of the Christ.

The emergence of Islam

The fight of the gospels writers against the fundamentalism of the writing law. Successful new political culture usellu nearly always follow a reactive pattern:

-         against the law and in the obedient to a authority

-         in favor of a law and  rebellious against any  authority which does not comply with this law

The gospels containts far more attacks and radically new interpretation (usually contrarian) against the existing laws. The pharisians constently attack Jesus as describing as an hypocrite enemy of Moise decalog. Jesus fearcily counter them back (…) with radically new arguments. St Paul is even more radicale in its critics of the laws of pharisian.

Letter from Paul to Timothy I, 4

[1] Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
[2] Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
[3] Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
[4] For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:

In the process of Christianisation, local people were reluctant due to fact that people see Christianity has a world without law under the authority and the unlimited arbitrarian of the roman emperor and the Church.

Reformatting native religious and cultural activities and beliefs into a Christianized form was officially sanctioned; preserved in the Venerable Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum is a letter from Pope Gregory I to Mellitus, arguing that conversions were easier if people were allowed to retain the outward forms of their traditions, while claiming that the traditions were in honour of the Christian God, "to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God".

The destruction of the legal system of the empire during the process Christianization should not be underestimated. During the pagan time, the Roman world got an extremely well develop legal process, procedure and laws voted by the senate and a large network of judge and tribunal all over the empire and also numerous oral tradition. Futhermore, traditions were linked to pagan beliefs and defends by disappearing pagan gods. Jesus teaching based on the redistribution of the property to the poor, were hardly a replacement to the strong Roman legal system strict on the stiffs punishment in the case of the non payment of debts by for example losing a free man or citizen status to the slave status with a proceed going to to the debtor:

According to wikipedia.org, the senate voted clear law like the

Lex Aelia Sentia (AD 4) – concerning the manumissions of slaves

Those clear law which defined individuals status and make the function of tribunal feasible break down and disappears and were replaced by imperial directives like the Codex Theodosianus  of Theodosus in 429 AD and the “Corpus Juris Civilis” of Justinian I in 529 AD. Those laws are not really laws to be used by a tribunale but a list of directives to be executed by the administrations in order to persecute and eliminate paganism, heresie with a special mention to Arianism (the belief in a human Jesus Christ and not in a god like Jesus Christ).

And, you have the constitution of large groups leaded Robin Wood, converted to Christianity distributing the output of pagan business people to the poor and so also to themselves. The disasters can be established by the destruction of most pagan temples and lost of half of the souls of the empire in 100 years. The lost of souls can be also attributed to the destruction of thebarbarous invasion in the Western European part of the empire but not in the East like Egypt and Palestine.

In this apocalypse of three centuries of civil war and arbitrary ruling of the new christian authorities, a new religion in 632 appears at the border of the Byzantine in the independent and illiterate province of Arabia. The prophet Mohammed based his religion on a clear writing law that god dictates him. The corannic law is clear and easy to interpret. The coranic law have to be applied to all mulsulmans incluting the sultans and the members of the autority and so the subjects are protected against the abuse of the power.

And so for territory conquer by the Islam army, the conquest appears like a liberation and a chance for all to escape the arbitrary of the Byzantine which could persecute any body on the belief that a person might be an hidden pagan or heretic and acting for more than 3 centuries to the unification of the beliefs in the empire.

As Islam gave also relatively clear status for Christian and Jews and limited the persecution to pagans, local population had all the interest to accept the Islamic new rulers even if they had no intention to accept the new beliefs. The Islamic conquest had also of positive effect on the development of business practice, which could redevelop in such a manner that the Islamic world got an economy in a far better shape than the European Christian world. The lost of clear regulation of properties right which was the consequence of Christianization made a situation where moralized and legalized robbery completely arbitrary. The story of the rich young man in Mattew 19.16 is a good insentive for Christian authority to confiscate properties for the sake of the tax owner in order to save his life from greediness. The Story of the rich young man is probably one of the most culturally significant verses of the gospels in the sens that it will change and inverse the meaning of greediness. In the pagan and jews world, a greedy person is the one who want to acquiert the property of others by robbery and roguery. But, in the Christian world, the sin of greediness is the one who does not wanted to give away his wealth. The very successful satiric play Moliere theater play 1668, The Miser describes clearly Christian attitude toward saving. The absence of property laws gave all right to the administration and the Church to relieve saver from the properties to distribute it to the poor and the member of those administration. This state of economic last in western Europe up to the XI century where Roman inspired legal system gradually reappeared and its end in 1453 in the Byzantine Christian Orthodoxe East Roman empire. The consequence was disappearance of all industry (Gaulo-Roman got  a lot of artisanal industry: clay, wine barrack, textiles…), stone building architecture and in the VI century England even Money disappears. The complete collapse of an antic civilization due to the move moral law from a pragmatic pagan law to an idealistic christian law is an unique and extreme political event. The fight against all pragmatism attitude of the Christian last during most of the middle age

India, a creator acting through his laws

The Asian sub continent develops a complete new set of religions: Karmic religions. Karmic religion includes the most famuous Buddhism which spread all over Asian to Japan, Mongolia, Viet Nam. Janism is with 15 millions rich faithful an important north Indian religion and most Hinduism since 500 BC. 

According to http://wikipedia.org

The theory of the law of karma is important because it starts a completely different approach to the religion than the biblical religions based on the belief of the active of guiding god sending messenger (prophet) to guide the human kind. For the follower of Karma, there should be a creator, but the creator is not a god. He is rather a programmer, the programmer of the law of Karma which has created us as well as secondary divinities.

As the creator programmer is absent and possibly ignorant of our existence, it is irrelevant to mention it to justify the will of the creator to orient our collective political action. Our duty is to learn about our karma through the meditation and the experimentation. The meditation process is a kind of self introspection in order to awaken our knowledge of ourselves. In a psychoanalyst view, the purpose of meditation is be conscious of our subconscious to get a full understanding and control of our ego (personality or soul). The second part of the process: experimentation in order to understand the karmic laws of causes and effect did not have a strong success in the sub Asian continent but it has in the north Asia China and lead to the philosophical justification of the scientific experimentation. In order to act right according to the karmic law, human being should do their best to know the laws and so they should be knowledgeable about the scientific research to avoid to act by ignorance of the karmic law and to commit a karmic sin. This view point explains the keen interest of karmic believer to scientific study all over Asia and the extremely high percentage of Asian engineer.  The law of physics and evolution are the modern version of the law of Karma. There is a strong religious incentive to understand the basic mechanism of those laws to avoid living sinfully according to the creator views. Christian Catholics and musulmans do not have this religious obligation and got a simpler way to different sin to good deed: The writing law of god in the Bible and the Koran.

The view point of the research of the law through experimentation developed far more in the Greek Classic world than in the Asian World and bears the name philosophy but according to politics, there is very little reason to differentiate religious beliefs and philosophy. Religious beliefs are always teaching under the framework of a philosophy. They both aimed to reduce the sinful acts commited by human and increase the number of good deed to increase the welfare of future generation. The philosophical approach is based on the idea of a god progammers not involved in the development of his creation but the creator had choosen the law of Karma in order that we are there with an initial intention for us to be there. In a major theological point, there is not really the belief of an humanity created by accident or hazards. Our present has been decided and programmed by our creator and our duty is to learn through scientific research and philosophy the way to not behave by ignorance against those laws.

The biblical theological model is radically different than the Karmic/philosophical theological model. The creator has created a unique single world on the center of universe from Clay. The creation necessitates a lot of work and so it is very precious to him. Unfortunately, groups of demons want to take advantage of his hard creative work and starts to corrupt the humankind.  In the antic Jews/Christians, those demons are in fact the very active pagan gods which lead pagans to act sinfully. For example,  Beelzebub (Matthew 12.24,27 and Luke 11.15,18–19) is the philistine god Baal and an adversary of the hebrew god. Their purpose is to abuse and corrupt the heart of the creation and so the creator had to send messenger prophets with a writing law to help human to escape from those demons. Those prophets are named Moses, Jesus or Mohammed and the writing law is the Bible, gospels or Koran. The failure to learn this law made humans impossible to understand sins and to escape from the ceasure of pagan demons. The biblical view lead to hostile view of the law of nature as the nature is full of demons which are trying to corrupt the humankind.

On the opposite, Karmic and philosophical religion force human to see the study nature as the way to understand the laws and the unique real source of widow. Human being are full of negative emotions like anger, pride, greed and deceit. Those emotion strengthen his ego and made him losing any sens of wisdow. The remedy is the isolation in the nature and forest. The meditation process which is focused on the emptiness of the thought, will help me to cure him of all mental impurieties and save him from the madness that he quarried from the society. The nature will be his teachers and will provide him a real understanding and a true wisdom that no book or teacher will ever give him.

The birth of Buddhism

Buddhism, probably the most successful of the Karmic starts with the live of Sidhartha Gautama around 450 BC which teaches in north India at the same time than Mahavira, the founder of the jain religion, the most philosophical of the Karmic religion.

Buddhism was adopted by Asoka Maurya, the founder of the biggest Indian empire in 260 BC, 50 years after the Alexander the great conquest. Asoka has a lot of parellele with Constantine the Great (500 years later). Buddhism doctrine is based on compassion and enlightment and like Jainism rejects violence as a mean to solve conflicts.  Buddhism spread like Christians in the same historical circumstance. The fascist competitive logic marked an end and the two others competitive logic: Mendicacy and productivism. As it will point later, Christian Catholicism rejects the productivism competitive logic as well as the facist competitive developed his doctrine around the logos: the verb incarnated.

Buddhism has a complete biased against all form of competitive logic which indirectly favor the productivist competitive logic as it is the most natural one. The political power belongs to the one who has something to give and not to the one who is in position to be listened. The difference can be traced back to the difference of social status of Jesus and Buddha. Jesus is the “elligimate” son of a carpenter, who should normally endure the hard job of Carpenters but prefers to do a religious and political campaign in favor of a new interpretation of the Jewish law in order to create a new moral world. Jesus had a campaign lasting 3 years and is stopped prematurely with the move of Jesus toward Jerusalem. The roman government Ponce Pilate arrests Jesus under the accusation to campaign for the title of Jews and crucify him like any other rebels against the fascist roman order.

On the contrary, Buddha is a prince and an heir of Kingdom of the Shakya nation. He deliberately gave up with the high social status of prince to live like a meditative saddhu in the forest during 6 years to achieve perfect enlighten at the age of 35. Due to his high social status, he then has no difficulty to teach his doctrine. Gautama is also said to be a man extremely good looking with a very attractive physical aspect. For Buddha, it was so extremely easy to have converted to his doctrine and be invited by most kings of India to teach his wisdom and to explain the truth. A prince choosing the life of a mendicant was a marked of an exceptional personality and a man that every one wants to meet and hear.

By contrast, Jesus is exactly the opposite. His social status made him rejected by everybody including his parents Joseph and Mary (Mark 1-24, Matthew 1-28, Marc 3-22, Mark 8-11, Matthew 12.38, Luc 11.16, Luc 12-54, Mark 8.34-35, Matthew 8.34-35, Mt 21.23-27, Mc 11.27-33)

Matthew 13.54

We can summarize the electoral campaign that Jesus to be recognized as the Messie-Savor of the Israel by:

-          opposing to the one who doubts in him, and threaten those who refuse to listen to him,

-          criticize the interpretation of the law of the Pharisees,

-          oppose to the possession of riches,

-          denounce social and moral discrimination toward women,

-          insisted oppressed individuals (prostitute, poor, sick and so impure …) to a social rebellion against the discrimination that they support

Jesus rarely argues his claim and prefers to justify them by showing his mastering of Magic.  He did not develop any convincing doctrine like Gautana based on logics and a deep understanding of the law of nature.

 His campaign is extremely vigorous and energetic and should be the source of the aggressive marketing that Christian civilization is used to. In contrast, the Asian Buddhist world sees such marketing has a lack of humility and manifestation of ego.  The Buddhism doctrine had rather a psychoanalytic approach as the Christian doctrine can be seen as a social approach.

Buddhism tries to fight violence fascist competitive logic by understanding of oneself. The approach is comparable to the one used by psychoanalyst. Christian sees it as a fight against demons that source of fascism. They develop an offensive proselytism in order to be large number in order to win the war against badness.

On the long run, however criticized the Christian civilization lead to a remarkable civilization and the Buddhism paralyze itself like the Islamic civilization to the stage of social development of the appearance of the doctrine.

One reason is that Buddhist focus an adapting oneself to the reality instead of changing its. With this strategy, you do effectively do not change anything and learn to stay happy by controlling the positivity of oneself thought.

In Christianity, it is exactly the opposite. The aggressive marketing toward a Kingdom of god who might exist in the future, become an aggressive marketing toward everything who might exist in future.

The Buddhist world does not worry about what might exist in the future because the state of mind of an entrepreneur will not be an acceptable peaceful mind. In the Christian world, the state of mind of an Entrepreneur campaigner for funds is hardly different to the one of Jesus. Western entreprener sell product who can maybe exist but in many case never exist. They had to follow an aggressive campaign for funds to finance their innovative ideas and lead their society on the path of innovation.

After his conversion to Budhism, the emperor Asoka extends

Technological progress in the confucianism imperial China

Mendicacy competition

.The competition inside communities and latter in the Church is now on the individual marketing skills and the one who has the most persuasive will move to the top of the society. As the Church rapidly did it, he will also provide some service to help the riches to unload his wealth. As mentioned to the rich men in Matthew 19.16 (cite before), it is difficult for a rich men to distribute his wealth directly to the poor and to follow Jesus. If it does not select his poor careful, the poor might take him as an idiot. So, Christian community will solve the problems by accepting rich disciple and their wealth and distribute the collect wealth to the poor member and prospect. We do see the start of the meditative competitive logic which is the based of the social structure of the catholic world. The priest is a chief marketer and advance according to their capacities to collect funds and will be promote according to their success. The poor beggar is also submitting to a Sharpe competition to give a good image of themselves to deserve those funds. In both case, the capacity to persuade is the source of success and hard working entrepreneur will deprive his children for their heritage to the benefit of the churches.

The influence of our genes

From this first genetic differentiation, the human nature develops multiple characters with different individual benefits. One of them is the age differentiate. We are genetically programmed to have changed of personalities according to the age. For example, children have a fearing individualist psychologist. In face of dangers, they try to save themselves first. We all know characters that can be qualified of selfishness, which can be attributed to the youngest. The young are always selfish because they have to stay alive and accumulate the maximum potential (or properties) to secure their capacities to have children. For aged and middle aged individuals, the psychologies are completely different. Individuals tend to give away their belongings toward the youngest and are usually ready to sacrifice their life for their children. Another age-oriented attitude is learning programs. Human being likes most living creature is “programmed” to learn different things at different age. Young girl are playing to be a mother at 6 and a nurse at 10. Young boy play to war with their friend in the wood at 6, and to trading game or hunt building at 12. Those ages dependent psychology has one major thing in common is this age is not a constant and varies considerably from an individual to another.   Some individual lose their childish fear or their childish greediness very young. Others will keep it to a very old age and might die before losing it. The age dependent psychological characters are extremely important in order to consider in the variation of personality pool according to the environment. They depend of genes, which are limited number of function so government could consider changing them without risking endangering the health of the newborn. For people who are traveling and live in different continents, we have the tendency to see others childish according to some character and they see us also childish according to other criteria. For example, adult African looks childish toward European due to the directness toward the other sex or high attraction toward physical performance. Adult European looks childish toward an Asian by its tendency to say jokes or sarcasm. Adult Asian looks childish toward European by its tendency to accept the authority of the knowledgeable. Those characters were often believed to be a cultural artifact but in fact, you usually have the culture that our genes can adopt. It will important to consider later why nature are programmed us to resist cultural changes and the also variation between country and continents.