On a Godless Planet:Volume3A Chapter 21
Chapter 21: Flash Back[edit]
–Any regret you can remember
Was inevitable and meant to be.
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Kuwajiri realized everyone had reacted to Yomoji’s question by looking at her.
What a pain, she thought, but also…
…It is nice having them rely on me as a knowledge god.
Gods like her existed for times like this.
Knowledge ruled. She could even fight back against stronger gods with the weapon of knowledge. That was what it meant to be a knowledge god.
So she opened her mouth.
“I want to make one thing clear before we discuss this. Many things are considered sins, but when was lying defined as a sin?”
A head tilted and a hand went up in response.
“Are you saying lying isn’t a sin?”
“Lying can be a useful tool, so it is not always a sin. For example, when you get in an annoying mood where you keep various things from that idiot, that could be considered lying.”
“Ow, ow, ow, ow! I wasn’t expecting to have that one turned back on me!”
“When you think about it, that one was painful for me too.”
Maybe I overdid that one.
But she knew the answer to her question.
“In ancient times, trials had the suspect give their defense and then they were judged. The Greek gods will probably be familiar with this, but the suspect would defend themselves in a public location and then a group of citizens would vote on their punishment.”
“Those jury trials were the standard in Athens where I ruled. The method began at around the 6th century BCE and was one of the pillars supporting Athens’s democracy.”
“Right. But in those jury trials, the suspect’s defense could lessen or strengthen their crime. And in some cases, this could be influenced by outside interference. Because lying can be a tool, it didn’t matter if their defense was false. As long as the jurors found them innocent, they were innocent.”
Meaning…
“In ancient times, lying was not a sin. That isn’t to say the fault lay with the deceived, but lying could be used to survive.”
“Sorry. I’m not sure I entirely agree.”
Kuwajiri understood. A certain trial was like an old pain for Athena.
“The Apology of Socrates, right?”
●
“In the 5th Century BCE, Athens lost to Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. This led to a reign of terror by a pro-Spartan group known as the Thirty Tyrants and one of their victims was the Athenian philosopher Socrates.”
“Eh!? What’d he do!? Worship flat chests or something!?”
“The goddess of Athens – that is, Athena over there – has a decent-sized chest.”
“Just so you know, Socrates was pro-Athens.”
“Then I was wrong! You can keep going, Kuwajiri!”
●
“Raidou-senpai, Shifu-senpai. I can’t seem to ignore that idiot’s comments the way you can. Am I lacking some quality you have?”
“I’m not sure I want to know what quality that would be.”
“Hmmm. Can’t you just think of it as us being different?”
●
That aside, Kuwajiri decided to continue.
“Now, Socrates was a poor, hen-pecked 70-year-old who was an exceptionally good speaker and who established the dialectical method. Two parties would hold a deep discussion with each other to reveal each other’s ignorance and contradictions. Socrates used this method to get along with politicians and other influential people despite their being incompetent and unthinking.”
“Kind of like how we discuss the manga we like to find where we interpret them differently and decide whose interpretation is correct.”
More or less. But…
“This method gathered the wrong kind of attention on Socrates, so the Thirty Tyrants cooked up a few crimes to charge him with and sentenced him to death. For his trial, 500 citizens were chosen as jurors. But the Thirty Tyrants posted someone at the trial to ensure the jurors could only vote guilty.”
Before adding a “but”, she looked to Athena, who sighed.
“Socrates used the dialectical method to overturn his charges. He revealed them all to be false – in other words, lies. But the Thirty Tyrants were too powerful, so he was voted guilty and his execution was carried out.
“That’s what happened,” added Athena with a shrug and Balancer turned toward her.
<Athena? The votes were 220 for not guilty and 280 for guilty. Given his extreme disadvantage, making it within 30 votes of halfway proves the power of the Apology of Socrates.>
“He was lost due to my weakness.”
“Was that old troublemaker really such a loss?”
“I know of Socrates as the one who said ‘I know that I know nothing’. In other words, the knowledge of ignorance.”
“Yes, Socrates is better known for that ‘viewpoint’ – which you could call his morals – than for his dialectical method.”
What did that mean?
“Socrates could have chosen exile rather than execution and he could have escaped even after his death sentence was passed. But he did neither of those things because, in his point of view, doing something illegal to avoid his execution would eliminate his own righteousness in opposing his death sentence.”
“His own personal morals told him to trust in his own righteousness and not to lie.”
“And he chose this because something inside him told him to, not because the gods he revered or some other person told him to. In other words…”
Athena continued from there.
“Socrates established the idea of individual intent and respect removed from one’s gods or leaders. Even as a human, he may have been equal to us.”
A breath.
“I am the god of strength and justice. …I should be proud that one of my people realized and respected an inner justice separate from my own.”
“What’s with you?”
“Hm? What do you mean?”
The idiot answered Athena’s question.
“If you’re sad you lost him, then just come out and say it.”
●
“Kido-san.”
“Yes?”
“I give that 500 billion points out of 100.”
“I give it double that.”
●
Kuwajiri watched the busty goddesses exchange a handshake and then watched Athena’s reaction.
“Don’t be silly,” said the goddess of justice. “Being sad would defile his personal choice.”
“Oh,” replied the idiot. “You’re a really nice person!”
●
“…Yeah.”
TJ heard Beisu’s reaction. And she nodded too.
“Human, that’s a good way of putting it.”
●
“Now, then,” said Kuwajiri before pausing.
Athena looked her way, telling her to proceed.
So she spread her arms a little and…
“This moral view – of justice and an emphasis on the individual – later spread across Europe and formed the foundation of modern Western morals. To put it another way, humanity had always lived while reliant on something else, but this allowed them to awaken as individuals and set an example for them. This is why Socrates is known as one of the four great teachers alongside the Buddha, Christ, and Confucius.”
The meaning of that must have gotten through to Kido because she spoke up.
“It feels almost mythical for righteous morals to be born from a jury trial allowing lies.”
“It’s like they purified that impurity to create a great fortune.”
“We like to do things our own way. Try to pin us down and we will protest.”
<It is said that Socrates said “even bad laws are the law” when he accepted his execution, but that is an apocryphal addition created in Japan. Like Kuwajiri said, Socrates felt his sense of justice would not allow him to escape the “bad law” leading to his execution, but that does not mean he accepted the bad law itself.>
“I’m pretty sure that was in a book of famous quotes I got when I graduated middle school, but you’re telling me it was made up!? And it was the opposite of what he actually said!?”
“After I was demoted, I fought back so hard I turned into a cursed god, but it sounds like Socrates was much more mature.”
“Socrates did say that we should not fear death because no one knows what happens after death. That positive and optimistic attitude had a great influence on Europe later on.”
<By the way, Socrates began with philosophy and the dialectical method after an oracle at the temple of Apollo praised him as a wise man and he began to wonder if that was really true. That means we have the Olympus gods to thank for Socrates.>
“Oracles are so cool!”
“I feel like it was only a huge nuisance for him, though.”
Athena averted his eyes awkwardly, so Kuwajiri decided to ignore that part.
“Now, this moral basis leads in to the next step: the final days of the Roman Empire around 500 years later.”
●
Now we’re really getting to the meat of it, thought Kuwajiri.
Everything set the stage for this.
“At the end of the 4th century, the Roman Empire was split between east and west, but this was when the Western Roman Empire was being destroyed by an influx of Visigoths. A philosopher there named Augustine, an expert of the dialectical method born in Northern Africa, wrote two texts. They were titled On Lying and Against Lying and they classified and defined lies while warning against them.”
And…
“He said lies that were known to be jokes or inventions ‘are not real lies’, so he went on to define what a real lie is.”
That was…
“ ‘Because all lies are decisively sinful, they are not morally acceptable.’ This is said to be the first time in history lies were conclusively stated to be sinful and immoral – that is, unjust. Other countries viewed lying as wicked, but they did not judge it so harshly as to call it an unjust sin.”
●
“Um,” said a voice.
“I agree that a real lie is a sinful thing, but that does seem strict.”
“That’s right. I think he wrote that aphorism because Europe was in a bad state at the time and he wanted to avoid leading the world into chaos.”
“But is that really all that important?”
Beisu tilted his head.
“Sure, he was a philosopher, but there must have been tons of philosophers back when the Roman Empire was falling, so wouldn’t they have been writing lots of aphorisms like that?”
“True. Beisu is correct that there were quite a few wise men at work across the land in that time.”
But.
“Augustine worked as a bishop when East Emperor Theodosius I declared Christianity the national religion of Rome as a whole, so he was such a big name that both he and his mother were made saints. He created the rules for orthodox Christian faith and he wrote The City of God, a look at human history from a Christian historical perspective while West Rome fell, and it is even said he newly established the Christian faith in that era.”
Now…
“The man who was viewed as the top wise man told a just and moral Europe that lying is a sin in order to calm the chaos caused by the fall of the Roman Empire. Do you understand what that means?”
●
“Does aaaanyone know what haaaappened then?”
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
“I think your bad feeling is correct.”
●
I asked the question but no one answered, thought Kuwajiri. So…
“How about a hint?” she said. “Christianity originally had something called confession. Based on Christ forgiving a sinner who showed true regret and repented, believers would discuss their sins and regrets with each other and, by pursuing them far enough, they would elevate them away from being sins or accept what they had done. Does that sound familiar to anyone?”
“The dialectical method.”
“Correct. Christianity used the dialectical method to help people understand their own sin and find forgiveness. It was a doctrine that really shows its European roots. And while Christianity grew from the late 1st century to the 2nd century, it gained official positions like bishop and priest, so confession became their job.”
“Oh,” said a few voices.
They were gradually catching on. So Kuwajiri knew what to ask.
“Chaos spread across the land, the city-states were no more, and trials began to be run by those powerful enough to hold jurisdiction. In a time like that, what do you get if you combine Socrates’s ideas of just morals, Augustine’s idea of lying as a sin, and the Christian practice of confession?”
“A focus on confession!”
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Kuwajiri nodded.
“After West Rome fell and until a people’s revolution in France allowed the people to reclaim a citizen jury system, whether or not someone had committed a crime was determined more by confession than by investigative proof or dialectic proof. What forensic science did exist didn’t catch on, so after an age of the kind of retaliatory law we Norse gods love, Europe did regain a trial system in the Middle Ages, albeit one without a citizen jury.”
“Really? Then were things good? Could they take their evidence and forensic investigation data to the courthouse and get things worked out?”
“It didn’t work that way. Trials at the time began with whether or not the suspect would accept the suggested ruling – or more accurately, the suggested punishment – given by the judge. And if they rejected it, they had to make their defense.”
“Do you understand?” she asked.
“Most cases were minor offenses, so it was easier to accept the suggested ruling – which was much like a plea bargain – than to search for evidence and make a defense. Offenses could be reduced through your defense or monetary payments. And if the suspect was influential or powerful, no suggested ruling was made at all for fear of reprisal. But…”
But…
“The judges given their positions by the elites were of course educated and thus had a way with words. When working out the suggested ruling, they could talk suspects into paying large sums or even into losing their lives. This was done during the witch hunts and other times they wanted to eliminate someone they didn’t like.”
“In other words, people were forced to confess. The suggested ruling itself would be pushing the suspect toward a confession.”
Kuwajiri nodded at that.
“Correct. While they did have a chance to defend themselves, the focus was on a confession and other people could manipulate that. And defending yourself meant defying the elites, which put your life at risk. Even the forensic investigation that was possible in the Greek era was no longer necessary when people were forced or pressured to confess.”
What did that mean?
“The need for existing forensic investigation methods and evidence was replaced by forcing or pressuring a confession with a suggested ruling. In the worst cases, a confession could be used to create a crime from whole cloth. This outdated form of trials and the ‘legal lawlessness’ of the time were tolerated because of one thing.”
A breath.
“The fact that no one protested the emphasis on ‘truthful confessions’ and a justice based on that foundation.”
●
“Soooome people are allllways causing trouble.”
“Yeah, and this time it’s you. This one’s on you.”
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“But,” I said as everyone huddled together.
“I thought this all sounded so nice up through the Socrates part.”
“Really, I think the Augustine part was pretty nice too. He lamented the state of the world and said lying is bad.”
“How did two rights make a wrong?”
“We saw it earlier with that Archimendes created by combining walking outside and cup ramen.”
“These things happen.”
“What was this discussion supposed to be about again?”
“The dialectical method, so I feel like Socrates and Augustine would be satisfied.”
“But,” said Shifu. “The dialectical method wouldn’t exist without Demeko-chan’s Apollo and then those confession-based trials wouldn’t have existed, right?”
“The dialectical method is simply a method of debate, so I suspect it would have been invented in some era or other regardless.”
“Then would their trials have been more modern if not for their one true god?”
“What do you think, Shinsei?”
“IIII was really fullll of myself back then. And there were soooo many of them, I was thiiiinking of sending a plaaaague to restore the balance.”
“So you’re a well-balanced evil god.”
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<By the way, after they regained a jury trial system, modern Western courthouses tend to display a statue of Themis as a god of law.>
“So they were returning to the classics.”
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At any rate, Kuwajiri lowered her head toward the others.
“That is why it took so long for Europe to develop its forensic science. And I believe I have proven that the gods are involved in trials and how they are run.”
“That was a hell of a digression… I see. So all that was going on in the 10th century when our Norse mythology was restored and compiled.”
“Speaking of forensic science, most mythologies come from an era when culture and civilization had not yet developed far enough for it. And the myths that were compiled later on had that done during a time when forensic science was rendered unnecessary thanks to confessions and retributive trials.”
“In that sense, which mythology has the newest – or most advanced – trial format?”
“That would be us. Although it’s less in our myths and more that our believers held citizen jury trials with a judge presiding over them and Themis was said to watch over those trials. The judge would read off the charges and the suspect would make their defense. And if necessary, they would be questioned.”
“In that case,” said Kido. “Mr. V and I are the judges here. And the charge is ‘flooding’. The suspects can defend themselves and, if necessary, everyone can question them. We will then determine together if they are lying.”
“Okay! Then it’s time for Course 1! Seaweed Man! You’re up!”
“Oh, you chose me first? How delightful.”
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