Start w/ the Greek Plays, or utube

[kavaris]

Id recommend reading "The Greek Plays" or one of the ones that has the actual play -versions in them as thats like the quintessential way to see the artistic language used. Sophocles introduces morality in his and whatknot — and,alas i tried to find utube videos to be a kindve introduction to—but i dont know if there are any, atleast none that capture the artistry involved; still you could go into it from any point jus to get familiar w/

 

[kavaris]

~Oh wait, technically you should start w the "creation myth", which you could easily find online and read in like 5 minutes or watever it takes to.

[kavaris]

The playwriter Aristophanes stuff is good stuff too...
Lysistrata: "O Aphrodite, breathe down over our breasts and thighs, an attraction both melting and mighty."
Lysistrata: "These gates we hold, and they’ll not be opened, except upon our terms."

For context, this moment occurs as the women strategize (to end the Peloponnesian War) and to maximize their appeal, knowing the men are growing desperate. Lysistrata’s prayer to Aphrodite frames their bodies as divine instruments, flipping the script on the whole dominance game, and Upon our terms -shes talkin' bout their vaginas basically

Edited April 15 by kavaris

[Nilsi]

Greek tragedy might honestly be one of the most powerful models for human existence ever conceived. It doesn’t try to solve life - it shows that life can’t be solved. That it’s built on contradiction, on forces that pull in opposite directions and don’t neatly reconcile. That whole sensibility - of tension, limit, and paradox - basically disappeared for over two thousand years in Western consciousness. It got steamrolled by systems that promised certainty: moral, religious, metaphysical. Nietzsche saw what was missing and tried to bring it back. He understood that tragedy isn’t just a genre - it’s a stance, a way of being with the real. And a few serious thinkers since have taken that up, but it still hasn’t fully sunk back into our culture.

And in the absence of that tragic sense? We get hubris. We get vulgarity. You see it everywhere: in the absolutism of the Abrahamic religions, in the shallow triumphalism of modern science, in Silicon Valley’s deranged techno-optimism, and yeah, even in spiritual-intellectual systems like Ken Wilber’s, which try to wrap the entire universe in one neat tiered package. All of them push the same myth: that everything can be understood, integrated, fixed. But that’s exactly what Adorno and Horkheimer were critiquing in Dialectic of Enlightenment - how reason turns into its own myth, promising mastery where there should be reflection, closure where there should be tension.

The tragic view says: no, not everything resolves. And that’s not a problem to fix - it’s the condition of being alive. Rediscovering that doesn’t lead to despair. If anything, it’s what rescues us from all the forced coherence and spiritual bullshit that passes for depth now.

Edited April 18 by Nilsi

[kavaris]

2 hours ago, Nilsi said:

Greek tragedy might honestly be one of the most powerful models for human existence ever conceived...

Thank you for agreeing, as i wasnt expecting yous to go in a solid direction that was approving of my prioritizing Greek myth, and perhaps even any history that is sortve like, a story that you have to sortve go through and find reflection in. But to also see how like, life is a tragedy, and as such, we might say to ourselves, like —here are these people recognizing it, and sorting through like: A) how do we illustrate it, and B) what are we trying to say,.... is it the stories themselves, is it the emotional impact?... theres many components to it, and somehow, the stories are unbelievable, otherwordly. And so we have to askwhat thats about too, but its like, regardless of, they are real people in how they face dilemmas, and so its like, how do you solve things during critical points—thats one idea. how do you not lose hope. but even thats not the final message, cause its like, the heroic aspect shares a symbiotic relationship with our ability to discern anything, like, we arent just a newborn without any priors. we have roots, and lots of ideas about what reality is, and who we are. nd we are always trying to go back to our own mythology to work that out. We have like a buffer that returns to a very greek or norse myth place, as its trying to stay on the wagon.

Edited April 19 by kavaris