/lit/ - Literature

>>22776314
I'm of two minds when it comes to Thucydides' account of Pericles. On one hand he seems to greatly admire him as a prescient leader of Athens, who was 'a far-sighted judge of the city’s strengths' and that 'under him it [athens] reached the height of its greatness', on the other hand Pericles appears to be a deeply ironic character in the greater story of Athens in the war. Much of what Thucydides seems to praise in Pericles precipitates the downfall of Athens first in the demagoguery of Cleon and later Alcibiades, and much of what Pericles praises in the Athenians is precisely what leads them into their worst expeditions.
We should remember that at the time, Pericles (along with Ephialtes) were democratic radicals who tore down the more aristocratic Cimon and ushered in the vision of a popular athens that we think of today. Thucydides would have been acutely aware of this, and his primary praise of Pericles comes from his understanding of the Athenian character (as outlined in the Funeral Oration and the Corinthians' account to the Spartans) in his ability to mobalise this character as a 'whirlwind of both thought and action', but steer it away from disaster. So Pericles is the individual who both unleashed the democratic character of Athens and best harnessed it for the public good.
And yet, when we look at the greatest errors of Athens throughout the war, they stem almost entirely from ironic corruptions of Pericles' statements, or their ironic fulfillment. To make a list of what Pericles praises of Athens:
>The Delian league is centralised under the tyranny of Athens' rather than the more democratic Peloponnesian League
>Athens' ability to make quick action in response to emergencies
>They consider the interests of the many not the few, are equal under the law but public appointment is by merit
>Athenians have a spirit of freedom and tolerance in private matters, but severity and law abiding in public matters
>They combine an interest in public and private matters, and are steadfast in the face of death
>They are all personally involved either in actual political decisions or in deliberation about them, in the belief that it is not words which thwart effective action but rather the failure to inform action with discussion in advance
>They possess a 'political eros' which stokes their love for the fame and grandness of Athens

>>21050126
So the Landian AI isn't a literal computer/machine, but an emergent property of the modern, self-correcting mechanisms of commercial society? That is, the AI is society itself?