Greece disliked institutions for the most part. They allowed some minor institutionalizing, but their biggest institution was the gathering of free thinking citizens that owed their allegiance to no one or no god but only to themselves.
Stating it like that, it's a wonder that they got anything done or left any record of accomplishment. When times of crisis occurred, they managed to institutionalize the military, naval and land forces. They also institutionalized the games or sports, and they had some legal, civic and religious institutionalizing occurring as well. You could say they created individual democracy based on individual freedom. You could even call that itself an institution if you wish.
Left to their own devices, institutions were secondary at best to the ordinary citizen of Greece. This is not well understood in the west today with its millions of institutions. We have a group or sub society for everything it seems, and I mean everything. Take a look at FB Groups and you'll see what I mean.
American institutions have existed since our national beginning in the 17 and 18 hundreds. But I really believe they went ballistic after WWII. The GI generation rebuilt America after the depression and put its institutions on steroids.
Ancient Greeks, especially the Athenians, would have fought against this form of society. It might have been the greatest outpost for individual instead of collective thought and philosophy. For many reasons, we will never have another Athenian like democracy, at least not so you would notice. It just can't be replicated.
And yet, it seems like many people today are tired of the Institution, whatever one they choose that is or all of them for that matter. And like the ancient Greeks, they wish to remain free of institutional control. Control is a word we can get our mind around. But there are words even deeper in hierarchy of institutions. Power, dominance, grandiosity and the like come to mind. Control is the concentration of force or coercion to obtain those base conditions.
It seems like we might be having our own Athenia revolution today. Americans are no stranger to the feeling of wanting control over their own lives and resist strongly outside influences of control. With all the institutions vying for our attention either because of their failures or their power, we are finding ourselves less trusting of them.
Greece had no model for moving past its institutional past. Tyrants ruled them, Priests coerced them, and the god's frightened them. That's why they did away with, neutered or minimized these institutions.
We might be seeing a repeat of the unwinding of the Institutional Movement as well today. My interest is what side of and what role do I wish to play in this movement. Take religion for instance. Greece would no longer be afraid of their gods and their priestly class as Egyptians were. So they changed religion to something much less formidable and even tepid, more safe perhaps, more controllable. This took time to achieve but it was the direction of their thought.
Should this be similar today? I don't think so. But I see changes coming, and have already started to institutional religion that are well under way and unstoppable, not all for the better.
We are in the midst of an Athenian style revolution. Most have no idea this is so. Where will it go from here, again, most have no idea. But at some point, we will stop and take inventory of what we have left and what we want to rebuild. All revolutions do this.