3 ms·

I'm trying to figure out what this means but can't. Are you implying the people of the past had some huge secrets figured out?

harimau777 3y ago
It's possible that they are referring to humanities based on classical Greek and Roman thought and the idea of a "Western Canon". Perhaps in contrast to modern humanities that emphasize also understanding non-Western cultures.
- pyuser583 3y ago
  It’s not “old Western” against “new non-Western.” Lots of “old Western” ideas are Islamic, and plenty of new ideas are very Western. Barthes, Chompsky, T.S. Eliot and Foucault are as Western as you get.
  - anon291 3y ago
    That's right. We shouldn't think of the ancient classical Canons of Afro-Eurasia as separate. They all knew of each other and drew on each other, even if they have their distinct expressions.
    - pyuser583 3y ago
      Canons of Afro-Eurasia … I’m curious what you mean by that! Are you taking about “Mediterranean Civilization?”
- anon291 3y ago
  A Western Canon would be better than the modern canon we have, but really any classical Canon would be more sufficient, whether it be Greco-Roman, Persian, Indian, Chinese, etc. All these cultures had great thinkers whose philosophies elucidate basic universal realities on human nature.
pyuser583 3y ago
I’m going to guess the poster meant studying Aristotle, Plato, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, etc. Rather than more modern theorists. If that’s what the poster meant, I strongly agree. If I could push a button requiring all students to take four years of Plato, I’d smash that button again and again.
- anon291 3y ago
  Yes... this is what I meant. People don't read the classics. Classics aren't good because they're old. They're good because they're the original 'good reads 5 star review' except it's even better because you're taking votes from dead people too. It's not just the Greek greats either. The same basic approach to human behavior has been discovered by all great cultures. The Indians, the Persians, the Chinese, etc... all of them knew how humans acted and wrote endless treatises on it. At the end of the day... people act the same. When you read 1000-year-old stories and realize people then behaved the same way now, you start to understand the things that make people tick. It's not going to be any different tomorrow than it is today. People do not change. Yes their circumstances do, and if you look only at the response you might conclude they actually changed, but the way in which people respond rarely change substantially. > people try to understand the relationship between Apple and Google by looking at the relationship between the dutch and the british east india company. Absurd. Of course, we shouldn't look at apple and google and think the dutch and british east india company would be the same. They're different. But what doesn't change is people and yes, you can look at the people behind the companies and they will probably all act the same. Corporations are not people; people are people.
anon291 3y ago
No. I'm implying that they had some stuff figured out and we waste a lot of time rediscovering the same basic impulses that underlie all human behavior. It's like... Newton didn't understand gravity better than we did today, but imagine if you throw out all knowledge from physics developed prior to 1950 and then tried to reconstruct it. Would you agree it's a waste of time? And yet, we've basically done that with humanities education. The great classics are seen as wastes and we've substituted them for vapid books without any important insight into human nature. Or worse, a very contemporary surface-level observation of human nature.

harimau777 3y ago

It's possible that they are referring to humanities based on classical Greek and Roman thought and the idea of a "Western Canon". Perhaps in contrast to modern humanities that emphasize also understanding non-Western cultures.

pyuser583 3y ago
It’s not “old Western” against “new non-Western.” Lots of “old Western” ideas are Islamic, and plenty of new ideas are very Western. Barthes, Chompsky, T.S. Eliot and Foucault are as Western as you get.
- anon291 3y ago
  That's right. We shouldn't think of the ancient classical Canons of Afro-Eurasia as separate. They all knew of each other and drew on each other, even if they have their distinct expressions.
  - pyuser583 3y ago
    Canons of Afro-Eurasia … I’m curious what you mean by that! Are you taking about “Mediterranean Civilization?”
anon291 3y ago
A Western Canon would be better than the modern canon we have, but really any classical Canon would be more sufficient, whether it be Greco-Roman, Persian, Indian, Chinese, etc. All these cultures had great thinkers whose philosophies elucidate basic universal realities on human nature.

pyuser583 3y ago

I’m going to guess the poster meant studying Aristotle, Plato, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, etc. Rather than more modern theorists. If that’s what the poster meant, I strongly agree. If I could push a button requiring all students to take four years of Plato, I’d smash that button again and again.

anon291 3y ago
Yes... this is what I meant. People don't read the classics. Classics aren't good because they're old. They're good because they're the original 'good reads 5 star review' except it's even better because you're taking votes from dead people too. It's not just the Greek greats either. The same basic approach to human behavior has been discovered by all great cultures. The Indians, the Persians, the Chinese, etc... all of them knew how humans acted and wrote endless treatises on it. At the end of the day... people act the same. When you read 1000-year-old stories and realize people then behaved the same way now, you start to understand the things that make people tick. It's not going to be any different tomorrow than it is today. People do not change. Yes their circumstances do, and if you look only at the response you might conclude they actually changed, but the way in which people respond rarely change substantially. > people try to understand the relationship between Apple and Google by looking at the relationship between the dutch and the british east india company. Absurd. Of course, we shouldn't look at apple and google and think the dutch and british east india company would be the same. They're different. But what doesn't change is people and yes, you can look at the people behind the companies and they will probably all act the same. Corporations are not people; people are people.

anon291 3y ago

No. I'm implying that they had some stuff figured out and we waste a lot of time rediscovering the same basic impulses that underlie all human behavior. It's like... Newton didn't understand gravity better than we did today, but imagine if you throw out all knowledge from physics developed prior to 1950 and then tried to reconstruct it. Would you agree it's a waste of time? And yet, we've basically done that with humanities education. The great classics are seen as wastes and we've substituted them for vapid books without any important insight into human nature. Or worse, a very contemporary surface-level observation of human nature.