I find it really interesting that the vast bulk of cuneiform tablets that have survived from ancient Sumer, are mostly records of transactions of goods and services and people's complaints about those same goods and services. They survive because the physical media survives and not because of the way they were treated. The commonplace and banal is often discarded and thrown away; literally like yesterday's newspaper. Had they been on something as flimsy as paper, they likely would have been burned.
It is the papyri of philosophy, of religion, of scripture, of the things held to be sacred, holy, and precious, that were committed to memory, that were transferred into books, that were squirrelled away in caves and libraries, and which have on occasion been subject to deliberate desecration, burning, and defacement. In an age of limited literacy, scribes were revered and or alternatively hated, depending of whether or not they worked for the institutions held to be sacred or secular.
It used to be that media was demarcated and sectioned. Granted that there are other issues with having what kind of information and opinion is doled out by only a few gatekeepers but the point stands that separate things in print media used to be kept separate. However on an infinite canvass with an infinite scrolling service like Twitter or Facebook, the serious and the silly, the stupid and the sacred, the sexual and the scandalous, the salacious and the serious, can all scroll on by as the platforms clamber for your attention, without context, without reflection, and without value. When everything is reduced to something to be liked, laughed at, and/or fed into the outrage machine, any judgements which the reader used to make about suitability, are all levelled into a grey goo.
I think that one of the things that societies realised in the past and that we have chosen to thrown away and burn upon the pyre of consumerism, is that ideas of what is pure, sacred and maybe even holy, just might give us a better appreciation of the world that we live in, the limitedness of life, and the vast stretches of nothingness that exist in space and time in all directions.
The Greeks had the word Hagnos (ἁγνός) which kind of hinted at the pure, holy and sacred. I do not think that philosophy was seen as purely an intellectual exercise but rather, that the contemplation of art, of physical space, the unknown, of beauty, of ideas and texts, is more of an appreciation of the sacred and an agreement that there are things which are in fact precious.
Holiness as a concept implies that special things, objects, people, spaces and places, have been set aside or been marked as being different, for either the specific use of the deity or in contemplation of some higher power. In that respect, Hagnos has been reserved for chambers, buildings, mountains, scriptures, and priesthoods. The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul retains its Greek name despite being used as a mosque and the words 'Hagia Sophia' are usually taken to mean in English 'Holy Wisdom'. The really weird thing about the Hagia Sophia is that even after is has been described as the most beautiful building in all of Christendom, it still managed to capture less of a sense of Hagnos than the view from the front door which overlooks the glassy Mediterranean Sea.
High places invariably require an effort to get to; then provides the traveller a view which overlooks the vastness of the world. People will also say that they have had a 'mountain top experience' after going through something important and this might have something to do with the shared cultural heritage that religions have collectively provided us with but I do not think that it is by accident that high mountains are often described as holy places, with the sense of hagnos that tumbles out of them.
The problem is that we've come so far down the road of discrete compartmenalism, that even thinking about what is scared is almost by default associated with religion. Religion or rather, organised religion, has on many occasions been weaponised and what might have been sacred scripture and ritual, have been poisoned by very very powerful institutions, and where ritual and dogma have been weaponised as instruments of control. People quite rightly have objections to this and instead of what should be something to think about freely, is either diminished or rejected outright.
It is exceptionally unpopular to talk about a concept like purity in a society which is unbound, unchained, and permissive at every opportunity. It is even more unpopular to suggest that using sexuality to sell every product imaginable, might not be a good idea for the moral formation of society because when relativism and individualism rule the roost, then any kind of push back is seen as a personal affront. The very thought that those things might be scared has ironically been rejected by a modern society which wants to reject the idea that can anything be sacred at all.
Just as religious people do not have a monopoly over morality, I do not think that religion has a monopoly over sacredness. I do not think that what the Greeks saw as Hagnos necessarily had a connection with thoughts about the afterlife, with prayer and ritual, with scripture and doctrine, or with priests and the clergy. Whether or not you believe in God, is an entirely different question and may or may not have consequences, but Hagnos exists outside of religion.
I have stood at a lookout overlooking a great valley in the mountains and the entire of nature seems to be shouting at you. I was once standing in a valley looking up at the night sky and with no sense of any man-made street light, it was like I could scrape eternity with my fingers. I think that it is possible to find Hagnos in the screaming silence, or maybe in the middle of a profound piece of music, or in moments where the kosmos ceases to exist and a fleeting sense of exhilaration rushes in to fill the space.
Religion might be able to describe things that are true, albeit different things to what Science can describe as true but even then, religion can not describe those things such as beauty, love, inspiration, a sense of awe, except by point you towards those things. Religions themselves are not the objects of worship and they are not actually the thing that is sacred.
Hagnos like art, is one of those things that when experience, the person living through it knows exactly what it is. I have no doubt that a scientist can tell me why various stars shine with different wavelengths of light, or perhaps even describe the motions of the objects in the heavens ever more precisely, like Kelper, Newton, and Einstein might, but none those people can adequate explain why if people stare up at the night sky, we feel small and unimportant against a backdrop of a hundred billion suns. Hagnos has a better handle on wonder and awe, than all of the scientists and religious practitioners put together do.
Any attempt to characterize a sense of Hagnos is going to be limited because the observer of Hagnos is also limited. In that sense, Hagnos is not pro or even anti religion because at some point, everyone has to realise that the universe is bigger than ourselves.
The question then is what you do with that Hagnos. If I am standing on the shoulders of giants and able to see further than anyone who has come before me, does that perspective change me? Does it change my view of other people? If I can see beyond the limited realm of my own blinkered perspective, am I then changed to view others as valuable? And if so, should that perspective change people's views towards the embiggenment of the other eudaimonic elements such as truth, justice, freedom and what not?
In many respects the metaphor of the mountain is the best tool to grasp an idea of Hagnos. I think that Hagnos is akin to climbing the mountain philosophical contemplation because in doing so, one rises above the ordinary and is able to see the depths and broadness of the human experience and even the kosmos. In standing on the summit, we see boundaries far beyond our usual selves, beyond the smallness of a self-centered perspective, and allows our understanding to expand towards others, towards life, towards reality as a whole; towards wisdom, love, truth and freedom.
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