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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (82519)	3/16/2003 2:07:26 AM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

re: Alcibiades <seduced the wife of Spartan king Agis II> Guy had balls. There was a lot there, I skipped around, couldn't tell what you were referring to.

To: Bilow who wrote (82519)	3/16/2003 3:55:05 AM
From: NightOwl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Of course the lessons of ancient Greece do not apply to the current situation. The ancients, after all, didn't have Jesus to guide them / didn't have an emperor descended from the Gods / were not the master race / didn't worship Allah / didn't understand the historical dialectic / whatever. Hoo Hoo! "Whatever" indeed Carl.<g> After 2500 years, give or take a century, I think it's about time we finally accept the fact that those "lessons" (whatever they may be) simply don't matter. ...At least as far as their ability to alter our nature or effect the conduct of our national and international affairs is concerned.<vbg> I put it to you: 1. We are alive and thus we must compete to survive and flower. 2. To survive and flower as a life forms, we must also maintain a substantial degree of diversity and dispersion: edition.cnn.com 3. Thus we instinctively discriminate between "ourselves" and favor those who "we" most resemble. 4. Moreover to maintain a beneficial level of diversity and dispersion, no single nation/state/people can be allowed to actually succeed in attaining complete dominion everywhere. 5. This in turn precludes a dominant nation/state/people from obtaining a global consensus on anything significant, i.e., anything related to "its" life/competition/flowers. <vbg> These things led the Spartans to kill their own children, and the Athenians to kill everybody else's children. In the end they both stooped to desperate, wild-eyed, preemptive attacks, as did the Persians ...and everyone else who could muster the forces. <Hoo> For it all, none of them could ever attain complete dominance, let alone hold on to it. But willingly, or unwillingly, being alive ...they were all required to try. <Hoo> And the lesson of this classic tale? ...I think it must be that religion, reason and rationality are simply additional "WMD's" in the competitive arsenals of our little Blue Marble. ...Fortunately for "us," they have proven no more effective than the plague or nuclear fission. <Hoo><sigh><Hoo> 0\|0