isany1listening

Well it has been a while since I posted, but I am back.  Keep tuning in to see what will be said next…

I have been wanting to write this post for a long time.  With the political news slightly dragging this week, I thought it might be a perfect time.  Let me begin by saying that I am a student of literature and philosophy.  And I love mythology and I love epics.  I even love Greek tragedy.  What this says about me, I still have yet to figure out, but I digress…

One of my favorite pieces of work from the Ancient Greeks is Homer’s epic poem “The Iliad”.  It is the story of the Trojan war up until the burial of Hektor, the Trojan hero.  If anyone saw the awful movie “Troy” you may be vaguely familiar with the characters, not necessarily the events as told by Homer in the poem.  It is also the story of the Greek, or Achaian warrior, Achilleus, who I have to admit is one of my favorite figures in literature.  His ability to stand up to Agamemnon, who dishonors him in front of the army, and tries to stand for the honor code among warriors is incredible. 

Who among today’s soldiers would ever question a figure of authority, especially in a time of war?  Today, soldiers are taught to follow orders or they will die.  You do not question authority.  I am not arguing that there is not some need for this, of course there is.  In a time of war and in the military, there needs to be rules of order, and these rules need to be followed in order to maintain security.  But I have to say, there must also be a time to question, and room for someone to speak up when there is wrong being done.  The past eight years under Bush are evidence enough for that. 

See my point about Achilleus, and don’t get me wrong, there are some pretty awful things he does throughout the poem, but it is the fact that he feels bound by an ethical duty to call the “king” on his violation of common valued codes and laws.  Achilleus is bound by ethics and by honor, and therefore, feels he can trangress the chain of command and break with the authority figure.  And he is right to do so.  Now of course it is more complicated and I am boiling down the events and the ethos behind it for the blogosphere, but be that as it may, my point can still be made.  There are no more Achilleus in this world.  And that is unfortunate.

No one wants to take a hard stand against what is wrong, and no one wants to question authority.  Sure now that we know the abuses of Bush’s power and the days of it are numbered, we can all come forward and be critics.  But where were we when he was elected?  Where were we when he led us into an unnecessary war?  Where were we when we elected him a second time?  My point is this, we can sit back and blame 9/11 and the dangerous time after where if you spoke any criticism against the government you were labeled unpatriotic.  But that is just an excuse.  We let Bush and his team manipulate us into following whatever he wanted to do in terms of the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, torture, the failure to act after Katrina, etc.  We allowed them to dictate policy based on fear and terror, whether it was real or imaginary. 

No one stood up.  No one questioned authority.  No one said enough.  There was no Achilleus among us.  You can say it is different, for we do live in modern times and politics and society are much more complicated.  But cowards are still cowards, the weak are still the weak.  Our country is circling the drain.  We are fighting two wars, the economy is in the tank, the auto industry is about to go bankrupt, and still we seemed to be more concerned about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s kids than about anything else.  No one can be bothered to act on behalf of the Greater Good, to stand for something more.  And this is how we have operated in the past eight years and now our country is falling apart and people are terrified, and they should be when they are losing their jobs and their homes.  But you know what, we have no one to blame but ourselves, because we let the government put us in this position.  We didn’t say no and we didn’t stand up for what was right.  We let Bush take us here and to be frank, now we are reaping what we sowed. 

We need to read stories, myths, epics, like “The Iliad”.  I think they can give us perspective on how we can act as individuals.  They can guide us and show us a time where there people who stood for something, who acted and took the risk despite the consequences.  There was a time when people stood for a Greater Good, had ethics, and lived by them.  We need just a little bit of that.  Obama needs a little bit of that.  And it is our responisibility to have that in us so we don’t continue on the path we are on, and let ourselves be fooled again.  We cannot be ruled by our fears and we cannot let people play on them.  We still need the Ancient Greeks, to show us that although it may be difficult, it is not impossible.  But that is just my two cents.