When seeking a method for finding the truth in science, Imre Lakatos said that research programmes contain a ‘hard core’ at their centre, which can never be questioned. Anyone doing so would be ostracized, losing their job and bringing their scientific career to an end.
Such a phenomenon is widespread, both in human communities and within groups of other animals. For instance, children in the school playground might bully those who do not ‘fit in’. And of course, we witness such behaviour patterns in widespread racism and sexism in the world today. Similarly, a herd of antelopes might reject an albino born in its midst, for being a ‘freak of nature’.
Regarding civilizations, questioning all cultural assumptions can lead seekers of Love, Peace, Wholeness, and the Truth to be ignored and rejected by Society, at once experiencing deep joy and pain.
For, by awakening to Total Revolution, as Vimala Thakar advised in Spirituality and Social Action: A Holistic Approach in 1984, the entire infrastructure of Western civilization, the global economy, and the patriarchal epoch would collapse, requiring us to rebuild the entire education and economic systems on a sound foundation.
So, whether Panosophers will ever be understood and accepted as ordinary human beings is the great unknown at the time of writing this Glossary entry.
1649, ‘exile by ostracism, banish by popular vote’, from ostracism ‘the name of a legal political method among the ancient Athenians by which men deemed dangerous to the liberties of the people or embarrassing to the state were banished for 10 years by public vote’ (1588), from Latinized form of Greek ostrakizein ‘to banish’, literally ‘to banish by voting with potsherds’, from ostrakon ‘shell or potsherd’, from PIE base *ost- ‘bone’.
So called because the citizens each indicated the name of the man they wished banished by scratching it on a potsherd or tile.