We Speak Greek And You Barely Notice
There is one famous quote from the Bible that leaves sellers and marketers all around the world very disappointed:
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun — Ecclesiastes 1:9
Although it is a shity quote, it’s also very inspiring.
If we pay attention to it and try to understand it through a working class hero’s perspective, the same obstacles were passed by other people that were stronger and prettier a long time ago in fantastic tales, adventures and epic battles. In a time where gods and men lived in the same place.
There are people who believe or disbelieve in the ancient greek myths just like the ones who believe that there is an easy way to get rich online.
Ancient Greece, besides holding ancient runes, beautiful beaches and shawarma, is the birthplace of all things we know and love: Mythos (fantastic tales) and Logos (Science).
And you knew that, but never payed attention to it.
It has been under your very nose all this time.
Both Mythos and Logos are opposite poles when it comes when it comes to explaining the beginning of our planet and natural phenomenons. They are like Fire and Water.
This dicotomy still dictates people’s live in many areas and old guys like Hesiod and Thales of Miletus drew the line of this dicotomy.
If something is called new, it’s stealing. The greeks already done it.
In the beginning of the 6th century B.C., the myths were the only thing available that explained the origin of the universe and supernatural beings that controlled all the nature’s laws in the form of gods.
Such phenomenons were called Theogony (origin of gods) and Cosmogony (origin of the universe).
It sounds ridiculous, but there is a lot of reason underneath the myths.
Hesiudus, one of the most famous greek poets, tells the infamous story of Prometheus and how he is responsible of killing all mythos to promote science and knowledge to the human race by stealing Zeus’s Fire.
It is a symbol of stealing divine knowledge to create great technologies and the evolution of the civilization.
Sounds familiar?
When he was caught by Zeus, he punished the mortal by having his liver eaten by an eagle for thirty thousand years.
Thirty fucking thousand years getting eaten by a bird.
A valid interpretation is that the eagle means religion and the liver is the science.
You know why?
Thanks to science, it is known that the liver is the only organ of the human body that can regenerate itself.
Everytime that Prometheus’s liver comes back to life, the eagle eats it. Meaning he is destined to live a life of suffering, fadigue, and tiredness. Like our fellas working class heroes.
Meaning of the story: All logic work keeps us away from paradise.
The Otherside
On the other side, Tales of Miletus is the reason why we have wi-fi and online classes (Hell, we learn his theorem in school. Best tribute ever).
Known to many as the first western philosopher that divided logos and mythos, he is the first of the pre socratics (philosophers before Socrates) to say fuck you myths and hell yeah to science.
Miletus argued that life, the world and human race all came from one single element: The Arche (in greek, means the beginning; origin)
For him, there is no way life came from an ocean god.
In Miletus’s view, the Archee was water. Other pre socratics would have their version and arguments of the Archee. Anaximenes say it is air. Democritus says it is the atoms.
Believe what you want, the shit is real.
Miletus was a port city located on the lower parts of Asia. It was the most common thing in the world to share different world views and meet other people and languages besides trading coin or products.
That’s how the logic way of thinking came from Greece to the world.
What highlights the passage of mythos to logos is the behaviour of questioning everything and why of things. Always curious and always doubting everything and others. In later years, Socrates would say that this is the way of life of a philosopher.
And no surprises, Greek culture and myths still remain as the big influences on modern world.
Words like dinossaur (deinos meaning frightening in greek and saurus meaning lizard) and oneiric (oniros in greek; dreams) are inspired by the greek words.
On entertainment, fantasy stories like Harry Potter, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings carries the symbol of a hero and the good and evil dicotomy. All which came from either greek myths or the greek theater.
Honestly, it’s all stolen from Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey.
Greece’s biggest legacy is not the myths or the philosophies, but that it is the mother culture of all others in the western world.
