The Classics Won't Save Us

Read this article a short while ago. Well, at the start of the pandemic, to be exact, and I was pretty taken by it as it reflected much of what I thought at the time, and still think. Indeed, with all my talk about the failures of the west (when it comes to this pandemic), I sense that part of the current lot of sickness is a result of this "Classics" say it all belief. [1] Whether it's manifesting itself as a conspiracy theory or general dumbness [2].

Of course, I read the classics. One must, even from a "know your enemy" POV. And the classics from around the world (I'm not talking just western here) all have some similarities (the ode to power, being the biggest), though some are a little more self-aware than that. But one must read them with more than a eye to gaining status or confirming status. 

Your thoughts?

 

[1] It's complex, of course. Some on the right or the center who scream "western values teach the classics" probably don't actually know Socrates, and his dissenting views, they just want something white. They are usually the same lot who think statues of confederates are actually history and not the whitewashing thereof, so take what they say with a grain of salt. But since that is the loudest cohort, and the most powerful, it's valid to take them at their word. Furthermore, there are some who are aware of the classics and (either knowingly or otherwise) will oversell it as humanities, that is all of humanities and the first article takes that to task (fairly, IMO).

[2] Trump, I'm sure has no clue what a classic is, outside of the fact that he may think it a white thing to like. But Newsom and Cuomo, both fuckups in their own right, have few excuses. There are others with higher education (Ivy, whatever) who use the classics as a way to status signal, rather than truly understanding them (and, besides, aren't the classics usually just very good propaganda for the powerful of the past?).

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