Homer is the classical epic. Virgil is the epic of Rome. Sirat Bani Hilal is the Arabian epic. Dante is the epic of Christendom. Milton is the epic of the Renaissance. Luther is the epic of the Reformation. Robespierre is the epic of Terror. David Cameron and Theresa May could represent the epics of misconception and mismanagement.
An epic is a work of high amplitude, an exercise of inclusiveness, a demonstration of seriousness, a manifestation of willpower over material, the ultimate expression of the sense of an entire period and culture. An epic reflects the universal call of a rational order of things, the skeptical expression of a conversation that seeks the empowerment of society through thoughtful actions and the implementation of a strategy that elevates statecraft into scientific art.
Welcome to the era of anti-epics of a leaderless world that has lost its identity, its anchor, its compass and direction, while doing its very best to undermine its own future and the future of generations to come. Does this describe Greece, its lost generations and its brain-drain? Does it describe our own malevolent deficit-hungry budgets at the expense of education and the elderly? Does it describe the thoughtless leadership of the UK?
When errors become horrors, and when corruption (mental, emotional, and material) is elevated into a joyful celebration, then we know that we have been seduced into a narcoleptic state where the love for power, reaction, and fame – under artful but stupid disguises – insinuates itself into the hearts of a tyrannical majority that has no sense of right and wrong simply because it is manufacturing rather than discovering what is true.
A savage enthusiasm which views ourselves as victims, mortifies our affections, and embraces an isolationist worldview that even surpasses – in the absence of reason and science – the laborious virtues of the Grecian schools. The degradation of truth has killed Homer. The eradication of reason has eliminated Virgil. The absence of a disciplined strategy has undermined Dante and has enthroned an absurd Roberspierrean mentality of perversion with a corrosive force of bigotry.
In our failure to read – let alone understand – Cicero we have lost the capacity to comprehend what politics should strive to create: a republic. “I breathed the spirit of freedom, and I imbibed from his precepts and examples the public and private sense of a man.” Cicero sets out the path of duties and excellence for the common good through a self-imposed discipline in which the passions are subjected to the control of reason and truth. The balance found between the oppression of tyranny and the anarchy of perfect equality is moderated by freedom and justice in conditions of order.
Welcome to the Kantian world where civilization consists in the control of passions and in the exercise of reason, while instincts are governed by the rule of law. However, reason can function only under conditions of liberty, and liberty cannot exist in a state of untruths, deception, and ignorance.
The vices of corrupted minds constitute a betrayal of the rule of law and of the rule of reason, and thus their actions are nothing but a betrayal of civilization. Such narratives reflect Rome’s subjection to the barbarians in the fifth century. They are representative examples of narratives related to split societies like in Justinian’s Constantinople around 800 AD. Needless to say, such split served as the appetizer for the Conquest of Constantinople.
We are creating ghosts of ourselves who proudly crown each other upon our own graves. The translatiio imperii a.k.a. the transfer of imperial power has taken a wrong turn. Pride was the cause of both the first and the second Fall. Hubris can bury great ideas, nations, and unions. And now, at the dawn today of another vote in the British parliament that will try to avoid a disorderly exit, and before an attempt is made tomorrow to extend the Brexit deadline, the market uncertainty may continue its myopic trajectory of calculating temporary paper gains and treating the symptoms, while ignoring the causes and the need to cure the disease.
Market hubris – even under the pretense of discounting events – under conditions of unorthodox policies (both fiscal and monetary) and geopolitical tensions, can eradicate the logic of fundamentals while fantasizing of neutral rates that we can no longer afford due to our indebtedness and the fiasco of an inverted financial pyramid.
The barbarians may not be at the gates. All they had to do is to conquer our minds.
Anti-Epics, Brexit, and Market Outcomes: A Mark of an Epic Misconception and Mismanagement
Author : John E. Charalambakis
Date : March 13, 2019
Homer is the classical epic. Virgil is the epic of Rome. Sirat Bani Hilal is the Arabian epic. Dante is the epic of Christendom. Milton is the epic of the Renaissance. Luther is the epic of the Reformation. Robespierre is the epic of Terror. David Cameron and Theresa May could represent the epics of misconception and mismanagement.
An epic is a work of high amplitude, an exercise of inclusiveness, a demonstration of seriousness, a manifestation of willpower over material, the ultimate expression of the sense of an entire period and culture. An epic reflects the universal call of a rational order of things, the skeptical expression of a conversation that seeks the empowerment of society through thoughtful actions and the implementation of a strategy that elevates statecraft into scientific art.
Welcome to the era of anti-epics of a leaderless world that has lost its identity, its anchor, its compass and direction, while doing its very best to undermine its own future and the future of generations to come. Does this describe Greece, its lost generations and its brain-drain? Does it describe our own malevolent deficit-hungry budgets at the expense of education and the elderly? Does it describe the thoughtless leadership of the UK?
When errors become horrors, and when corruption (mental, emotional, and material) is elevated into a joyful celebration, then we know that we have been seduced into a narcoleptic state where the love for power, reaction, and fame – under artful but stupid disguises – insinuates itself into the hearts of a tyrannical majority that has no sense of right and wrong simply because it is manufacturing rather than discovering what is true.
A savage enthusiasm which views ourselves as victims, mortifies our affections, and embraces an isolationist worldview that even surpasses – in the absence of reason and science – the laborious virtues of the Grecian schools. The degradation of truth has killed Homer. The eradication of reason has eliminated Virgil. The absence of a disciplined strategy has undermined Dante and has enthroned an absurd Roberspierrean mentality of perversion with a corrosive force of bigotry.
In our failure to read – let alone understand – Cicero we have lost the capacity to comprehend what politics should strive to create: a republic. “I breathed the spirit of freedom, and I imbibed from his precepts and examples the public and private sense of a man.” Cicero sets out the path of duties and excellence for the common good through a self-imposed discipline in which the passions are subjected to the control of reason and truth. The balance found between the oppression of tyranny and the anarchy of perfect equality is moderated by freedom and justice in conditions of order.
Welcome to the Kantian world where civilization consists in the control of passions and in the exercise of reason, while instincts are governed by the rule of law. However, reason can function only under conditions of liberty, and liberty cannot exist in a state of untruths, deception, and ignorance.
The vices of corrupted minds constitute a betrayal of the rule of law and of the rule of reason, and thus their actions are nothing but a betrayal of civilization. Such narratives reflect Rome’s subjection to the barbarians in the fifth century. They are representative examples of narratives related to split societies like in Justinian’s Constantinople around 800 AD. Needless to say, such split served as the appetizer for the Conquest of Constantinople.
We are creating ghosts of ourselves who proudly crown each other upon our own graves. The translatiio imperii a.k.a. the transfer of imperial power has taken a wrong turn. Pride was the cause of both the first and the second Fall. Hubris can bury great ideas, nations, and unions. And now, at the dawn today of another vote in the British parliament that will try to avoid a disorderly exit, and before an attempt is made tomorrow to extend the Brexit deadline, the market uncertainty may continue its myopic trajectory of calculating temporary paper gains and treating the symptoms, while ignoring the causes and the need to cure the disease.
Market hubris – even under the pretense of discounting events – under conditions of unorthodox policies (both fiscal and monetary) and geopolitical tensions, can eradicate the logic of fundamentals while fantasizing of neutral rates that we can no longer afford due to our indebtedness and the fiasco of an inverted financial pyramid.
The barbarians may not be at the gates. All they had to do is to conquer our minds.