Classical Education.
Meaning: to be taught the Classics - Ancient Greek and Roman plays, Satires, poems, the languages, fashions, politics and history of that time.
I don't know if a 'Classical Education' is all it's cracked up to be - I know it leaves out just as many (more) things as it leaves in. But if nothing else, what a classical education gave me was a full sense of art, life, and politics in Europe 1000-2000 years ago. And you know what? That's essential. Because it's just the bloody same as modern day.*
- Artists are dreamers who have to find patrons who want them to paint stuff they're not interested in and lie whilst they do it.
- Poor people are mocked by the rich and given empty promises by the politicos. Many have to appease a local power to get their weekly rations. All of them have a charioteer team or local gladiator they are fanatical about.
- Religion is viewed somewhere between a social background norm, an outmoded state convention and a joke you'd like to make but can't for fear of prosecution.
- The higher up the religious official - or any other official for that matter - the more likely he is to be corrupt. Good intentions rot just like any other fruit.
- Women are protected/free/educated/crazy/pure/sexy/frigid/girly/lovely/slutty/insane/sex-hags/innocent/darlings who may or may not be mental and may or may not be allowed to wear 'spartan' short skirts.
- War? Sucks. Read Aristophanes' 'Peace'. He disagreed with the bloodshed and complained bitterly that it was the civilians who had to pay the price when kings or statesmen couldn't settle their differences.
But really, everyone, just please, read the Oresteia by Aeschylus**. It's actually three plays: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, & The Eumenides. It starts as a revenge tragedy of the sort that Shakespeare, Marlowe or Webster would be proud of. But slowly through the trilogy we are asked to agree with each semi righteous yet problematic character's view as their reasons for their terrible actions are explained to us and made to sound sane. The Tragedian's way - the old God's way - was that blood must always have blood. But at the end, when bloody justice was about to met out on Orestes (who'd killed his mother... 'cos she'd killed her husband (O's dad)... 'cos (O's dad) had killed a daughter (O's sister, and by the by his other sister was pissed...)
In the way of plays, Orestes had it coming - but before the devil could take his soul (so to speak) Athene turned up and being the goddess she was bitch-slapped everyone into holding the first trial by jury to decide his guilt. The jury was split 50/50: so she put in the casting vote and told everyone they were forbidden from taking revenge. From now on things were going to be judicial and lawful - they were going to be civilized...
I know there will always be those who abuse the law, or those whom the law cannot stop in time. There will be bad laws too, laws that need to be changed.
But I believe in Athene***. The Furies will gnash their teeth and demand blood for blood, recompense with interest for every slight great or small whether committed yesterday or a thousand years back. Emotion demands we satisfy these hurts - you strike me so I strike you. But Athene is reason, not emotion, and reason sees that an eye for an eye and blood for blood leaves us all blind and wounded: the cycle of vengeance must be broken and justice put in its place.
Justice is imperfect, alas, even after all these years. But I still think despite its myriad flaws it is a better system than vengeance.
I've been told, since I believe in justice in this mode, that England should pay back damages not only to all its old Empire pieces (India, Africa, etc) but any other country it ever shat on in the past. (And the longer it shat on it the more it ought pay.)
Okay. I'm up for a Time-Lord Geneva-Convention. But how is this to work exactly - what are the rules - where's the start point? Because... I know Wessex owes Mercia and Cumbria for being a dick for a start, eventually England owes Scotland, Wales and Ireland for being a bastard (but apparently all the different clans in Scotland Ireland and Wales are cool to let bygones be bygones about THEIR inter-murder-history) then Britain or the UK (how united are we at this point in history?) owes Australia and America and anywhere else we colonized first time round... Then India and bits of Africa and the Caribbean and some other places...
If we're paying for land taken and people killed and revenue piked over time, honestly bits of England might be paying other bits of England the most - not to mention demanding dividends off of the Viking lot. And the Romans - do we demand Italy pay us back for the shit they started? And how are the Greeks to pay back all they took across the world? Or the Persians? Or the Mongols - surely we should all be demanding child benefit if nothing else from the Mongols - Genghis Khan sired half of bloody Europe!
...And America - how is it you think you're so clean of this awful historical murdering bastardry? Fucking hell - you can't pin all your sins on the Europeans - though you do try. You're independent my dears - have been since 1776 - that makes you your own country! Such a pity there were those pesky 'natives' you had to constantly 'deal' with - how tiresome! The ongoing genocide, marginalization and mistreatment of native clans - which you have yet to rectify in any meaningful way... Nope, you'd rather get hugely pissy about what the English did to your ancestors 400+ years ago than acknowledge the horror you committed to an indigenous people less than 200 years back...
Sod off. You pay back all that land and death and damages you did to the American Indian tribes and then I'll be happy to talk as an 'English' person repaying your Irish/Scot/Whatever ancestors for that blood debt.
People and countries are bastards and have been for all time, I suppose is my point. We all have laws to try to elevate us from us murderous horrible pasts - WHICH IS REALLY BLOODY IMPORTANT. Because that's what law is at its most basic point - it's an attempt to be right next time - to aid human society as a whole - even if we can't make right the past.
PS. Please do shut up about Cromwell being our fault. We didn't elect him, we lost a sodding war to him, and we hated him too - he was a cunt. We tried, we failed. Sorry.
PPS. Also yes by all means tell me how the IRA were fine - when you didn't even know there were different arms/splinter groups to the IRA in the first place or what they stood for. Or the fact that the bombed their own people a lot. Fekkers. I can cope with that - that's ignorance. Just don't bloody tell me that the bombing campaign during my childhood was some sort of magical fiction made up between the BBC, my brain and the adults I knew who all worked in different independent news/TV - cos that's just bloody rude.
===========================
*= I'm remembering mostly satires by Horice and Juvinal for the social stuff but also the religious chatter from some Comedies and a history of Rome and Senneca and some other peeps - I'd quote chapter and verse but all my books are stuck in boxes far away. Please comment with quotes that support (or not!) from those or similar sources.
**= I know there are lots of other texts ((oh gods please read Marcus Aurelius too)) and that's not counting all the OTHER AWESOME philosophical texts from AROUND the WORLD.
***= I'm not actually keen on Athene and her ilk they were all pretty bloody shit (and Zeus was a cock-monster) but in this case I mean Athene as her primary aspect: reason and wisdom.
I don't know if a 'Classical Education' is all it's cracked up to be - I know it leaves out just as many (more) things as it leaves in. But if nothing else, what a classical education gave me was a full sense of art, life, and politics in Europe 1000-2000 years ago. And you know what? That's essential. Because it's just the bloody same as modern day.*
- Artists are dreamers who have to find patrons who want them to paint stuff they're not interested in and lie whilst they do it.
- Poor people are mocked by the rich and given empty promises by the politicos. Many have to appease a local power to get their weekly rations. All of them have a charioteer team or local gladiator they are fanatical about.
- Religion is viewed somewhere between a social background norm, an outmoded state convention and a joke you'd like to make but can't for fear of prosecution.
- The higher up the religious official - or any other official for that matter - the more likely he is to be corrupt. Good intentions rot just like any other fruit.
- Women are protected/free/educated/crazy/pure/sexy/frigid/girly/lovely/slutty/insane/sex-hags/innocent/darlings who may or may not be mental and may or may not be allowed to wear 'spartan' short skirts.
- War? Sucks. Read Aristophanes' 'Peace'. He disagreed with the bloodshed and complained bitterly that it was the civilians who had to pay the price when kings or statesmen couldn't settle their differences.
But really, everyone, just please, read the Oresteia by Aeschylus**. It's actually three plays: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, & The Eumenides. It starts as a revenge tragedy of the sort that Shakespeare, Marlowe or Webster would be proud of. But slowly through the trilogy we are asked to agree with each semi righteous yet problematic character's view as their reasons for their terrible actions are explained to us and made to sound sane. The Tragedian's way - the old God's way - was that blood must always have blood. But at the end, when bloody justice was about to met out on Orestes (who'd killed his mother... 'cos she'd killed her husband (O's dad)... 'cos (O's dad) had killed a daughter (O's sister, and by the by his other sister was pissed...)
In the way of plays, Orestes had it coming - but before the devil could take his soul (so to speak) Athene turned up and being the goddess she was bitch-slapped everyone into holding the first trial by jury to decide his guilt. The jury was split 50/50: so she put in the casting vote and told everyone they were forbidden from taking revenge. From now on things were going to be judicial and lawful - they were going to be civilized...
I know there will always be those who abuse the law, or those whom the law cannot stop in time. There will be bad laws too, laws that need to be changed.
But I believe in Athene***. The Furies will gnash their teeth and demand blood for blood, recompense with interest for every slight great or small whether committed yesterday or a thousand years back. Emotion demands we satisfy these hurts - you strike me so I strike you. But Athene is reason, not emotion, and reason sees that an eye for an eye and blood for blood leaves us all blind and wounded: the cycle of vengeance must be broken and justice put in its place.
Justice is imperfect, alas, even after all these years. But I still think despite its myriad flaws it is a better system than vengeance.
I've been told, since I believe in justice in this mode, that England should pay back damages not only to all its old Empire pieces (India, Africa, etc) but any other country it ever shat on in the past. (And the longer it shat on it the more it ought pay.)
Okay. I'm up for a Time-Lord Geneva-Convention. But how is this to work exactly - what are the rules - where's the start point? Because... I know Wessex owes Mercia and Cumbria for being a dick for a start, eventually England owes Scotland, Wales and Ireland for being a bastard (but apparently all the different clans in Scotland Ireland and Wales are cool to let bygones be bygones about THEIR inter-murder-history) then Britain or the UK (how united are we at this point in history?) owes Australia and America and anywhere else we colonized first time round... Then India and bits of Africa and the Caribbean and some other places...
If we're paying for land taken and people killed and revenue piked over time, honestly bits of England might be paying other bits of England the most - not to mention demanding dividends off of the Viking lot. And the Romans - do we demand Italy pay us back for the shit they started? And how are the Greeks to pay back all they took across the world? Or the Persians? Or the Mongols - surely we should all be demanding child benefit if nothing else from the Mongols - Genghis Khan sired half of bloody Europe!
...And America - how is it you think you're so clean of this awful historical murdering bastardry? Fucking hell - you can't pin all your sins on the Europeans - though you do try. You're independent my dears - have been since 1776 - that makes you your own country! Such a pity there were those pesky 'natives' you had to constantly 'deal' with - how tiresome! The ongoing genocide, marginalization and mistreatment of native clans - which you have yet to rectify in any meaningful way... Nope, you'd rather get hugely pissy about what the English did to your ancestors 400+ years ago than acknowledge the horror you committed to an indigenous people less than 200 years back...
Sod off. You pay back all that land and death and damages you did to the American Indian tribes and then I'll be happy to talk as an 'English' person repaying your Irish/Scot/Whatever ancestors for that blood debt.
People and countries are bastards and have been for all time, I suppose is my point. We all have laws to try to elevate us from us murderous horrible pasts - WHICH IS REALLY BLOODY IMPORTANT. Because that's what law is at its most basic point - it's an attempt to be right next time - to aid human society as a whole - even if we can't make right the past.
PS. Please do shut up about Cromwell being our fault. We didn't elect him, we lost a sodding war to him, and we hated him too - he was a cunt. We tried, we failed. Sorry.
PPS. Also yes by all means tell me how the IRA were fine - when you didn't even know there were different arms/splinter groups to the IRA in the first place or what they stood for. Or the fact that the bombed their own people a lot. Fekkers. I can cope with that - that's ignorance. Just don't bloody tell me that the bombing campaign during my childhood was some sort of magical fiction made up between the BBC, my brain and the adults I knew who all worked in different independent news/TV - cos that's just bloody rude.
===========================
*= I'm remembering mostly satires by Horice and Juvinal for the social stuff but also the religious chatter from some Comedies and a history of Rome and Senneca and some other peeps - I'd quote chapter and verse but all my books are stuck in boxes far away. Please comment with quotes that support (or not!) from those or similar sources.
**= I know there are lots of other texts ((oh gods please read Marcus Aurelius too)) and that's not counting all the OTHER AWESOME philosophical texts from AROUND the WORLD.
***= I'm not actually keen on Athene and her ilk they were all pretty bloody shit (and Zeus was a cock-monster) but in this case I mean Athene as her primary aspect: reason and wisdom.