Alexander the Great, when addressed by people as “God” replied that there were at least two reasons he thought this not to be true. His need for food and his need for sex!
How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend – Plutarch
(The image is Mesopotamian and represents the person asking for the help of a God.)
“Some animals express their passion vividly. Others are almost like humans and more sensitive about it. Aristophanes of Alexandria loved a flower girl. But so did an elephant. Every day as the elephant went through the market it would bring her what fruit it had taken. The animal would stand next to her for many minutes. And it would very gently fondle her by putting its trunk inside her clothes and fondling her lovely breasts.”
Whether Land or Sea Animals Are Cleverer – 972 d -Plutarch
We know that the dead had to have a coin in their mouth to pay for their trip to the Underworld. What we forget is that in the 5th century it was also customary for living people to keep coins in their mouth! Was it because their clothes were not very practical and had no pockets?
Enyalius was one of the meanest Gods in ancient Sparta. Blood and gore was what he liked. So what did they sacrifice to him? Puppies!
In Leucada there is a cliff called Lovers Leap, reputed to help lovers forget their woes. Sapho is said to have jumped from here. At the festival of Apollo every year, a criminal was thrown off for good measure. But not just like that! They attached feathers of all sorts to him in some sort of sick attempt of humor. Was he meant to break the fall by flapping?
In any case they often died. Other times they were saved by somebody in a boat below and whisked off to the mainland .
If Athenians were such nice people, how come they cut off all the thumbs of the people of Aegina? Or kill all males in Lesvos? Or brand an owl on the foreheads of the people of Samos?
Aphrodite was of course know for her beauty. She was often referred to as “callipigos”, ie “lovely rumped” Aphrodite and her sacred tree was the box tree, again in honor of her buttocks! ( πύξος [ pyxos ]) the tree, (πυγαί [ pygae ] the buttocks)
It has been decided. Unless some other country takes the technological lead in the next ten years in a major way, English will not only remain the de facto global language but will also greatly expand its reach. We can debate the finer points about lost nuances, great cultures of the past and all that will be lost if you want. But the issue is all but closed.
There are two major factors making this a certainty: culture and artificial intelligence.
The effects of global (internet) culture have been well documented even before the web. Young people all over the world learn English via YouTube videos or apps on their phones. A teacher, as in a physical person helping you learn English, is optional. The kids learn the words, learn what is cool and how the concepts are connected much like Google learns how to spell; through trial and error and connecting the dots. Local television is dying as the new generation downloads series (in English, they bother less now even with subtitles) or watches videos online. In English.
However artificial intelligence is what will kill off the remaining pockets of local languages. I talk to Google Now all the time. In English. Sure, it supports other languages, but it doesn’t figure out all the cool things that make the difference in other languages. The semantic special juice only works in Californese, you have to be near enough the Silicon Valley minds that thought it all up for it to work well. Same goes for in-car navigation systems or any other tech helper. It isn’t just about voice recognition. Companies like Google are taking artificial intelligence and putting it in our phones, on our browsers. All the connections between our search history, our requests, our locations and everything else they take into account…yep…it’s all figured out in English terms. The frames of reference, the logical constructs, all in English.
Being Greek this is quite a pill to swallow. Most of my compatriots still think that Ancient Greece is the foundation of Western though, the cradle of civilization and all that. It was. For a while. But now it is English, or more accurately, American English which is carrying the planet to the next major step of discoveries. This isn’t about science fiction. This is day to day life. From social media to ordering pizza, most of our life is going to be in English no matter where on the planet we live. And because all these developments are patented, it is near impossible for any other language to catch up with the Googles and Facebooks with all their big data and big patent portfolios for the AI they have seen working.
Get used to it, stop kicking and shouting in protest and enjoy the benefits.
The antics of the Greek government these past 100 days have achieved what nobody for decades had managed to shift: the image of Greeks. As correctly identified by various spin doctors, the image of a Zorba type lazy Greek at the cafe was holding us back. No matter how many advertising campaigns we tried, millions spent with consultants and the dedication of previous tourism ministers…all to no avail.
Enter Yani Varoufakis.
The man started by taking one “n” out of his first name. Because he is a blogger, not a politician. We forget it, but his title for a long time had been “blogger economist” or “economist blogger”. He had toured the media and the world on the borders of pseudoscientific economic revolution. If he stayed in the US a bit longer he would probably end up with a YouTube channel, selling doomsday catastrophe theories like so many other conspiracy theorists.
But he became finance minister.
Probably because hardly anyone else in the cabinet speaks English. Maybe because his crazy theories are popular with lazy Greeks. Zorba, sipping his eight coffee of the day, likes to hear that it is someone else’s fault. Why face your own shortcomings when you can point a finger to global economic discrepancies? “The eurozone is broke”. Oh really? The eurozone has been broke since the day it started and thousands of people have been trying to fix it ever since. How are you helping?
Well Mr Varoufakis decided to take an unusual communication route. Namely complete insanity and inconsistence. If everyone is wearing ties, he goes without one. If everyone submits proposals in writing, he just glosses over some points with a mini lecture. If everyone is polite, he will act like a spoilt brat. The worse kind of spoilt brat as his parents (the rest of the cabinet and the prime minister) all support it, no matter how ridiculous his actions. One day he says A, the next B. The next he refuses he said either A or B and denies the existence of the alphabet for good measure. A week down the line he insinuates that use of the alphabet is in fact a Western though trap and the minister of Defence (from the far right nationalist party which shares power now) claims that the alphabet is a Jewish invention to be avoided by true Greeks. A month down the line he repeats A and says “this is what I have been saying all along”.
He can go on forever like this apparently.
The rest of the world however cannot. Greeks are no longer considered lazy Zorba types. We are now considered crazy, rude, irreverent, unorganized, spoilt brats. You no longer pity us for shortcomings of our economy, you hate us. We look like we know what we are doing and like we are purposely trying to get you to pay the bill for us being lazy. This is no Zorba, this is the grandson of Zorba, playing Candy Crush on the beach and wanting everyone else to serve him the coffee.
Of course many Greeks are not like this. However at least 30 percent voted for this government and more than 30 percent support this crazy approach. Mr Varoufakis and his crazy gang have pulled back the blinds and uncovered what 40 years of corruption has done to my country. We are nowhere near the end of our troubles. This generation will live through poverty like the country hasn’t seen since the time before Zorba.
In a way, I am grateful. Rock bottom is a tough place to start but at least it is stable.
The common cultivated fig originated in western Asia. It is one of the most ancient fruit crops, with evidence of cultivation and use at various Neolithic, late Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in the Mediterranean basin. Most of the world’s production still occurs in and arounfQhe Mediterranean basin, the major producers being Turkey, Egypt and Iran. Italy, Portugal, Spain and Greece have historically been important European producers. Figs are also grown in an area stretching eastwards from the Balkans and Turkey into Iran and India. Figs are grown in North Africa and Middle Eastern countries, where the ability to tolerate low rainfall and drought conditions makes the tree a valuable asset. Spanish missionaries were responsible for introducing the common edible fig into California, and figs are now grown in the southern, drier areas of the USA. In the southern hemisphere, Argentina and Australia have limited production.
The fig has a history that includes religious associations. It is cited in the Bible (Genesis 3:7), when the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, cover themselves with fig leaves. The fig is one of the two sacred trees of Islam. Fig trees also have a pivotal presence in Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. Siddhartha Gautama, the Supreme Buddha, is traditionally held to have found bodhi (enlightenment) while meditating under a sacred fig (Ficus rcligiosa).
The number of species (about 750) and the range of plant habit in the genus Ficus is large .
Whereas the common is a deciduous temperate tree, many other species are subtropical and tropical evergreen plants, ranging in size and form from large trees, sometimes with aerial roots, to small trees, shrubs and climbers. Ficus clastica (the rubber tree) and the weeping fig (Ficus benjamina) are used as houseplants in temperate regions. The creeping fig (Ficus pumila) is a vine whose small, hard leaves form a dense carpet of foliage over rocks or garden walls. Despite the Ficus genera having a broad range of plants there are several distinguishing botanical features. In particular, Ficus species plants have a white to yellowish sap (latex). Tissue wounding normally leads to the exudation of the latex, sometimes a copious exudate.
Many Ficus genera plants are gynodioccious (have two sexual forms). The plants may have two flower-bearing structures – one is termed the capri-fig and has staminate (male) flowers and short-styled pistillate (female) flowers; the other, the fig, only bears long-styled pistillate flowers. The structure typically recognized as the fig ‘fruit’ is a specially adapted type of inflorescence (an arrangement of multiple flowers). This structure is botanically termed a syconium. On examination, the structure is found to be an involuted and nearly closed flower receptacle, with many small flowers arranged on the inner surface of the ‘fruit’.