No Robots

Socrates and his disciple Plato tell us continually that the road to perfection is through self-identification with the ideal: the beautiful, the good and the just. This ideal is eternal and is the source of all existence. In self-identifying with this principle, we realize that we are the eternal One. And the more we self-identify with this principle, the more we live on in the hearts and minds of other humans, as we see with Socrates and Christ.

No Robots

Our civilization is built on two foundational cultures: the Homeric and the Mosaic. The former is artistic and philosophical, the latter is mystical. Both direct our attention toward the ideal.

Toto

This is getting a little off topic. With the length of this thread, please keep to the stated topic or start a new thread. Thanks.

Yellum Notnef

Sorry. This thread was totally boring until "Jesus was a genius" popped up again, but I won't derail it any further.

lpetrich

What does considering oneself a citizen of the world have to do with demanding exclusive devotion? Especially devotion that involves hating everything else.

So acting like some autocratic cult leader is something to be proud of?

Stalin and the Cult of Personality describes some of the praise that many Russians heaped upon him, like

O great Stalin, O leader of the peoples,
Thou who broughtest man to birth.
Thou who fructifies the earth,
Thou who restorest to centuries,
Thou who makest bloom the spring,
Thou who makest vibrate the musical chords...
Thou, splendour of my spring, O thou,
Sun reflected by millions of hearts.

How had he supposedly done that?

And what does that have to do with his supposed historicity, anyway?

I'm reminded of the argument that the Jesus Christ of the Gospels was too noble a character to have been invented. That's the argument that Will Durant uses in The Story of Civilization: Caesar and Christ; he claims that inventing the story of Jesus Christ would require a much bigger miracle than any in the Gospels.

No Robots

Yeah, that's pretty much Constantin Brunner's position as well. I mean, how is that some anonymous group managed to create the most compelling person in history out of thin air? Where is there a figure in all of our literature that has had anywhere near the same impact? Look at Hamlet, probably the greatest of our purely literary creations. He's a pale shadow in comparison. No one is willing to die for Hamlet. What's more is that these anonymous authors are said to have not only created the most influential person in history, but that they made themselves look like complete fools in comparison with the person they describe. It is like we had all of Hamlet's great speeches, but the rest of the play was filled with bad narration.

bacht

It's obvious to me that people are capable of imagining all sorts of things that don't exist in the real world. otoh real historical figures like Alexander the Great or Cyrus the Persian are impressive enough without embellishment.

No Robots

Alexander the Great was greatly mythologized. See Alexander the Great:
A Life in Legend / Richard Stoneman. Review (pdf).

bacht

No doubt. But the basic facts are still there:

- sweeps out of Macedonia and defeats the Persian king of kings Darius III
- continues to move across the Near East as far as India, founding cities along the way including the great Alexandria in Egypt
- travels overland through southern Persian wilderness back to Babylon
- founds Hellenistic culture that carries on for centuries

all with simple technology and communications

As to whether he really slept with a copy of Homer under his pillow or cut the Gordian knot or fought in the vanguard or elicited absolute loyalty from his troops etc I suppose there's some wiggle room. But there's little doubt that this guy was the real deal, a gifted general that changed the world.

spin

Zing!

Damn, where's that over-the-head smilie when you need it? :constern02:


spin