Why Xenophon?
I have thought about this for some time and this is where I am with it so far. You see Xenophon is one of the Socratic commentators. He creates an image of Socrates different than that of Plato. Which tells us something about the symposium, the nature of education, democracy and civilization; it forces to mind the assumptions of our civilization and reminds us that Athens was not a success. You see Plato and Xenophon were the first Bloggers, recording and commenting on the discussions at the symposia. They become like omniscient narrators, selecting and constructing the narrative to their design. Not unlike News and the Modern Mass Media Corporations. If we were to take the modern media corporations model of information dissemination as a model for history, selecting those events reported by the news as significant historical events, then we would view the world as an escalating consumption, where movie stars and American Idols change the world. But we all know American idol does not pay the bills or feed any of those who participate as spectators. NO the world has changed, the fundamental means through which you sustain life and access to those resources and means, is determined by a slow grinding bureaucratic process of barter: in favor, obligation and debt and the men and women who negotiate this – in short the world is changed by bureaucrats not the beautiful ones. So if one wants information about the world one lives in as opposed to the world one wished one lived in then the structure of the news narrative needs to change. This blog is simply a different take on the world narrated by a set of concerns centered on the question: Who gets to eat?
To be continued . . .
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