Finished reading The First Clash by Jim Lacey today, a history of the battle of Marathon. As the author notes early on, people know Thermopylae better lately because of the movie 300...and maybe because 300 vs. 300,000 is cooler than 10000 vs. 60000. (Rough numbers, all around - I don't feel the need to get exact about them, since for every one - except the 300 Spartans - nobody else seems 100% sure either.)
He makes the good point that, without Marathon, Thermopylae wouldn't have happened. Athens gets taken over, all the other city-states submit to Persia, Sparta holds out for a while... but the best case there is a glorious but decisive defeat. By showing that the Persians were not invincible - not by a long shot - the Greeks had some expectation that a battle held the possibility of victory.
This appears, of course, to be a Crisis period, at least for the Greeks. It's not clear whether Thermopylae 10 years later is the final culmination of the Crisis, or if it was a relatively minor issue
to the Greeks, so indicating that this was more of a First Turning war than a Peak Crisis one. At the least, though, Lacey refers to the men at Marathon as a "Greatest Generation" indicating that, whatever side of the Crisis they were on, those who were there were the Heroes of their day.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Monday, March 23, 2015
1973, Then and Now
Opinion piece in the Times this week about ending the abortion wars.
It's an opinion piece, of course, so it naturally supports the points its trying to make. And for that matter, it's of interest here because it supports the points made here: As the Crisis takes hold, and the Hero generation becomes dominant, fights over moral issues like abortion stop being the most important political question. And nobody is likely to miss them.
When setting up The Grid, 1973 was a very tempting year to consider for the latest Awakening, specifically for Roe v. Wade. It's a line drawn with words, a battle between ideas. memorable, significant, with two sides who are both always absolutely certain that their side was the only right one. That it had a hefty religious and spiritual component is overkill.
And it may, eventually, be incomprehensible as well. Why that case and this cause was the major one of the last 40 years could be as difficult for schoolchildren to understand as Henry's motivations or the goals of the Free Silver movement.
It's an opinion piece, of course, so it naturally supports the points its trying to make. And for that matter, it's of interest here because it supports the points made here: As the Crisis takes hold, and the Hero generation becomes dominant, fights over moral issues like abortion stop being the most important political question. And nobody is likely to miss them.
When setting up The Grid, 1973 was a very tempting year to consider for the latest Awakening, specifically for Roe v. Wade. It's a line drawn with words, a battle between ideas. memorable, significant, with two sides who are both always absolutely certain that their side was the only right one. That it had a hefty religious and spiritual component is overkill.
And it may, eventually, be incomprehensible as well. Why that case and this cause was the major one of the last 40 years could be as difficult for schoolchildren to understand as Henry's motivations or the goals of the Free Silver movement.
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Crisis, Apocalypse, and Cloverfield
Sometimes it seems like it's all staying the same:
Crisis: Climate Crisis, Greek Crisis, Crisis in Mexico, Crisis in Ukraine.
(Pretty standard, really - not difficult to look those up yourself.)
Apocalypse: How Democrats and Republicans see their chances in apocalyptic conditions; A show about a conspiracy concerning apocalypse; A movie about Australia being wiped off the map; and just because this bullet point has ended up about cultural touchstones, The Last Man on Earth started last Sunday.
Cloverfield: New Spiderman movie uses someone from Cloverfield, and Harrison Ford crashes a plane that took off from Santa Monica Airport - formerly known as Clover Field. (No coincidence: The movie Cloverfield took its name from the Santa Monica street Cloverfield which is named after the airport.)
Crisis: Climate Crisis, Greek Crisis, Crisis in Mexico, Crisis in Ukraine.
(Pretty standard, really - not difficult to look those up yourself.)
Apocalypse: How Democrats and Republicans see their chances in apocalyptic conditions; A show about a conspiracy concerning apocalypse; A movie about Australia being wiped off the map; and just because this bullet point has ended up about cultural touchstones, The Last Man on Earth started last Sunday.
Cloverfield: New Spiderman movie uses someone from Cloverfield, and Harrison Ford crashes a plane that took off from Santa Monica Airport - formerly known as Clover Field. (No coincidence: The movie Cloverfield took its name from the Santa Monica street Cloverfield which is named after the airport.)
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