"It is said that the young Alcibiades, visiting a grammar school around 430 B.C., asked the teacher for a volume of Homer and, hearing there was none, struck the hapless teacher with his walking stick and left."--
That is so fucking awesome! You remember the days when intellect meant something, that is, the possession of an inquiring mind was a great thing in and of itself? Ahh.. oh wait... it has yet to mean anything in our dismal lifetime. Of course that doesn't stop me from lovin' Bernini and Nietzsche and Baudelaire and good espresso... See my boys Homer and Epicurus below, as well as the mystical capybara:
That is so fucking awesome! You remember the days when intellect meant something, that is, the possession of an inquiring mind was a great thing in and of itself? Ahh.. oh wait... it has yet to mean anything in our dismal lifetime. Of course that doesn't stop me from lovin' Bernini and Nietzsche and Baudelaire and good espresso... See my boys Homer and Epicurus below, as well as the mystical capybara:
I just think that we are all more distracted then people even 60 years ago. And we have everything in abundance to point of being confused as to what we really want.
Remember when you were out camping and all the food you had was just the food in the campsite that day ( far away from convenience stores and supermarkets ) Do, you remember how good at the end of the evening of being out in the wilderness, how good that food tasted.
That's the best understanding I know of what it must have been like in the past.