Achilles, Patroclus, and the end of the world as we know it.
Perusing Wikipedia, I was amused to find that the question of whether or not Achilles and Patroclus were lovers was as much debated in ancient Greece as it is today. Glancing over Wiki’s Iliad entry, I get the impression that the score was running about 70-30 in favor of the sex scenario, which, by a remarkable coincidence, seems to be about how the score is running today, based on my conversations and reading. In other words, we’re looking at no less than 2500 years of complete metatextual impasse. Just what were those guys up to? The world may never know...
Looked at another way, what a remarkable example of cultural continuity. It astounds me that the burning question of the nature of the sex lives of two fictional characters pondered by the likes Aristotle and Aeschylus remains a burning question for me right now and, let’s face it, for the people who bankrolled Troy. The more things change...!
But things do change. And what are the odds that in another 2500 years, the human race will still be pondering the riddle of Achilles and Patroclus? Let me list three things that would have to happen in order for that to occur:
1) We’d have to retain enough of a record of A/P for people to access the story.
2) We’d have to stay sufficiently like the human race of today to care about questions of sex and/or gender and/or different types of love relationships.
3) We’d have to have avoided obliterating ourselves through nuclear holocaust, biowarfare, unforeseen plagues, gray goo, biospheric collapse, etc.
Now, (1) is doable (it’s already been done once, and mostly without the benefit of printing presses, computers, etc.); (2) is possible if we steer clear of radical bioengineering and cyborgization, etc.; (3), I have to say, seems unlikely... unless we a) have a fairly major holocaust that plunges us back into a technological dark ages for centuries or b) learn how to terraform.
All in all, I wouldn’t bet on the human race being here in another 2500 to discuss those vital emotional questions of that tale of 2700 years ago.
We may, in fact, be living at the end of history as we know it, and what a great loss.
And as a final point to ponder, how ironic it is that much of the basic attitude toward earth and science, “man” and “nature” that has brought us to this seeming edge of apocalypse arises out of that same Greek civilization... that the same Plato who, with the rest of them, pondered the sex lives of Achilles and Patroclus, became one of the principal spokesmen for system of division between body and spirit, which, to this day, prevents us from living on this Earth like beings whose future crucially depends upon our planet.
Or maybe we’re simply trapped by sociobiology. Maybe the same basic humanity that made Homer write of the love of Achilles and Patroclus and Aristotle devote pages to writings of Homer and me clutter up my LJ with writings on the lot of them is a humanity not equipped to survive in world in which it has handed itself the gods’ own powers of destruction. Then, onward to the Scaean Gates.
Looked at another way, what a remarkable example of cultural continuity. It astounds me that the burning question of the nature of the sex lives of two fictional characters pondered by the likes Aristotle and Aeschylus remains a burning question for me right now and, let’s face it, for the people who bankrolled Troy. The more things change...!
But things do change. And what are the odds that in another 2500 years, the human race will still be pondering the riddle of Achilles and Patroclus? Let me list three things that would have to happen in order for that to occur:
1) We’d have to retain enough of a record of A/P for people to access the story.
2) We’d have to stay sufficiently like the human race of today to care about questions of sex and/or gender and/or different types of love relationships.
3) We’d have to have avoided obliterating ourselves through nuclear holocaust, biowarfare, unforeseen plagues, gray goo, biospheric collapse, etc.
Now, (1) is doable (it’s already been done once, and mostly without the benefit of printing presses, computers, etc.); (2) is possible if we steer clear of radical bioengineering and cyborgization, etc.; (3), I have to say, seems unlikely... unless we a) have a fairly major holocaust that plunges us back into a technological dark ages for centuries or b) learn how to terraform.
All in all, I wouldn’t bet on the human race being here in another 2500 to discuss those vital emotional questions of that tale of 2700 years ago.
We may, in fact, be living at the end of history as we know it, and what a great loss.
And as a final point to ponder, how ironic it is that much of the basic attitude toward earth and science, “man” and “nature” that has brought us to this seeming edge of apocalypse arises out of that same Greek civilization... that the same Plato who, with the rest of them, pondered the sex lives of Achilles and Patroclus, became one of the principal spokesmen for system of division between body and spirit, which, to this day, prevents us from living on this Earth like beings whose future crucially depends upon our planet.
Or maybe we’re simply trapped by sociobiology. Maybe the same basic humanity that made Homer write of the love of Achilles and Patroclus and Aristotle devote pages to writings of Homer and me clutter up my LJ with writings on the lot of them is a humanity not equipped to survive in world in which it has handed itself the gods’ own powers of destruction. Then, onward to the Scaean Gates.