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The Greeks had two words for it — 14 Comments

  1. Ooops, typo, thanks. Will correct.

    I know I should have studied harder for that Greek test.

  2. any one other than me sees other greek words from the dead white guys?

    τύραννος

    té½rannos

    In ancient Greece, tyrants were influential opportunists that came to power by securing the support of different factions of a deme. The word “tyrannos” then carried no ethical censure; it simply referred to anyone, good or bad, who obtained executive power in a polis by unconventional means. Support for the tyrants came from the growing middle class and from the peasants who had no land or were in debt to the wealthy land owners. It is true that they had no legal right to rule, but the people preferred them over kings or the aristocracy. The Greek tyrants stayed in power by using mercenary soldiers from outside of their respective city-state.

    [you mean like granting immunity to interpol?]


    the subsequent growth of Athenian democracy, the title “tyrant” took on its familiar negative connotations. The murder of the tyrant Hipparchus by Aristogeiton and Harmodios in Athens in 514 BC marked the beginning of the so-called “cult of the tyrannicides” (i.e., of killers of tyrants). Contempt for tyranny characterised this cult movement. The attitude became especially prevalent in Athens after 508 BC, when Cleisthenes reformed the political system so that it resembled demokratia (ancient participant democracy as opposed to the modern representative democracy).

    The Thirty Tyrants whom the Spartans imposed on a defeated Attica in 404 BC wouldn’t be classified as tyrants in the usual sense.

    but given that this has to do with a certain type of populism, and our leader loves populism.

    Populism
    Greek tyranny in the main grew out of the struggle of the popular classes against the aristocracy or against priest-kings where archaic traditions and mythology sanctioned hereditary and/or traditional rights to rule. Popular coups generally installed tyrants, who often became or remained popular rulers, at least in the early part of their reigns. For instance, the popular imagination remembered Peisistratus for an episode – related by (pseudonymous) Aristotle, but possibly fictional – in which he exempted a farmer from taxation because of the particular barrenness of his plot. Peisistratus’ sons Hippias and Hipparchus, on the other hand, were not such able rulers, and when the disaffected aristocrats Harmodios and Aristogeiton slew Hipparchus, Hippias’ rule quickly became oppressive, resulting in the expulsion of the Peisistratids in 510 BC.

    from roman times to now, what was accidental then has become a process.

    yet… we cant see its remakes as what they are

    Tyrant – a harsh and cruel ruler who places his or her own interests or the interests of a small oligarchy over the best interests of the general population.

    heck…
    another latin/greek word.

    nihilism…

    “Nothing exists. If anything did exist it could not be known. If it was known, the knowledge of it would be incommunicable.” the original nihilist Gorgias

    I will bet that few realize the meanings when they hear some talk about it. they tend to think of, like above, an extreme form of relativism/skepticism.

    but they know this one:
    the principles of a Russian revolutionary group, active in the latter half of the 19th century, holding that existing social and political institutions must be destroyed in order to clear the way for a new state of society and employing extreme measures, including terrorism and assassination.

    nothing like when progressive nihilists take tyrannical office

    And none can understand that sentence by its proper meanings, and “get it”.

  3. ya want to laugh..

    Νέμεσις, is also called Nemesis

    which is also called Rhamnousia / Rhamnusia

    and i would relable reid as “invidia”
    (but thats roman)

    but then again it all goes back to the inversion of the virtues, raising the seven deadly sins above the virtues.

    Invidia is one of the Seven Deadly Sins
    8 evil thoughts by ponticus…

    Γαστριμαργία (gastrimargia)
    Πορνεία (porneia)
    Φιλαργυρία (philargyria)
    Λύπη (lype)
    Ὁργῆ (orge)
    Ἀκηδία (akedia)
    Κενοδοξία (kenodoxia)
    Ὺπερηφανία (hyperephania)

    and if one was to look from above, then the seven deadly sins which undoes man, fits reid and others to a T… (too bad they think that the virtues are just a way to prevent others from using a winning strategy).

    In AD 590, some years after Evagrius, Pope Gregory I revised this list to form the more common Seven Deadly Sins, by folding sorrow/despair into acedia, vainglory into pride, and adding extravagance and envy, while removing fornication from the list. In the order used by both Pope Gregory and by Dante Alighieri in his epic poem The Divine Comedy, the seven deadly sins are as follows:

    luxuria (extravagance – later lust)
    gula (gluttony)
    avaritia (avarice/greed)
    acedia (acedia/discouragement – later sloth)
    ira (wrath)
    invidia (envy)
    superbia (pride)

    so what one can clearly state is that they are losing because they have not morals to resist the temptations of the 7 deadly sins that bring man to his fall.

    pride goeth before the fall
    [one could say hubris and pride are similar]

    and if one lists them again
    “pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth/acedia”

    and matches them to the holy virtues:
    humility, charity, kindness, patience, chastity, temperance, and diligence

    its clear to see that one destroys a culture and nation from the inside by visiting the sins upon its people. the story of soddom and gomorra made real by the actiosn of ordinary men and women.

    they take pride that they can get you to envy others who you belive to be gluttonous so that your lust can be used to bring false wrath down for the reward of sloth.

    🙂

  4. In 1589, Peter Binsfeld paired each of the deadly sins with a demon, who tempted people by means of the associated sin. According to Binsfeld’s classification of demons, the pairings are as follows

    Lucifer: Pride (superbia)
    Mammon: Greed (avaritia)
    Asmodeus: Lust (luxuria)
    Leviathan: Envy (invidia)
    Beelzebub: Gluttony (gula or gullia)
    Satan: Wrath (ira)
    Belphegor: Sloth (acedia)

  5. and a tip to my and neo’s forever discussion on feminists… 🙂

    According to a 2009 study by a Jesuit scholar, the most common deadly sin confessed by men is lust, and for women, pride.

    its why modern texts on political control and manipulation of the state, focus on maximizing womens vanity and pride. their pull is so strong you can get them to murder their own to be fashionable, modern, etc.

    “The women has her own battlefield with every child she brings into the world she fights a battle for the nation”

    ever notice that all top womens mags are ideological (their editors, creators and publishers say so), but mens mags are not?

    “All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.”

    “Hate is more lasting than dislike”

    “The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.”

    all those quotes were hitlers.

    care to read other quotes before we forbid their speakings for vanity reasons?

    Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.
    Friedrich Nietzsche

    and if you dont believe that we negated them for vanity..

    Censorship is the height of vanity.
    Martha Graham

    “There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.”

    “Worst of all, it is women who usually have to do, usually alone, all the dirty work of the kitchen and household, work that is unimportant, hard, tiresome, and soul-destroying”

    Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism”

    The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency”

    “The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses”

    The goal of socialism is communism.”

    all that was lenin…

    “Democracy is the road to socialism.”

    “Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.”

    that was Marx

    and this…

    “Women have no sympathy… And my experience of women is almost as large as Europe. And it is so intimate too. Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving you any in return for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so.” — Florence Nightingale

    fun with words quotes history and origins…

  6. Everything must go – even the allegedly universal disciplines of logic, mathematics and science, and the intellectual values of objectivity, clarity and precision on which the former depend

    DAPHNE PATAI

    “Not merely about equal rights for women … Feminism aspires to be much more than this. It bids to be a totalizing scheme resting on a grand theory, one that is as all-inclusive as Marxism, as assured of its ability to unmask hidden meanings as Freudian psychology, and as fervent in its condemnation of apostates as evangelical fundamentalism. Feminist theory provides a doctrine of original sin: The world’s evil’s originate in male supremacy.” — Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge, Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women’s Studies, p.183 (***Note: Patai & Koertge write from a critical perspective of where feminism has been going and use the above in the context of an example to illustrate their case. See Daphne Patai’s website here: http://www.daphnepatai.com/ And read about her work here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Patai )

    i now go back to sleep till the next crisis that doesnt make sense

  7. A tremendous victory and Obama has been severely weakened. Obama-Pelosi-ReidCare is dead. The Dems are only fooling themselves if they try to blame it all on a weak Coakley candidacy. Add to this our victories in Virginia and New Jersey and it all spells trouble for the Democrats.

    If the Republicans don’t blow it, that is.

    The GOP has to nominate good, electable, conservative candidates. They have to lead with the right message; fiscal responsibility, jobs and the economy. Keep the social issues in the background. Welcome the Tea Party people into the GOP and adopt their issues but don’t let them dominate it.

    Do these things and Obama is a one term president.

  8. Tragedy, as an art form, never felt so good.

    How about the German word schadenfreude? Who knew it was related to the English word ‘scathe’? Oh and wait, this is good…

    “derived from the Greek word ἐπιχαιρεκακία. Nathan Bailey’s 18th-century Universal Etymological English Dictionary, for example, contains an entry for epicharikaky that gives its etymology as a compound of epi (upon), chaira (joy/charity/heart), and kakon (evil).”

    {Insert my evil cackling laughter.]

    (Thanks, Wikipedia.)

  9. hubris Overweening pride; arrogance, which leads to:

    é¡tÄ“ criminal recklessness, that causes:

    Nemesis divine vengeance; retributive justice.

  10. Beyond Hubris and Nemesis, the lesson is this:

    If you stick to putting your name on the podium, you’re less likely to have every word on it turn out to be a lie.

  11. Another thought, and related to the ongoing discussions here about Obama, and who he really is:

    Remember that whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

    I used to think this was part of what happened to Clinton–although Clinton was intact for longer that he was president. I think madness is even more likely to be what is happening to Obama (that may be mere wishful thinking, though). Huxley expects Obama to implode, and maybe even go so far as resigning the presidency before completing his term, because he’s simply not up to the task. I haven’t seen anything so far that rules that possibility out, and there are some things that suggest it may come to pass. I remember noticing, a year ago this very day, that his inaugural address showed none of the charisma of his campaign speeches. He didn’t recover the magic in any of his subsequent speeches, either. And he’s always been a sort of cipher.

    Well, we are the Watchers.

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