The superiority of Igbo exceptionality over the Greek, about democracy

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The western exceptionality —nor exceptionalism— could be understood with its evolution from Minoan cataclysm; making democracy such an unnatural thing, which will inevitably struggle in precarious equilibrium on its own development. From here, democracy comes even as a negative effect of the weakness of Mycenaean’s, after that cataclysm; in the narrow space of that void, for the expansion of Phoenician commerce beyond the reach of their own conventional powers.

That exception would occur of the new political culture in the Aegean, relying in the growth of an oligarchy; as a class with resources (capital) for they own needs as determinations, different from the earlier peasant aristocracy. This is the same social process of the French feudalism transitioning to Modernity, with the revolution as that cataclysmic effect; with the old aristocracy funding the new high bourgeoisie, along with founding of the intellectual specialization as a political elite; something that also happened in the middle, again in France, with the Merovingian renaissance, concluded with Carlo Magno.

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As a negative process, democracy then comes with other developments, in the overgrown of that new aristocracy; in the legitimation of concepts as artificial and unnatural as well as power itself, and of the capital to sustain it. It’s not that this was not natural to that development, since this is even the natural on classical structures of powers; it’s just that this was not a classical structure of power but a democracy, showings its unnaturalness; so this is what shows the efficiency of the other process of democracy, like that of the Igbo people, in Africa.

The Igbo model of democracy is as exceptional as the Greek, but in a positive process rather than negative; since it’s not born from the void of a cataclysm like that of the Minoan civilization, but as a natural progression in its own. This is not about romanticizing de ideal of primitiveness, since the Igbo culture is as exceptional as the Greek, not recurrent; as shown the more natural developments of classical structures, like the empires Mande, Dahomeyan, Yoruba, etc.

It’s the exceptionality of their development through familiar clusters, what makes this so singular and efficient; as a process of fractalization of nature, continuing reality rather than trying to overcome it with a political artificiality. This would keep the pace in the other process of political specializations, with power as a condition of aging; making the structure —social fabric— able to repair itself when broken, with this power as a natural condition (scope), not something to pursue by itself.

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This way, society is still organized with subestructural specializations, but all of them integrated in their functionality; even if dealing with other natural problems, like greed, laziness, patriarchalism or even cruelty and criminality. This is so functional that society —and thus culture— don’t need to overgrowth some substructures, to regulate others; keeping power at bay, in that unbreakable rule of succession based on age —and not election— that makes demagogy unthinkable.

This is what weakens western structures, with the overgrowth of power as an intellectual concept itself; that can be reach and so legitimated, upon the use of strength, introducing dialectical crisis as the way for political growth. The problem with this is the placement of social objectivity in history (idealization) rather than in reality itself; justifying those ideas on social theory, with the interpretation of history rather than with their immediate functionality.

From an outside point of view, this would make Igbo societies —and African in general—  primitives and unsophisticated; as an intentional generalization of this simplicity, which ignores the classical structures of power that surrounds it. Though, as malevolent and inaccurate as this reduction is, it still ignores its perfect —even minimalist— functionality; based on the hermeneutic they use for its own existential reflection from reality itself, not from a concept of reality.

This is the problem brought by the intellectual specialization, from that exponentiation of thought by an elite; that creating systems as useful and functional as scientific thought, also creates artificial problems as that of ontology; which is not bad in itself, but naturally born with flaws of logic hard to correct, due their own diachronic process. That with the other problem —flaw logic— of historical transcendentalism as the main frame of political objectivity; that subordinates individuality to collectivity, because its incapacity to understand the superimposed and entangled state of reality, as universal.