One of those things that strikes me as I write this down, concerns the fact that 2500 years ago it would have been more difficult to compare these two types of travel, although the book in reference points out that much of the history is lost, the future is far more difficult to predict with certainty.
However, even from our perch above the past, the book recalls the story experienced by the author about a lost city, visible in ruins, where the locals no longer no its history, its people and their history having been erased from the local lexicon.
What I was saying when we started this visit was that the conflict between East and West largely takes place in what we would call ancient greece and involving greece and persia. It is particularly interesting that the greek historian Herodotus apparently was in occupied greece (by persia) during the formative years, if not when he wrote his histories (I need to listen to that section again) and I wonder if the same might not be true of Zeno.
This in turn leads to the observation that Titantic struggles often give rise to the greatest creativity. Art without suffering is like candy without sweetener; it's something else. Wasn't it Hemingway who said you had to live through war to write?
Speaking of Titanic, it turns out that Syrus was the first person to use the phrase "I am King of the World" later used by Dicaprio's character in that movie. I wonder if this was an intentional alliteration for the ultra sophisticated or perhaps just (accidental?) plagiarism.
And speaking of firsts, it turns out the oldest drama known in any language was "The Persians" [In case you are interested:http://classics.mit.edu/Aeschylus/persians.html] by Aeschylus (why on earth did they need to spell their names like this, or is this just a single letter in that alphabet which looks so strange to western eyes and is so beloved by mathematicians and physicists?) who, it would gratify Hemingway, was the survivor of Salamis (480BC) the greatest known naval battle of the ancient world where the greeks defeated the namesake Persians.
How complicated it must be to write of an enemy so powerful and so close, and yet writers have a type of immunity that comes from their craft. I have no hesitation to point out we are at war with China (even though we don't know it) even as I look to China myself for so much, it having been abandoned so completely in our own country. I'll post a blog on the theft of our currency through a change in the world standard (predicted in China's weaponized economy) which was facinating, having been written by someone else who was much smarter than I and who points out that the average term for a currency to be the world standard over the last few hundred years is only 85 years, a term our currency is approaching and a clear indicator to future leaders, perhaps the Chinese, that the weaknesses of a strong currency must be measured against its strenghts. It is, however, getting back to the subject at hand, no wonder that the persians are not more villified, because Herodotus must have closely experienced the good and bad of their rule growing up, perhaps with a touch of nostalgia and Aeschylus with a touch of respect from an adversary.
All this talk of Greeks and Greece, however, is exhausting me and reminds me that suffering comes in as many forms as candy, and then more and I am not particularly fond of suffering or candy. And this post has to get back to the topic at hand.
No comments:
Post a Comment