The Classical Greeks

The Classical Greeks, by Michael Grant..wonderful if you are a scholar of ancient Greece. Ponderous if you are not.

Basically, the Greeks learned from the many wars, and power struggles, that cooperation was better than non cooperation. At the same time in history, deductive thinking became more prevalent as a fruit of the newly acquired leisure time, afforded by their society.

A burst of creativity led to further didactic thinking that traveled through the society, in paintings, and literature. This developed into more sophisticated presentations, as the creativity of the artists caught on encouraged by the release from the back breaking toil of centuries.

Largess toward others began, not only in the form of government , as the Greeks headed toward early Democracy, but in the sharing of the beauty of their creativity, through the arts.

What are the lessons of the ancients? I guess it is that we all need time to develop our own pattern of growth. Just as a child goes through stages of development each society has to go through stages of development. Each society, whether modern or ancient, has to develop a way to allow their people to rise up from the back binding toil of hand to mouth existence. Providing sustenance, is not enough, since we have not shown success with that program.

I happen to disagree with our elitist way of taking jobs from people in other nations, that are not being paid "sufficient money" , by out standards. Jobs are needed everywhere in the world, to allow people to rise into the different standards of living, from poor, to working poor, to middle class, and so on.

Just look at the mess we are in , in our own country. We had to wait for the figures to show that jobs where being lost during this recession, that started in August 2005. Anytime a major industry is in trouble, it has a trickle down effect.

My Dad, was not a scholar, but he knew, that our national industries, housing and cars, could have a devastating trickle down effect. That hint from our conversations, and the experience I have accumulated now convince me beyond a doubt, that we can not let our national industries fail without severe economic problems. Where jobs are lost, new ones must be created, not only job re-training, but new jobs in a related industry.

Maybe I am wrong in my deductions, but, I believe that if we put the construction workers back to work, on the most needed projects, rebuilding roads, and bridges that are over 50 years old , we will be on the right track. Pork barrel projects have unfairly used the taxes that are collected for the maintenance of roads and bridges, and when more disasters occur, what do we tell the loved ones? A bridge to nowhere in Alaska, was worth more than the life of your loved one who died on a bridge crossing the Mississippi.