The only point I can agree with you is that the UK is definitely going down hill. When you see that there are no jobs, "political correctness", politicians who can't stop labelling each others weaknesses, different races not getting along, more and more drink and drug problems along with many other problems you start thinking ... what is **** is going on?
I can't understand racism. From either side. Never experienced it in the same way someone of colour is likely to have/has. I've been called "white trash" by more than one group of Indian looking (As in: I couldn't tell where the devil they came from, since I can't understand the language they were speaking, and am not capable of differenciating between anything other than major racial differences: Black/White/Asian/Indian) lads, and was told I was being racist by telling them to go scoff cock. I didn't understand. Still don't, actually. However, I've found a solution that seems to work: Carrying on with something more important. Counting grass, for example. To be quite honest, if you're cool you're cool, if you're a dick, you're a dick, regardless of skin colour, culture etcetc. For the record, I don't celebrate anything cultural, because I just don't care. If you're culture's important to you, then that's cool, but I still won't care to take part, or have anything to do with any of it.
white muslims can presumably goto a muslim school. Being white and being muslim are differant, you know ?
Apologies for bringing this up if someone already has, but in England we don't have African American day or anything similar. All white schools are not the same thing as Muslim schools, one is a racial thing the other a creed (most schools for example used to have a religeon associated with them, I went to a Catholic school for example even though I'm not Catholic) I think the OP is a bit confused as to what country they live in.
I'm trying to remember the name of the famous Greek pessimist who chronicled what he felt were the signs that his country (and world) were getting worse: animals became progressively smaller and more frail and infertile; trees withered more rapidly; spring grew increasingly brief; and each successive generation seemed more idiotic, emasculated and devoid of nobility. One's nation must be understood apart from one's own experience. It doesn't pay to confuse the seasons of one's life with the chapters of history. The skyline is ever shifting; buildings are being torn down and replaced constantly. But when structures that demarcate great symbols and stages of our lives are erased from familiar landscapes, it does something awful to us. We alone are affected; the nation has never stopped mutating and metamorphosing. We live on the back of a chrysalid in the act of becoming a thing we won't be able to recognize, as time winds down. Whether that's traumatic or fascinating is a question of temperament, not truth.
Sophocles was pretty bloody miserable most of the time - is that who you mean? And he was a batty boy. I went to posh school by the way (but that was only to beat up the posh kids).
Actually, he isn't. The writer of whom I'm thinking was a famous historian. I still can't recall his name. Since I haven't mentioned my education or anyone else's, you're either adding this comment as a veiled insult (to me for mentioning Greek writers) or apologizing in advance (because you actually knew Sophocles' name). If I understand your comment correctly, you (i) despise people who mention Greek writers and/or yourself for saying things about them, and (ii) used to enjoy beating up children whose parents had more money than yours. (No offense, but your father must be so proud!) Neither of us need apologize, Vast Hulking D. It is an act of prejudice to make assumptions about a British person's character simply because s/he tends to bring up classical writers and use large words. It would be like assuming that an Irish person who enjoys reading books about astrophysics likes to beat his wife, or that a Sicilian butcher who loves talking about his craft must be a murderer. People like to talk about things that interest them. A person who spoke only about things that bored him would be the one who roused my suspicions. William Fowler clearly writes from the perspective of class prejudice in Modern English Usage (a standard reference book for editors and writers), but the interesting thing is that he's not an intellectual snob but rather an anti-intellectual snob. His idea is that people from lower classes who use large words and pronounce French correctly are pretentious because their only possible reason for doing these things must be to climb the British social ladder. He then goes on to say that truly upper-class people profess to be middle-brows and tend not to exhibit any excessive interest in books or language generally. The laughable aspect of all this is Fowler's own class pretensions. For him, the noblest class was clearly aristocratic, and one he aspired to desperately himself (hence his thoughts on usage). Lower class English citizens who aspired to more were dismissed on his part as hopeless -- not because their French accents were bad, but because they were good, which separated them from their upper-class counterparts. Fowler was also unable to conceive of the idea of an educated proletariat: a poor person who masters certain kinds of learning for sincere and personal reasons -- reasons that have everything to do with personal enrichment and nothing at all to do with social standing. * * * * When it comes to erudition, formal education is perhaps less relevant than perseverance, reflection, a predilection for analysis and a keen sense of individual taste. Some of the best critics I've ever read have been autodidacts and dropouts; some of the worst, seasoned academics with pedigrees. That isn't intended as an attack on pedigreed academics, but as a reminder that academic standing is not a synoym for intellectual integrity. A resumé is a useless yardstick for eloquence, as any short survey of the published papers of recent MFAs will show.
No, but you're not far off mentioning a Greek historian from the Hellenistic period (Hellenism and pessimism being rather closely related).
Remembered him at last: Hecataeus of Miletus, author of the two-volume work, Travels around the Earth (Periegesis, lit. Tourism). He is, despite Herodotus's characterization of him, more historiographer and lexicographer than historian, but his chief works incorporate history as well as geography -- he was a chronicler of travels and chronologies -- and his famous skepticism was attributed by Herodotus to his study of the importance of earlier civilizations, which taught him that the cultural beliefs he had inherited were not necessarily central to culture itself (he did not consider Greek civilization to be old or authoritative compared to that of Egypt and elsewhere, despite its primacy in his early education). On occasion, his contempt for modern Greek life was not so much skeptical as subjective and pessimistic. Thus the wildly subjective bit I paraphrased from memory a few posts back. One of his principal works, Geneologies, or Historiai, is a systematic study of the traditions, culture, mythology and religion of the Greeks. It aspires to critical scrutiny but actually cites Homer as an unassailable historical source. Here is how the book begins: "Hecateus says this: I write what seems to me to be true. The Greeks in my opinion have related many things contradictory and ridiculous." Despite this vow of empirical chastity, Periegesis contains as much gullible recounting as critical reporting. In one instance, Hecateus describes an island in Egypt that "floats, sails about and moves." Herodotus responded by remarking that, while certain Egyptians claimed this of the island, he himself did not observe it moving, sailing about or doing anything uncharacteristic of islands generally. I believe that what I read originally was a quote attributed by Herodotus to Hecataeus, who is also mentioned by name in the Histories of Herodotus, and is called an historian in that context: Later, Heraclitus wrote: "Knowing a great deal does not teach a man to have sense. It did not teach Hesiod . . . nor, for that matter, did it teach Xenophanes and Hecataeus."
Higson, just give up mate. You came to the gun fight with a pen knife. This board is hardcore. Give up or you're not getting out alive.
This thread went from right-wing nutjobs to discussing Greek philosophy in the space of 5 pages - that's why I like this place .
