Pericles and athenian democracy

The story of Greece as a nation state is an interesting one because Greece was composed of 31 individual states including Athens and Sparta and these states had governing systems and standing armies independent of each other. Greece was as close as they come when it came to having democracy. Only men were allowed to vote because women did not enrolled in the army and hence did not have as many responsibilities as men. Though they were still chauvinistic with regards to how they thought of females. The intellectuals of Athens thought that females might be useful for having babies, it would be better to be in love with a young man because that would be a higher form of relationship. The Great leader of Greece was Pericles whose statesmanship can be compared to that of Lincoln. He also believed in the ideals of democracy and wanted to spread this viewpoint as much as he could. After the Persian war, Athens decided become imperial when it started exerting its influence over other nation states. And because of this expansion, Athens eventually found itself being in conflict with Sparta and Pericles understood that there can only be one superpower not two. That's why he led his country to war. But he encountered backlash over this decision as soon as dead bodies started showing up. There were even investigations of him having unethical relations and sex scandals but he understood that all of this political manipulation was going on because they wanted out of war. This is one weak point of having a democracy. The national spirit can be quite fickle and whatever they want at one moment can quickly change at another moment.

Herodotus: A true historian

From the brief introduction to the kind of History that Herodotus presented to his intended audience, the athenians, he seems like a genuine historian who is willing to express his personal opinions and make the reading of history an interesting one, rather than trying to be objective, which no one can. He tells stories of hubris, and how being a superpower may lead a nation to crave for more and more power. His story was interesting since his audience were free people, unlike the nations that in his story met defeat as they were led by kings who called themselves King of Kings (Darius) or God King (Xerces) both Persian kings who tried to conquer Greek cities in the past. He also told the story of King Cyrus who spared the King of Lydia as the Lydian King had committed a mistake and had become too extreme in his aspirations. King Cyrus learned from Lydian King's mistakes and spared his life. Herodotus was trying to show what can happen when one lets Hubris govern over decisions and how it is possible to not let Hubris corrupt one's thinking. The athenians themselves enjoyed the History as told by Herodotus and gave him enough money that he wouldn't have to worry about money for the rest of his life. And then they went ahead and ignored his advice.

Learning history is useful because it presents us with an opportunity to observe mistakes made by others and then learn from them. The mistakes that we ourselves make are not helpful, because we are seldom willing to recognize them as mistakes in the first place. So we should cherish and absorb every lesson from history.

The book of Samuel

The history of rise and fall of Israelites is really tumultuous and it is surprising to know how vengeful the God of Israelites is. The God wants perfect obedience and if there is any kind of deviation, even possibly innocent one, then God is willing to punish just as easily as the mistake was made. But God is also willing to give multiple chances, as it is written in the Book of Samuel. King Saul commits mistakes and he quickly gets abandoned though the Israelites are still given a chance to have a righteous King. David, who was merely a shepherd, gets to command the Israeli empire but he makes mistakes as well, which leads to him dying a sad old man many of whose children die before him. Israel ultimately loses its status and gets conquered by other nations. The book of Samuel makes it clear that there is no difference between public and private morality, and that individual decisions may end up effecting the whole empire. This sense of there being no distinction between how people act in private and in public still continues to exist in the U.S. Though sometimes it may be appropriate not to make this distinction, when there is matter of hypocrisy involved, at other times; especially instances with celebrities it does become inappropriate.

The trojan war

Apparently a true historical war that was fought for the resource of Iron that was deemed as valueable as Oil is considered today, Homer created a beautiful romantic story to create an interest over lessons that are to be learned from this war. This lesson which was still not taken into consideration when U.S. invaded Iraq, was the lesson that when you go to war, you never know how things are eventually going to turn out. The war itself was full of mistakes from the beginning, Paris refusing to take the choice of being the ruler of the world, instead choosing to have the most beautiful woman on the planet, Helen eloping with Paris being considered as an act of terrorism, neither side willing to make concessions due to the emotion called pride, war dragging on far outweighing the positive to be gained and yet it being continued, and final deception from the Greeks towards the trojans in the form of a wooden horse. Though the Illiad may have started in heavens the book ended with death. And historically both Troy and various Greek cities eventually saw their demise as a new superpower arose. Another lesson of history, you never know who is going to be the next super power on the world stage.

Birth of civilization in the middle east

It's interesting to know how tumultuous the civilization of middle east were and how they saw themselves as a people. The idea of not having a word for freedom in Eygptian is indeed appalling, specially through the eyes of someone that grew up on the notion of human dignity and freedom. Freedom for many people at least in the past was not a universal value and bowing down to someone else for the sake of peace and basic human conditions was deemed more important. So much so that other people were regarded as Gods. The story of Herodotus about the King of Medes and how he treated his Vazir for not following his orders about killing his own grandson was really surprising. He still got his grandson and yet he ordered for Vazir's son to be killed and cooked? Vazir did nothing because for him he was the slave and whatever the master decided was the deed. This story told by herodotus and how it has been passed down from the Greeks to the modern day is a wonderful example of extended cognition and how ideas of the ancient come into being through another hardware by existing outside the hardware of the originator.

monsters and monstrous: Niall Scott

The book is about how in movies, literature, and even music, the idea of monsters is used to say something about the human condition. Different articles talk about different movies and types of monsters and what they say about society in general. Some are interesting while others are not. There is one article in particular that caught my attention because the author was proclaiming that by becoming monstrous, it can be used as a tool to escape from general societal boundaries and possibly be free. So becoming monstrous is a path to possible freedom. I don't really agree with this thesis. Because when someone is labeled as being monstrous, then they are simply being categorized in another way and then they have to live up to this new category.