(no subject)

[twincityhacker]

And so, even though men are always inclined, while they are engaged in a war, to judge the present one the greatest, but when it is over, regard ancient events with greater wonder. Yet this war will prove, for men who judge from actual facts, to have been more important than any war before. - Thuchydides Book I of "The History of the Peloponnesian War"

It's very weird when reading a history of a war that happened 2,500 years ago sounds so similar to the one that's happening now. Except with the cognitive dissonance where the two are simultaneously going on at the same time, because the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem very far away. And at the same time the never ending wars are going on, Athens is stressed to the breaking point.

Then I think of a scholar a thousand years from now, crouched over a dusty book or whatever information is stored on, reading about now. Will they too look up from their work, and see the parallels of the same actions that happened in Athens, in the US, unfolding outside their window?

I wonder what they'd think of us.

Comments

[trinfaneb.livejournal.com]

Good question. I would love to have the foreknowledge to put our current history into a more understandable perspective.

I think Iraq and Afghanistan will be seen as wars of occupation, kind of like the ones the Romans waged. At some point in their history, wars of occupation usually lead to the downfall of Empires. Only time will tell if the American Empire has reached this point yet.

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

The only thing I would guess that the future would say about us is what everyone says to the generastions that have gone before: What were they thinking!?!

I'll reply more when my brain un-curdles.