Acropolis Now

Above is a picture I took of Athens, on a full moon night last month.  You can see the Acropolis in the distance.  You can see moonlight on the sea.  I'm rather fond of the picture, taken with a cell phone in the early morning.

I've been away from the blog for some time.  I've lacked the energy, perhaps, but also the interest.  It's difficult to be interested in these times, though they're no doubt interesting to some, and will be interesting to historians of the future.  I nearly wrote "if there is a future."

I'm being over dramatic, of course.  There will be a future.  We go on and on, and are none the better for it if I am any judge. There is something remarkable about us.  We don't change but we survive.  We don't adapt, we don't learn, we simply still are here, and will be here until our unchanging nature exhausts the world.

I've now been to many places.  I've walked where Cicero, Cato, Augustus and Caesar walked when I visited the Roman Forum.  More recently, I walked where Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes and Zeno walked when I visited the Agora of Athens. It's unfortunate to live in this time, when there are no people comparable to those who went before.  Is anyone now living who can be described as great, or noble, or heroic?  Is there anyone who will be worth remembering or studying when this time is past?

If the Pythia was still sitting on her tripod at Delphi, which I was also fortunate enough to visit, perhaps she could answer such questions.  I suspect she could and even would, but in no clear manner, as it seems was her practice in ancient times.  She could also be quiet droll, as Croesus learned.  Any answer would do, comforting or not.  Delphi's magic is long gone but we still strive to learn the future in ways not all that different from consulting oracles.

In this disturbing, dull and shabby age, it's particularly pleasurable, to me at least, to see the ruins of the ancient world.  As unremarkable as we are, the achievements of the ancients were remarkable.  I cannot imagine how the Parthenon and the other structures were built on the Rock, as it was called by one of our guides.  Nor can I imagine how the great temples were built in the mountains at Delphi, or how it was that so many traveled so far and so slowly to reach the oracle.  Were they actually better than we are now, in many ways?  Perhaps we do change then....for the worst.

Moralists and the religious enjoy declaring that we become decadent over time.  I don't think we're more decadent than those who lived in the past, though.  I think that we're merely more stupid than they were.  How else explain how a prosperous people and nation have come to be ignorant, bigoted,  petty and cruel?  A certain degree of dullness is required.  The bovine are self-satisfied, fearful of change, content with what is, resentful of what is not, is different.

Well, let's carry on.  Stoicism is not a philosophy of the status quo, as some have said.  It is a philosophy, instead, which grants us a measure of peace and serenity when the status quo is deplorable.