Looking to the past for today’s solutions

Whenever we face insurmountable problems, there is a yearning for a leader who will lead us out of the mess or a reference to an olden era where the solutions to present-day problems lie. In India we often revert to Geeta or the Mahabharata to see how they solved the big issues of the day and derive some comfort from the fact that there is nothing new under the sun and that perhaps a more devoted perusal of old classics will provide guidance for us for the future.

Here is an effort by a Armand D'Angour , a Greek scholar to search for answers from the old Greek sages to some of the problems of the day. For example what advice would the ancient Greeks provide to help modern Greeks with their current financial worries?

1. Debt, division and revolt.  In the early 6th Century BC, the people of Athens were burdened with debt, social division and inequality, with poor farmers prepared to sell themselves into slavery just to feed their families. Revolution was imminent, but the aristocrat Solon emerged as a just mediator between the interests of rich and poor. He abolished debt bondage, limited land ownership, and divided the citizen body into classes with different levels of wealth and corresponding financial obligations. His measures, although attacked on all sides, were adopted and paved the way for the eventual creation of democracy.

Solon's success demonstrates that great statesmen must have the courage to implement unpopular compromises for the sake of justice and stability. But is there one living today?

2. How would the gods on Mount Olympus tackle the IMF and the bond markets?  Faced with the financial armageddon in their time, the ancient Greeks would have gone to the Delphi for the oracle’s words. Ancient Delphi was the site of Apollo's oracle, believed to be inspired by the god to utter truths. Her utterances, however, were unintelligible and needed to be interpreted by priests, who generally turned them into ambiguous prophecies. In response to, say, "Should Greece leave the euro?" the oracle might have responded: "Greece should abandon the euro if the euro has abandoned Greece," leaving proponents and opponents of "Grexit" to squabble over what exactly that meant. 


It is, of course, something like listening to modern day economists. At least the oracle had the excuse of inhaling the smoke of laurel leaves. Wiser advice may be found in the mottos inscribed on the face of Apollo's temple at Delphi, advocating moderation and self-knowledge: "Know yourself. Nothing in excess."

3. Will this ever end?

If modern Greeks feel overwhelmed by today's financial problems, they might take some comfort from remembering the world-weary advice from their ancestor Pythagoras that "everything comes round again, so nothing is completely new". Pythagoras of Samos was a 6th Century BC mystic sage who believed that numbers are behind everything in the universe - and that cosmic events recur identically over a cycle of 10,800 years. 


In short, this means that  "There is nothing new under the sun".

4. How do we face this challenge?

"Hold fast, my heart, you have endured worse suffering," Odysseus exhorts himself in Homer's Odyssey, from the 8th Century BC.Having battled hostile elements and frightful monsters on his return home across the sea from Troy to his beloved Ithaka and wife Penelope, Odysseus here prevents himself from jeopardising a successful finale as a result of impatience.

The stirring message is that whatever the circumstances, one should recognise that things could be, and have been, even worse. Harder challenges have been faced and - with due intelligence and fortitude - overcome.

5. Are you sure that we are following the right path?

By cross-examining ordinary people, the philosophers aimed to get to the heart of complex questions such as "What is justice?" and "How should we live?" Often no clear answer emerged, but Socrates insisted that we keep on asking the questions. "The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being," he said.

Socrates bequeathed to humanity a duty to keep on thinking with tireless integrity, even when - or particularly when - definite answers are unlikely to be found.

6. Do we have the right leaders?

The most brilliantly inventive of comic playwrights, Aristophanes was happy to mock contemporary Athenian politicians of every stripe. He was also the first to coin a word for "innovation".His comedy Frogs of 405 BC, which featured the first representation of aerial warfare, contained heartfelt and unambiguous advice for his politically fickle fellow citizens. 


"Choose good leaders, or you will be stuck with bad ones."

7. Should we do the same as last time?

"You can't step into the same river twice" is one of the statements of Heraclitus, in the early 5th Century BC - his point being that the ceaseless flow of the water makes for a different river each time you step into it.!




While change is constant, different things change at different rates. In an environment of ceaeless flux, it is important to identify stable markers and to hold fast to them. Magical or wishful thinking cannot bring a cure. Only honest, exhaustive, empirical observation can hope to reveal what works and what does not.

8. Finding solutions?

Asked to measure whether a crown was made of pure gold, the Sicilian Greek Archimedes (3rd Century BC) puzzled over a solution.The story goes that when he eventually took a bath and saw the water rising as he stepped in, it struck him that an object's volume could be measured by the water it displaced - and when weighed, their relative density could be calculated. He was so excited by his discovery that he jumped out of the bath and ran naked through Syracuse shouting "Eureka!" - Greek for "I've got it!"

Finding the solution to a knotty problem requires hard thinking, but the answer often comes only when you switch off - and take a bath!!


I wonder if any Indian writer has delved as deeply into the sages of the past for answers to our present day problems. What advice could Valmiki give to Manmohan Singh? Has not the BJP followed the prescriptions of Chankaya in its strategies ? The American scene today also seems to yearn for the past in its prescriptions for the future- and not always successfully. 


The real lesson is be "learn from the past but be careful in looking for all answers in the past to today's problems."