History, Time and Peoples Evidenced

written 20 Mar 2008 some time after midnight

Apparently, Aristotle said:

Those who live in a cold climate and in Europe are full of spirit, but wanting in intelligence and skill; and therefore they retain comparative freedom, but have no political organisation, and are incapable of ruling over others. Whereas the natives of Asia are intelligent and inventive, but they are wanting in spirit, and therefore they are always in a state of subjection and slavery.

I find that incredibly fascinating, to see the insight of this impossibly important original thinker from who’s teachings we’ve based a large chunk of our modern society on, to be representing Europe, and himself perhaps, as lacking in intelligence and skill…without political organization, and incapable of ruling over others….it seems so foreign to me, seeing white people as having clearly established quite a large rule over the world, being pretty damned good – if not downright over the top – with political organization issues, and certainly obsessed with a gathering of knowledge for gathering knowledges sake (as opposed to for wisdom’s sake).

There are modes you could draw about the lovin’ on the freedom stuff and being full of spirit, which I might, even wrongfully, assume that any human would like to hear about themselves, but I’m just incredibly interested in how a perspective can change over a few thousand years.

Want more stories? A father, a son, a VW bus and all the open road at moseyho.me.

Filed Under: contemplating molecules
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7 people chatting it up...

  • Of course Aristotle was Greek, and as such excluded Greece from Europe. Greece was thought then, as well as today by many leading scholars, to be the center of the universe, the origin of knowledge.

    I have spent a great deal of my life teaching classical greek scholars about what really happened back then.

    - wolfman | 08:03pm 20 Mar 08

  • Thank you for your generous contributions to history, WM.

    May the fools of today learn from your lack of mistakes in the past.

    - nathan | 01:27pm 21 Mar 08

  • the history of bombing is really not about bombs. it’s funny that i assumed that when picking up the book. it’s really about people’s attitudes about bombing, the ability to bomb, why to bomb, the ability of bombs, hating to bomb, having to bomb, not hating to bomb, bombing to bomb, bombing for leverage, bombing to hit military objectives, military objectives becoming civilian moral, bombing civilians

    i’ll say more later. steve’s up for a smoke

    - chadilogical | 09:05pm 26 Mar 08

  • “morale”

    - chadilogical | 09:17pm 26 Mar 08

  • “morale”

    - chadilogical | 09:17pm 26 Mar 08

  • two times is a charm.

    ok.

    any more?

    bombing to control. bombing to destroy. bombing to kill.

    here’s something.

    almost all early fiction of the superweapon (turns out to be nuclear weapons) was about the superweapon being used to save civilization.

    - chadilogical | 09:19pm 26 Mar 08

  • Hmmm…that is interesting. I would think that now the vast majority of fiction about superweapons would be one where they blew up the Earth.

    So you read, eh? Lots then?

    I’m thinking about getting into that habit…

    - nathan | 10:39pm 26 Mar 08

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