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/lit/ - Literature

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17527088 No.17527088 [Reply] [Original]

>CONSEQUENTLY Athens lost BECAUSE of democracy
Was he actually serious?

>> No.17527110

>>17527088
He was. Athens fucked up its own strategy listening to demagoges who provoked blunder after blunder.

>> No.17527124

>>17527088
>he thinks he was joking
Read Xenophons critique of the Athenians government
Will make more sense then

>> No.17527128

Democracy and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

>> No.17527132

>>17527110
The more things change, the more they remain the same

>> No.17527164

>>17527132
Has nothing to do with current world retard. Communists just steal elections

>> No.17527351
File: 65 KB, 285x413, möllendorf.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17527351

>>17527088
>reads Thucydides in translation
filtered

>> No.17527881

>>17527128
>Democracy and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

Give me few good reasons as a why ?

>> No.17528263

>>17527881
The history and entire philosophy tradition is full of such reasons you illiterate mong

>> No.17528311

>>17527164
nice delusion

>> No.17528329

>>17527881
Athenian Democracy was essentially a way for a wealthy mercantile elite to leverage political power while minimizing its ability to act upon them. To put it another way, they could bribe people to change "the will of the people" and therefore enact political power, but no one could ever do the same to them. We see a parallel in Liberalism today, which was essentially invented to keep the King of England and the Pope from stopping Judeo-Dutch merchants from stealing peasants' property and selling spoiled turnips to urbanites.

This had the disastrous effect of meaning that any petty grudge was immediately brought to the political arena resulting in mass gang violence. Remember, Athenian Democracy was done by literally having the most people in an area raise their hands; it was entirely fair game to physically remove people from the voting square. Ironically, Athens' victories and triumphs uniformly occur when some single individual, or a very small clique, assume total power and did away with Democracy entirely.

A common occurrence was that some general would gather up a warchest, some ships, and men, and head out to fight the Persians, or the Spartans, or whoever. His political enemies would then smear him as a tyrant, and demand he be executed and have his property (and that of his soldiers) seized and given to his political enemies. This would be done, often requiring him to go back to Athens in the middle of a campaign, where he would then be executed. The military force he'd amassed would dissipate. His allies, then, would turn on the men who had caused his death, and get them murdered. Their allies would then turn on the prior group, and on and on and on. The entire military campaign against the Persians or the Spartans would then grind to a screeching halt.

>> No.17528360

>>17528311
nice cope

>> No.17528410

>>17528329
How do you know all this? It's not in Thucydides or Herodotus (aside of some stuff like the Sicily expedition but that wasn't against Sparta/Persia)

>> No.17528440

>>17527088
>CONSEQUENTLY Athens lost BECAUSE of democracy
Based. Didn't he also say Pericles was a retard?

>> No.17528461

>>17528410
Just reading about Athens. Thucydides is living during the time when Athens is even capable of such unifying figures. Eventually, they stop. There's a reason Athens turns from an imperial power into a small fishing hamlet.

>> No.17528564

>>17528440
No, they were close friends, retard

>> No.17528868

>>17528440
he basically says that Athens would have won they war if they had listened to Perikles

>> No.17528882

>be athenian general
>lose battle
>be executed by angry mob

imagine if 10% of the population could vote and beofre voting they listened to a trump speech

>> No.17528891

>>17528461
>There's a reason Athens turns from an imperial power into a small fishing hamlet.

entirely due to the athenian empire/delian league where they collected large amounts of GIMMEDATS from their slave states and distributed it as welfare

>> No.17529036

>>17528882
It's not Trump who is going to be remembered as a demogoge, rather the democratic/republican elites that somehow manage to convince a substantial part of the public that offshoring undustry to Cnina was a great idea, not to mention mass immigration, the gender nonsense and so on.
Trump will be the guy who tried to stem the American decline and failed at it.

>> No.17529053

>>17528891
It paid the Parthenon also.

>> No.17529087

>>17527351
Most classics buffs I know ask me why would I want to read x classic in Ancient Greek, it’s a worthless endeavor etc. and no, I don’t think they’re testing my resolve.

>> No.17529737

>>17527881
Walk outside

>> No.17531343

>>17528329
Do you think there's any way to salvage democracy by being much more strict in regards to who can vote? I mean some way that could filter both the subversive bourgeois/mercantile class and the plebs who were never meant to wield any power in the first place.

>> No.17531835

someone please tell me what the CONSEQUENTLY meme is from

>> No.17532523

>Hobbes' Thucydides
Why?

>> No.17532538

>>17529087
That's because they're literally retarded and most people with an interest in the classics today are literal normies, just of a higher variant.

The original will always be more valuable.

>> No.17532544
File: 151 KB, 1024x731, 1613062444874.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17532544

>>17527164
>Has nothing to do with current world retard. Communists just steal elections
Cope

>> No.17532979

>>17527881
Democracy gives morons too much power.
It's not a left or right thing.
In America, there are idiots on the left who think that the Democrats give a damn about them, and there are idiots on the right who think that the Republicans give a damn about them. For every left-winger who swallows corporate-media propaganda, there's a right-winger who swallows Qoomer-tier Internet LARPs.

>> No.17533372

Athens lost cause of the plague but it had lagged consequences

>> No.17533380

>>17527351
>möllendorf.jpg
Who?

>> No.17533385

>>17532523
Because it's the best one?
>>17531343
Athens was pretty restrictive wrt who can vote. For one, voters had to also fight for their country.

>> No.17533565

>>17527881
Have a conversation with the average person and then recognize that they have the same political power as the smartest people under a democracy.

>> No.17533567

>>17532979
Aye

Dictatorship concentrates too much power into the hands of one person which is basically a dice roll in how they turn out

and on to the many other systems and ideas

A system, idea, etc. lives and dies by it's adherents

>> No.17533662

>>17533565
The average person is more competent than the average elite.

>> No.17533670

>>17532544
ywnbaw

>> No.17533673

>>17533662
Those same average people let the elites in power the first place

>> No.17533685

>>17533673
No one votes the deep state in

>> No.17533726

He never says any such thing
He is much more fond of oligarchy but the portrayal as an incredibly biased oligarch is a meme

>> No.17533735

>>17533726
yes he does retard he says Athens lost because of the Sicily expedition which was ruined by demagogues that were appealing to the multitude in a democracy

>> No.17533860

>>17533735
Post the passage where he explicitly says that

>> No.17533871

>>17533860
why would I bother putting in any effort for a retard like yourself? he has a passage where he explicitly gives his own view for why athens lost. read the book instead of secondary sources and fragments you illiterate moron

>> No.17534456

>>17527088
>getting filtered by Thucydides of all people
never gonna make it

>> No.17534511

>>17532979
No, it keeps morons occupied. In a dictatorship all these people can do is plot

>> No.17534516

>>17533565
Imagine actually thinking this lol

>> No.17534545

>>17527088
did he say that? i thought he said that basically Persia won, and Athens and Sparta were just cucking each other while Persia reaped the benefits

>> No.17534558

>>17528329
so basically you are saying that Alcibiades did nothing wrong, based

>> No.17534588

>>17527088
Yes, democracy is self-defeating if its not kept in check

>> No.17534647

>>17534456
>Thucydides of all people
>thinks Thucydides is simple
You probably got filtered

>> No.17534668

>>17534647
Don't kid yourself, Thucydides is easy compared to Plato, Aristotle etc.
If you disagree, you're an idiot, plain and simple. History of the Peloponnesian War is much easier to understand than stuff like Plato's "Parmenides" and "Sophist" or Aristotle's "Organon" and "Metaphysics".

>> No.17534730

>>17527088
>CONSEQUENTLY Athens lost BECAUSE it was Athens
is basically what he's saying.

>> No.17534756

>>17534668
>not simple means more complicated than Aristotle's Metaphysics
You got filtered by logic 101 retard find a different hobby

>> No.17534806

>>17534756
Keep seething.

>> No.17534845

>>17533685
Yes they unknowingly do

>> No.17534887

>>17534845
Whether you vote or not, whether you vote for x or y, deep state still wins. Voting is irrelevant in countries like America where there are no choices.

>> No.17534888
File: 28 KB, 474x294, download - 2021-02-13T083848.625.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17534888

>>17527110
What? But democracy is freedom, the guy who makes my laws told me so

>> No.17534903

>>17534888
It's freedom for anyone strong enough to succeed in the resulting competitive environment that it creates. Freedom is always a matter of victory.

>> No.17534914

>>17534888
Where did Hobbes say that lol

>> No.17534918

>>17534903
Wait, are you saying freedom is a natural state of being, and that living under a government necessitates negotiations with and around that freedom?

>> No.17534943

>>17534918
>Wait, are you saying freedom is a natural state of being
I just said the opposite, retard.

>> No.17535249

>>17531343
I see this attitude a lot and I would like to ask you a few questions at this juncture if you don't mind. When asking how to 'salvage' or set up a 'real/good; democracy it makes it seem like the individual loves democracy (or w/e it is) as an inherent good and is trying to find a way to still have their cake and eat it too. Reminds me of Deneen's critique of liberalism in 'Why Liberalism Failed' where he explains what the title says and then ends with (paraphrasing) "we need to find a way to be illiberal liberals who support democracy and equality while knowing liberalism is bad" it's funny because he talks often in book about how liberals always prescribe more liberalism as the fix anytime there's an error in the system, yet that's exactly what he does. He fundamentally agrees with everything liberal he's just salty it didn't actually work, "what if we were not liberals and then we tried everything they tried". He aknowledges the faults of democracy then dreams a what if where all the inherent flaws of the system are gone (and does this by being more egalitarian).
Your post is different ofc because you advocate for further restrictions, therefore my question is why bother? If democracy is a system for manufacturing the consent of the governed by plutocrats and oligarchs (read "The Machiavellians: defenders of freedom" for more on this), then what's the point of creating a voting system that filters plebs and the bourgeoisie/mercantile class? SO, only aristocrats, military and political elites have control? Like in almost every other form of government? Why try to fit 'democracy' into a mold it doesn't fit. Fundamentally you and others must make a decision on what the actual reason for their political beliefs are... Do we support democracy because it leads to Good, or is Good. Or, do we support Good in so far as it supports democracy. Cart before horse you know. I want a good system of government not a good system of democracy, if democracy is not good then let's leave it instead of trying to hold onto it as an axiomatic value. I realize I started by saying I would ask questions and I think I only asked one and just ranted, hope it make you think nonetheless.

>> No.17535262

>>17534903
ASS

>> No.17535290

>>17533567
Dictatorship formalizes power so you know whose in charge which means you know how to get change. Look up the stats on representation vs form of government. Dictatorships with a parliament are more 'representative' than democracies. The dictator is on the hook when things go wrong, when democracies do a bad job whose fault is it? Oh, we voted the wrong guy or picked bad policies its our fault. Oh, it was the one bad guy we put into power we just got to wait a few years then we can get one of our guys in again then we can fix things. The unelectable elements can continue their policies indefinitely and a massive bureaucracy can operate outside the purview of the executive. A dictator can actually get things done, lasting changes.

If we accept your position that dictators are a dice roll, sure. We can get anything from 1 to 6. In a democracy as previously mentioned in thread the oligarchs manufacture the will of the people and thus only do what they want, the bureaucrats remain untouchable.
If a dictator is a dice roll, a democracy is a dice roll with loaded dice. You can roll as many times as you want you'll only get between 1-3.

>> No.17535358

>>17535249
I tried to read your post but I gave up after a few sentence of you saying nothing and seeing there's so much left of it.

>> No.17535408

>>17535358
:(

>> No.17535423

>>17535290
I agree on what you are saying on the flaws of democracy, I'm merely pointing out that dictatorship has it's own flaws just as every system does along with it's benefits as you've pointed out on dictatorship

>> No.17535459

>>17535408
Sorry buddy next time get to the point faster and less blogging

>> No.17535470

>>17535459
I personally like his explanations, they might be long but so what? You get more info and you learn more cuz it's not filled with meaningless or dumb gurgling

>> No.17535489

>>17535459
>>17535470
It's all good, I'm just happy to be here talking shit about democracy with the boys

>> No.17535514

>>17533670
ywnbam

>> No.17535523

>>17535514
:3

>> No.17536158

>Be Pericles the Younger
>Son of Pericles
>That Pericles
>Win naval battle
>Leave own sailors among to wreckages
>To pursue enemies and capitalize the victory
>Plan to come back later to rescue sailors
>Storma happens
>Sailors drown
>Come back home
>The people is very angry
>Stand trial
>Lose trial
>Get executed
>And other five commanders too
>People rejoice

>A couples of days later
>The people realize they have killed the son of Pericles
>The people is sad and angry
>The people execute the instigators of the trial they supported
>Sparta offers peace
>The people refuse and continue the war

>Navy now has no quality commanders
>Athens get wrecked
>Athens surrender and the walls are torn down

Just a little example
And this happened after the shitshow of the Sicilian Expedition
Sparta didn't win the Peloponnesian war, the Athenian democracy managed to lose it single handedly

>> No.17536365

>>17536158
better yet:
>leave some captains behind to save the wrecked crews
>storm comes along
>they can‘t save the men, neither can you go to the attack
>you and your fellow commanders are now on trial for leaving your sailors to die
>the captains you left behind to do the job also accuse you
>you (collectively) get sentenced to death because some storm fucked up your plans and certain captains held a grudge on you

>> No.17536866

>>17527088
athens lost because it got too big for its britches. same reason sparta was eventually crushed by thebans and everyone ended up being vassels of the macedonians

>> No.17536911

>>17536158
but on the other hand the practice of ostracization was based as hell. imagine if we could vote to banish any single citizen for one year, every year?

that said i also think the athenian practice of filling government posts by lot rather than hiring professionals was a great idea as well, because it a)gives a large number of citizens practical experience of how the government works b)makes citizens care very much about the quality and conditions of citizenship and c)limits the power of government posts to mitigate the damage of an inept or corrupt occupant. just imagine how fucking wild it would be if congress and the supreme court and the cabinet et al were chosen by random lottery

>> No.17537446

>>17536911

Your post demonstrates what an utter retard you are.

>> No.17537469

>>17527881
Have you had a look at the world today?

>> No.17537473

>>17534558
He failed :(

>> No.17538787

>>17534914
Leviathan

>> No.17539690
File: 23 KB, 220x311, cat.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17539690

>>17529036
nah he'll probably go down as America's Catiline

>> No.17539698

>>17532538
>The original will always be more valuable.
sure, but valuable enough to spend however long it would take to learn ancient Greek instead of reading a higher number of translated texts or learning a living language? There's an opportunity cost here

>> No.17540081

>>17535249
this post made a lot of sense, anon. Dont let yourself be bullied

>> No.17540384

>>17535249
good effort post and generally agree but split up paragraphs in the future, some people get turned off when they see a wall of text.

>> No.17541686

>>17536911
You do have a point

As much as direct democracy has it's flaws it also has it's benefits as you so happily pointed out

>>17537446
you've just proven your biases

Going along with the flow of "Democracy is failing and always has!" doesn't make you smart because that is the flow of things are going right now

We gotta learn to think for ourselves

>> No.17541874

>>17532979
The New York Times tells the story of one Bernie Sanders supporter who entered — and then exited — the QAnon movement:
Those who do leave are often filled with shame. Sometimes their addiction was so severe that they have become estranged from family and friends... "We felt we were coming from a place of moral superiority. We were part of a special club." Meanwhile, her family was eating takeout all the time since she had stopped cooking and her stress levels had shot up, causing her blood pressure medication to stop working. Her doctor, worried, doubled her dose...

When she first left QAnon, she felt a lot of shame and guilt. It was also humbling: Ms. Perron, who has a master's degree, had looked down on Scientologists as people who believed crazy things. But there she was...

She agreed to speak for this article to help others who are still in the throes of QAnon.

And CNN reporter Anderson Cooper recently interviewed a recovering QAnon supporter, who tells him there were many theories about Cooper, including one that said he was actually a robot. The embarrassed former QAnon supporter admits that he had once believed that the people behind Q "were actually a group of 5th dimensional, intra-dimensional, extraterrestrial bi-pedal bird aliens called blue avians."

During that interview, he also tells Anderson Cooper, "I apologize for thinking that you ate babies."

>> No.17541881

The more educated people are, the more likely they are to believe claims made by QAnon, according to a tracking poll by polling firm Morning Consult. From Politico:
Twenty-seven percent of people with a postgraduate degree responded that QAnon claims are either very accurate or somewhat accurate. That compared to 20% of those with a bachelor's degree and 14% of those with less than a college degree. The numbers were similar in Morning Consult's October poll.

But a new survey from the same pollsters also shows fewer Americans believing in QAnon's conspiracy theories. Newsweek writes:
While eight percent of Americans still believe the radical conspiracy theory is "very accurate" and a further 10 percent consider its claims "somewhat accurate," this 18 percent figure is a six-point drop from a similar poll in October... Trust in the widely debunked conspiracy listed as a domestic terrorist threat by the FBI is also dropping among Republicans. According to the survey, 24 percent of GOP voters who have heard of QAnon say its claims are at least somewhat accurate — a 14-point drop from October...

And 51% of the adults surveyed also believe social media's spread of conspiracy theories is a "major problem."

>> No.17541886

IQ test scores have been increasing for 100 years, reports a senior journalist at BBC Future. He also writes that there's evidence "that we may have already reached the end of this era -- with the rise in IQs stalling and even reversing."

But this raises an even larger question: did a century of increasing scores on IQ tests bring benefits to society?
You might assume that the more intelligent you are, the more rational you are, but it's not quite this simple... Consider the abundant literature on our cognitive biases. Something that is presented as "95% fat-free" sounds healthier than "5% fat", for instance -- a phenomenon known as the framing bias. It is now clear that a high IQ does little to help you avoid this kind of flaw, meaning that even the smartest people can be swayed by misleading messages. People with high IQs are also just as susceptible to the confirmation bias -- our tendency to only consider the information that supports our pre-existing opinions, while ignoring facts that might contradict our views. That's a serious issue when we start talking about things like politics.

Nor can a high IQ protect you from the sunk cost bias -- the tendency to throw more resources into a failing project, even if it would be better to cut your losses -- a serious issue in any business. (This was, famously, the bias that led the British and French governments to continue funding Concorde planes, despite increasing evidence that it would be a commercial disaster.) Highly intelligent people are also not much better at tests of "temporal discounting", which require you to forgo short-term gains for greater long-term benefits. That's essential, if you want to ensure your comfort for the future.

Besides a resistance to these kinds of biases, there are also more general critical thinking skills -- such as the capacity to challenge your assumptions, identify missing information, and look for alternative explanations for events before drawing conclusions. These are crucial to good thinking, but they do not correlate very strongly with IQ, and do not necessarily come with higher education. One study in the USA found almost no improvement in critical thinking throughout many people's degrees. Given these looser correlations, it would make sense that the rise in IQs has not been accompanied by a similarly miraculous improvement in all kinds of decision making.

The article concludes that "this kind of thinking can be taught -- but it needs deliberate and careful instruction," and suggests "we might also make a more concerted and deliberate effort to improve those other essential skills too that do not necessarily come with a higher IQ..."

"Ideally, we might then start to see a steep rise in rationality -- and even wisdom... If so, the temporary blip in our IQ scores need not represent the end of an intellectual golden age -- but its beginning.

>> No.17541892

>>17533662
>>The average person is more competent than the average elite.
Trump and Macron have proved this false

>> No.17541903

>>17538787
He didn't

>> No.17541921

>>17527124
>Xenophon's critique of the Athenians government
In what work?

>> No.17542021

>>17541921
He means pseudo-Xenophon's Constitution of the Athenians

>> No.17542039

>>17528868
Pickle Rick?

>> No.17543183

>>17542021
nice

>> No.17543255
File: 27 KB, 300x377, schopenhauer_arthur_700056552_beschnitten.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17543255

>>17539698
>valuable enough to spend however long it would take to learn ancient Greek instead of reading a higher number of translated texts or learning a living language?
Yes.