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with the four elements which constituted the Greek world—earth, air, fire and water. The fifth was regarded as a symbol of the quintessence of the other four, thus presumably representing some unworldly, supernatural and perhaps even dangerous power. Ordinary people were to be kept unaware of the dodecahedron as a matter of something like "Cognitive security". In fact, Pythagoreanism was popular until its practitioners were found to be dealing in this alarming and subversive subject, whence they were suppressed and some lynched, thus initiating the West's long and venerable tradition of persecuting intellectual heretics.
Such actions were justified in the classical world by a schema which dealt with both ideals and ideas in terms of a desired moral end rather than accuracy and practicality. Any object or observation might provide a starting point for a train of thought, but then a logical philosophy could be constructed based upon it without any particular concern for congruence with reality. Worse yet, a contrived system could be constructed for a particular moral purpose—i.e., to justify a particular desired policy— and many were and still are to this day. If Greeks were stupid in their philosophical ways, Romans were stupid in pragmatic, practical ways. Far from being thinkers, Romans were doers—short-range opportunists of the first order. Julius Caesar, for example, never had a long-range plan. His schema was to act to his immediate advantage, with his most brilliant stratagem being moment-to-moment scheming. His assassination was the price he paid for his overwhelming success. He aroused resentment and jealousy in others in the way the Big Man on Campus might be hated for being so popular. In its most characteristic and basic form, the Roman mind was dominated by a conservative, self-serving schema in which there was a conspicuous lack of imagination, creative fantasy and playfulness. Basically, the Romans really were not much fun to be around. The opportunity of the moment might be seized, but there was little creative in Roman culture. Its literature and art were wooden, and there emerged no genius in mathematics or science. If the Romans had any genius at all, it was in applied intellect. For example, as engineers, they built to last, with some of their roads and aqueducts still in use today. Romans fully expected their stand-pat, stagnant culture to last as long as their works in engineering. They deified "Law and order"—a defining component of the modern centurion's schema. They delighted in framing laws and profoundly loved systems. They defined the future in terms of the past and had no concept of progress. They dominated for centuries
 stupidity.net 
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