Friday Filosophy v.09.23.2022

Friday Filosophy v.09.23.2022

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson; born 19 June 1964) is a British politician who has served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party since 2019. He announced his pending resignation on 7 July 2022 and will remain as prime minister until a new party leader is elected. He served as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2016 to 2018 and as Mayor of London from 2008 to 2016. Johnson has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Uxbridge and South Ruislip since 2015, having previously been MP for Henley from 2001 to 2008.

Johnson attended Eton College and read Classics at Balliol College, Oxford. He was elected president of the Oxford Union in 1986. In 1989, he became the Brussels correspondent—and later political columnist—for The Daily Telegraph; and from 1999 to 2005 was editor of The Spectator. Following his election to parliament in 2001, Johnson was a shadow minister under Conservative leaders Michael Howard and David Cameron. In 2008, he was elected mayor of London and resigned from the House of Commons; he was re-elected as mayor in 2012. In the 2015 general election, Johnson was elected MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. The following year, he did not seek re-election as mayor. He became a prominent figure in the successful Vote Leave campaign for Brexit in the 2016 European Union (EU) membership referendum. Theresa May appointed him foreign secretary after the referendum; he resigned the position two years later in protest to the Chequers Agreement and May’s approach to Brexit.

In 2019, Johnson was elected Leader of the Conservative Party, defeating Jeremy Hunt. He re-opened Brexit negotiations and in early September controversially prorogued Parliament; the Supreme Court later that month ruled the action unlawful. After agreeing to a revised Brexit withdrawal agreement, which replaced the Irish backstop with a new Northern Ireland Protocol, but failing to win parliamentary support for the agreement, Johnson called a snap election for December 2019 in which he led the Conservative Party to victory with 43.6 per cent of the vote, and the party’s largest seat share since 1987. On 31 January 2020, the United Kingdom withdrew from the EU, entering into a transition period and trade negotiations leading to the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement. The COVID-19 pandemic became a major issue of his premiership; the government responded by introducing various emergency powers and measures across society to mitigate the pandemic’s impact, and approved the rollout of a nationwide vaccination program.

In December 2021, a controversy known as “Partygate” began which concerned Johnson and other government officials attending social gatherings at which some attendees breached COVID-19 regulations; Johnson received a fixed penalty notice, becoming the first prime minister of the United Kingdom to be sanctioned for breaking the law while in office. The publishing of the Sue Gray report and a widespread sense of dissatisfaction led in June 2022 to a vote of confidence in his leadership among Conservative MPs. While the parliamentary Conservative Party was found to have confidence in him, the result was regarded as having left Johnson politically weakened. In July 2022, revelations over his hiring of Chris Pincher as Government Deputy Chief Whip led to a mass resignation of ministers from his government and to Johnson announcing his forthcoming resignation as party leader. He remains in office in a caretaker capacity pending a leadership election.

Johnson is a controversial figure in British politics. Supporters have praised him as humorous, witty, and entertaining, with an appeal stretching beyond traditional Conservative Party voters. Conversely, his critics have accused him of lying, elitism, cronyism and bigotry. Johnson’s political positions have sometimes been described as following one-nation conservatism, and commentators have characterized his political style as opportunistic, populist, or pragmatic. 

  • Ping-pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century, and it was called Wiff-waff! And there, I think, you have the difference between us and the rest of the world. Other nations, the French, looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner; we looked at it and saw an opportunity to play Wiff-waff.
  • My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
  • My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it.
  • I’m in politics to change things – if possible, for the better. I was a journalist for a long time, but I had a kind of midlife crisis, and I decided I needed to do something to get on the pitch and stop endlessly kicking over other peoples’ sandcastles.
  • It is easy to make promises – it is hard work to keep them.
  • There is absolutely no one, apart from yourself, who can prevent you, in the middle of the night, from sneaking down to tidy up the edges of that hunk of cheese at the back of the fridge.
  • My speaking style was criticized by no less an authority than Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was a low moment, my friends, to have my rhetorical skills denounced by a monosyllabic Austrian cyborg.
  • We cannot turn our backs on Europe. We are part of Europe.
  • I have more in common with a three-toed sloth or a one-eyed pterodactyl or a Kalamata olive than I have with Winston Churchill.
  • I used to get very, very frustrated by people being told what to do by nanny in Brussels. And I remember once I rang the official who was actually responsible for banning the prawn-cocktail-flavored crisp, which I think contained a dye called Arithrazine or something like that.
  • If we judged everybody by the stupid, unguarded things they blurt out to their nearest and dearest, then we wouldn’t ever get anywhere.
  • I’d like thousands of schools as good as the one I went to, Eton.
  • This is an absolute turning point in the story of our country because I think if we go on with being enmeshed in the E.U., it will continue to erode our democracy. That is something that worries me.

The Time is Now

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Friday Filosophy v.09.16.2022

Friday Filosophy v.09.16.2022

Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair KG (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labor Party from 1994 to 2007. On his resignation he was appointed Special Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East, a diplomatic post which he held until 2015. He has been the executive chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change since 2016. As prime minister, many of his policies reflected a centrist “Third Way” political philosophy. He is the only living former Labor leader to have led the party to a general election victory, and one of only two in history to form three majority governments, the other being Harold Wilson.

Blair was born in Edinburgh. After attending the independent school Fettes College, he studied law at St John’s College, Oxford, and became a barrister. He became involved in Labor politics and was elected Member of Parliament for Sedgefield in 1983. He supported moving the party to the center of British politics in an attempt to help it win power (it had been out of government since 1979). He was appointed to the party’s frontbench in 1988 and became shadow home secretary in 1992. He became Leader of the Opposition on his election as Labor Party leader in 1994, following the sudden death of his predecessor, John Smith.

Under Blair, the party used the phrase “New Labor” to distance itself from previous Labor politics and the traditional idea of socialism. Despite opposition from Labor’s left-wing, he abolished Clause IV, the party’s formal commitment to the nationalization of the economy, weakened trade union influence in the party, and committed to the free market and the European Union. In 1997, the Labor Party won its largest landslide general election victory in its history. Blair became the country’s youngest leader since 1812 and remains the party’s longest-serving occupant of the office. Labor won two more general elections under his leadership—in 2001, in which it won another landslide victory (albeit with the lowest turnout since 1918), and in 2005, with a substantially reduced majority. He resigned as prime minister and Labor Party leader in 2007 and was succeeded by Gordon Brown, who had been his chancellor of the Exchequer since 1997. The fraught relationship between Blair and Brown has been the subject of much controversy and speculation since 1994.

Blair’s governments enacted constitutional reforms, removing most hereditary peers from the House of Lords, while also establishing the UK’s Supreme Court and reforming the office of lord chancellor (thereby separating judicial powers from the legislative and executive branches). His government held referendums in which Scottish and Welsh electorates voted in favor of devolved administration, paving the way for the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly in 1999. He was also involved in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement. His time in office occurred during a period of continued economic growth, but this became increasingly dependent on mounting debt. In 1997, his government gave the Bank of England powers to set interest rates autonomously, and he later oversaw a large increase in public spending, especially in healthcare and education. He championed multiculturalism and, between 1997 and 2007, immigration rose considerably, especially after his government welcomed immigration from the new EU member states in 2004. This provided a cheap and flexible labor supply but also fueled Euroscepticism, especially among some of his party’s core voters. His other social policies were generally progressive; he introduced the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, the Human Rights Act 1998, and the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and in 2004 allowed gay couples to enter into civil partnerships. He declared himself “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” and oversaw increasing incarceration rates and new anti-social behavior legislation, despite contradictory evidence about the change in crime rates.

Blair oversaw British interventions in Kosovo (1999) and Sierra Leone (2000), which were generally perceived as successful. During the War on Terror, he supported the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration and ensured that the British Armed Forces participated in the War in Afghanistan from 2001, and more controversially the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Blair argued that the Saddam Hussein regime possessed an active weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program, but no stockpiles of WMDs or an active WMD program were ever found in Iraq. The Iraq War became increasingly unpopular among the British public, and he was criticized by opponents and (in 2016) the Iraq Inquiry for waging an unjustified and unnecessary invasion. He was in office when the 7/7 bombings took place (2005) and introduced a range of anti-terror legislation. His legacy remains controversial, not least because of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Despite his electoral successes and reforms, he has also been criticized for his relationship with the media, centralization of executive powers, and aspects of his social and economic policies.

  • Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.
  • The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.
  • Education is the best economic policy there is.
  • Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.
  • Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile. This is a party of government, and I will lead it as a party of government.
  • The purpose of terrorism lies not just in the violent act itself. It is in producing terror. It sets out to inflame, to divide, to produce consequences which they then use to justify further terror.
  • By nature, I am a unifier. I am a builder of consensus. I don’t believe in sloppy compromise. But I do believe in bringing people together.
  • Whatever the dangers of the action we take, the dangers of inaction are far, far greater.
  • I think the journey for a politician goes from wanting to please all the people all the time, to a political leader that realises in the end his responsibility is to decide. And when he decides, he divides.
  • You know, one of the things I’ve learnt since coming out of office is how much easier it is to give the advice than take the decision. I mean, you know, it’s tough.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.09.09.2022

Friday Filosophy v.09.09.2022

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, DStJ, PC, FRS, HonFRSC (née Roberts; 13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013), was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. The longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century, she was the first woman to hold that office. As prime minister, she implemented policies that became known as Thatcherism. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the “Iron Lady”, a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style.

Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, and worked briefly as a research chemist, before becoming a barrister. She was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970–1974 government. In 1975, she defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition, the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom.

On becoming prime minister after winning the 1979 general election, Thatcher introduced a series of economic policies intended to reverse high inflation and Britain’s struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an oncoming recession. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasized deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), the privatization of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Her popularity in her first years in office waned amid recession and rising unemployment. Victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her landslide re-election in 1983. She survived an assassination attempt by the Provisional IRA in the 1984 Brighton hotel bombing and achieved a political victory against the National Union of Mineworkers in the 1984–85 miners’ strike.

Thatcher was re-elected for a third term with another landslide in 1987, but her subsequent support for the Community Charge (“poll tax”) was widely unpopular, and her increasingly Eurosceptic views on the European Community were not shared by others in her cabinet. She resigned as prime minister and party leader in 1990, after a challenge was launched to her leadership. After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher (of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire) which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. In 2013, she died of a stroke at the Ritz Hotel, London, at the age of 87.

A polarizing figure in British politics, Thatcher is nonetheless viewed favorably in historical rankings and public opinion of British prime ministers. Her tenure constituted a realignment towards neoliberal policies in Britain, with the complicated legacy attributed to Thatcherism debated into the 21st century.

  • If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.
  • The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.
  • Power is like being a lady… if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.
  • If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.
  • Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.
  • Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.
  • I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.
  • Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.
  • I love argument, I love debate. I don’t expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that’s not their job.
  • It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs.
  • What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.
  • Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.
  • To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So, it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.
  • I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.
  • If my critics saw me walking over the Thames, they would say it was because I couldn’t swim.
  • People think that at the top there isn’t much room. They tend to think of it as an Everest. My message is that there is tons of room at the top.
  • It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.
  • I’ve got a woman’s ability to stick to a job and get on with it when everyone else walks off and leaves it.
  • Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, and not as the government dictates. Let us extend choice, extend the will to choose and the chance to choose.
  • It’s passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.
  • Ought we not to ask the media to agree among themselves a voluntary code of conduct, under which they would not say or show anything which could assist the terrorists’ morale or their cause while the hijack lasted.
  • If… many influential people have failed to understand, or have just forgotten, what we were up against in the Cold War and how we overcame it, they are not going to be capable of securing, let alone enlarging, the gains that liberty has made. \
  • I owe nothing to Women’s Lib.

The time is now.

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Friday Filosophy v.09.02.2022

Friday Filosophy v.09.02.2022

Founder Ron Slee shares quotes and words of wisdom from Winston Churchill in Friday Filosophy v.09.02.2022.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, DL, FRS, RA (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.

Of mixed English and American parentage, Churchill was born in Oxfordshire to a wealthy, aristocratic family. He joined the British Army in 1895 and saw action in British India, the Anglo-Sudan War, and the Second Boer War, gaining fame as a war correspondent and writing books about his campaigns. Elected a Conservative MP in 1900, he defected to the Liberals in 1904. In H. H. Asquith‘s Liberal government, Churchill served as President of the Board of Trade and Home Secretary, championing prison reform and workers’ social security. As First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War, he oversaw the Gallipoli Campaign but, after it proved a disaster, he was demoted to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He resigned in November 1915 and joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front for six months. In 1917, he returned to government under David Lloyd George and served successively as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, and Secretary of State for the Colonies, overseeing the Anglo-Irish Treaty and British foreign policy in the Middle East. After two years out of Parliament, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin‘s Conservative government, returning the pound sterling in 1925 to the gold standard at its pre-war parity, a move widely seen as creating deflationary pressure and depressing the UK economy.

Out of government during his so-called “wilderness years” in the 1930s, Churchill took the lead in calling for British rearmament to counter the growing threat of militarism in Nazi Germany. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was re-appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. In May 1940, he became Prime Minister, replacing Neville Chamberlain. Churchill formed a national government and oversaw British involvement in the Allied war effort against the Axis powers, resulting in victory in 1945. After the Conservatives’ defeat in the 1945 general election, he became Leader of the Opposition. Amid the developing Cold War with the Soviet Union, he publicly warned of an “iron curtain” of Soviet influence in Europe and promoted European unity. He lost the 1950 election, but was returned to office in 1951. His second term was preoccupied with foreign affairs, especially Anglo-American relations and the preservation of the British Empire. Domestically, his government emphasized house-building and completed the development of a nuclear weapon (begun by his predecessor). In declining health, Churchill resigned as Prime Minister in 1955, although he remained an MP until 1964. Upon his death in 1965, he was given a state funeral.

Widely considered one of the 20th century’s most significant figures, Churchill remains popular in the UK and Western world, where he is seen as a victorious wartime leader who played an important role in defending Europe’s liberal democracy against the spread of fascism. He has also been praised for his role in the Liberal welfare reforms. He has, however, been criticized for some wartime events and also for his imperialist views. As a writer, Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 for his historical and biographical work. He was also a prolific painter.

  • We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
  • To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
  • Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
  • The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
  • Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
  • I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
  • If you’re going through hell, keep going.
  • A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
  • Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
  • You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.
  • All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
  • A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
  • The price of greatness is responsibility.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.08.26.2022

Friday Filosophy v.08.26.2022

Founder Ron Slee continues with the theme of Greek poets and writers with Friday Filosophy v.08.26.2022, the final installment for the month of August.

Menander; c. 342/41 – c. 290 BC was a Greek dramatist and the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy. He wrote 108 comedies and took the prize at the Lenaia festival eight times. His record at the City Dionysia is unknown.

He was one of the most popular writers in antiquity, but his work was lost during the Middle Ages and is now known in highly fragmentary form, much of which was discovered in the 20th century. Only one play, Dyskolos, has survived almost complete.

Menander was the son of well-to-do parents; his father Diopeithes is identified by some with the Athenian general and governor of the Thracian Chersonese known from the speech of Demosthenes De Chersoneso. He presumably derived his taste for comic drama from his uncle Alexis. 

He was the friend, associate, and perhaps pupil of Theophrastus, and was on intimate terms with the Athenian dictator Demetrius of Phalerum. He also enjoyed the patronage of Ptolemy Soter, the son of Lagus, who invited him to his court. But Menander, preferring the independence of his villa in the Piraeus and the company of his mistress Glycera, refused. According to the note of a scholiast on the Ibis of Ovid, he drowned while bathing, and his countrymen honored him with a tomb on the road leading to Athens, where it was seen by Pausanias. Numerous supposed busts of him survive, including a well-known statue in the Vatican, formerly thought to represent Gaius Marius. 

His rival in dramatic art (and supposedly in the affections of Glycera) was Philemon, who appears to have been more popular. Menander, however, believed himself to be the better dramatist, and, according to Aulus Gellius, used to ask Philemon: “Don’t you feel ashamed whenever you gain a victory over me?” According to Caecilius of Calacte (Porphyry in Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica) Menander was accused of plagiarism, as his The Superstitious Man was taken from The Augur of Antiphanes, but reworkings and variations on a theme of this sort were commonplace and so the charge is a complicated one.

How long complete copies of his plays survived is unclear, although 23 of them, with commentary by Michael Psellus, were said to still have been available in Constantinople in the 11th century. He is praised by Plutarch (Comparison of Menander and Aristophanes) and Quintilian (Institutio Oratoria), who accepted the tradition that he was the author of the speeches published under the name of the Attic orator Charisius. 

An admirer and imitator of Euripides, Menander resembles him in his keen observation of practical life, his analysis of the emotions, and his fondness for moral maxims, many of which became proverbial: “The property of friends is common,” “Whom the gods love die young,” “Evil communications corrupt good manners” (from the Thaïs, quoted in 1 Corinthians 15:33). These maxims (chiefly monostichs) were afterwards collected, and, with additions from other sources, were edited as Menander’s One-Verse Maxims, a kind of moral textbook for the use of schools. 

The single surviving speech from his early play Drunkenness is an attack on the politician Callimedon, in the manner of Aristophanes, whose bawdy style was adopted in many of his plays.

Menander found many Roman imitators. Eunuchus, Andria, Heauton Timorumenos and Adelphi of Terence (called by Caesar “dimidiatus Menander”) were avowedly taken from Menander, but some of them appear to be adaptations and combinations of more than one play. Thus, in the Andria were combined Menander’s The Woman from Andros and The Woman from Perinthos, in the Eunuchus, The Eunuch and The Flatterer, while the Adelphi was compiled partly from Menander and partly from Diphilus. The original of Terence’s Hecyra (as of the Phormio) is generally supposed to be, not by Menander, but Apollodorus of Carystus. The Bacchides and Stichus of Plautus were probably based upon Menander’s The Double Deceiver and Brotherly-Loving Men, but the Poenulus does not seem to be from The Carthaginian, nor the Mostellaria from The Apparition, in spite of the similarity of titles. Caecilius Statius, Luscius Lanuvinus, Turpilius and Atilius also imitated Menander. He was further credited with the authorship of some epigrams of doubtful authenticity; the letters addressed to Ptolemy Soter and the discourses in prose on various subjects mentioned by the Suda are probably spurious. 

Most of Menander’s work did not survive the Middle Ages, except as short fragments. Federico da Montefeltro‘s library at Urbino reputedly had “tutte le opere”, a complete works, but its existence has been questioned and there are no traces after Cesare Borgia‘s capture of the city and the transfer of the library to the Vatican. 

Until the end of the 19th century, all that was known of Menander were fragments quoted by other authors and collected by Augustus Meineke (1855) and Theodor Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta (1888). These consist of some 1650 verses or parts of verses, in addition to a considerable number of words quoted from Menander by ancient lexicographers. 

  • Bad company corrupts good character.
  • The character of a man is known from his conversations.
  • The sword the body wounds, sharp words the mind.
  • I call a fig a fig, a spade a spade.
  • We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.
  • He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.
  • ‘Know thyself’ is a good saying, but not in all situations. In many it is better to say ‘know others.’
  • The chief beginning of evil is goodness in excess.
  • Intelligence, if it is clever in the direction of the better, is responsible for the greatest benefits of all.
  • It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.
  • Riches cover a multitude of woes.
  • Whom the gods love dies young.
  • Old men are children for the second time.
  • The person who has the will to undergo all labor may win any goal.
  • The Truth, sometimes not sought for, comes forth to the light.
  • ‘Tis always best to tell the truth. At every crisis, I recommend this as a chief contribution to security in life.
  • Let bravery be thy choice, but not bravado.
  • Even God lends a hand to honest boldness

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.08.19.2022

Friday Filosophy v.08.19.2022

Homer is the legendary author to whom the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey (the two epic poems that are the foundational works of ancient Greek literature) is attributed. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential authors of all time. For example, in Dante Alighieri‘s Divine Comedy, Virgil refers to him as “Poet sovereign”, king of all poets; in the preface to his translation of the Iliad, Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the “greatest of poets”.

The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek kingdoms. It focuses on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles lasting a few weeks during the last year of the war. The Odyssey focuses on the ten-year journey home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after the fall of Troy.

The Homeric epics were a defining influence on ancient Greek culture and education. To Plato, Homer was simply the one who “has taught Greece”. From antiquity until the present day, the influence of Homeric epic on Western civilization has been great, inspiring many of its most famous works of literature, music, art and film. 

The question of by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. It is generally accepted that the two works were written by different authors. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC. Many accounts of Homer’s life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary. 

The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally. 

Today only the Iliad and the Odyssey are associated with the name ‘Homer’. In antiquity, a very large number of other works were sometimes attributed to him, including the Homeric Hymns, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, the Little Iliad, the Nostoi, the Thebaid, the Cypria, the Epigoni, the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia (“The Frog-Mouse War”), the Margites, the Capture of Oechalia, and the Phocais. These claims are not considered authentic today and were by no means universally accepted in the ancient world. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer’s life, they indicate little more than the centrality of Homer to ancient Greek culture. 

Some ancient claims about Homer were established early and repeated often. They include that Homer was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bard Demodocus),[16][17] that he was born in Chios, that he was the son of the river Meles and the nymph Critheïs, that he was a wandering bard, that he composed a varying list of other works (the “Homerica”), that he died either in Ios or after failing to solve a riddle set by fishermen, and various explanations for the name “Homer”.

The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. 

In the early 4th century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional account of a poetry contest at Chalcis with both Homer and Hesiod. Homer was expected to win, and answered all of Hesiod’s questions and puzzles with ease. Then, each of the poets was invited to recite the best passage from their work. Hesiod selected the beginning of Works and Days: “When the Pleiades born of Atlas … all in due season”. Homer chose a description of Greek warriors in formation, facing the foe, taken from the Iliad. Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor, the judge awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who praised husbandry, he said, was greater than the one who told tales of battles and slaughter. 

  • There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.
  • Wise to resolve, and patient to perform.
  • In youth and beauty, wisdom is but rare!
  • Light is the task where many share the toil.
  • A sympathetic friend can be quite as dear as a brother.
  • Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for other’s good, and melt at other’s woe.
  • Words empty as the wind are best left unsaid.
  • Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this.
  • For rarely are sons similar to their fathers: most are worse, and a few are better than their fathers.
  • The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.
  • The charity that is a trifle to us can be precious to others.
  • And what he greatly thought, he nobly dared.
  • But curb thou the high spirit in thy breast, for gentle ways are best, and keep aloof from sharp contentions.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.08.12.2022

Friday Filosophy v.08.12.2022

Friday Filosophy v.08.12.2022 shares quotes, words of wisdom, and thoughts for consideration from Euripedes.

Euripides; c. 480 – c. 406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined – he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander. 

Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. He also became “the most tragic of poets”, focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was “the creator of … that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare’s Othello, Racine’s Phèdre, of Ibsen and Strindberg,” in which “imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates”. But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw. 

His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism. Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia, but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources.

 

Traditional accounts of the author’s life are found in many commentaries, and include details such as these: He was born on Salamis Island around 480 BC, with parents Cleito (mother) and Mnesarchus (father), a retailer who lived in a village near Athens. On receiving an oracle that his son was fated to win “crowns of victory”, Mnesarchus insisted that the boy should train for a career in athletics. But the boy was destined for a career on the stage (where he was to win only five victories, one of these posthumously). He served for a short time as both dancer and torch-bearer at the rites of Apollo Zosterius. His education was not confined to athletics, studying also painting and philosophy under the masters Prodicus and Anaxagoras. He had two disastrous marriages, and both his wives—Melite and Choerine (the latter bearing him three sons)—were unfaithful. He became a recluse, making a home for himself in a cave on Salamis (the Cave of Euripides, where a cult of the playwright developed after his death). “There he built an impressive library and pursued daily communion with the sea and sky”. The details of his death are uncertain. It was traditionally held that he retired to the “rustic court” of King Archelaus in Macedonia, where he died in 406 BC, but modern scholarship is skeptical of these claims. It is possible that in reality he never visited Macedonia at all, or if he did, he might have been drawn there by King Archelaus with incentives that were also offered to other artists. 

  • He is not a lover who does not love forever. 
  • To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter.
  • The greatest pleasure of life is love.
  • Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.
  • One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
  • Those whom God wishes to destroy; he first makes mad.
  • Much effort, much prosperity.
  • Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.
  • The good and the wise lead quiet lives.
  • Silence is true wisdom’s best reply.
  • The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.
  • Love makes the time pass. Time makes love pass.
  • Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.
  • No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.
  • Cleverness is not wisdom.
  • Who so neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.
  • There is something in the pang of change More than the heart can bear, Unhappiness remembering happiness.
  • But learn that to die is a debt we must all pay.
  • It’s not beauty but fine qualities, my girl, that keep a husband.
  • Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.
  • Lucky that man whose children make his happiness in life and not his grief, the anguished disappointment of his hopes.
  • Forgive, son; men are men; they needs must err. 

The Time is Now

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Friday Filosophy v.08.05.2022

Friday Filosophy v.08.05.2022

In Friday Filosophy v.08.05.2022, founder and managing member Ron Slee shares quotes and thoughts for consideration from Aeschylus.

Aeschylus was born in c. 525 BC in Eleusis, a small town about 27 km northwest of Athens, in the fertile valleys of western Attica. Some scholars argue that his date of birth may be based on counting back forty years from his first victory in the Great Dionysia. His family was wealthy and well established. His father, Euphorion, was said to be a member of the Eupatridae, the ancient nobility of Attica, but this might be a fiction invented by the ancients to account for the grandeur of Aeschylus’ plays. 

As a youth, Aeschylus worked at a vineyard until, according to the 2nd-century AD geographer Pausanias, the god Dionysus visited him in his sleep and commanded him to turn his attention to the nascent art of tragedy. As soon as he woke, he began to write a tragedy, and his first performance took place in 499 BC, when he was 26 years old. He won his first victory at the City Dionysia in 484 BC. 

In 510 BC, when Aeschylus was 15 years old, Cleomenes I expelled the sons of Peisistratus from Athens, and Cleisthenes came to power. Cleisthenes’ reforms included a system of registration that emphasized the importance of the deme over family tradition. In the last decade of the 6th century, Aeschylus and his family were living in the deme of Eleusis. 

The Persian Wars played a large role in Aeschylus’ life and career. In 490 BC, he and his brother Cynegeirus fought to defend Athens against the invading army of Darius I of Persia at the Battle of Marathon. The Athenians emerged triumphant, and the victory was celebrated across the city-states of Greece. Cynegeirus was killed while trying to prevent a Persian ship retreating from the shore, for which his countrymen extolled him as a hero. 

In 480 BC, Aeschylus was called into military service again, together with his younger brother Ameinias, against Xerxes I‘s invading forces at the Battle of Salamis. Aeschylus also fought at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. Ion of Chios was a witness for Aeschylus’ war record and his contribution in Salamis. Salamis holds a prominent place in The Persians, his oldest surviving play, which was performed in 472 BC and won first prize at the Dionysia. 

Aeschylus was one of many Greeks who were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, an ancient cult of Demeter based in his home town of Eleusis. According to Aristotle, Aeschylus was accused of asebeia (impiety) for revealing some of the cult’s secrets on stage. 

Other sources claim that an angry mob tried to kill Aeschylus on the spot but he fled the scene. Heracleides of Pontus asserts that the audience tried to stone Aeschylus. Aeschylus took refuge at the altar in the orchestra of the Theater of Dionysus. He pleaded ignorance at his trial. He was acquitted, with the jury sympathetic to the military service of him and his brothers during the Persian Wars. According to the 2nd-century AD author Aelian, Aeschylus’ younger brother Ameinias helped to acquit Aeschylus by showing the jury the stump of the hand he had lost at Salamis, where he was voted bravest warrior. The truth is that the award for bravery at Salamis went not to Aeschylus’ brother but to Ameinias of Pallene. 

Aeschylus travelled to Sicily once or twice in the 470s BC, having been invited by Hiero I, tyrant of Syracuse, a major Greek city on the eastern side of the island. He produced The Women of Aetna during one of these trips (in honor of the city founded by Hieron), and restaged his Persians. By 473 BC, after the death of Phrynichus, one of his chief rivals, Aeschylus was the yearly favorite in the Dionysia, winning first prize in nearly every competition. In 472 BC, Aeschylus staged the production that included the Persians, with Pericles serving as choregos.

Aeschylus married and had two sons, Euphorion and Euaeon, both of whom became tragic poets. Euphorion won first prize in 431 BC in competition against both Sophocles and Euripides. A nephew of Aeschylus, Philocles (his sister’s son), was also a tragic poet, and won first prize in the competition against Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Aeschylus had at least two brothers, Cynegeirus and Ameinias.

The death of Aeschylus illustrated in the 15th century Florentine Picture Chronicle by Maso Finiguerra

In 458 BC, Aeschylus returned to Sicily for the last time, visiting the city of Gela, where he died in 456 or 455 BC. Valerius Maximus wrote that he was killed outside the city by a tortoise dropped by an eagle (possibly a lammergeier or Cinereous vulture, which do open tortoises for eating by dropping them on hard objects[24]) which had mistaken his head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell. Pliny, in his Naturalis Historiæ, adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avoid a prophecy that he would be killed by a falling object, but this story may be legendary and due to a misunderstanding of the iconography on Aeschylus’s tomb. Aeschylus’ work was so respected by the Athenians that after his death his tragedies were the only ones allowed to be restaged in subsequent competitions. His sons Euphorion and Euæon and his nephew Philocles also became playwrights. 

The inscription on Aeschylus’ gravestone makes no mention of his theatrical renown, commemorating only his military achievements:

  • He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. 
  • Obedience is the mother of success and is wedded to safety. 
  • I have learned to hate all traitors, and there is no disease that I spit on more than treachery. 
  • From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow. 
  • It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath. 
  • Whoever is new to power is always harsh. 
  • It is best for the wise man not to seem wise. 
  • Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times. 
  • There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. 
  • Memory is the mother of all wisdom. 
  • Death is softer by far than tyranny. 
  • It is always in season for old men to learn. 
  • God lends a helping hand to the man who tries hard. 
  • God’s most lordly gift to man is decency of mind. 
  • God loves to help him who strives to help himself. 
  • It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer. 
  • But time growing old teaches all things. 
  • It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted. 
  • Married love between man and woman is bigger than oaths guarded by right of nature. 
  • The words of truth are simple. 
  • And one who is just of his own free will shall not lack for happiness; and he will never come to utter ruin. 
  • Too few rejoice at a friend’s good fortune. 
  • Who, except the gods, can live time through forever without any pain?

The time is now.

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Friday Filosophy v.07.29.2022

Friday Filosophy v.07.29.2022

Founder and managing member Ron Slee shares quotes and thoughts for consideration from Aesop, the fable writer, in Friday Filosophy v.07.29.2022.

Aesop, 620–564 BCE, was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop’s Fables. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales associated with him are characterized by anthropomorphic animal characters.

Scattered details of Aesop’s life can be found in ancient sources, including Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch. An ancient literary work called The Aesop Romance tells an episodic, probably highly fictional version of his life, including the traditional description of him as a strikingly ugly slave who by his cleverness acquires freedom and becomes an adviser to kings and city-states. Older spellings of his name have included Esop(e) and Isope. Depictions of Aesop in popular culture over the last 2,500 years have included many works of art and his appearance as a character in numerous books, films, plays, and television programs. 

The name of Aesop is as widely known as any that has come down from Graeco-Roman antiquity [yet] it is far from certain whether a historical Aesop ever existed … in the latter part of the fifth century something like a coherent Aesop legend appears, and Samos seems to be its home.

The earliest Greek sources, including Aristotle, indicate that Aesop was born around 620 BCE in the Greek colony of Mesembria. A number of later writers from the Roman imperial period (including Phaedrus, who adapted the fables into Latin) say that he was born in Phrygia. The 3rd-century poet Callimachus called him “Aesop of Sardis,” and the later writer Maximus of Tyre called him “the sage of Lydia.” 

From Aristotle and Herodotus we learn that Aesop was a slave in Samos and that his masters were first a man named Xanthus and then a man named Iadmon; that he must eventually have been freed, because he argued as an advocate for a wealthy Samian; and that he met his end in the city of Delphi. Plutarch tells us that Aesop had come to Delphi on a diplomatic mission from King Croesus of Lydia, that he insulted the Delphians, was sentenced to death on a trumped-up charge of temple theft, and was thrown from a cliff (after which the Delphians suffered pestilence and famine). Before this fatal episode, Aesop met with Periander of Corinth, where Plutarch has him dining with the Seven Sages of Greece, sitting beside his friend Solon, whom he had met in Sardis. (Leslie Kurke suggests that Aesop himself “was a popular contender for inclusion” in the list of Seven Sages.) 

Aesop may not have written his fables. The Aesop Romance claims that he wrote them down and deposited them in the library of Croesus; Herodotus calls Aesop a “writer of fables” and Aristophanes speaks of “reading” Aesop, but that might simply have been a compilation of fables ascribed to him. Various Classical authors name Aesop as the originator of fables. Sophocles, in a poem addressed to Euripides, made reference to the North Wind and the Sun. Socrates while in prison turned some of the fables into verse, of which Diogenes Laërtius records a small fragment. The early Roman playwright and poet Ennius also rendered at least one of Aesop’s fables in Latin verse, of which the last two lines still exist.  

  • No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
  • We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
  • The level of our success is limited only by our imagination and no act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.
  • Every truth has two sides; it is as well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either.
  • It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.
  • Appearances are often deceiving.
  • Slow but steady wins the race.
  • Persuasion is often more effectual than force.
  • Please all, and you will please none.
  • It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow.
  • A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.
  • Self-conceit may lead to self-destruction.
  • He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.
  • Affairs are easier of entrance than of exit; and it is but common prudence to see our way out before we venture in.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.07.22.2022

Friday Filosophy v.07.22.2022

In Friday Filosophy v.07.22.2022, Ron Slee shares quotes and thoughts for consideration from John Muir.

John Muir  April 21, 1838 – December 24, 1914), also known as “John of the Mountains” and “Father of the National Parks“, was an influential Scottish-American  naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist, and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States of America.

His letters, essays, and books describing his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada, have been read by millions. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park, and his example has served as an inspiration for the preservation of many other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he co-founded, is a prominent American conservation organization. In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to the preservation of the Western forests. As part of the campaign to make Yosemite a national park, Muir published two landmark articles on wilderness preservation in The Century Magazine, “The Treasures of the Yosemite” and “Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park”; this helped support the push for U.S. Congress to pass a bill in 1890 establishing Yosemite National Park. The spiritual quality and enthusiasm toward nature expressed in his writings has inspired readers, including presidents and congressmen, to take action to help preserve large nature areas. 

John Muir has been considered “an inspiration to both Scots and Americans”. Muir’s biographer, Steven J. Holmes, believes that Muir has become “one of the patron saints of twentieth-century American environmental activity”, both political and recreational. As a result, his writings are commonly discussed in books and journals, and he has often been quoted by nature photographers such as Ansel Adams. “Muir has profoundly shaped the very categories through which Americans understand and envision their relationships with the natural world”, writes Holmes. 

Muir was noted for being an ecological thinker, political spokesman, and religious prophet, whose writings became a personal guide into nature for many people, making his name “almost ubiquitous” in the modern environmental consciousness. According to author William Anderson, Muir exemplified “the archetype of our oneness with the earth”, while biographer Donald Worster says he believed his mission was “saving the American soul from total surrender to materialism”.  On April 21, 2013, the first John Muir Day was celebrated in Scotland, which marked the 175th anniversary of his birth, paying homage to the conservationist.

  • The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. The whole continent was a garden, and from the beginning, it seemed to be favored above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe.
  • It seems strange that bears, so fond of all sorts of flesh, running the risks of guns and fires and poison, should never attack men except in defense of their young. How easily and safely a bear could pick us up as we lie asleep! Only wolves and tigers seem to have learned to hunt man for food, and perhaps sharks and crocodiles.
  • The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves.
  • Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last hardly longer than those of wood rats, while their more enduring monuments, excepting those wrought on the forests by the fires they made to improve their hunting grounds, vanish in a few centuries.
  • The making of the far-famed New York Central Park was opposed by even good men, with misguided pluck, perseverance, and ingenuity, but straight right won its way, and now that park is appreciated. So we confidently believe it will be with our great national parks and forest reservations.
  • From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals.
  • Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash.
  • The wild Indian power of escaping observation, even where there is little or no cover to hide in, was probably slowly acquired in hard hunting and fighting lessons while trying to approach game, take enemies by surprise, or get safely away when compelled to retreat.
  • As soon as a redwood is cut down or burned, it sends up a crowd of eager, hopeful shoots, which, if allowed to grow, would in a few decades attain a height of a hundred feet, and the strongest of them would finally become giants as great as the original tree.

The Time is Now.

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