Politics

We must revise our disappointment in people, as people are never what they seem, and see our disappointment as the failure in ourselves.

When Alexander's project, the first to attempt to bring east and west together, fell apart, Demetrius the City-Besieger, son of Antigonus the One-Eyed Govenor of Phygia in central Asia, rebuilt a great part of Alexander's empire in 300 BC. The spreading of Greek culture thus began in earnest, "the era of not only Greekness but of becoming Greek", as noted in Price and Thonemann's book, The Birth of Classical Europe.

Certain control techniques--the notion of a common language for one--were exerted as well as the notion of some token but limited power "coming from below;" those in real power granted some autonomy to those who subscribed to certain Hellenistic notions and from whom taxes could be levied.

We think that what we're living through is something new, but it's not. Certain myths, the hindu principles, for example, of creation and destruction, have enough capacity to hold both reality and delusion, but for some reason we have decided to be as christian a nation as humanly possible and therefore limited our options.

And so we live with the hope that things will change; it seems to be the best that we can do, and the worst.