Dem­ocri­tus med­i­tat­ing on the seat of the soul, by Léon-Alexan­dre Del­homme (1868)

This blog has been online for a dozen years. A good deal has changed in that time. 

When I began PhilPaine.com in 2006, it was only read by a hand­ful of friends. Since I held no aca­d­e­m­ic posi­tion, and had more or less failed as a fic­tion writer, I did my work in obscu­ri­ty. I have no degrees, no aca­d­e­m­ic posi­tion, no insti­tu­tion­al con­nec­tions. My “CV” con­sists of a lot of youth­ful and incau­tious “adven­tures” in dis­tant places, a good deal of expo­sure to the seamy under­side of my own soci­ety, and a sys­tem­at­ic pro­gram of read­ing. A sin­gle paper, writ­ten in col­lab­o­ra­tion with an estab­lished schol­ar, Steven R. Muhlberg­er, was for many years my only claim to aca­d­e­m­ic legit­i­ma­cy, though it was to have an amaz­ing endurance and influ­ence. Steve’s patient friend­ship and emo­tion­al sup­port have been the key to my sur­vival. His own blog, the lit­er­ate and infor­ma­tive Muhlberg­er’s World His­to­ry, pre­ced­ed mine. We are still col­lab­o­rat­ing, though nowa­days on the trans­la­tion of a medieval text. I am equal­ly indebt­ed to Skye Sepp and Isaac White, whose reg­u­lar vis­its, intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­lus, and reg­u­lar com­pan­ion­ship have kept me from going bonkers. I also had emo­tion­al sup­port from old­er friends, scat­tered around the world, who remained in touch by cor­re­spon­dence and occa­sion­al vis­its. Of par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tance to me has been an endur­ing com­rade­ship with Fil­ip Marek of Prague, whose actions dur­ing the Czech Rev­o­lu­tion of 1989 inspired me both intel­lec­tu­al­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly. Over the course of a long friend­ship we have trav­eled the roads and trails of Cana­da as far as the Arc­tic Ocean, picked our way through a half dozen ancient Minoan and Myce­naean sites, and not long ago spent a week hik­ing the trails of mag­nif­i­cent Mt. Assiniboine.

Now, in 2018, the pic­ture is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. I have a mod­est aca­d­e­m­ic rep­u­ta­tion, and some of my writ­ings are wide­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed. As of this year, I am free to pur­sue my research­es full-time as long as I live fru­gal­ly. A few eccentrics in con­ven­tion­al Acad­e­mia have pro­mot­ed my work — notably Jean-Paul Gagnon (now with the Insti­tute of Gov­er­nance and Pol­i­cy Analy­sis in Can­ber­ra, Aus­tralia). Cita­tions pile up. The blog has a wide inter­na­tion­al read­er­ship. I have wit­nessed some of the ideas which, when Democ­ra­cy’s Place in World His­to­ry was first pub­lished in 1993, were nov­el and unortho­dox, become a sig­nif­i­cant stream of thought sur­fac­ing in many quar­ters. Though we are enter­ing some dark and dan­ger­ous times, as far as democ­ra­cy and civ­i­liza­tion are con­cerned, I believe those ideas will ulti­mate­ly flour­ish and tri­umph over barbarism.

My blog writ­ing is not meant to be the same as for­mal aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ing, and much of it is rough and unpol­ished. Top­ics as dif­fer­ent as the soci­ol­o­gy of silent films, cur­rent hot bands, democ­ra­cy in the ancient world, how to cook ban­nock, and why you should­n’t climb vol­ca­noes in sub­stan­dard sneak­ers appear in the blog, hig­gledy-pig­gledy. But among these, in the begin­ning years, were a series of arti­cles called “Med­i­ta­tions on Democ­ra­cy and Dic­ta­tor­ship” which are still reg­u­lar­ly read today, and have had some influ­ence. They still elic­it inquiries from remote cor­ners of the globe. They are now buried in the back pages of the blog, so I’m mov­ing them up the chrono­log­i­cal counter (for the sec­ond time) so they can have anoth­er round of vis­i­bil­i­ty, espe­cial­ly (I hope) with younger read­ers. Over the com­ing months, I’ll be re-post­ing them in their orig­i­nal sequence. Some ref­er­ences in these “med­i­ta­tions” will date them to 2007–2008, when they were writ­ten. But I will leave them un-retouched, though I may occa­sion­al­ly append some ret­ro­spec­tive notes. Most­ly, they deal with abstract issues that do not need updating.

Phil Paine, Toronto.