Power politics from ancient Greece
"So many people quote the famous line from Thucydides—'The strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must'—and forget that the amoral imperialists who used that line in the end lost their war and their empire. "Thucydides does not offer the line, 'The strong do what they can,' as a neutral analysis of how international affairs operate. He offers it as an expression of the reckless arrogance that brought about the destruction of the Athenian Empire."
1 comment:
Good insight. We live in interesting times. The fundamental challenge of our era (and also the opportunity) is that we lived previously through many decades where the socialist/woke left held the moral high ground. They demanded self sacrifice, and more recently an apology for natural masculine energy. An energy that when taken to excess is responsible for some bad things (eg: war) but also most of the good things.
So it’s no wonder that men have rebelled against this, young men in particular, as they should. The problem is that immature men - - whether because of their age (excusable), or lack of wisdom developed from life experiences (less excusable, but still understandable) see Trump as their saviour and answer to what they rightly hate the most. At some level there’s something refreshing in acknowledging that strength and physical competence matters, and that you should use strength to ruthlessly pursue what’s in your interest.
The problem though is that in Trump, they think they’ve backed a good horse, but in reality backed a donkey. A donkey with extremely narcissistic and self destructive tendencies. Some narcissism is healthy, but too much is self destructive.
The opportunity lies in realising that, and instead backing a better horse that’s more rationally selfish.
Post a Comment