There is escalating civil unrest across many cities in America today. Cities—as have been mentioned on this blog—are sites where the intoxication of words and the influence of mass media are strongest. Cities are where people are free to live in abstractions, not answering to the challenges (and truth) of the natural world. Cities are often where people go to get money—but oftentimes that money comes at the price of losing touch with reality.
Greeks and Romans
I'm reading some stuff about Greeks and Romans. Recall that Romans came after the Greeks and adapted many elements of Greek cultures. However, Romans in many ways were practically-minded and scheming politicians—skilled in agrarian and military things—rather than idle philosophers and poets. 1
Living in a suburb, I am glad that I have at least some connection with the "natural world" beyond the concrete jungle of a city. I have access to a yard and some nice streets to pace around on as well...
I wish more people could just take some time off and go hiking in the mountains or something. Breath in the nice mountain air... struggle and be out of breath facing a natural barrier (e.g. gravity and slope of a mountain) rather than constructing ideological enemies...
SpaceX Rocket Launch
In the USA today also, we got a SpaceX rocket launch. What a nice, positive thing for all sorts of people to celebrate.
If you are getting too political, I advise you to shut up and learn some technical skills and improve relationships with the people around you. Upon doing that, you can use your big brane to make the world a better place through organizing labor and developing better ways to do things and you will have fun with friends/family while you're at it. 2
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There is a lot more research for me to do here, but this is the general pattern as I understand it. Greeks had a lot more plurality/diversity in the form of many city states... Romans did more empire building. ↩
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Most people I know who are "overly political" in my opinion are left-leaning folks pushed into constant angst by the legacy media. There are some right-leaning people that are similarly "overly political" in the sense that they want to implement their morality into law... My personal opinion is that we should de-escalate state power to the best of our ability such that there is no giant gun lying on the floor for various political actors to wrestle over. Insofar as the power of the state grows, so the potential destruction your political opposition can wield increases. Let's "de-escalate" and chill out, allowing decentralized progress and peace. ↩