“Live As On A Mountain. Let Men See.”

“Men exist for the sake of one another”

[...] Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power. [...] He who does not know what the world is, does not know where he is. And he who does not know for what purpose the world exists, does not know who he is, nor what the world is. But he who has failed in any one of these things could not even say for what purpose he exists himself. What then dost thou think of him who avoids or seeks the praise of those who applaud, of men who know not either where they are or who they are?

 [...] Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today inquisitive, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill. [...] Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them. [...] Very little is needed to make a happy life. [...] Know the joy of life by piling good deed on good deed until no rift or cranny appears between them. [...] Have I done something for the general interest? Well then I have had my reward. Let this always be present to thy mind, and never stop doing such good.  [...] He who fears death either fears to lose all sensation or fears new sensations. In reality, you will either feel nothing at all, and therefore nothing evil, or else, if you can feel any sensations, you will be a new creature, and so will not have ceased to have life. [...] Live as on a mountain. Let men see, let them know a real man who lives according to nature. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live thus." - Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 – murdered 180 AD): Meditations

Confucius In The Age of Oligarchy

"Better light a candle
than curse the dark."

One great tradition of anti-oligarchical thinking in world culture stems from the influence of Confucius (551-479 BC). Confucianism can perhaps best be understood as a movement to save Chinese civilization from oligarchical depredations. Confucius starts from a standpoint very much like that of Plato (428-348 BC): the need to secure good government capable of promoting the general welfare. Confucius recognized that most governments in the divided and balkanized China of his time were unacceptable. 

The main political issue was the incessant private warfare of the Zhou dynasty military nobility, which served no useful purpose, but kept the country weak and divided, with no effective central government. According to Confucius, bad government derived from the fact that rulers and high officials lacked the character and qualifications to serve the common good. 

Sun Yat-Sen, Provisional President,
Republic of China (1912), the first
Republic in Asia: "Of the people, by
the people, for the people."

Confucius thought the main reason for this incompetence was the status of the rulers and hereditary aristocrats around them. He regarded most of them as parasites, and wrote in his Analects: 

“It is difficult to expect anything from men who stuff themselves with food the whole day, while never using their minds in any way at all. Even gamblers do something, and to that degree are better than these idlers.”
 
Like Plato he argued that government needs to be in the hands of the most capable and competent. Ability has nothing to do with birth, nobility, or wealth, but depends on character and knowledge alone, which in turn are the results of education. Confucius called for careers open to talent, in which appointment and advancement would be based on ability, not on property, hereditary rank and title. Contrary to this, oligarchy represents an irrational principle based on domination and repression, justified neither by merit and ability, nor by the results achieved.