Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
classicalwisdom.substack.com
classicalwisdom.substack.com
Eudaimonia THIS IS AN ANCIENT GREEK WORD, normally translated as 'fulfilment', particularly emphasised by the philosopher Aristotle. It deserves wider currency because it corrects the shortfalls in one of the most central terms in our contemporary idiom: happiness. The Ancient Greeks resolutely did not believe that the purpose of life was to be happy; they proposed that it was to be fulfilled. What distinguishes happiness from fulfilment is pain. It is eminently possible to be fulfilled and, at the same time, under pressure, suffering physically or mentally, overburdened and in a tetchy mood. Many of life's most worthwhile projects will, at points, be quite at odds with contentment, but may be worth pursuing nevertheless. Henceforth, we shouldn't try to be happy; we should accept the greater realism, ambition and patience that accompanies the quest for eudaimonia.
“With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon” — Elon Musk
Let’s hope for good demons! I’ve been thinking about it lately, and in a world that many believe is filled with intelligence and consciousness at different levels, it might make sense to dust off our Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy. There are a lot of intriguing ideas there, like the immaterial world of forms.
I know that many people reactively disbelieve in immaterialism—but it is a quite common perspective among physicists. There, most probably agree that the basis of the world is not material stuff, but rather immaterial mathematics.
Just don’t anthropomorphize the daimonia. Human consciousness and intelligence clearly isn’t the only type of intelligence or consciousness in this world.
If you are interested in the intersection of the esoteric and AI, I’ll be giving a lecture June 1 at the Ritman Library of Hermetic Philosophy in Amsterdam. I just got tenure so I’ll be trying to push the envelope :) https://embassyofthefreemind.com/en/plan-your-visit/agenda#D...
You have immense respect for the humanities—but will casually call me a lazy hype monger? Pity.
Daimon or Daemon (Ancient Greek: δαίμων, "god", "godlike", "power", "fate") originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit such as the daimons of ancient Greek religion and mythology and of later Hellenistic religion and philosophy. The word is derived from Proto-Indo-European daimon "provider, divider (of fortunes or destinies)," from the root da- "to divide".
-- Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daimon)
The sorts of beings modern English refers to as "demons" are* daimons, but so are "guardian angels" and "saints".
That is brilliant. It's so refreshing to hear of Neoplatonism and Hermetic Philosophy, not just for historical study but as a living stream of thought and inspiration. People seem to forget that the roots of science is magic.
I bet Ancient Greeks didn't constitute a hivemind and had different opinions on the matter.
It's discussed in the Life sucks sometimes and it's okay section of the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t06rkOOUa7g#t=1h13m
"In Ancient Greek philosophy, ataraxia (Greek: ἀταραξία, from "a-", negation and tarachē "disturbance, trouble") is a lucid state of robust equanimity characterized by ongoing freedom from distress and worry. In non-philosophical usage, ataraxia was the ideal mental state for soldiers entering battle. Achieving ataraxia is a common goal for Pyrrhonism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism, but the role and value of ataraxia within each philosophy varies in accordance with their philosophical theories."
> 10. Ataraxia (Greek: ἀταραξία) > Ataraxia literally translates as “unperturbedness”, but is generally considered as “imperturbability”, “equanimity”, or “tranquillity”.
It's a non-sequitur if I've ever seen one. Although I agree with the idea, it's a disservice to present it with "There's a fancy word which means [...] Henceforth, you should do as I say."
Obviously one should not always be happy. You shouldn't be happy at a funeral. You should also have cause to go to a funeral (having friends, family, etc.). You should also do things you might hate or cause pain because long term they are good. Studying, running, etc. Life if full of these struggles and they are good.
But there is also a common hedonistic misunderstanding where people seek pleasure, avoid pain, and think it will lead to happiness, or fulfillment, or however you want to characterize a "good" life. I see this a lot in the "self-care" advocates who justify unhealthy behavior by positioning it as championing some self-diagnosed mental health cause. It often looks like "I'm going to ignore my responsibilities because I feel bad and people shouldn't question me because I am the full authority on anything I categorize as my mental health."
A better language and a better society has a more sophisticated set of words to communicate with.
For example parenthood can be a large collection of frustration and exhaustion, and still be one of the most powerful gate to happiness.
Shouldn't I? I suspect you're just unthinkingly exporting cultural expectations you've absorbed. I don't believe all cultures treat funerals as necessarily sad occasions, and I really don't like being told what I should feel by someone else (although I realise you probably didn't mean it that way).
(small edit)
In my mind mourning is a very private and too sad an event to have people around, and there is bound to be cultures where mourning is cause to celebrate, have fun, and enjoy life in all of its beauty.
I was born and raised in Poland, a Catholic country, and we do gather after the funeral to mourn and eat together. However, apparently this custom dates back to Slavic times – this may explain the difference between our experiences.
And Ireland is VERY Catholic.
1. feeling or showing pleasure or contentment
2. having a sense of confidence in or satisfaction with
3. fortunate and convenient
RIP
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrasia
> Weakness of will to act against one's own better judgement.
It's everywhere in modern society, and I'd love to see it called out more.
For self control, I feel like it's universal human experience to always find this falling short. Throughout history we do things we know we shouldn't, as in, we agree they're bad for our health or unethical, but we're really good at doing it anyway for whatever reason. Reasons like forgetting in the heat of the moment or dreaming up some unreasonable justification. So, to say there's something new in modern society about this, I don't know if I agree. If anything I think each individual's ability to manage this is under direct attack by increasingly effective mechanisms manipulating our cognitive biases and flaws, such as notification bells and other UX dark/whatever patterns.
As for the changing of presumptive morals, this I feel is quite noticeable in modern society, and I wonder if when someone appears "offended for being called out," what's really happening is a misinterpretation of their morals. In fact they're acting out their morals just fine, and there's a disagreement.
The example of this I most often think about is laziness. I personally feel bad if I spend a day at home watching netflix or whatever. I think I should instead be reading my HUGE backlog of books I want to get through, or work on my personal projects, or go clean the local park, or do literally anything. If you catch me watching netflix, that's a failure to act out my morals.
That said, I don't have the strongest argument for my morals. After all, what's all that wrong with spending a lifetime sitting at home watching netflix? Honestly? Do we need to have massive expectations for all the billions of humans? Maybe we do, and maybe the person works really hard during the day, and that's good enough? Or maybe our technology has advanced to the point where perhaps it's just fine for us to relax and float on the river of life. In fact maybe technology has nothing to do with it, maybe it was always ok to do nothing. In Cory Doctorow's "Walkaway," there's a subset of the culture that exclusively do nothing, contribute nothing, so as to lessen the guilt of hardworkers when it's time for them to take a break: "Relax, there's no way you can be lazier than us after all!"
What examples of people being offended, for being called out for what, did you have in mind?
Just very simple things, like if you were to suggest to someone evidently overweight to perhaps move around a little more or watch their diet, they (or other people for that matter) are likely to call you judgemental and be offended.
It’s one thing to state that collectively, people are more obese these days than in the past, and that certain proscriptions (food intake type and quantity, activity type and quantity) are called for. In most cases such statements would be unremarkable and get broad agreement. But you don’t know me or what I’ve been doing/trying etc, so on what basis do you think you can make a comment like that about me and expect me not to be offended? I find that expectation quite remarkable. It’s not that people are more offended these days as much as it is people find it perfectly acceptable to do and say what in the old days would be considered “rude” or “impolite”. Civility has been upended by “truth telling”. Can’t say I’m a huge fan tbh.
1. Nobody has a right to judge others. 2. I judge everybody who disagrees with me to be dicks.
Either your own rulebook applies to everyone except you (hypocrisy) or your premise is false (selfcontradction). If you hold that people should not pretend they have the right to think at others, then you should stop doing so yourself. Or is it not the freedom of thinking but the freedom of speech you dislike? Of course because you yourself enjoy your right to judge others (and have done so here) it follows that your premise is false. Thus, everyone has a right to judge others. QED
The opposite claim is less wrong: nobody has a right to be free of judgement from others. To argue otherwise reduces to: I don't like shame, so I deny its validity by blaming others. Being shameless is some kind of behavior disorder predicate, not a virtue! For example here is some random guy in Arkansas who writes about these topics:
"when disturbed characters do perceive that someone is judging them in a negative manner, they easily think that it’s the other person who has the problem."
Source: https://www.drgeorgesimon.com/shameless-and-guiltless-thinki...
The social implications topic came up centuries ago in the Federalist v Antifederalist debate. Where IIRC there was a line of reasoning that the new USA didn't need certain organs of power (law enforcement?) because the 'coercive force of shame' within communities was sufficient to self regulate. I haven't read this stuff for decades but as I recall the counter argument went like: yeah maybe for you guys up north but that only works in your homogeneous post-puritan monoculture... down here in the south we have slave revolts to suppress, er property rights to enforce.
On a lighter note, this whole topic reminds me of:"oh you strenuously object?" from A Few Good Men:
I suppose you could argue about the health and longevity benefits of being low bodyfat, restricting calories, regular cardiovascular activities, these are scientifically documented... however, allow me to assume for a second that you haven't maximized these to their utmost. Do you, personally, fast to the maximum recommended amount, do cardiovascular to the maximum recommended amount, maintain a super cut bodyfat %, etc? Maybe you do quite well, but do you do it perfectly? Never drink alcohol (increased risk of cancer for even 1 drink a week)? Apply sunscreen in all cases you're in the sun (melanoma)? Avoid eating meats (cancer, cardiovascular disease)?
I'm going to assume no, because, what a life, right? You probably make some sacrifices to your longevity, for a life that's a little more chaotic and fun. So now the question is just, to what degree? I think that degree of variability is high, and I think it's perfectly normal to be fat and rational. I'm an example, lol, because I was once 15% bodyfat, 2pl8 lifter, 5k every other day kind of guy, and now I'm 10kg overweight. The upside is I get to eat cake, which I am obsessed with, and sleep in. I found a balance I'm happy with. I fluctuate towards and away 10kg overweight, never over, and have a life I like.
So when you see me fat, are you going to say I've lost control of my life? I think I have things under control. I think my ethics are in line with my actions.
That's part 1 of my thoughts, part 2 is a challenge to you to take some of my values that I'm more than happy to defend vigorously as ethical, and ask yourself (and tell us if you're open to it, I'm curious) what you'd feel if I asked you these questions:
1. If you live in a place that has elections, have you voted in every single election for which you've been capable, after spending a decent amount of time researching candidates first?
2. Do you prioritize taking public transit? Or, bicycling and walking, or similar?
3. The times you drive a private vehicle, do you rigorously give right of way to pedestrians and bicycles, even if it's not strictly legally required to do so?
4. You don't ever litter, right?
5. You regularly attend civil rights protests, right?
6. You write your representative about civil rights and other issues frequently, don't you?
7. You push for open-sourcing any code you write with stakeholders, yeah? And you open source all your personal project code?
8. You support strikers by not buying goods from companies undergoing a strike, and not crossing a picket line, right?
9. You are a vocal LGBT ally, right? And you challenge family and friends when they voice bigoted ideas?
10. If you are a founder or similar, do you follow the principles of fairness in labor by either profit sharing, or incorporating as a co-op?
11. You don't buy from companies that engage in slavery, wage theft, exploitative labor practices, or extreme environmental harm, right? Generally speaking, you check into this before buying from these companies? And you only shop local businesses, rather than monopolizing companies like Walmart?
If you find these questions surprising, tiresome, offensive, annoying, stupid, or ridiculous, can you see how someone might feel the same if you suggested they reprioritize their life around weight loss? Because it's not just a question of ethics and capability of self control for implementing ethics, it's also a question of prioritizing certain ethics.
Furthermore: your questions are about ethics, which mine may differ from yours. I wouldn't be offended by such questions and in fact I could quite vividly debate all of them.
However I may be concerned over someone's weight especially if they are close to me, for the objectively indisputable reason of health.
Sure, but will you engage the first part of my comment then, regarding degrees of healthiness, and the health choices you may not be making?
I'm basically arguing both that it's not as indisputable as you seem to say, and, that you may be missing the full picture here.
That would be normal mutual care.
From the wiki article ""lacking command" or "weakness", occasionally transliterated as acrasia or Anglicised as acrasy or acracy) is a lack of self-control, or acting against one's better judgment."
Less seriously, a grammatical construction I wish we had in English is the Latin future passive participle, typically ending in -ndus, -nda, -ndum. It means that something needs/ought to be done.
For instance "Amanda" is "she who must be loved."
So if someone asks you why your feature isn't in production yet, you can say the pull request is reviewandum.
Or you can tell the kids that the trash is emptianda, or the dog is walkandus.
These are kind of lame examples, but once you get the idea you can find places where it'd be convenient several times a day.
> agenda
I see what you did there.
This is probably a joke but it still is an absurd category to think about.
How can anyone be compelled (by what force?) to love someone else?
You can interpret it as implying an obligation or compulsion; but I don't think obligation or compulsion are direct meanings of this verb-form.
And as you say, they’re really like gesture words, which make so much sense, especially as text is now read/written without any human speaking behaviour at all.
Arguably emojis fill this need, but I’m unconvinced.
But there's also the meaning of "this and that", so you might be right.
...
> It means that something needs/ought to be done.
> something needs/ought to be done.
> "she who must be loved."
All of your examples are in the present tense.
Or at least that's how I reason it. English is rather hard to analyze sometimes.
"I am having a party next week." That's a present continuous sentence referring to a future activity.
Some argue that English doesn't even have a future tense. For these things it certainly is lacking, along with German it seems.
What about "I will have a party next week" or "there will be a party next week"?
> Some argue that English doesn't even have a future tense.
I learned this as: There's no language feature that denotes future tense (like a suffix), but it's done via grammar (and context).
I have to acknowledge that I'm not the right person to be debating this. Like most native speakers, my grasp of the rules often boils down to whether something "sounds" right.
Ought and should express objective and subjective opinion respectively.
# Passive
amita - to have been loved
amata - to be loved
amota - to be going to be loved
# Active
aminta - to have been loving
amanta - loving
amonta - to be going to be loving
Li estis amita - He had been loved
Ŝi estas amanta - She is loving
Mi estos amota - I will be going to be loved
You can create 9 combinations from these simple shapes (or 18 of you count passives), and if you draw them on a time-line they will correspond to distinct sub-sets.
There also some participles like "amanda/amindo/amenda" but I have simply forgotten what they each mean. I think one of them mean "worthy of being loved", another meaning "should be loved".
I, for one, find myself wishing for the destruction of Phoenician cities multiple times a day[1].
- The pull request needs reviewed
- The trash needs emptied
- The dog needs walked
Just one(ish) extra syllable!
(There are some fairly ordinary English words derived from this construction. The agenda is those things that need to be done. The legend (of a map, graph, etc.) is the stuff you need to read.)
However, in the modern age it seems like metamodernism has become king, and that is something that does not play well with ancient greek culture and its derivatives. I am a firm believer that the crisis of the West is a cultural crisis where the departure from the ideas that shaped us, lead us into this kind of metamodern nihilism that everyone sees around them.
Ancient greek ideas and philosophy are still relatively unspoiled from modern institutions (except Democracy of course, but thats another point), which means that reviving some of the ethos found there could actually help us find some purpose again.
This was not only a thing in Nazism where this is very apparent, but it was a kind of embedded in that time.
Ofcourse after the wars, people kind of embraced this post modernist, brutalistic and nihilistic, or non sense attitude. Take the Cobra and Dada movements in art, the book the Lord of the Flies, Brutalism of Corbusier.
Wouldn't be far fetched for the humans of our age to be seen as the generation of hubris by a less technologically advanced but ultimately surviving culture in the future.
We need to get our shit together and offer the people in the west a vision worth living for, or we will all happily turn into AI-made paperclips
Old English are way harder to understand for an neo-English speaker than Homer writings, going back 3000 years, are for a neo-Greek speaker. Does this make English a dead language?
Also these terms exist in English in one way or the other, taking time to study a word gives it a lot more deeper meaning that it needs, especially when the word uses changes by time and place. Many of these Classics worshipers can be paralleled with the weird Japanese culture worshipers Weeabos.
Ancient Greeks didnt just invent it, they thought deeply about all systems of power and their failure modes. Techniques they used feel still a thing from the future for us modern "democrats".
For example, take the term ostracism/ostracize. Today the term has degenerated to mean a certain negative cultural phenomenon.
For them it was a democratic process, a sort of negative voting, to pre-emptively remove from power somebody becoming too entrenched.
"Reviving" means obviously the good bits, unless you claim that the only possibility is an all-or-nothing replica.
Also, "Greek democracy" was diverse. Athenian democracy isn't at all the same as Spartan democracy.
Why this matters? In Italy, my country, there is much talking of eliminating a type of high school where ancient greek and latin study is central and carried out through all five years of its duration. People that haven't attended such a school fail to grasp why it may be useful to some (and also some who did, but they're a minority).
For the programmers or aspiring programmers out there: what most shaped my problem solving and bug finding abilities is translating ancient greek and latin in high school. The skill of "reverse engineering" an ancient language is very similar to reverse engineering a (short but difficult) program, for instance.
Or, you know, we could teach that directly instead of using dead language as a proxy for it
It's perfectly fine that schools teaching programming directly without ancient languages exist. But why eliminate the possibility for a student to learn those languages when almost all people who did are happy with it? Anyway, I won't debate the matter further: my example is merely set to say that learning doesn't always have barriers as we like to think. Learning some greek and less math doesn't mean you won't ever be a mathematician.
These obligations seemed to be very important to the culture at the time. So much so that it was considered the domain of Zeus (Zeus Xenios) to protect strangers seeking shelter. There are plenty of examples in myth of people breaking the sanctity of xenia and receiving divine punishment for it.
Xenia was such a powerful social norm that for a warrior, in the heat of battle, is perfectly fine to temporarily be nude, exchange your finest armour for a lower grade one, and still be happy about it.
See also their translator's note to their translation
There's a coffee shop near me, attached to and co-operated by a climbing gear store, called arête. The proximity to the climbing store suggests one interpretation, but it is an excellent coffee shop.
The ê before the t is evidence betraying the disappearance of a historic s, which is still present in English cognates:
hôpital -> hospital
forêt -> forest
The word arête means edge, similar to bord.
Not every bord is an arête; only some protruding ridge or sharp edge. It seems to be used for geological ridges, like mountain crests and such, but evidently it can also refer to the blade of a knife or sharp too or such.
This is because it's stripping the circumflex accent somewhere. English dictionaries list arête.
According to good old etymonline.com (thank you, Douglas!) the unaccented form exists in English, as well as the separate word of Greek origin:
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=arete
A similar situation exists with the word parity which has two entirely different meanings: "number of pregnancies" (where the word shares etymology with parent and parentage) or equal status, from Latin paritas.
This ultimately traces back to a homonym in Proto Indo-European:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/*pere-
The number-of-pregancies parity traces back to (1) and "even parity; reaching parity" to (2).
One parity traces back
I found his two books very interesting and I had not heard of arete until reading him, even though I had read Homer (in Spanish).
Parrhesia means literally "to speak everything" and by extension "to speak freely", "to speak boldly". It implies not only freedom of speech, but the obligation to speak the truth for the common good, even at personal risk.
https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Truth-Government-Lectures-198...
It's why we have the two sayings "Man is a political animal" and "Man is a social creature." They are different translations of the idea that "Man is a creature of the polis."
Consider "polity".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police
I also would think they are pronounced differently, but a quick Google isn't clarifying how polis is pronounced and my two classes of classical Greek taken eons ago aren't sufficient background for me to be confident about my pronunciation of the word.
If anyone could cast light on the pronunciation of polis, that would be cool.
I also thought this means the second syllable should be a short i, consistent with how we pronounce metropolis.
Because police stresses the second syllable, it sounds like ee not a short i. So I didn't readily make the connection between the two words in part because they are spelled different and in part because I don't think they sound alike.
It would be different if it went into a bit of depth on a few of them. But this looks like a list of words to memorize for throwing out at dinner parties or something.
I guess practically speaking that's what most people really want.
From your link - "such as temperance, moderation, prudence, purity, decorum, and self-control."
Specifically:
To make a distinction between technē and arete, the value of technē is the end product while arete values choosing the action that promotes the best moral good.
See:
> From Ancient Greek ἐγχειρίδιον (enkheirídion), from ἐν (en, “in”) + χείρ (kheír, “hand”) + a neuter suffix.
And given how news, media, entertainment and politics always gravitates towards the least common denominator of knowledge and education forcing the rest of us to deal with both demagogues and TV shows about wealthy housewives, "ochlocracy" (mob rule) is another that needs a revival.
> From Middle French ochlocratie, from Ancient Greek ὀχλοκρατία (okhlokratía), from ὄχλος (ókhlos, “multitude, crowd”) + κράτος (krátos, “power”).
μαθηματικὴ (mathematike): If I remember correctly, it means 1. learning, 2. letter or book and 3. "everything there is to know (for certain)".
χαίρε (chaire): Used as a greeting, literally "be happy!"
Also it is funny that βαίνω (baino) means: I am walking, while "Bein" means leg in German - the amount of Ancient Greek words in German and other languages is ridiculously high.
Here's[0] a massive list of them, and you can see cognates between languages you might not have thought would have them, like Sanskrit, Latin, and Ancient Greek sharing many cognates.
Fascinating subject, definitely.
I'd love to be skilled in Ancient Greek but alas it's not so. Unfortunately, my understanding of Ancient Grecian classics I've read comes only from English translations (Benjamin Jowett and others), and, no doubt, as good and as scholarly these translations are, my somewhat limited knowledge of modern languages such as French and German tells me that even the best translations fall short of the ideal—that of reading and understanding a text in its own language.
Every language has words whose meanings don't translate exactly into other languages, they've nuances that are lost in translation and even though skilled translators may understand their subtleties they have limited choices and must compromise.
More than ever, what this excellent little article has brought home to me is that those differences in meaning are much wider and more nuanced in Ancient Greek than in modern languages by virtue that ancient Greeks had a different perception of life and the world around them than those of us familiar with modern life.
It's logical sense that words used by those whose perceptions of life are foreign to ours have no simple or direct translation. However that could be to our advantage—with our newly acquired knowledge of these wonderful words it would nice if we could expand our own horizons. Perhaps difficult, but if we started using them in their Ancient Grecian context that may come with time (it seems those Ancient Greeks still have much to teach us).
Whilst I've considered these matters previously, reading this story has made them much more poignant
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%201-d&geo=...
"To provide an example, let's consider a simple statement in English and explore how Ancient Egyptian could potentially convey additional information or nuances:
English statement: "The sun rises."
Equivalent statement in Ancient Egyptian (not a direct translation): "Ra, the life-giving sun, majestically ascends in the sky, illuminating the world and ushering in a new day."
In this example, the English statement conveys the basic idea that the sun rises. However, the Ancient Egyptian statement incorporates additional cultural and religious associations. It mentions Ra, the ancient Egyptian sun god, attributing the sun's rising to Ra's life-giving aspect. It also includes descriptions such as the sun's majestic ascension, its role in illuminating the world, and its symbolic significance of ushering in a new day.
By incorporating specific cultural references and poetic descriptions, the Ancient Egyptian statement provides a more elaborate and nuanced understanding of the sun's rising, capturing the broader context and symbolic layers associated with this natural phenomenon within the ancient Egyptian worldview.
Please note that the above example is a hypothetical representation and not a direct translation, as the complete nuances and intricacies of the Ancient Egyptian language and culture cannot be fully captured in English. It serves to illustrate the potential for additional information and cultural richness that can be conveyed in Ancient Egyptian beyond the basic content of an English statement."
Do you really think that Ancient Egyptians didn't have a simple declarative statement that "the sun rises"?
Don't fall into exoticism. Ancient Egyptians were human beings speaking language for the purposes of communication in their day-to-day life, just like we do.
That being said, it definitely could be interesting to see how LLMs would work when trained on different language corpuses and other cultural contexts.
That sentence alone tells you an awful lot about the society it came from.
============= This is Latin, not Greek, but ===========
Supposedly "Cicero" was pronounced "KICK-er-oo"
I don't care. I'm going to keep saying SISS-er-oh.
Evidently (since it's the family name) it's because his ancestors farmed chickpeas, but I still like to imagine it as a personal nickname instead.
eudaímonia: "a good spirit took you" - it is like saying, "a lucky star".
aretḗ: it is in the "arts", and in the idea of áriston, of the áristos ("aristocracy"). The "arya" is the noble because "artist" - That with a Goal ("artha").
phrónēma: that energetic inside - "frenetic".
kléos: today it would be "inclitus", but for some reason the term (which is present in some post-Latin languages) did not reach English. Edit: I am surprised (did not notice), the root of 'kléos' is the same of 'listen'.
And so on for the rest (still reading the list).
I coined the term "Xenoserver" back in 1999, for a paper in IEEE HotOS proposing an architecture for allowing systems in core networks to safely accept and execute code from untrusted users (for a fee, of course!): https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/papers/1999-hoto...
I was inspired by the word "xenos" (meaning both stranger and guest, or in combination a stranger who you invited into your home) rather than the word "xenia" for the general concept of hospitality extended to such a stranger [EDIT: since I wasn't familiar with the word "xenia"].
The Xenoserver project at Cambridge University developed this idea, and eventually focused around the hypervisor, which took on the name Xen.
https://classicalwisdom.com/culture/literature/the-odyssey-b...
I hope Greek is still being taught, it's quite the puzzle.
>Ou is the negative adverb for facts and statements, negating both single words and sentences. Mê is the negative used in prohibitions and expressions of doubt meaning "not" and "no." As ou negates fact and statement; mê rejects, οu denies; mê is relative, ou absolute; mê subjective, ou objective.
The particles are found in the two words for "nothing" you mentioned, ouden/meden. Meden is usually found in imperatives, oaths, i.e. something you want to never happen, while ouden simply states that something never happens.
The more we study chimps the more we realize that we, as their descendants, are pretty vicious as well. Education by our parents, schools and social circles play a big role, to keep in check that viciousness. How much is any ones guess!
In my opinion we are gonna solve many of the psychological problems of humans in single digit years in the near future. Dr. Daniel Amen, have stated that after examining a hundred thousand brain scans of humans, every single psychological problem people have, is observed in brain scans, as reduced electrical signals in the brain. Problems like suicidal thoughts, depression you name it. Every one of them, means the brain do not fire enough electrical signals.
The best natural substance in the world, which we produce here in Greece from the ancient times, to solve that problem, is saffron. It is on par with the best synthetic anti-depressants, and probably better. Dr. Amen eats saffron every day, and i do as well.
So there is a solution for every person on the planet to be genius 1000x or a 1.000.000x, never suffer psychological ailments, and that is to eat a lot of saffron every day. Then most of the virtues in that list, will come natural to humans.
we are not descended from chimps
Edit: I'm realizing this could be a language barrier. "Descendent" is the inverse of "ancestor". A descendent is directly downward in lineage from an ancestor.
I strongly recommend "You're Basically The Hagfish of Reptiles..." [1]. It will make your head spin.
Cool! I hope we can learn from this rich vocabulary the Greeks have developed to describe and to understand our common nature.
> "So there is a solution for every person on the planet to be genius 1000x or a 1.000.000x, never suffer psychological ailments, and that is to eat a lot of saffron every day."
wait what
I have written an article recently, in which i renamed Tor -> Pandiodos, Torrent -> Logothece, Bitcoin -> Drattergon,
/google emporas lichess blog/ it is somewhere there.
https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/77/8/557/5...
But if this was really significant, you'd expect saffron-producing/eating countries to stand out. Iran is #1, are they really all 1,000,000x happy geniuses?
Some of the virtues of the article, are a state of mind anyway, that's why i mention saffron. Many people are eating too much, only to feel better. Food has certainly the ability to alter our state of mind, which in some cases ends up in obesity.
Virtues in the article, like apatheia, ataraxia, eudaimonia include in their meaning, not indulging in every pleasure in excess, and food is one of them. Well, that can be automated by producing more saffron and lowering it's price.
The dose is the poison - take care with spices.
My friend died young of liver failure due to eating comfrey as a vegetable.
Saffron is toxic at that dose, very likely lethal. Please stay safe.
[edit]I would love to see PG coming back, programming a new Common Lisp by hand, and writing a 1000 page manual just by himself, if he gets a supercharged brain. GPT and Artificial intelligence will be left back in the dust.
superstition in Latin
Just... not too sure how we ended up here considering the topic of OP.
How many people drive their car full speed without being in a hurry? Or how many people eat more than their energy requirements dictate to? I think there is a solution to that, and that is saffron.
An example from daily life, binging random digital content is not Pleasure, enjoying a documentary or music is.
The story of the Odyssee describes Odysseus as being (literally) charmed by Calypso, a nymph with magical powers. Odysseus is described as longing for his wife, crying himself to sleep and Calypso using him for sex against his will. This is as straightforward as it gets when it comes to a description in Ancient Greece of a man being raped by a woman.
After skimming a few of the other unpaid articles it seems the author prefers implying their biases over outright stating them, often publishing articles with promising or suggestive titles, presenting two sides of an argument, then leaving the conclusion to the readers whose responses may or may not end up in the next article's "mailbag" section. Upon closer inspection the two sides are rarely truly representative of the entire spectrum of an issue, instead revealing a consistent political bent, e.g. Ayn Rand being contrasted with a free market liberal opinion.
It's always worth widening your horizon by reading material from people with contrasting opinions but it's also worth keeping in mind the bias of an author when engaging with their work, especially if it tries to appear objective and neutral.
was one i thought would be on there.
And generally speaking most of the Delphic maxims still have their validity despite the thousands of years that separate them from us: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphic_maxims
p.s. TIL that Odysseus was forced to be a sex slave for 7 years?
So yeah, forced seems right.