Oh Jane,
Just move to Maine and audit classes at Bowdoin, so we can do what we do at christiania and ponder these things for days at a time. Because these are the things I've been thinking about!
I am constantly amazed at how generic people and personalities are!
If you look at ancient grafitti from Roman cities such as Pompeii or Herculaneum, these people are saying the exact same things we ourselves scrawled on the walls of our bathroom stalls in high school. "Corelia is a whore, Brisius fucked here," various love notes, insults, and cheesy campaign slogans are all over the walls of these cities! Our thoughts and personalities have not evolved, only our language has.
Consistent with this, I also agree that many of our problems and daily minutia are essentially similar to those in the time of the ancients. If you strip away context and technology, problems always come down to things like morals, work, money, health, politics, etc. like you mentioned.
I had a similar realization when started taking latin courses, in that I questioned the ability and intelligence of moderns versus ancients. When you read latin poetry and start to understand enough about the language to truly see how english limits you, it's hard not to have your mind blown and come to the conclusion that the ancients were simply smarter. Ultimately what I've wondered is if it's just a factor of uncharted territory. Perhaps its just that there are no fundamental truths left to discover? and all that's left is to build upon and improve the base of knowledge that exists? It's not that some among us don't have the capacity to be great thinkers, it just that in our age of freely flowing information, discovery is not so easily facilitated. Now the only things left to think about are things that can only be discerned using out technologies.
Basically, People are generic. They take the information they have and go from there. I don't think we're smarter, dumber, or more advanced. Just better at typing and playing guitar hero. We're definitely not as good at drinking (and we're pretty good).
Does that make sense at all? How off-topic did I get in order to get my own agenda forward, haha.
Oh and as far as assuming Sophocles was aware of astrology, I'd be careful there. it seems to me to be more of an eastern tradition (though I have no real idea) and you know how the Greeks regard the Persians (not highly, haha).
Could not have said it better. To expand upon the how limiting English can be. I think you were referring to the phenomenon that occurs in ancient languages such as Latin, Greek, Hebrew in which, for example "pharmakon," has ambiguous meaning (remedy, poison, and paint) which are all applicable to the situation at hand. It makes you wonder how many different interpretations are available, and if these plays were so effective because the audience would be able to conclude their own "logos" (word, meaning, speech, thought). I should take Latin, the not so dead language. I'll Rosetta Stone it and see how far that takes me?
ReplyDeleteAnd about Bowdoin, I should - after four years, I still can't figure out how to arrange a decent schedule. I did, however, manage to schedule in my first night class which I never knew was offered. It starts at 7pm and lasts 3 hours. Did I mention its after a 4 hours lab on Thursdays?