Conversation

When I encounter a reference to either ancient Greek history or famous anime plot events in an argument, my eyes glaze over in exactly the same way. There’s a weird fandom-of-closed-cartoon-extended-universe quality to both 🤔 Oddly enough Greek *mythology* gets through for me
3
34
I suspect both are used a lot primarily because they are extensively documented and have shaped the cultural consciousness of largish contemporary groups. Not because the content is particularly rich. Same as how researchers used Enron email stash mainly because it is available.
1
8
European history only gets interesting for me after later Rome I think. After that, connections to world history feel solid. Greek history otoh is more like a matrix/blue pill/reality distortion field. Like A. N. Whitehead’s “European philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato”
3
10
The history of Rome affects you whether you want it to or not. For eg Tsar comes from Caesar, and Putin’s ambitions are supposedly derived from seeing Russia as true descendant of the Eastern Roman Empire. Greek history, like anime, mainly affects you if you take a blue pill.
2
15
Greek history is an origin myth that some Europeans find comforting. For others it is Viking history. Both mythologized Xanadu-type visions (Ted Nelson, not Kublai Khan). Rome is more like a version 1.0 of real Europe. Or like an MS-DOS stage in the Windows evolution path.
1
9
The Islamic world is the same way about the first caliphate 🤔 I’ve had devout Muslim friends argue with me that a true, virtuous Islamic state is possible because the first caliphate is an existence proof.
1
6
Oddly enough I don’t think Indian history has this kind of consciousness-shaping origin myth because the relevant periods are too tangled up with actual mythology. The Puranas for eg could be viewed as a fact/fiction mix of Homeric epics and Herodotus that can’t be separated
Replying to
Ie people who take them seriously sound like crackpots (imagine a European who can’t separate Hercules and Pericles in their historical theorizing)
1
5
I don’t know Chinese history well enough, but feels like the warring states period feels semi-mythological.
2
4
Replying to
I think the origin myth has to be tied to a religion/belief system (rather than a geography) to have any juice. I.e. Indian history might not have the origin myths, but Buddhist history does
2
1
Replying to
True but it’s also a lighter thing, like Jewish history/Old Testament, being the history of an idea+people rather than a complete society. The Buddhist jataka tales are fun but surprisingly light on historical insight into early Magadha. You just get some detail in passing.
1
1
Show replies