Cleveland Mark Blakemore said:
See above post on the Spartans being gay.
Never said they were gay, they prefered male company, mainly for other reasons than sexuality (like for example the fact that they would be on the field for long periods of time and forming families, at least for the soldiers, wasn't an efficient acitivity, that was for the peasants), but being all the time in male company (or in a military campaing of ten years) leaves you wondering how they satisfied their sexual urges, it could be masturbation or homosexual activity, I'm not inclined for neither of them, but you seem to despise both activities, so...
Just like you, I have heard it said a thousand times over a thousand. Is it true yet? Was there any more incidence of pederasty amongst the Spartans than ordinary people? Maybe if you watch Spartacus enough times, you'd start to think so. Movie-reality would become more real for you than reality.
Who spoke of pederasty? I didn't. Never saw Spartacus, is there any pederasty in that movie? I never use a movie as a source of knowledge, only entertainment.
What about the movie "300?" Wasn't that reality? Weren't the Persians a bunch of gay tattooed circus freaks with nipple piercings? Edjumificated types concur. If you differ, go see the movie again.
That movie gave me physical pain, it made my sarcasm bone tingle. Again, if you think I'm one of those who uses movies to create their vision of historical events you're wrong. Don't trust too much in books either though.
I think the last 25 years of the 20th century were mainly occupied in completely rewriting the past 2000 years of history completely from scratch.
Desinformation has existed for longer than that and it was quite sistematic, the only difference is that now the media is truly massive so it's more noticeable. You'll agree though that this isn't some kind of conspiracy, right? It isn't a thing of Hollywood vs. reality for the sake of desinformation, they're only intending to entertain.
Yes, there were astonishing amounts of perversion in Rome near the end. The question is, what was Rome like during it's rise and ascension to empire? Did people snicker when you mentioned Romans because they were degenerate perverts? Or did they quake with fear at their ironman reputations and rumors they were a morally incorruptible people?
It's true that new civilizations and new cities often implement old ideas better than their predecesors, they're also more easily to organize and expand. But it's also true that, as you said, this is a cycle, the very thing that makes a civilization rise and shine, is the one that eventually generates the flames that consumes it, a poster above expressed the same idea. However I beg to differ with your last idea, that they had a reputation of being morally incorruptible man, they weren't, and there will never be such thing, the idea of Locke is more realistic and I fit in it, perhaps you too. Also, the very fact that they conquered other lands and killed other people and in the famous case of Carthage even salted the Earth, shows that they were morally corrupt, unless your idea of morality differs from my.
For example, if people in the future remember America as she has been only in the past 25 years, you would go through life thinking that Americans were a sick, diseased race of hideous mutant ejaculators who lived only for sexual gratification and drugs. Yet America for the prior 150 years was reknowned throughout the globe for the virtue, honesty and moral discipline and restraint of it's inhabitants. Another example - a citizen of the future viewing the United States on recorded tapes from 1980-2008 would get the impression they are a nation of dribbling illiterate morons. This is the same nation which was once fabled to have the grandest public education system in the history of mankind and the most intelligent, well informed and literate population ever.
You remind me of Cato, a good fellow, died alone though. Or so the book tells.
Today I don't have that vision of the USA, I still see it as a niche for clear and strong minds, very few, but then again when in the history of human kind a civilization was characterized by trading on grey matter execess.
