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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27876 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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Since @FD4280 has already quoted Pushkin, I'll do the usual with Galkosvky (he has a somewhat humorous quote for every occasion):

The event that took place in Plato's Athens was far from innocuous

And in general, the emergence of philosophy is simply and fully against nature. What prompted people to such a useless, fruitless and destructive endeavour? What manner of cause? – Sexual perversion. Ancient Greek society is a homosexual society, homosexual in a deep, committed sense. One need only read the works of Aristophanes. They were written by a convinced pederast, and a pederast living in an appropriately arranged, congruous pederastic world at that. Socrates, too, was a pederast; Plato was a pederast as well. The Greek youth gathered around the learned men and formed philosophical unions of homosexual kind. Herein lies the precondition for the birth of philosophy. A young man, unlike a girl, has intellect, which creates the opportunity of intellectual courtship. After all, what can be more attractive and tempting for a man than a wonderful conversation on lofty topics? The most mediocre, pathetic male's eyes light up should you start talking to him about eternal issues. And Socrates, so absorbed in Eros, but, alas, unshapely, threw all his energies into the creation of the palace of reason; and as a result – what a catch! – the handsome Alcibiades fell in love with him. It was Eros that begat the revolution, otherwise it is utterly incomprehensible why the shell of naive everyday consciousness would have burst.

But the nascent fire of the Logos was so bright, so dazzling, that not only some dirty homosexuality (which even among the Greeks was seen as somewhat sinful), but the whole world, and life itself, began to seem a dirty and dark cave. Socrates refused the love of Alcibiades and then drank hemlock. Aphrodite the Vulgar turned into Aphrodite Urania. Love for woman, the inferior being, into love for the perfect being, man; carnal love – into perfect, Platonic love, into male intellectual friendship – into the brotherhood of philosophers. Then into love for the idea of Love, and love for the world of ideas, identified by Plato with the realm of Hades, the god of the dead and the netherworld.

The fire of philosophy since then was passed among people as something given, cleansed of its original filth. After asexualisation, there even came the time for heterosexualisation of philosophy. Having become a social phenomenon, it was mirrored in the world of women. A woman cannot comprehend the worth of a philosopher, but she can see that in the male intellectual world her chosen one is deeply respected for some reason. And that turns out to be enough. Philosophy has become a much more normal phenomenon, more adapted to real life. After all, this adaptation has been going on for two and a half millennia. And yet, we should not forget the rather rakish history of the birth of self-consciousness.

Also:

You see how complicated it all is, how contradictory. Paradox atop a paradox. A young man goes to a literary club, is fond of weightlifting, wanders around city parks at night in a woman's dress, writes abstruse poetry, and has cut his arms with a razor. Who would have ever expected it! What a complex young man! And yet he's not complex. He's a pederast. A pederast is always busy, his eyes are always restless, a young man is ceaselessly in search. Homosexuals, after all, don't and can't have love. Only partners. Partners are exchanged quickly, sought by the lavatories at night. That's why you have to hustle day and night, "look for a dose".
There is such a profession - spies. They are complicated, contradictory…

(Galkovsky has a wife and three children, lives a very «boring» life, and generally despises people in unconventional relationships).

Socrates refused the love of Alcibiades and then drank hemlock.

Alcibiades died around 5 years before Socrates was sentenced to death. Also Alcibiades was a scoundrel of a human being, (probably) defacing sacred statues, sending Athens to a doomed expedition in Sicily, betraying his city, defecting to its enemy Sparta, then running to the Achaemenids when they got wind of his general shittiness, overthrowing the democratic government of his home city and replacing it with an oligarchy, general philandry all over the place and then finally coming to an ignoble end by being assassinated after he had become too big of a problem to ignore for the real powers that mattered.

I don't know what Socrates ever saw in him, this relationship always seemed very incongruous to me.

A young man goes to a literary club, is fond of weightlifting, wanders around city parks at night in a woman's dress, writes abstruse poetry, and has cut his arms with a razor. Who would have ever expected it! What a complex young man!

Gilbert and Sullivan got there first.

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