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As a Greek, living in Greece i second most of the terms. Know thyself (γνώθι σαυτόν) is a big one as well. Ancient Greeks were masters of psychology, i.e. what kind of animal humans are. Are we a good creature by nature or a bad one? 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 c…
superstition in Latin
These are great suggestions. Adding these words to your own internal vocabulary is totally worth it for self-reflection. 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 prod…
- The pull request needs reviewed
- The trash needs emptied
- The dog needs walked
Just one(ish) extra syllable!
As a Greek, living in Greece i second most of the terms. Know thyself (γνώθι σαυτόν) is a big one as well. Ancient Greeks were masters of psychology, i.e. what kind of animal humans are. Are we a good creature by nature or a bad one? 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 c…
Just... not too sure how we ended up here considering the topic of OP.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those responding in such a way are not in fact acting against their better judgement - they lack a judgment better than the one they have, therefore the criticism is moot.
Not true. Often they really do have a better judgement but choose to be offended when called out.
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?
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.
I've always liked "akrasia" 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.
I think you misquoted. The actual meaning is weakness of will to act according to one's better judgement. 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."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds very interesting. What were these obligations?
Xenia is all about the relationship between the host and guest. Both parties are expected to be well-behaved and generous in their interaction. There was also an expectation that such kindeness should be returned if the opposite situation were ever to arrive. The concept was also inter-generational, with family lines maintaining a mutual bond created through reciprocal hospitality of each other. In book 6 of the Ilia…
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.
These are great suggestions. Adding these words to your own internal vocabulary is totally worth it for self-reflection. 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 prod…
I've heard a regional English construction for this: "needs X'd". For your examples: - The pull request needs reviewed - The trash needs emptied - The dog needs walked Just one(ish) extra syllable!
Parrhesia 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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrhesia
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.