Chris Weimer wrote:It's a logical fallacy. Just because two things coincide doesn't mean one follows the other. See here for an explanation of the fallacy.
if a people with an advanced culture, add Greek to their culture, they will have a huge advantage over other cultures that don't.
Turendil wrote:if a people with an advanced culture, add Greek to their culture, they will have a huge advantage over other cultures that don't.
Sorry. Don't buy it. It's a logical fallacy. Plenty of people spoke and read ancient greek and still managed to be uncivillized.
Turendil wrote:PEOPLE make civilizations not the study of a language.
Turendil wrote:Many intelligent erudite people who knew greek contributed greatly to western civ. However many dumb, ignorant, well educated people with no insight or understanting also knew greek.
Studying great examples and thinking about them makes you a better person, as thoughts eventually form character.
megas_yiannakis wrote:If anyone lives in a democratic country, they are experiencing GREEK CULTURE.
interesting... I learnt that the western democratic institutions were prompted by local developments and were autonomous from and not based on ancient Greek (Athenian) democracy.
Turendil wrote:To answer your question in short I would say that in england the rise of representative government was a response to local condtions which gradually built precedent over time. In France it seems to me to be a group of people bombinating about classics in a vaccum, who when they were given the chance to govern with no practical experience royally (no pun intended) screwed things up.
megas_yiannakis wrote: i cannot believe that an educated person learning classical languages can even show a slight ignorant beliefe in the idea that Alexander the Great was Macedonian and not greek. this bothers me greatly. anybody who knows anything about history knows that the Macedonians (makednos=high-landers/tall people) were just as greek as the spartans and athenians, not only culturally, but also in the way they thought and what they strove to do.
YES the romans conquered greece... but then the greeks tamed the lion. The Romans always looked to the greeks as a more cultured and educated people.
plus it is obsered to think that a people is more 'cultured' than another by the fact that they 'conquered' them, it is infact implying the opposite.
Greek culture is minimal?... cough... the thought of this idea makes my hair rise its so wiered. I think this is a case of that greek culture has become SO fundamental in western culture in general that one cannot easily pick it out and so 'look thats greek!'. If anyone lives in a democratic country, they are experiencing GREEK CULTURE. If someone is at all christian, they are experiencing GREEK CULTURE (considering the way greek minds developed the christian religion). If someone decides to go and learn maths, physics or even chemistry (atomos), they are experiencing GREEK CULTURE. If someone wishes to learn philosophy, they are in every way experiencing GREEK CULTURE.
The whole roman culture is based heavily upon the greek. Many "Roman ideas" are actually greek, and people go their whole lives never knowing this.
i agree that it is not at all practical to say a culture 'needs' greek, or that it would even be an advantage. One thing i can agree on and say though is that western culture was created in Athens. <<< this sentence itself sums up exactly how fundemental GREEK CULTURE is to Westerners.
if what was implied was saying that 'modern greek' culture today is minimal, then again without trying to be mean or overly nationalistic : what does one expect from a country that has been through that much? Modern Greece in my mind is completely synonymous with ancient greece, culture and language. although it might be.... cough minimal that has no bearing on how rich the culture itslef is.
Chris Weimer wrote:True Plato played his part, but what a horrible part he played! The threw off the critical inquiry of Socrates and opted for the theory of God from Plato!
Arvid wrote:When modern-day Christians use terms like "life-affirming" to describe their propaganda, we're not supposed to laugh in their faces, even though what they call life-affirming in fact embodies virulent hatred for everything that characterizes life as it exists here on Earth: flesh, sex, reproduction, mortality, change, evolution, etc., etc.
Arvid wrote:Sorry--I didn't mean to tar everyone with the same brush, but you have to admit that fanatics such as I describe are running the country (into the ground) right now. Tom Delay on the Columbine School massacre: "What do you expect when they teach evolution in school?"
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