What are European Values?
Essentially I would have to say that what I see is the legacy of Greece and the introduction of democracy, for all that may have changed in its precise definition since Hellenic times.
Beyond this, the right to self-determination, I would argue is confederacy and brotherliness with one’s neighbours. Neighbourliness.
From the security of this foundation of fellowship and peace, culture and the arts can thrive. No nation matched the Classical era of Greece for philosophy and the arts in Europe, until the Renaissance in Italy, a period of a thousand years.
Greece stood as the pinnacle of European culture from that time (400 BCE) forward. Not that I wish to suggest it was easy, unchanging, nor gained without struggle.
But by the time we reach the Roman empire the emphasis was on power. With the collapse of that empire Europe returned to a gentle agricultural era until the Roman Church took over the role of the army from Rome in its attempt to subjugate the rest of Europe to the detriment of the natural cultures that had evolved there, culminating in the crusades, even against fellow Christians in the Albigensian wars, which saw the introduction of the Spanish Inquisition.
Now that the fifth root race – the race of Adam’s apple we might call it – has ended no-one doubts their own identity nor their right to self-determination, despite the efforts of others to suppress such awareness. Look at the struggle of the girls and women in Afghanistan.
Adam’s apple is the place of the throat chakra, which among other things is the place of Venus, whose symbol is the looking glass. We have passed the era of vanity and self-appraisal to enter the era of self-reflection and responsibility. The 6th root race began following the demise of the 5th in 1945. We see it in the young people born since 1980 who hold a radically different perspective on the world to that of their forebears.
We realise that no-one has the right to force us to undertake something without our consent. The imposition of the Will of one over the body and actions of another is a contravention of the gift of God which has been to give us each, free will.
It is not a religious thing we see unfolding so much as a stage in the evolution of humanity. We are entering a time of galactic awareness. Some use instruments to expand their awareness – radio telescopes and electron microscopes – others use other disciplines, drugs, meditation, trance dance, shamanic drumming, and other mind-expanding techniques. Increasingly the art forms of cinema and video, with computer generated imagery, are opening the human mind up to the possibility of Life on other planets, of realms of the dead and the many frontiers we have falsely erected to close down our senses and comfort ourselves on dark nights. The number of animated movies raises the awareness among children that there are such things as fairies and ogres, that animals have different personalities. All are expanding our horizons.
All of these are based on security and ‘getting on with daily life’. Look at how life in Ukraine has been shattered by the aggression of its paranoid neighbour. We cannot believe that the Russian people want to maintain this perpetration of violence against its neighbour. But sadly the people are not allowed to make the decisions, or even to complain against actions they consider unjust.
Sadder still is that Russia is not alone in crushing its neighbours. Can we consider these actions as part of our European values? I don’ wish to suggest that wars have not torn the continent apart in the past. But rather to suggest that we have outgrown those localised values to a greater awareness of the needs of all and most importantly, to extend respect to all, even when their choices seem aberrant to us.
