The Festival of San Fermin is underway this week (July 6-14) in Pamplona. Join the gigantes and cabezudos there for a celebration dispairing their absence (and our own loss of masculinity) in our daily lives as we preoccupy ourselves with "running from the bull" (instead of either being dragged along by or confronting it).Friday, July 8, 2011
Gigantes y Cabezudos
The Festival of San Fermin is underway this week (July 6-14) in Pamplona. Join the gigantes and cabezudos there for a celebration dispairing their absence (and our own loss of masculinity) in our daily lives as we preoccupy ourselves with "running from the bull" (instead of either being dragged along by or confronting it).
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lol. why single me out? I am man enough i should have thought. :)
ReplyDelete...are those bulls gelded, i wonder. ;)
ReplyDeleteI singled you out because of your comments at Geeez. You seek a "middle ground" between the gigantes and cabezudos. Unfortunately, the two races prefer to live and breed "separately" ;)
ReplyDeletefrom the Jowett summary of Plato's "Statesman"
ReplyDeleteo the Greek, nomos was a sacred word, but the political idealism of Plato soars into a region beyond; for the laws he would substitute the intelligent will of the legislator. Education is originally to implant in men's minds a sense of truth and justice, which is the divine bond of states, and the legislator is to contrive human bonds, by which dissimilar natures may be united in marriage and supply the deficiencies of one another. As in the Republic, the government of philosophers, the causes of the perversion of states, the regulation of marriages, are still the political problems with which Plato's mind is occupied. He treats them more slightly, partly because the dialogue is shorter, and also because the discussion of them is perpetually crossed by the other interest of dialectic, which has begun to absorb him.
Plato, "Statesman"
ReplyDeleteSTRANGER: Where this divine bond exists there is no difficulty in imagining, or when you have imagined, in creating the other bonds, which are human only.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How is that, and what bonds do you mean?
STRANGER: Rights of intermarriage, and ties which are formed between States by giving and taking children in marriage, or between individuals by private betrothals and espousals. For most persons form marriage connexions without due regard to what is best for the procreation of children.
YOUNG SOCRATES: In what way?
STRANGER: They seek after wealth and power, which in matrimony are objects not worthy even of a serious censure.
YOUNG SOCRATES: There is no need to consider them at all.
STRANGER: More reason is there to consider the practice of those who make family their chief aim, and to indicate their error.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.
STRANGER: They act on no true principle at all; they seek their ease and receive with open arms those who are like themselves, and hate those who are unlike them, being too much influenced by feelings of dislike.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How so?
STRANGER: The quiet orderly class seek for natures like their own, and as far as they can they marry and give in marriage exclusively in this class, and the courageous do the same; they seek natures like their own, whereas they should both do precisely the opposite.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How and why is that?
STRANGER: Because courage, when untempered by the gentler nature during many generations, may at first bloom and strengthen, but at last bursts forth into downright madness.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Like enough.
STRANGER: And then, again, the soul which is over-full of modesty and has no element of courage in many successive generations, is apt to grow too indolent, and at last to become utterly paralyzed and useless.
YOUNG SOCRATES: That, again, is quite likely.
STRANGER: It was of these bonds I said that there would be no difficulty in creating them, if only both classes originally held the same opinion about the honourable and good;—indeed, in this single work, the whole process of royal weaving is comprised—never to allow temperate natures to be separated from the brave, but to weave them together, like the warp and the woof, by common sentiments and honours and reputation, and by the giving of pledges to one another; and out of them forming one smooth and even web, to entrust to them the offices of State.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How do you mean?
STRANGER: Where one officer only is needed, you must choose a ruler who has both these qualities—when many, you must mingle some of each, for the temperate ruler is very careful and just and safe, but is wanting in thoroughness and go.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly, that is very true.
STRANGER: The character of the courageous, on the other hand, falls short of the former in justice and caution, but has the power of action in a remarkable degree, and where either of these two qualities is wanting, there cities cannot altogether prosper either in their public or private life.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly they cannot.
STRANGER: This then we declare to be the completion of the web of political action, which is created by a direct intertexture of the brave and temperate natures, whenever the royal science has drawn the two minds into communion with one another by unanimity and friendship, and having perfected the noblest and best of all the webs which political life admits, and enfolding therein all other inhabitants of cities, whether slaves or freemen, binds them in one fabric and governs and presides over them, and, in so far as to be happy is vouchsafed to a city, in no particular fails to secure their happiness.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Your picture, Stranger, of the king and statesman, no less than of the Sophist, is quite perfect.
We must seek to weave the peplos, and encourage others to do the same.... only we're VERY likely to get "gored" in the process.
ReplyDeleteIt's something that we must accustom ourselves to. ;)
...what i said in GeeeeeZ: I personally prefer duels to any such wars, wherein i believe there are no sides to be taken.
ReplyDelete...I would that you read it in this context:
The capacity for and obligation to a long gratitude and to a long revenge—both only within the circle of one’s peers—the sophistication in paying back again, the refined idea in friendship, a certain necessity to have enemies (—basically in order to be capable of being a good friend): all those are typical characteristics of a noble morality, which, as indicated, is not the morality of “modern ideas” and which is thus nowadays difficult to sympathize with, as well as difficult to dig up and expose. Things are different with the second type of moral system, slave morality. Suppose the oppressed, depressed, suffering, and unfree people, those ignorant of themselves and tired out, suppose they moralize: what will be the common feature of their moral estimates of value? Probably a pessimistic suspicion directed at the entire human situation will express itself, perhaps a condemnation of man, along with his situation. (BGE)
... however, there is more to be said on why i think there are no sides to be taken in these wars - but let me beg for some time. :)
You may have it. Take whatever time you wish, whenever you wish. :)
ReplyDelete...it'll give me time to put my pistols in order. ;)
ReplyDeleteLiberal/conservative
ReplyDelete...An answer was pending.