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Mount Athos, the “Autonomous Monastic State” of Greece (2016)

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Re: Mount Athos, the “Autonomous Monastic State” of Greece (2016)

#141

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

kippster wrote: post #114
raptorraver wrote: post #109

I had a two week pilgrimage to Mt Athos on Summer 2019. It was literally a trip to another world. We wondered around the peninsula and visited few monasteries and met wonderful people living there. Happy to see this on HN. If anyone has any questions I'm more than happy to answer those. Btw, there's a great documentary about Mt. Athos that I think really expresses the ehtos of the place: https://youtu.be/U5pwfLRI-R8

How feasible would it be to do a pilgrimage there without knowing Greek?

After traveling the world a bunch, I've learned that you can travel almost anywhere in the world and not know the language at all, and still get along fine. If you make a genuine effort to be a kind respectful guest/traveler, people all over the world will go out of their way to help you. All the core needs can be expressed universally by humans. A little money and small gifts of course helps to repay kindnesses.

Re: Mount Athos, the “Autonomous Monastic State” of Greece (2016)

#142

Post by xdennis »

new_guy wrote: post #47

> "Do all woman have haloes?" he wanted to know. What we consider attractive (boobs, ass etc) comes from society. There are tribes where women go around naked with no issue. Back in the Victorian era they used to go ga-ga over ankles. So it'd be interesting exposing* a man like that, whose essentially a blank slate, to a nude woman and seeing what he finds attractive. *no pun intended!

> What we consider attractive (boobs, ass etc) comes from society.

I seriously doubt it. The main things that men find attractive are genetically programmed.

It's true that secondary things come from society (ankles as you say, beauty marks, long necks (hence the need for neck rings), etc), but that doesn't mean that a blank slate man would find long necks and breasts equally attractive.

Re: Mount Athos, the “Autonomous Monastic State” of Greece (2016)

#143

Post by msla »

joelmichael wrote: post #60
necovek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds irrelevant instead, and whoever wrote the article, is obviously being a bit too playful with words. Of course it's not "two weeks ago there", it's just that the date is different: it's as if you tried to use a different calendar system altogether — it's fine, you just need to convert back and forth. FWIW, a bunch of churches (Russian, Serbian, Romanian Orthodox churches) still respect the Julian calendar to…

Being better aligned with astronomical events makes it more correct. The purpose of the calendar is to map the year, the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. The drift in the Julian calendar was not intended. It is a flaw.

And here we have the root of the disconnect between wall-clock time and stopwatch time.

In short: How long it takes to cook an egg doesn't change because someone inserted a leap second.

Of course, when people try to do the obvious thing, and measure time durations using a wall clock, that's when the fun begins. In that world, "a day from now" is not a consistent number of seconds in the future, due to the aforementioned leap seconds, daylight savings time, and, potentially, time zone shifts if the person doing the measuring is traveling, or is (or, perhaps, was) in a particularly "interesting" jurisdiction.

Re: Mount Athos, the “Autonomous Monastic State” of Greece (2016)

#144

Post by sneak »

bobthechef wrote: post #140
NKosmatos wrote: post #77

One of the bad aspects of religions are such restrictions that have no base whatsoever. If we omit this anachronism, Agion Oros, as it's commonly called in Greece, is a nice place to visit (Christian men only) with an unspoiled environment and peaceful way of living. It's common for many Greeks to visit at least once this special place (something like Hajj/Hadji), but in recent times this has been declining. There ar…

You're a victim of the biases and presumptions of your own egalitarian culture. There is a basis. Men and women are different and sexually complementary. One obvious reason is that the sexual tension and constant presence of people of the opposite sex (female orders exclude men also) and subsequent temptation and stirred concupiscence can be a distraction to the spiritual life. But the tendency for sex segregation oc…

The concept that sexual tension/activity and a spiritual life are at odds or mutually exclusive is itself a bias and presumption.

Re: Mount Athos, the “Autonomous Monastic State” of Greece (2016)

#146

Post by necovek »

dangerbird2 wrote: post #134
zajio1am wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that the purpose of the calendar is tracking time/days in general. Astronomical events are just used as a tool to do that. Earlier calendars were lunar-based instead of solar-based, as keeping synchronized with moon is easier.

The solar cycle is extremely important for premodern agricultural societies, since it allows predicting growing and harvesting seasons. If you're going by the Julian calendar and the Autumn equinox is falling on September 10, there's probably going to be confusion as to when the harvest should occur. In the case of the Gregorian Calendar, Catholic countries rely on the Spring Equinox to schedule Easter, and when it s…

While it's somewhat true, most of the people in premodern agricultural societies couldn't read (especially those concerned with when the harvest should happen), and probably couldn't care less about dates in the calendar. Even today, weather and actual crop lifecycle plays a larger role in agriculture than particular dates.

Even if people were tracking dates, adjusting for a couple of days every 200 years wouldn't be that hard: nobody would remember the good old times when we did the harvest on September 22nd in 1234, and now we do them on September 20th in 1434.

Finally, matching up with astronomical events would sometimes put sidereal year (and day) at the forefront: a day that's ~4 minutes shorter than the solar day making the tropical year Gregorian calendar is based on. Things get murky quite quickly once you start going down that path of what "correct" really is.

Note that in the Gregorian calendar, Spring equinox in 2021 and 2022 fell or falls on March 20th. It's only pretty good when averaged out over a 400-year cycle.

Basically, all of these calendar systems are attempts to "square the circle": find something resembling the least common multiple of non-integer values (solar day length and tropical year length), and then try to mix in a bunch of events observed in a different coordinate system (to overly simplify it, all the night stuff is "sidereal").

So we get back to what is really "useful"?

If you don't care about knowing how many days ago, or on what date in the proleptic calendar of your choice something happened in the past just from the date inscribed on it (eg. imagine a letter dated January 5th, 1605), you would certainly be fine with just dropping 10-13 days somewhere along the way. I can, however, understand when someone thinks it's easier to be off from astronomical events for a few weeks to avoid all that administrative trouble, for instance. However, the biggest practical problem today would be that everyone else has written those 10-13 days off, so it's probably easiest to switch too, especially in the global world we've got today.

But there is nothing intrinsically better in the Gregorian calendar that makes it win on all counts. It's just another agreed-upon approximation.

Re: Mount Athos, the “Autonomous Monastic State” of Greece (2016)

#147

Post by necovek »

joelmichael wrote: post #60
necovek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds irrelevant instead, and whoever wrote the article, is obviously being a bit too playful with words. Of course it's not "two weeks ago there", it's just that the date is different: it's as if you tried to use a different calendar system altogether — it's fine, you just need to convert back and forth. FWIW, a bunch of churches (Russian, Serbian, Romanian Orthodox churches) still respect the Julian calendar to…

Being better aligned with astronomical events makes it more correct. The purpose of the calendar is to map the year, the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. The drift in the Julian calendar was not intended. It is a flaw.

What about the drift in the Gregorian calendar? Solar day and tropical year do not have a least common multiple.

Earth's rotation is — arguably — better measured against the stars, so a sidereal day is more "correct", yet it would not map to our daily routine at all.

So I believe the question is not what is more "correct" (we've long established that we are dealing with approximations at best, Julian calendar included: it already had leap years), but what is more useful? And that's what has driven adoption of the Gregorian calendar in most of the world, but I am fine if somewhere it's more useful not to have to worry about did some days just disappear at some point in the past.

Re: Mount Athos, the “Autonomous Monastic State” of Greece (2016)

#148

Post by NKosmatos »

cblconfederate wrote: post #93
NKosmatos wrote: post #77

One of the bad aspects of religions are such restrictions that have no base whatsoever. If we omit this anachronism, Agion Oros, as it's commonly called in Greece, is a nice place to visit (Christian men only) with an unspoiled environment and peaceful way of living. It's common for many Greeks to visit at least once this special place (something like Hajj/Hadji), but in recent times this has been declining. There ar…

> have no base whatsoever Gender segregated monasteries have existed since foreveer. Mt Athos is like one giant monastery in that sense. For religious people there is a base for gender segregation.

No problem with monasteries and gender restrictions of religions, but here we’re talking about a huge area (a peninsula)! We have similar restrictions for women in churches located in cities and these are generally accepted and followed, but only on “holly” grounds and not for large areas like Mt Athos.

Re: Mount Athos, the “Autonomous Monastic State” of Greece (2016)

#149

Post by NKosmatos »

Grustaf wrote: post #89
NKosmatos wrote: post #77

One of the bad aspects of religions are such restrictions that have no base whatsoever. If we omit this anachronism, Agion Oros, as it's commonly called in Greece, is a nice place to visit (Christian men only) with an unspoiled environment and peaceful way of living. It's common for many Greeks to visit at least once this special place (something like Hajj/Hadji), but in recent times this has been declining. There ar…

What are these "restrictions that have no base whatsoever"? Are you referring to "Christian men only"? Surely you can see the basis of a male monastery complex only allowing male Christian guests? Would you be equally upset at a Buddhist convent only allowing Buddhist women as guests?

No, the problem is not with the rules of the monasteries, but with the rules of our religion against women. There are no Greek Orthodox women priests, despite the fact that we have many women Saints! And just to be clear, I’m against all religions that are discriminating people and putting them into groups.

Re: Mount Athos, the “Autonomous Monastic State” of Greece (2016)

#150

Post by usrusr »

throwawaygal7 wrote: post #84
usrusr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am convinced that in pre-secularism days, when "religious" was pretty much the default assumption, there were plenty of monks/nuns who went down that path not because they were particularly devoted but because they failed to fit into any of the conventional roles offered by society but didn't want to become outcasts either. Yes, this might be a misconception (inspired by Eco/Connery?), but it be surprised if there…

I think this is probably a modern bias since we tend to under appreciate the sincerity of religious beleif that many people had , historically. I'm not saying everyone did, but many did. I think the rigors of monastic life are also off putting to someone just wanting to hang out. anway, if there is a formula for secular monasticism I would like to see it. In my view, without the orders and vows there is nothing keepi…

I wasn't trying to imply that they went monastic despite not believing, but something quite consistent with your first paragraph: today we assume that only people form, I don't know, the top percentile in the metric of belief sincerity could even consider the monastic path, the pieousest of the pieous. But back then religion was so much a basic part of everybody's mental model of the world, that I don't believe that anybody would be considered, even by themselves, as "not monk material" for lack of belief. Practical reasons to stick to a worldly path, sure, or incompatible desires, preferences. Or, most importantly, simply better options. But hardly ever lack of belief. Just like today people don't usually become a physicist because they are more convinced than others that gravity exists.

Back to secular monasticism: the closest we have are militaries (which have been substitute homes and families for a certain kind of person ever since the invention of standing armies) and the prison system. I wonder if UBI, even a UBI of the very low kind, might end up with something like secular monasticism emerging. Communities with absolute minimalism in terms of individual rooms and all remaining resources (rent and chore hours commitment) put in shared amenities. So many ways to make a setup like that a catastrophic failure, but there might be winning patterns

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