Why the Worship of Ancient Greece and Rome?

[Audie]

Whydo we love some abusive arses but not the rest? Like Genghis Khan. Once he was done raping women under his empire enjoyed equality they wouldn't know again for centuries with many still being more repressed today. And the Ottoman Empire? The contribute A LOT to the modern world but they're just damned Turks.

Why do people always pick on my greatity- great grandpa?

 

[Augustus]

In Elizabethan times, math was suspect
as deviltry, side note wise.

One of the key figures in the development of the modern application of maths to science was Archbishop of Canterbury...

Thomas Bradwardine (c. 1300 – 26 August 1349) was an English cleric, scholar, mathematician, physicist, courtier and, very briefly, Archbishop of Canterbury. As a celebrated scholastic philosopher and doctor of theology, he is often called Doctor Profundus...

Merton College sheltered a group of dons devoted to natural science, mainly physics, astronomy and mathematics, rivals of the intellectuals at the University of Paris. Bradwardine was one of these Oxford Calculators, studying mechanics with William Heytesbury, Richard Swineshead, and John Dumbleton. The Oxford Calculators distinguished kinematics from dynamics, emphasising kinematics, and investigating instantaneous velocity. They first formulated the mean speed theorem: a body moving with constant velocity travels the same distance as an accelerated body in the same time if its velocity is half the final speed of the accelerated body. They also demonstrated this theorem — the foundation of "The Law of Falling Bodies" — long before Galileo, who is generally credited with it.

...The now published sources prove to us, beyond contention, that the main kinematical properties of uniformly accelerated motions, still attributed to Galileo by the physics texts, were discovered and proved by scholars of Merton college.... In principle, the qualities of Greek physics were replaced, at least for motions, by the numerical quantities that have ruled Western science ever since. The work was quickly diffused into France, Italy, and other parts of Europe. Almost immediately, Giovanni di Casale and Nicole Oresme found how to represent the results by geometrical graphs, introducing the connection between geometry and the physical world that became a second characteristic habit of Western thought ...

 

[Nakosis]

That doesn't mean it's good though. Egypt, Rome, Greece, we glorify the ancient cultures and put them on a pedestal, but why? The Greeks were terrible hypocrites about that democracy thing. Most of our ancestors were abused, enslaved, and butchered by the Romans and were taught Rome was good while our "barbarian" ancestors where trouble makers (rather than fighting for their freedom and lives). Egypt took the god-king thing very seriously and very literally with the Pharaohs.
We say it's because of what they contributed. I call bull. The Nazis contributed quite a bit to modern Germany and the world (the Autobahn, Volkswagen, animal cruelty laws, anti-smoking campaign, rocket technology that enabled the space exploration), but we don't put them on a pedestal. We don't excuse their abuses. But why not? The vikings were hardly any better and we glorified and romanticized them to absurd and ridiculous ends.
Why do we love some abusive arses but not the rest? Like Genghis Khan. Once he was done raping women under his empire enjoyed equality they wouldn't know again for centuries with many still being more repressed today. And the Ottoman Empire? The contribute A LOT to the modern world but they're just damned Turks.

Well. if you want to be sentimental about it.
A civilization has to survive above all else to be seen as contributing to our advancement. In their time of course.
Whether it's good or bad.

Germany failed to survive. If it had, I suspect we be considering how great it was.

 

[exchemist]

And so-?

And so your post 98 gives a misleading impression.

 

[Augustus]

Why do we love some abusive arses but not the rest? Like Genghis Khan. Once he was done raping women under his empire enjoyed equality they wouldn't know again for centuries with many still being more repressed today. And the Ottoman Empire? The contribute A LOT to the modern world but they're just damned Turks.

Because we tend to have a Whiggish view of history where we assume the purpose was to evolve to where we are now. Anything we assume helped us get here is "good" and anything that 'slowed us down' in getting here is "bad".

Fir the Whigs, the "good" was the Greeks, Romans, Christianity, Protestantism, the Glorious Revolution, the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution and the British Empire. Bad was 'effeminate' orientals, Popery, Spain and Napoleon.

The updated secular version is the Greeks, pre-Christian Romans, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the font of all evil is Christianity without which we'd be living in castles on the moon.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Scholars have long since dropped the term Dark Ages.

The Mediaeval period gave us much science and gave rise to the modern university. It was not the horrible dark period folks believe. This idea is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about really, 'Ancient Greece was science and the Middle Ages were anti-science'.

Doesn’t the term “dark ages” refer specifically to the lack of written records in comparison with what the Romans left us?

 

[Rival]

Doesn’t the term “dark ages” refer specifically to the lack of written records in comparison with what the Romans left us?

Yes, it does indeed - but it seems to have been misunderstood by the laity to mean 'barbaric'.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Why do people always pick on my greatity- great grandpa?

Not picking on him, but highlighting this dissonance in Western thinking. We're taught there was nothing good about him and he was a living plague upon the land. He was a brutal conqueror, sure, but we learn that but not that Julius Ceasar was a treacherous *******, power hungry wanker, and warmongering arseling. We could promote Alfred the Great and his advances in literacy, having everything written down, and even seeking a peaceful resolution to the Danish invasions. But a wise and well learned leader who prefers peace isn't what we promote, especially as he was sickly (possibly Crohn's Disease) and we don't like that.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

This is a long story that goes back all the way to the Italian Renaissance, which started to glorify ancient Rome. As Europeans developed their national and cultural identities throughout the 19th century, they would continue to return to that well again and again. And now that a lot of nationalisms have become unsavory among elites and intellectuals, they are trying to figure out whether that old well still draws enough water to supply a new Pan-European identity - and I'd say the jury is still out on that.

I would argue that this is even more pronounced in America, which not only deliberately modelled its national symbols after Greece and Rome, but also understood itself as continuation of that ancient glory.

There's never been a "pan-European" identity.

 

[Kooky]

Germany failed to survive. If it had, I suspect we be considering how great it was.

I'm sorry, what? Germany is still around, as far as I can tell.

 

[Debater Slayer]

Not picking on him, but highlighting this dissonance in Western thinking. We're taught there was nothing good about him and he was a living plague upon the land. He was a brutal conqueror, sure, but we learn that but not that Julius Ceasar was a treacherous *******, power hungry wanker, and warmongering arseling. We could promote Alfred the Great and his advances in literacy, having everything written down, and even seeking a peaceful resolution to the Danish invasions. But a wise and well learned leader who prefers peace isn't what we promote, especially as he was sickly (possibly Crohn's Disease) and we don't like that.

Not just Western thinking; I think it's a general symptom of tribalism and favoritism in one's outlook.

Many in the Muslim world hail Islamic conquests for "spreading the word of God" and "enlightening" other nations, but they rail against Western colonialism and military adventurism. Many extremist Jews sing the praises of Israel and ignore its illegal occupation but condemn neighboring states for human rights violations.

Ideological bias is quite a potent influence on many people's worldviews.

 

[Nakosis]

I'm sorry, what? Germany is still around, as far as I can tell.

So is Greece, just not as relevant as it once was.
I see Russia and China trying to regain its relevancy.

The point is if Germany had won WWII it would be admired for it technological advances. The atrocities more pushed under the rug.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Because we tend to have a Whiggish view of history where we assume the purpose was to evolve to where we are now. Anything we assume helped us get here is "good" and anything that 'slowed us down' in getting here is "bad".

Fir the Whigs, the "good" was the Greeks, Romans, Christianity, Protestantism, the Glorious Revolution, the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution and the British Empire. Bad was 'effeminate' orientals, Popery, Spain and Napoleon.

The updated secular version is the Greeks, pre-Christian Romans, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the font of all evil is Christianity without which we'd be living in castles on the moon.

Definitely. But there's so much crap that goes along with it that it boggles the mind. Like the scene from Life of Brian when they're writing their letter criticizing the Romans. Amd certainly people around the world had lists and pages of legit grievances against Rome. And then a member of the group points out the Romans did bring running water, good roads, and other good things. Amd it's true when Rome wasn't being an insufferable blight upon the world as it looted, plundered, pillaged, raped, enslaved and butchered people wherever it went, Rome did have some good stuff. So did the Nazis. Hitler himself started one of the first public anti-smoking campaigns and his animal welfare rights build the foundation of modern Germany's animal welfare laws. Ironically he even had some good pro-worker laws. And all those recent amazing footage we got from satellites touching the sun, fascinating new looks at black holes, and gazing out further than ever would be decades out still had it not been for the Nazis.
And that's where this thing is I cannot understand. Capitalists and Communists have both been rather nasty to world and it's inhabitants. But the good one and the bad one mostly just depends on where you're from. The Japanese Empire is bad for attacking a military base, but dropping bombs that flash incinerated civilians was ok. The Nazis are all bad, but their distant Danish cousins who were pirates, marauders, rapists, slavers, this group of people who were not good people are just fine and dandy because a proto-Nazi composed some operas loosely based on them.
None of this really makes sense to me. I get the reasons such as what you mentioned, but it still just makes no sense. People are just really weird.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I'm sorry, what? Germany is still around, as far as I can tell.

Nazi Germany didn't. East Germany and West Germany don't even exist more, with the modern state of Germany today enjoying the longest period of boarder stability that "Germany" has ever known (Germany itself as we know it and understand it today hasn't even been around that long).
Or to put it in perspective, even I'm older than the nation of Germany.

 

[Revoltingest]

These societies were horrible to 90% of the folks who lived in them, so why does Western society glorify them so much?

Go far enuf back in time, & things get more romanticized.
Just look at Vikings....thieves, murderers, slavers...yet
people ignore all that in favor of manly explorers.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

This is true; I'm more talking about our tendency to worship Ancient Geece and Rome whilst chucking Mediaeval Europe almost completely under the bus.

Yeah, I do think that the "dark ages" stigma is largely unwarranted. It may not have been Roman (granted the plumbing was worse) but medieval Europe had some great art and philosophy and it was really when Western music began to come together.

 

[Watchmen]

These societies were horrible to 90% of the folks who lived in them, so why does Western society glorify them so much?

On what basis do you make the statement that “those societies were 90% of the folks who lived in them?” I haven’t heard that before.

 

[Watchmen]

Well there's the notion of the Dark Ages too I suppose, anti- scientific attitudes and predating the Age of Enlightenment.

And during the so-called “Dark Ages” we were lucky to have the Ottoman Empire to preserve Western thought by NOT destroying Greek and Roman culture, writings, history, art and so on.

 

[Rival]

On what basis do you make the statement that “those societies were 90% of the folks who lived in them?” I haven’t heard that before.

I'm being hyperbolic, but those societies were terrible for most folks. Greece had enslaved more of its own population than anyone else; in ancient Rome, women and their children could legally be killed by their husbands; pederasty was rife; women were viewed as lesser, basically useless; slaves had eyes gouged out etc.; there was no conception of 'rights' at all (as this is a Christian, Mediaeval idea). The whole reason Christianity spread so quickly is because it gave folks a way, way better life than these ancient societies had ever given them - the idea that 'all are one in Christ Jesus' was so radical, so new, so uplifting that it captured the souls of millions. Before this, they were stuck in a rigid, horrible system that treated them as little better than chattel without even hope of an afterlife.

 

[Rival]

And during the so-called “Dark Ages” we were lucky to have the Ottoman Empire to preserve Western thought by NOT destroying Greek and Roman culture, writings, history, art and so on.

Um, the Ottoman Empire didn't exist at that time. It was Christian Byzantium.