The Greek Mind
What is it about the Greeks that enabled them to create the unique civilization we admire twenty five hundred years later -- a civilization some might argue has never been matched. To try and get at the answer, we look at the setting that fostered the building of a Greek identity, starting with the Greek dark ages and progressing to the classical period during the 5th century B.C. when the intellectual Greece reached its zenith.
In the time before the Greeks, man saw life as a dark and risky experience. Priests were part of each tribe and carried the responsibility for interpreting the will of the gods, which was not something that could only be understood by “specialists”.
The Greeks were able to escape the primitive view of the world and become enlightened as individuals. How?
Part of the story is the geography of Greece: mountainous with areas of extraordinarily fertile land, sitting at the connection of Europe to Asia, and not easy to invade. The mountains separated the people into local tribes, and those human colonies evolved into cities of equals. No aristocracy developed because there was no way to accumulate wealth; no way for a king to buy power. Military leaders ruled because each city had to be able to defend itself. Geography kept the colonies small and homogeneous -- the right setting for evolving the Polis.
Still geography does not tell us the whole story. It doesn’t tell us why the Greek mind began to wonder about man’s place in the world. To these first thinkers, the world seemed predictable and not magical. Physical events could be shown to repeat themselves meaning there must be order to the universe.
But the Greeks were thinking more broadly than the laws of physics. They adopted a unique synthesis of mind and spirit which has seldom existed before or since. Everything was looked at in terms of the whole and not its parts. Human beings were seen as part of a species even though they are individuals. The Greeks understood anatomy but realized a heart is the same in everyone. When they designed a building, the Greeks took into account its surroundings and how it fit in the space – the whole as important as the parts. Famous men were interested in everything as we see in the philosophers who were trying to learn all that could be known.
The Greek spirit is what we are missing today -- the experience of the joy of life. They played games for the purity of athleticism and competition and not for any other purpose. How sad to compare the Roman games of slaughter with the Olympics! They reveled in the joy of beauty and the appreciation of beautiful things. They described virtue as “beautiful” giving an aesthetic trait to human character.
The Romans never had the Greek spirit. They were “mind” only. Look at a problem, solve it, and move on. The context doesn’t matter; only the finished product – best army, best temples, best roads – but spiritless.
The same problem exists in the world today. We have become pieces separated from the whole – there is no whole. Only the individual matters, and individual rights over the rights of the people as a whole. Our minds have produced the greatest “things” but what does owning a designer shirt mean? Only more self-serving isolation from the rest of mankind.
There was also trouble at home. In 398, a plot was discovered which had helots and two Perioeci towns plotting to overthrow the Spartan government. At the same time, the issue of wealth began to bring out the more base instincts of Spartan men; instincts the Lycurgian laws had blocked for so long. As the spoils of the Peloponnesian War reached Sparta, its people began to forget their simple life. Some became wealthy and others coveted that wealth.
As the Oracle had predicted 300 years before, “Greed will be Sparta’s ruin.” Aristotle put it another way, “The Spartans always prevailed in war but were destroyed by empire simply because they did not know how to use the leisure they had won, because they had practiced no more fundamental skill than skill in war”.
The Spartans and “False Victory”
The period from 464 B.C. to 404 begins with the great Spartan earthquake and ends with the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War.
The Athenians were sent home, causing the reign of Cimon and the Athenian alliance with Sparta to come to an end. Cimon was exiled in favor of Pericles. The Athenians and Spartans went to war in 460 and fought half-heartily until 445 when they signed a thirty year peace treaty. The treaty lasted until 431, when the great Peloponnesian War began.
That war can be summed up as follows: Athens and Sparta fought to a draw between 431 and 422 when Athens sued for peace fearing defections of her allies. The war began again in 421. Two events mark this segment: the defeat of Athens and her allies at Mantinea in 418 and the failed Athenian attack on Syracuse in Sicily. In the third segment, starting in 413, Sparta invaded Attica and then allied itself with Persia who built ships for the Spartan Navy. Lysander, a brilliant Spartan admiral, defeated the Athenian allies at Aegosotami, the Athenians surrender, and the war finally came to an end.
For the first time in decades, the Iranian regime is defenseless. Will President Donald Trump seize on the moment and finally depose of the brutal theocracy before it gets “the bomb” or instead pursue another “maximum pressure” campaign, cutting the ayatollah off from the rest of the world? Victor Davis Hanson lays out these options and what role the MAGA worldview may play in the Trump administration’s decision-making on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words”
“Remember that fable of our youth when the mice got together and they say, ‘The cat is picking us off one by one. We need to put a bell around his neck so we could be warned.’ And everybody said, ‘That's a great idea.’
“The next item of business among the mice assembly was, who will bell the cat? What I'm getting at is the Europeans, I think even the Chinese and Russians, don't want on their border a nuclear Iran. The Americans, the Israelis, everybody knows they should not—that theocratic regime should not get the bomb. But who bells the cat? ...
“Maybe the correct stance of the incoming Trump administration is to go back to the maximum-pressure campaign of Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump and have strict sanctions on oil exports, maybe even a blockade, put the pressure on so the people then throw the theocracy out itself.
“But on the other hand, people are going to argue, ‘Wait a minute, there are no Iranian air defenses. For one of the few times in history, that regime is naked. There is no Assad. There is no Hezbollah. There is no Hamas. There is no Houthis that are capable of, as surrogates, attacking the Israeli state.
“‘So, maybe you could attack Iran—just this brief window—because Israel, in a series of brilliant air responses, has destroyed its ability—Tehran's ability to defend itself.’”
!summarize #basf #dow #lyb #investing #stocks #money
!summarize #germany #elections #governments #coalitions #europe #cdu
!summarize #trump #maine #governor
!summarize #space #solarsystem #spacetravel #physics
The Greek Mind
What is it about the Greeks that enabled them to create the unique civilization we admire twenty five hundred years later -- a civilization some might argue has never been matched. To try and get at the answer, we look at the setting that fostered the building of a Greek identity, starting with the Greek dark ages and progressing to the classical period during the 5th century B.C. when the intellectual Greece reached its zenith.
In the time before the Greeks, man saw life as a dark and risky experience. Priests were part of each tribe and carried the responsibility for interpreting the will of the gods, which was not something that could only be understood by “specialists”.
!summarize #trump #elonmusk #email #federalworkers
The Greeks were able to escape the primitive view of the world and become enlightened as individuals. How?
Part of the story is the geography of Greece: mountainous with areas of extraordinarily fertile land, sitting at the connection of Europe to Asia, and not easy to invade. The mountains separated the people into local tribes, and those human colonies evolved into cities of equals. No aristocracy developed because there was no way to accumulate wealth; no way for a king to buy power. Military leaders ruled because each city had to be able to defend itself. Geography kept the colonies small and homogeneous -- the right setting for evolving the Polis.
Still geography does not tell us the whole story. It doesn’t tell us why the Greek mind began to wonder about man’s place in the world. To these first thinkers, the world seemed predictable and not magical. Physical events could be shown to repeat themselves meaning there must be order to the universe.
But the Greeks were thinking more broadly than the laws of physics. They adopted a unique synthesis of mind and spirit which has seldom existed before or since. Everything was looked at in terms of the whole and not its parts. Human beings were seen as part of a species even though they are individuals. The Greeks understood anatomy but realized a heart is the same in everyone. When they designed a building, the Greeks took into account its surroundings and how it fit in the space – the whole as important as the parts. Famous men were interested in everything as we see in the philosophers who were trying to learn all that could be known.
!summarize #china #exports #trade #economy #recession
The Greek spirit is what we are missing today -- the experience of the joy of life. They played games for the purity of athleticism and competition and not for any other purpose. How sad to compare the Roman games of slaughter with the Olympics! They reveled in the joy of beauty and the appreciation of beautiful things. They described virtue as “beautiful” giving an aesthetic trait to human character.
The Romans never had the Greek spirit. They were “mind” only. Look at a problem, solve it, and move on. The context doesn’t matter; only the finished product – best army, best temples, best roads – but spiritless.
!summarize #canada #politics #economy #population
The same problem exists in the world today. We have become pieces separated from the whole – there is no whole. Only the individual matters, and individual rights over the rights of the people as a whole. Our minds have produced the greatest “things” but what does owning a designer shirt mean? Only more self-serving isolation from the rest of mankind.
!summarize #Nymets #nyyankees #pitcher
There was also trouble at home. In 398, a plot was discovered which had helots and two Perioeci towns plotting to overthrow the Spartan government. At the same time, the issue of wealth began to bring out the more base instincts of Spartan men; instincts the Lycurgian laws had blocked for so long. As the spoils of the Peloponnesian War reached Sparta, its people began to forget their simple life. Some became wealthy and others coveted that wealth.
!summarize #trump #macron #france #trade #Russia
!summarize #germany #trump #metz
!summarize #joyreid #msnbc #media #fired
!summarize #nymets #clayholmes #juansoto #springtraining
!summarize #espn #mlb #entertainment
!summarize #doge #elonmusk #government #danbongino
!summarize #california #money #gavinnewsom
!summarize #trump #democrats #politics #cabinet
!summarize #espn #baseball #philadelphia #eagles #mlb
!summarize #remotework #government #jamiedimon
As the Oracle had predicted 300 years before, “Greed will be Sparta’s ruin.” Aristotle put it another way, “The Spartans always prevailed in war but were destroyed by empire simply because they did not know how to use the leisure they had won, because they had practiced no more fundamental skill than skill in war”.
The Spartans and “False Victory”
The period from 464 B.C. to 404 begins with the great Spartan earthquake and ends with the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War.
The Athenians were sent home, causing the reign of Cimon and the Athenian alliance with Sparta to come to an end. Cimon was exiled in favor of Pericles. The Athenians and Spartans went to war in 460 and fought half-heartily until 445 when they signed a thirty year peace treaty. The treaty lasted until 431, when the great Peloponnesian War began.
That war can be summed up as follows: Athens and Sparta fought to a draw between 431 and 422 when Athens sued for peace fearing defections of her allies. The war began again in 421. Two events mark this segment: the defeat of Athens and her allies at Mantinea in 418 and the failed Athenian attack on Syracuse in Sicily. In the third segment, starting in 413, Sparta invaded Attica and then allied itself with Persia who built ships for the Spartan Navy. Lysander, a brilliant Spartan admiral, defeated the Athenian allies at Aegosotami, the Athenians surrender, and the war finally came to an end.
!summarize #karolineleavitt #cpac #politics
!summarize #joyreid #msnbc #media
!summarize #tesla #fsd #china #cybercab #unboxed
!summarize #iran #nuclear #theocratic #regime #weapon
For the first time in decades, the Iranian regime is defenseless. Will President Donald Trump seize on the moment and finally depose of the brutal theocracy before it gets “the bomb” or instead pursue another “maximum pressure” campaign, cutting the ayatollah off from the rest of the world? Victor Davis Hanson lays out these options and what role the MAGA worldview may play in the Trump administration’s decision-making on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words”
“Remember that fable of our youth when the mice got together and they say, ‘The cat is picking us off one by one. We need to put a bell around his neck so we could be warned.’ And everybody said, ‘That's a great idea.’
“The next item of business among the mice assembly was, who will bell the cat? What I'm getting at is the Europeans, I think even the Chinese and Russians, don't want on their border a nuclear Iran. The Americans, the Israelis, everybody knows they should not—that theocratic regime should not get the bomb. But who bells the cat? ...
“Maybe the correct stance of the incoming Trump administration is to go back to the maximum-pressure campaign of Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump and have strict sanctions on oil exports, maybe even a blockade, put the pressure on so the people then throw the theocracy out itself.
“But on the other hand, people are going to argue, ‘Wait a minute, there are no Iranian air defenses. For one of the few times in history, that regime is naked. There is no Assad. There is no Hezbollah. There is no Hamas. There is no Houthis that are capable of, as surrogates, attacking the Israeli state.
“‘So, maybe you could attack Iran—just this brief window—because Israel, in a series of brilliant air responses, has destroyed its ability—Tehran's ability to defend itself.’”
!summarize #california #realestate #gavinnewsom
!summarize #espn #baseball #mlb #sports