Here we go. The text below is the first chapter of a co-written book, of which I am one of the co-author. The goal is to present what we think about what Christianity was and how it arose. It is a long read (over 250 pages in length as of now). It works like the philosophical novels of Voltaire or Bunyan's
The Pilgrim's progress. The first chapter is just a framing device. Chapter 2 is where the real action begins.
Chapter 1 – Discovery
On July 17th 2024, I was on night shift duty at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station ARA monitoring room. ARA stands for “Askaryan Radio Array”, the unimaginative name of yet another Neutrino detection experiment undertaken by a consortium of mostly American universities. More on this later. The ARA monitoring room is not actually a room. It is just an area inside a fairly large Science lab section of the Amundsen-Scott main building. There, RAs (Research Assistants), like myself, sit in front of a bank of computer monitors, day and night, waiting for something to go wrong with the ARA gear, a set of 37 radio-wave detectors sunk into pits drilled into the South Pole ice crust two kilometers apart from each other over an area as large as downtown San-Francisco. That night, something had indeed gone wrong. At 2:28 am., on one of the screens, a row had turned bright red, indicating that one of the Digitization Daughter Boards (DTD) was no longer responding to SNMP requests and probably needed to be swapped. Faced with the prospect of a lonely snowmobile ride in the dead of night, I did what people do in such circumstances: I yawned, cracked all my fingers one by one, finished my mug of cold coffee, and got onto my feet.
Grabbing a spare DTD from the tech bench, I headed for the main exit airlock, donned my heavy arctic clothing and opened the outside door. The cold was fierce; wind chill at about minus 50 degrees centigrade. The weather was calm. Any hint of a storm and I would have been spared the trip into the cold arctic night. But no. No wind. I had no excuse not to go. The equipment rack with the faulty board was about 8 kilometers away; A 15 minutes snowmobile ride. After driving for a while, I was in total darkness. The lights of the Amundsen-Scott base were no longer visible behind me and the sky was cloudy; there was no Moon nor stars. The powerful headlights of the snowmobile were digging a tunnel into the darkness ahead of me, showing the perfectly straight track leading to the ARA-B-12 equipment cabinet, my destination.
Trying not to fall asleep during this most monotonous of rides, I kept moving my head from side to side to avoid letting my gaze become fixated on the track ahead. Suddenly, however, it felt as if I had indeed fallen asleep and was dreaming. The rush of air in my face was no longer cold; so much so that I started to feel hot under my heavy anorak. I released the throttle, half expecting to wake up buried in the snow beside the track under the upturned snowmobile. But no, I was not asleep. My machine slowed down gently to a stop and I hopped off, inhaling the warm surrounding air in puzzlement. The temperature must have been 15°C or so and I was getting sweaty. Having removed my overcoat and gloves, I was standing there in the light hoodie I had been wearing a few moments ago inside the building. I did not feel cold at all ! Surprisingly, the snow on the track did not seem to be melting. It felt as cold as usual to the touch; well below freezing.
It was then that I noticed the light. It looked like sunrise in the distance although of course it could not be sunrise, given the season, and it was not even in the right direction. Leaving the snowmobile behind on the track, I started walking towards the lit sky up a gentle slope. As I moved forward, everything slowly began to look as if the sun was indeed rising. But there was no sun. The snow around me just looked as it would have under a dim early morning sunlight. Turning back, I was startled when I realized that I could make out the snowmobile in the distance, although I had left it behind me in complete darkness, just a few moments ago. Rushing towards it, I suddenly found myself in the dark once more. Was it night again ? The snowmobile had become invisible. Turning around and looking up the slope, I saw the lit sky again. I ran towards it until I reached the same point as before and turned around. There it was. The snowmobile was clearly visible, sitting on the track 500 meters or so away from where I was standing. I started walking backwards, keeping the snowmobile in sight and my back to the light. As I did, the whole landscape in front of me was becoming more and more brightly lit. Soon enough, it looked as if I was standing in broad daylight. The snowmobile, now about 1 kilometer away, was perfectly visible and so was the track and every feature of the snowy and empty landscape. But it did not look as if the sun was shining either. Everything was bathed in the soft gray light of a cloudy day.
For the third time, I turned around and this is when I really got scared. I felt my face turn hot and my scalp creep as Adrenalin rushed through my veins. Before me, in a shallow depression extending as far as the eye could see, were buildings; rows after rows of buildings, neatly aligned along a grid of compacted snow tracks. But this was impossible ! I was not even 10 kilometers away from Amundsen-Scott, one of the most isolated places on Earth. Sobral, an Argentinian base, was over 1000 kilometers away and it was the closest installation to the South Pole station. As I looked more intently at the buildings, I noticed that they looked quite old fashioned. Many of them were Quonset huts, these semi-circular hangar-like structures used by the US military during World War II. Others looked like these standardized elongated low-slung bungalows that Seabees and Army engineers had built all over the world in the 1940s and 50s to house US personnel on overseas bases. All of them looked in perfect condition; almost brand new. I was looking at a full-fledged post World-War II US military base located right here at the South pole ! But there never was such a base. Amundsen-Scott was first established in 1956 and back then it was just a few Jamseway huts (arctic hardened versions of the Quonset hut) and a flagpole; not a nicely laid out permanent base like what I was now looking at.
As I walked towards the nearest building, my head was spinning with ideas of time-travel and inter-dimensional portals. However, unlike in movies, these ideas were not exciting. They were just scary. Was I going to be stuck here ? Was I going to die ? The first building I reached appeared empty, the door locked. As I walked further on the track that ran alongside it, I passed a number of Quonset Huts and what looked like a Liquefied gas tank. Then I reached a group of interconnected bungalow-like structures built on stilts 5 of 6 feet off the packed snow ground. They looked like they might be some sort of office. As I looked up the wooden staircase leading up to the front door, I froze as I saw the door open.
A man appeared, quite tall, a tad below 6 feet perhaps, sporting a shaggy red beard and wearing a light gray sweater and dark cargo pants. A wide grin shone through his beard. He looked more than a little nervous and awkward despite an obvious desire to look self-assured. “Hi. I was warned you would come. Your name is Aaron Cora, right ?”. His English was easily understandable, although marked by a thick Scandinavian accent. “My name is Finn. I am from the Troll station”. “But Troll is more than 2000 kilometers away from here !”, I blurted out. Troll station is one of Norway’s permanent Antarctic installations but whether he had come from there or not was certainly one of the least strange aspects of the whole situation. How on earth did he know my name, in the first place ? I briefly thought of asking him about that but he spoke before I could: “It is quite unclear where here is, he said. Come inside, I will tell you what I can about this place”.
I climbed the creaky wooden staircase and entered the building after Finn. Inside, it indeed looked like an office: four heavy steel desks, a few wooden swivel chairs, several large steel filing cabinets, all 1940s style like the buildings themselves. Everything looked as if it had been installed recently. There was even a faint smell of fresh paint. On one of the desks, a dozen dark gray binders were stacked in three piles. Another one was open, showing its contents of typewritten sheets of paper. Finn sat at the desk. I pulled a chair and sat in front of him. After a few seconds of silence, I asked:
— ME: How come the snow does not melt with this temperature ?.
— FINN: That I don’t know. What I do know is that this place is called “Station Philadelphia”, or at least, this is one of its names. According to the documents in these binders, it was created as a joint CIA-Atomic Energy Commission-Naval Intelligence facility in November 1946, as a follow-up to Operation Highjump, the US Navy’s post-War Antarctic expedition. Its location is unclear but it does not appear to have been built at the South pole, or near Troll for that matter. More probably, it was located closer to where McMurdo (the US main Antarctic supply base) is now, probably on the Ross ice shelf. It was not meant to last very long; probably no more than five years.
— ME: But where is it now ?
— FINN: No Idea. I am not even sure this is the original Station Philadelphia. According to the documents, the station, or what remained of it, was dismantled in 1958. The place we are at now appears to be some sort of replica.
— ME: Like a Museum exhibit ?
— FINN: Something like that, yes, except it was not set up by humans.
— ME: What ?! Are you talking about aliens now ?
It felt like a let-down. Aliens ! What a tired cliché, I thought. The tone of my voice must have given away the feeling I just had because Finn looked visibly embarrassed.
- FINN: I do not think the word “Aliens” is the right word exactly. At least, no mention of little green men appears in these documents, or anything of that kind. But the purpose of Station Philadelphia is said to have been the study of a technological device of non-human origin. This is the phrase these documents use; "non-human". Given how unreal this place looks, the brand new stuff, the temperature, etc. I think the term is appropriate. It seems indeed that some kind of Non-Human agency is at play here; Don’t you agree ?
— ME: “Yes, certainly”, I said sheepishly.
I felt guilty for having been such a snob about the idea of Aliens. After all, who was I to judge this whole thing as if it were a Hollywood script ? Only a few minutes ago, I had been scared out of my wits by the strangeness of it all. However, talking to another human being, and especially someone like Finn, obviously an early-career bottom feeder scientist like myself, had returned my brain to a sense of normalcy. I was starting to enjoy myself, actually. All this surely beats swapping an electronics board in some stupid ARA rack. I asked:
— ME: What kind of technological device are the documents talking about ?
— FINN: It was apparently a means to access the past. Not time travel exactly, but more like a remote-controlled camera and microphone which enabled people to witness and hear scenes from the past. The documents refer to the technology involved as "quantum archaeology", implying that it was somehow able to pick-up the remains of wave functions long after they have collapsed, in order to recover the traces of past events at the particulate level. This is why the AEC was involved. Many Manhattan Project people were sent here to try and understand the physics involved. Apparently they did not make much headway. In any case, understanding the device was not the main goal. Using it to fathom the roots of current events was. The cold war was on and the stakes were high. Some of the top people at the CIA and the White House figured that by having a greater insight into the past one might have an advantage in steering a course for the future. There was still something we might call a ruling class in those days and the core of its members’ education was still the classics, the humanities. As a result, the leading lights at station Philadelphia were not physicists but historians, philosophers, archaeologists ...
I must admit I was somewhat disappointed. The humanities had never been quite my thing and, although I am now ashamed to remember it, back then the idea of 1940s Harvard professors and Cambridge dons discussing history and philosophy evoked only boredom. Thus, I felt the urge to steer the conversation back to more immediate concerns.
— ME: Are we stuck here ?
— FINN: No, not at all, we can leave this place whenever we want. This is my third visit to station Philadelphia.
— ME: How long do you stay when you come here ?
— FINN: This time, about a month. On my first two visits, around a week each time.
— ME: But how do you explain your absences at Troll ?
— FINN: I do not have to. When we are here, time is stopped outside. When we leave, we reach the outside world barely a few seconds after we left it. And when we come back, it is the same. Time is stopped here, as far as we are concerned, when we are outside.
— ME: This is convenient, no doubt. But don’t you think this is a little too easy as well ? Are you sure we are not dreaming or, I don’t know, being used as guinea pigs in some mindfuck experiment ?
Finn glanced at me with a sad look on his face. He was clearly disappointed by my reaction.
— FINN: This is possible, of course, he replied after a few seconds of silence, but, so far, everything has been consistent when I come here. This place apparently obeys rules that are different from those we are used to but there are indeed rules and they appear to be consistent over time. The light is always as you see it outside. There is no night. The temperature does not change and yet the snow does not melt. There is this discontinuity in time that I just described. However, apart from that, everything works the same way here as in the outside world. Objects fall when you drop them. When you put something in a certain location, it stays there. And so on. This place does not seem less real than what we are used to.
— ME: What are you talking about ? All this sounds pretty unreal to me !
— FINN: Well, what does the word ‘real’ mean, anyway ?
Then, it was Finn’s turn to change the subject.
— FINN: Are you hungry ? he asked. We have been talking for quite some time and given the hour at which you arrived, it must be morning by now, at your clock. Care for some breakfast ?
— ME: Sure, I replied. Did you bring food from Troll ?
— FINN: No. There is plenty here. The building next door is a kind of mess hall. At the back, there is a pantry with abundant food stores in perfect condition. There is even an industrial fridge with fresh food; eggs, sausages, whole chicken ready to be roasted, and vegetables too. Whenever I take something from this fridge, it gets replenished when I leave. Upon my return, it is fully stocked again.
— ME: OK, let’s go enjoy the magic breakfast.
Finn got up and looked at me sideways. I felt bad for uttering this cheap joke. After all, this place was impressive, to say the least. Why did I feel the need to poop on it with my lame witticisms ? Of course, I could not answer this question, back then. But I was soon to discover the reason and indeed to learn more about such things than I cared to.
The breakfast was fantastic. Finn prepared eggs and bacon together with smörgås, a type of Norwegian cold-cut open sandwiches. The coffee was not bad either. While I was enjoying the food, Finn disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a folder he put on the mess-hall table next to my plate. It contained the following document:
— ME: So it is the German U-Boat that brought this device to Antarctica, right ?
— FINN: No, the Germans discovered it there. How they knew its location is not explained. The Ahnenerbe was an SS-funded research outfit that mostly performed zany "investigations" of occult stuff. Apparently, in this case, they had turned up something genuine. The British captureed the U-Boat and brought its crew back to the UK. But the device was not moved, apparently. It stayed in Antarctica where the German expedition had found it. The Philadelphia station was subsequently built around it.
— ME: What is "Bletchley Park" ?
— FINN: It was the code-breaking arm of the British intelligence apparatus during the War. A number of mathematicians, including Alan Turing, had been hired in 1939 to crack the code of the German Enigma machine. They were quite sucessful, throughout the war.
— ME: Why was the U-Boat crew interrogated there ?
— FINN: I don't know. Probably because the whole thing looked like something that needed deciphering, I guess. Also, Bletchley Park was one of the most highly secured places in the UK at the time.
— ME: So, the initial lead for all this came from the Brits, eh ? And before them the Germans ...
— FINN: It was like this for pretty much everything in that period. The British had invented Radar, the jet engine, the Enigma code-breaking techniques, and they were the first to tackle the Atomic Bomb development. World War II saw a huge technology transfer from the UK to the US.
— ME: What happened after that memo ? What did this ‘MOCKINGBIRD committee’ decide to do ?
Finn explained that, apparently, ‘MOCKINGBIRD’ was just a cover name for an informal group of advisers to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. It included James Conant, the president of Harvard University, Vannevar Bush, who had overseen the setting up of the Manhattan Project and extensively interacted with the British Tizard Mission, William Donovan, the head of OSS (predecessor of the CIA) and maybe Bernard Baruch, a close confidante of Roosevelt. Meetings took place in the Oval Office. The decision to create a base in Antarctica was taken quite quickly after the DRUMBEAT report was received, probably in June or July 1945.
Apparently, Conant had argued forcefully for the inclusion into the Philadelphia project of most of the British team which had started to analyze the Ahnenerbe material. He insisted they should be treated on an equal footing with the OSS (later CIA), Manhattan project (later AEC) and Naval Intelligence contingents. The cover for the setting-up of station Philadelphia was to be Operation HIGHJUMP, a major fleet exercise cum scientific expedition to Antarctica which was to take place in early 1946. Eventually, HIGHJUMP was delayed by a few months due to the tying up of US Navy assets for the repatriation of GIs from Europe and the Pacific. As a result, the construction of station Philadelphia started in August of 1946. Its first phase was completed in October and it started operating the following month.
In the material read by Finn so far, there was no description of the device used. Apparently, a few months had been required to master its operation, although the details of how this learning process took place were not given either. After the initial discovery phase, time spent using the device was allocated to various “experiments”, conducted by different sections of the Philadelphia team. Each experiment was then documented in a series of reports. As one would expect, time allocation was a contentious issue and it crystallized the opposing points of view held by the various team members about what the objectives of the project should be. From the start, there was a sharp opposition between what Alan Turing called the “Boffins” and the “Sleuths” in his personal logbook. The “Sleuths” were officers from MI6, OSS and US Naval Intelligence. Their focus was on the recent past which, they felt, would yield valuable intelligence, notably on how the leadership of the USSR functioned. Also, a determined faction among them advocated for the digging up of embarrassing personal stories about members of the Soviet Politburo, with the intent to plant these tales as apparent anonymous reports to the NKVD/KGB. The goal was to increase the paranoia of the Soviet leadership and induce them to turn on each other. Naturally, this kind of idea infuriated the “Boffins”, the members of the Philadelphia team hailing from Academia, who could not fathom how anyone could dream of using the device for anything but solving the most fundamental problems of humanity. Fortunately, there were arbiters between the two groups: James Conant, Vannevar Bush and John Cockroft, who had replaced Henry Tizard as the main scientific liaison between the US and UK governments. These, A. Turing called “the adults”, in his logbook.
After a number of heated meetings held in early 1947, the “adults” managed to broker a compromise between the “Boffins” and the “Sleuths”. Overall, the “Sleuths” would get 60% of the total device time, with the “tabloids”, another of Turing's nicknames, getting 20% within that figure. The “Boffins”, for their part, had to do with 40%, but with a mandate that left them a lot of leeway: “Determine why the Communist ideology enjoys such high prestige and appeal within Western Culture”. The wording of the objective given to the “Boffins” was a master stroke on the part of the “adults”. On the face of it, this was a vindication of the Boffin’s yearning for something “fundamental”. But it was also a jab at the arrogance of Boffin culture. As a matter of fact, many of them actually did hold Communism, or at least its underlying philosophy, in high regard. This was well known and was a constant bone of contention with the sleuths when it came to security clearance matters and the like. Whith this compromise settlement, Conant, Bush and Cockroft, despite their own Boffin pedigree, had displayed Solomon-like wisdom and impartiality. They had managed to dampen the potentially excessive self-confidence of their peers, by attracting everyone’s attention to a potential flaw in their ethos, while directing their energies towards something that even the sleuths considered actually useful.
I looked at my watch and realized Finn and I had been talking for a whole day. After I had finished my breakfast, we had walked back to the office where Finn had been showing documents to me and explaining their contents for 10 hours straight. He was obviously completely absorbed in all this and I was starting to share his fascination. However, for the moment, I mostly felt exhaustion fall on me like a ton of bricks. After a quick bite at the mess hall, Finn led me to a dormitory building where the windows were closed with heavy curtains blocking the invariably bright outside light. I crashed onto one of the beds and fell asleep within a few seconds.
Chapter 2 – Socrates
The following morning, I went to the mess-hall, fixed myself some breakfast and headed to the office. It was empty. Finn was nowhere to be found, probably sleeping. I sat at one of the desks and pulled a few binders from the filing cabinets. Finn had explained the filing system to me the previous day. Those binders whose label started with an X contained the experiment reports, those with an L, the personal logbooks, those with a C the general correspondence. I pulled binder X-47/01 which contained the documentation of the first experiment undertaken by the Boffins after the settlement of early 1947. While I was reading it, I also consulted binders L-47/01 to L-47/05 to get a sense of the context. All personnel at station Philadelphia were supposed to fill-in a personal logbook on a daily basis. It was understood that these documents were to remain sealed until their authors died or gave explicit permission to make them available. They were meant for posterity and team members were encouraged to use them to record their innermost feelings and thoughts.
The core of the Boffin team was composed of the following members:
- Alan Turing, mathematician (Bletchley Park/Cambridge)
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher (Cambridge)
- Joseph Brady, psychologist (Walter Reed Army Institute of Research)
- Wolfram von Soden, assyriologist (Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin)
- Willard Van Orman Quine, philosopher (Harvard)
- Thomas Kuhn, philosopher (Harvard)
- Adam Ulam, historian (Harvard)
- Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., historian (Harvard)
- Julius R. Oppenheimer, physicist (Harvard/Cambridge/Manhattan Project)
- Satyendra Nath Bose, physicist (University of Calcutta)
There was no logic in the composition of this group other than personal acquaintance. Given the secrecy of the project, James Conant and John Cockroft had simply selected the people they knew best, and trusted most, in their respective countries. A few men had also been recommended by other members of the team like Wittgenstein (recommended by Turing) and Bose (by Oppenheimer). Von Soden was part of the team because he belonged to the captured crew of U-843 and had established a rapport with Turing and Wittgenstein while in captivity at Bletchley Park. A number of remarks, scattered among various logbooks, made it clear that most members in the team were convinced that Turing had hired Wittgenstein because he was in love with him. Kuhn, for his part, was a personal protégé of Conant.
Experiment No. 1 was an exploration of Classical Greece, with a special focus on Athens at the time of Socrates and Plato. As indicated in the X-47/01 binder, the rationale behind this choice was this: because Marxism was, from its origin, rooted in the Western philosophical tradition, it made sense to go back to the foundational events of this tradition, in ancient Greece. In order to understand and translate the ancient Greek Language which was picked up by the device, a team of several 30-something classics scholars from Cambridge and University College London had been assembled by John Cockroft on the advice of Sir Edward Howard Marsh, a close friend of Winston Churchill.
The reading of the personal logbooks revealed that, as the experiment progressed, most of the team members became increasingly distraught by what they were uncovering. All of them, including the scientists, had a strong foundation in the classics, as was the rule for every University-educated person at the time. This classical education naturally led them to assume that Athens, and especially the entourage of Plato and Socrates, was the pinnacle of virtue, wisdom and intellectual acumen. But this is not at all how things looked as direct observations of the past started pouring in. The picture that emerged was one of a hotbed of jealousy, envy, pettiness and resentment.
The social milieu in which Socrates and Plato interacted was mostly composed of wealthy upper-class Athenians. Within that milieu, many individuals were known by name to the Boffin team members because they were mentioned in the Platonic dialogues and other historical sources. Naturally, these individuals were observed in great detail during the course of the experiment. Almost all of them turned out to be motivated by the most obsessive form of social conceit. According to their worldview, mankind was divided into two categories, the men of no account (the kakoi in Greek) and the superior people (the agathoi). Most of the population of Athens, and indeed of all Greece, were kakoi, according to them, and, as such, worthy of nothing but scorn and condescension. Then there were the agathoi, the happy few. However, the criteria determining who was part of this select group were quite elusive. At the time of Socrates and Plato, the political constitution of Athens was democratic. All institutional differences between aristocrats and commoners had been abolished. Naturally, some families retained an aura of nobility but this aura was no longer anchored in any kind of legal definition. Hence many were the members of the aristocratic milieu who longed after a definition of social superiority that would not longer be dependent on the vagaries of political life. But what was it going to be ? Manners ? "Virtues" (whatever that meant) ? There was no general agreement. As a result, all the members of Socrates’ and Plato’s circle lived in perpetual terror of not being superior enough to be counted among the agathoi. What if someone suddenly exposed whatever secret flaws they might have and caused them to be called kakoi ?
Driven by this well concealed but perennial anxiety, well-to-do Athenians were constantly engaged in the most vicious forms of gossip targeted at each other. As the proverb says: the best form of defense is the offense. However, they were also simultaneously, and secretly, worshiping the very people they were bad-mouthing. All of them were possessed of a burning desire to be invited to the parties (symposia, i.e. drinking feasts) thrown by the most fashionable people of the day while secretly plotting to topple them from their elevated position. In many ways, upper-class Athens in the late Vth century looked like a giant High School, with its cliques, its heavy-drinking parties, its excomunications and its betrayals
Athens political life was constantly marred by bizarre plots and egregious accusations against successful generals or administrators. What the Boffin team’s observations was revealing day after day was that the motivation for these flare-ups was generally nothing more than the resentment of people who had not been invited to a party they craved to attend, or other perceived slights of the same nature. At times, like during the so-called “30 tyrants” episode of 404-403 BC, the universal feelings of resentment reached such an intensity that they exploded into an orgy of political murders, expropriations and general lawlessness. All the 30 tyrants were members of the upper class and most of their victims were too. Most of the 30 were part of Socrates and Plato’s circle or knew people who were.
As a general rule, the role of Socrates within Athenian elite circles was that of a kind of court jester whose main task was to dampen the anxiety of his fashionable hosts by giving them reasons to believe that they were indeed genuine agathoi. Socrates was not of noble birth. As the son of a stonemason, he would not normally have been invited to the social gatherings of the elite. But his silver tongue had earned him a following among certain members of the upper class. He was not a “teacher” in the traditional sense, but rather a hanger on, a flatterer.
One day, in June 1947, Turing and Oppenheimer were observing Socrates in an animated discussion with Agathon, the main character of one of Plato’s dialogues. The object of the discussion was a feast that was to take place at Agathon's house the next day and at which Socrates was to be present. As they were reading the typed translation of the exchange, Oppenheimer and Turing were horrified to discover that Socrates charged a fee for his services and that he and the party's host were haggling over the price. Socrates was a paid entertainer; a sort of late-night talk-show host for the upper crust.
From this point onward, the experiment focused almost exclusively on what Socrates was actually saying, and on Plato’s understanding of it. One day, in August 1947, the following exchange was recorded:
- SOCRATES: Truth is the mark of the agathoi. While the kakoi stumble in obscurity, relying as they do on the deceitful senses, the agathoi are guided by the unchanging purity of the heavenly forms. The only genuine gnosis (knowledge) lies in the grasping of these pure forms and only this gnosis makes one worthy to be counted among the agathoi.
- PLATO: The forms you speak of, Socrates, are those that are made manifest by the tale you told us the other day about people being chained inside a cave. Is it not ?
- SOCRATES: Indeed, this is what they are, my young friend.
- PLATO: And the Truth is only to be found in these forms. Am I correct ?
- SOCRATES: That is so. Gnosis (knowledge) of the Truth lies in the perfectly exact apprehension of these forms within one’s soul. This is what sets apart the souls of the agathoi from those of the kakoi.
This exchange was crucial because it never appeared in any of the known Platonic dialogues. It revealed that Socrates had fashioned a theory of Truth which turned it into a form of luxury good for elite consumption. Naturally, Plato’s and Socrates’ social circle embraced this theory with an immense sense of relief. At last there was a way to be reassured that one was indeed part of the agathoi. Since the pure forms were eternal, just like the soul, One’s membership in this most exclusive of clubs was guaranteed for ever ! What a genius idea. Bravo Socrates ! Bravo ! Of course, this did not solve anything, really. As soon as Socrates views on truth and knowledge started to spread, people began to bicker about what exactly these pure forms might be and how one could have access to them. The bitterness and the vitriolic gossip were back with a vengeance. Yet, Socrates’ theory did not lose its appeal. It was simply too good, too tempting, to be given up.
From September 1947 onward, the Socrates experiment had winded down. Over the next few months, a detailed report was written. Most of it was signed collectively by the team but it also included some annexes penned by individual members. Here are excerpts from two of these:
Everyone knows that there is no such thing as Truth or Knowledge. At least since Kant has this been evident. Only charlatans like Hegel and his merry little band of followers have been shameless enough to continue pretending otherwise. Who on Earth could still be fooled by such baloney ? Well, to be honest, I was. The very word “truth” is so tantalizing ! I can still feel it pull at my brain like a giant magnet. I was a deceitful priest of the Truth too, in my time. Now, with what we have seen, will we be cured ?
Ludwig Wittgenstein, 9 October 1947
It has been noticed already by a number of commentators that Plato’s political thought has uncomfortable similarities with totalitarianism. In the dialog titled “the Republic”, Plato presents what he considers to be the ideal system of government: a small group of unelected but “enlightened” philosophers enjoying absolute power and ruling selflessly for the benefit of the community. It is hard to miss the parallel with the idea that the Communist Party must be the “vanguard of the Proletariat”. Did Marxism consciously emulate Plato ? Not explicitly, and probably not consciously. But the similarities just noted can hardly be a coincidence, given the quasi-religious devotion to “Philosophy” which permeates most forms of left-wing thinking.
Communists have always fancied themselves as thinkers; practical philosophers armed with the infallible intellectual tools of Marx’s scientific materialism. Of course, they loudly dismiss Platonic forms as the worst kind of childishly idealistic thinking (in their mouths, and under their pen, this term is the worst possible insult). However, by endorsing Hegel’s vision of Science approaching absolute truth ever more closely as “progress” marches on, they subscribe to a doctrine which possesses exactly the same psychological implications as the old Platonic system: the potential to create an elite of the Spirit.
While Socrates appears to have worked exclusively for the benefit of Athens’ elite, Marxism targets the alienated European educated lower-middle class. Being a member of this stratum in contemporary society implies the humble acceptance of one’s own existence as a minute cog in one or the other of the modern titanic bureaucratic machines (financial institutions, large corporations, government, etc.) While those with strong spiritual roots may be content with such a destiny, rebellion is the lot of the countless educated young men of middling social standing who are now adrift in a world increasingly vacated by the dogma of Christianity (and Judaism).
Some have already pointed out that Communism may be a form of snobbery; a way for the educated young men just mentioned, to take revenge on those they envy. Karl Marx, the Prometheus/Socrates of our time, offers them the opportunity to become members of a new elite club destined (supposedly) to take the lead in the new social order. Marx, like Socrates, offers knowledge as the means to join the elect. The certainties of dialectic materialism, like the Platonic forms, are reckoned to give access to the absolute truth. And what is “absolute truth” (in the guise of Hegelian “absolute knowing”) if not the most potent source of psychological self-righteous legitimation ?
Outwardly reviling what one in fact adores is a common trait of all types of snobbery. Like the upper-class Athenians we have seen pouring vitriol on prominent members of their own milieu only to run to their feasts, if invited, Communists loudly disparage the “Bourgeois” ruling class of the Western World only to imitate it as soon as they get the chance. Many have noted the Bourgeois turn of the Soviet regime from the 1930s onward. Neoclassical skyscrapers, comfortable “apparatchik” apartment blocks and the most unimaginative kind of academic painting style (under the name of “Socialist Realism”) have replaced the modernist aesthetic of the early years after the revolution. The successful Communist Party of Russia has given birth to a new bourgeois class, with the same tastes as the old one, while simultaneously maintaining its anti-bourgeois rhetoric.
Two contexts where snobbery is the driving factor; two cases where the promise of absolute truth is made out to be the ticket to an exclusive elite club. Is this the last word on what makes Communism appealing to the modern man ? Certainly not. But it probably indicates a fruitful direction for future research.
Adam Ulam, 17 October 1947
Ulam was a young PhD graduate in History from Harvard. As a Polish Jew, he had had direct experience of the two main forms of XXth century totalitarianism and was already considered, in the late 40s, as one of the foremost authorities on the history of the Socialist movement and of the Soviet Union. During his time at Station Philadelphia, he had struck up an unlikely friendship with a 40 year old OSS/CIA operative from Wisconsin, Lamar Gunderson, who had been a G-man before he enlisted and joined the "Company" during the War. Gunderson had told Ulam that he had conducted surveillance of Communist sympathizers during his time in the FBI. Upon learning this, Ulam showed him some of the Socrates experiment material, as well as his own conclusions regarding a possible parallel with Communism. Having read this material, Gunderson submitted a short piece of his own, which was added to the final report:
During my time in the FBI, conducting surveillance on Communist sympathizer organizations, I was always struck by the resemblance between these tiny Marxist outfits and ladies clubs. Ladies are always gossiping about other ladies in their town. Yet, when one of these very ladies throws some party, others run to it, if they are invited. But if they are not, they are so mortally wounded in their pride that they are ready to launch themselves into the most devious plots one can imagine to exact their revenge. Most of the material we were collecting on these Communist front organizations, through eavesdropping or mail interception, was of a similar nature. Their members spent nearly all their time denouncing each other in the most vicious terms yet they never failed to attend each other’s pompously named “conferences”, “workshops” or “sessions”. Did anything concrete ever came of all this ? Generally, no ! But this did not seem to bother them. Despite their constant calls to “action”, it was obvious that their internal bickering was the real point of their existence.
Lamar Gunderson, 12 November 1947
As I was finishing the report on the Socrates experiment, Finn showed up.
— ME: Hey ! How are you ? Were you sleeping ?
— FINN: Yes, for a while, Finn replied, then I spent a few days at Troll.
— ME: A few days ?! ...
— FINN: I told you that time stops when we leave this place, remember ? From your perspective, my trip to Troll lasted less than half an hour, the time it takes to reach the edge of Station Philadelphia on foot and to come back. From my perspective, it lasted 3 days. I brought some fresh clothes and a few items I thought might come in handy, like my laptop.
— ME: Oh, OK, yeah, it makes sense. I have been reading the Socrates experiment material that you showed me yesterday, but there are things that I don’t get.
— FINN: Like what ?
— ME: Well, first of all, where is their so-called "device" now ? Is it here somewhere ?
— FINN: No, I don't think so. During my second stay here I explored all the buildings of Station Philadeliphia. I found all sorts of things; science labs, workshops, dormitories, more offices with filing cabinets full of binders plus all the infrastructure needed to make the base habitable, like electricity, heating and so on. But I did not see anything that could possibly be "the device". One of the buildings has a large central space, two stories in height, where it might have been housed, but the place is empty.
— ME: Bummer ...
— FINN: Actually, reading the contents of the binders is probably more interesting than using the device ourselves. Neither of us speaks ancient Greek or any other ancient language and we are not professional historians or philosophers. At Station Philadelphia in the 40s they had gathered all the talents and the skills needed to make the best use of the device.
— ME: I guess ... Yet, it would have been fun to see the face of Socrates and catch him picking his nose or something like that.
— FINN: Sure, but we would have grown tired of doing that sort of thing pretty quickly, don't you think ? By reading the binders we have direct access to material that was never published or known to anyone but the protagonists themselves, like this dialogue between Socrates and a young Plato where they discuss how gnosis separates the agathoi from the rest. The comments by Wittgenstein, Ulam, etc. are also original material that you can't find anywhere else. Being able to read all this is pretty amazing.
— ME: Sure. Yet some of the comments are quite weird. This Gunderson guy, for example, I don’t see what his sexist remarks about ladies clubs have to do with Socrates, or Truth and the rest. What is his point ?
— FINN: Well, regarding the sexist remarks, you have to take into account the atmosphere of the era. The kind of things Gunderson says were absolutely standard fare at the time. His piece serves to highlight that the ideas of truth and knowledge may be motivated by a form of snobbery.
— ME: But what does it have to do with women ?
— FINN: The desire to belong to an exclusive social scene has always been more in evidence among women than men, especially in a country like the US where egalitarianism is supposed to be the norm. In pre-War America, no form of outward snobbery was considered acceptable among men. However, it was more or less tolerated among women, provided it was not completely for real, hence Gunderson’s allusion to Women’s clubs. In European countries, the kind of behavior Gunderson describes was much more overt and was not at all limited to women, although it often tended to revolve around them because of their role in running a salon or throwing parties. Have you read anything by Marcel Proust ?
— ME: No. But all this makes me think about High School, with the cliques, the Jocks, the Cheerleaders and all the rest. Is this what it is ?
— FINN: Yes, it is indeed comparable.
— ME: OK, but I still do not see what all this has to to with truth and knowledge. The social milieu of Socrates and Plato might have been full of the worst kind of snobs, but why would that imply that their ideas about truth and knowledge should be false ?
— FINN: Because Socrates audience and his theory are not two independent phenomena. What the Socrates experiment revealed is that the account of truth and knowledge transmitted to us by Plato was not the result of some disinterested quest for wisdom, as we usually tend to think, but was in fact tailor-made to please the audience of someone who turned out to be more of a talk-show host than a philosopher.
— ME: Say again.
— FINN: The members of the Athenian upper class wanted to think of themselves as a cut above the rest. But they were being assailed by doubt because, in a democratic society like Athens, there were no universally recognized cultural norms which could be used to justify elitist pretensions (there was no "nobility" per se). Then Socrates comes along and delivers to them exactly what they crave: a theory of knowledge rooted in an account of truth understood as an absolute and therefore independent of culture and human opinion. Since, in antiquity, only members of upper class had access to higher education in the form of private tutoring by philosophers, the goal is achieved. Since they are the only ones who have access to the kind of Truth with a big “T” that Socrates is talking about, well-to-do Athenians now had a way to justify their own feelings of superiority, at least in their own eyes.
— ME: But why would non-elite Athenians accept this claim ?
— FINN: That is not the point. We are not talking about a political or even a social strategy here. What Socrates is delivering to the Athenian upper class is nothing but a psychological remedy, a way to assuage its anxiety about itself.
— ME: But why would that make the theory incorrect ?
— FINN: Well, do you think that a theory solely designed to be a kind of Valium against upper class social angst has much chance to give an accurate picture of what we want to say when we use the words “truth” or “knowledge” in situations which matter, like science or engineering ?
— ME: I suppose not. But then what are knowledge and truth if they are not what Plato says ? Does all this mean that there is no such thing as objective truth ?
— FINN: This is exactly what the Philadelphia station Boffins were asking themselves when they had finished with the Socrates experiment. The idea of objective truth was a hot topic at the time. Almost no one, except a few people like Wittgenstein or Kuhn, was ready to let go of it completely. As a result, you will see that the whole team was frantically trying to get a grip on this question as they were considering what the next steps after the Socrates experiment should be. Most of the relevant material is in binder X-47/02 and X-47/03. There are also interesting things in the correspondence binders.
— ME: OK, I will read them, I said, yawning and stretching my arms and legs. But not now. I feel filthy. I have not showered nor changed clothes since I arrived here. I think I will go back to Amundsen-Scott and return here with what I need for a longer stay.
— FINN: Very well, see you in ½ an hour.
These are the first 2 chapters. I will wait until you have read them to publish the rest.