John Aniston, R.I.P.

 

Oh My Papa

Oh, my Pa-pa, to me he was so wonderful
Oh, my Pa-pa, to me he was so good
No one could be so gentle and so lovable
Oh, my Pa-pa, he always understood

There is a fitting way to honor Jennifer Aniston’s late father, Yannis Anastassakis.

In ancient Athens, they took jury duty and voting selection very, very seriously. But their answer was NOT to exclude those that might be corrupted. They instead ensured that the process was absolutely random so that corruptible humans were not involved. The representatives and jurors were chosen from among volunteers. There was a concern that the votes, or other decisions, of those representatives and jurors could be influenced by others, if their votes were public. Their solution was to make such votes secret. It did NOT require a high-tech solution. They deposited stones indicating their decision in a jar, where the color of the stone indicated whether they were in favor of, or opposed to, the issue. The number of stones in the jar indicated the will of the panel but no one could see, or influence, the decision of any one member of the panel.

There was also a concern that each of the ten tribes in Athens were fairly represented on any panel of representatives, jurors, etc. They often used a kleroterion to select panels.

From Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleroterion

“The kleroterion was a slab of stone incised with rows of slots and with an attached tube. Citizens' tokens—pinakia—were placed randomly in the slots so that every member of each of the tribes of Athens had their tokens placed in the same column. There was a pipe attached to the stone which could then be fed dice that were colored differently (assumed to be black and white) and could be released individually by a mechanism that has not survived to posterity (but is speculated to be by two nails; one used to block the open end and another to separate the next die to fall from the rest of the dice above it.) When a die was released, a complete row of tokens (so, one citizen from each of the tribes of Athens) was either selected if the die was colored one color, or discarded if it was the alternate color. This process continued until the requisite number of citizens was selected.”

Selecting candidates from the tribes of ancient Athens is not terribly different from Harvard selecting candidates representing different races, incomes, ethnicities, etc. The chances of being selected were greater for those in a tribe with fewer volunteers/candidates. But the process was completely random.  Your odds were equal within your tribe. That they were not equal with every member of every other tribe was a big so what. That was NOT the goal. 

Choosing anything as a selection criteria, which is strongly correlated with race, income, ethnicity, etc., means that you are effectively selecting on race, income, ethnicity, religion etc. For example, if you are selecting based on extra-curricular activities and white, rich, WASPs have a higher correlation with extra curricular activities this means that effectively you ARE selecting on race, income, ethnicity, religion, etc.  Selecting as the ancient Greeks did, eliminates the possibility of using any highly correlated criteria.

I just learned that Jennifer Aniston is of Greek heritage.  It would be fitting to honor her late father by realizing that Affirmative Action is nothing more than the modern equivalent of the kleroterion, even if the ancient Greeks did it better,  and that votes to end debate in the US Senate be by colored stones instead of filibusters.