Michael Seselja > Recent Status Updates

About halfway through this audiobook. A lot of practical wisdom so far.

About to get to the Passion

Book VII
This section was excellent and enjoyable. The classic Allegory of the Cave kicks things off and then we get some great reasoning about the importance of mathematics; namely as a way to lead the soul into the contemplation of higher truth. I wish I had this in mind when I learned maths at school rather than what job I could get with it.

I find Plutarch’s philosophising to sometimes be even more interesting than the lives of the people he writes about.

They did very well to cut out one particular sub-plot out of the movie

Book VI
There’s a line in here about “the good” begetting a son to send into the world to make itself visible. I’m not sure if the translator was influenced by Christianity, Plato had some spark of divine inspiration or St John was familiar with that language and used it in the Gospel, but it’s striking.

Book III
It’s still difficult to read this without just seeing it as a spin-off of the Odyssey, especially in this chapter where Aeneas tells the story of his travels at sea and how they escaped from the Cyclops. That story is not as dramatic as its Homeric counterpart though and I have the feeling that the exciting action is yet to come.

Shout out to Tommy for dutifully copying down the text of the missing 15 pages in this edition. Some of them must have been fun to write.

Book V
This is where some of the crazy communist sounding stuff about all the men having their wives and children in common comes in. Obviously Plato is overlooking something about human nature when planning his idealistic city, but I don’t even like the “ideal”.
But then we immediately get a fascinating discussion about the relationship between knowledge, opinion, being and non-being.

The first three biographies in this collection have pretty well hit the archetypes of semi-mythical hero, wise lawgiver and confident, brash general. Pretty entertaining read so far; I’m mainly reading this so I know at least a bit about a few of the main characters in the Peloponnesian War before I tackle Thucydides.

As Fitzgerald describes the anti-Communist activities of Santamaria and others in late 1940s Australia with a vague tone of disapproval all I can think is “based based based”

Book IV
Some very interesting ideas on the soul. And the concept of a rightly ordered life (in which reason rules over sensual appetites and emotions) being a just one.

Been zooming through this audiobook. Probably because the author is a Croat (although born in England), King Zvonimir has got a mention twice so far. Based.

Book VIII
Things are a little less exciting after the two famous battles at Marathon and Thermopylae. Plus I’m also realising that I enjoyed Herodotus’ random digressions and descriptions of peoples’ customs than his historical narrative. So things have slowed down.

In trying to create the perfect class of soldiers to protect his ideal city, Socrates seems to be cutting them off from some of the things that make human life worthwhile. It’s all a thought experiment though I suppose.

A surprisingly nuanced view of British imperialism here. Davies acknowledges its ills while still being sure to mention some of the ways it was a force for good.

Book VII
Apparently the Persian king Xerxes was so confident that when Greek spies arrived to check out his army, he refused to execute them and instead took them on a tour to show them just how big it was and how futile resistance was, etc.

This chapter also made me want to watch the movie 300.

Book II
I wish someone would make the Aeneid into a movie because I think Aeneas fits the traditional hero archetype a lot better than Odysseus.

Sorry to anyone who works in sales but Plato thinks that you are the weakest in bodily strength, and therefore of little use for any other purpose.

Reading this I found it easy to relate to the British Catholics of the seventeenth century in terms of being politically homeless. They were caught in a war between the monarchy, the Puritans and the Presbyterians. Most would side with the Anglican monarch but we were hardly natural allies with the established Church that had dissolved all the monasteries in Britain.

Book VI
Surprisingly the famous Battle of Marathon only gets a couple of pages. A lot of the chapter is spent on detailing how much the Greeks fought with each other; it seems the only thing that could (sometimes) bring them together was the threat of Persians invading.

Also I learned that the Spartans thought that drinking your wine neat would make you go insane. I wonder what they would think about scotch.

Book I
We get Socrates discussing what justice is not, that justice is a good and then whether the just or the unjust life is better. As usual it’s extremely entertaining to watch him arguing circles around people. And Plato was genuinely a great writer.

Book V
Herodotus thinks that in becoming democratic and giving their citizens a say over government, Athens became a much stronger fighting force as the men were more motivated. I think there’s something to this but it probably doesn’t work at the scale of many of today’s nation states.

Book I
I can’t remember if I sympathised with Aeneas in the Iliad because he was presented that way or because I already vaguely knew that he was the star of his own show. Either way, in Book I Virgil has already made me like the guy a lot.

I have just started reading this and my mind is being blown. Reno is expressing the latent political thoughts that have been swimming around my mind for years in polished form.

Very slowly getting through an audiobook version of this.

As the English nation develops in the medieval period I do notice the author’s tendency to try to deconstruct everything. For example he’s quite dismissive of the idea of the Magna Carta influencing Anglosphere politics today. It’s a very late 20th century way of looking at things which is a touch annoying. But he still covers a lot of ground and gives a sense of the complexity of it all. So I’m enjoying it.

Moving from Greece to Rome and believe it or not they are still going on about the Trojan War