As I prepare to write a post concerning ancient Western civilization, I stop to ask myself a few questions, find your personal answers if you wish, this will likely come up in my next or last post and might interest you further.
The Peloponnesian War
What do you think about this war, was it necessary? If you were leading the charge of the Spartans, what would you have done in hindsight? Do you think that the Spartans were right? Do you think that the Athenians did the best they could? What's your opinion? And what recent conflicts reflect this? Maybe we should've learned from their mistakes, maybe the modern society is better, maybe it's just as totalitarian. What do you think?
Politics and the Humanities
in Classical Greek Culture
Playing to the psychology side of these historical events, what caused Herodotus and Thucydides to start thinking this way? You hear in their speeches and writings that both of them are going against culture for some of the first times in recorded history so that they could accurately record history. Why do you think that we sought knowledge in this rarely thought of manor, and why did they think they needed an unbiased opinion for it to be accurate?
Why do you think people craved this kind of knowledge? The way that literature evolved into plays, movies, tv, Broadway, why is that source of entertainment and knowledge through fiction so important to mankind?
Why did religion so heavily influence the ancient Greek culture? How could every peace of art involve the gods? Was it simply their way of being curious about the world and expressing it through supernatural explanation? Or was there something to it that caused even those who mocked the gods to include them in their work?
Comments