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p l a n e t b e e s e e d
w a s p s
This so called education
murders the soul
and leaves the dead
to walk for a lifetime.
- Frank Lloyd Wright |
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Wasps
by Aristophanes
This drama, as
common for the time, takes its
title from the play's chorus: a band of old men dressed up as wasps, whose
acrimonious, stinging, exasperated temper is meant to typify the character
fostered among Athenian citizens by excessive addiction to forensic
business.
The comedy
climax is a "play in the play": a dummy-trial directed by
Vdelykleon, to cure - with a kind of psychotherapy - his old father, from
his tendancies to judge and criminate. Accuser and defendant are two dogs
- the wild Kedathenian dog (a magical image) and the perplexed
Exonian dog, that stole from the former a piece of cheese. (That's
right, no one moved the cheese you idiots! It was stolen!)
Finally daddy is trained from his son through cute flute-players, booze,
singsongs and sentiment - and becomes a "virtuous" Athenian
citizen, which can't stand hearing about trials injustices or crime.
SCENE: In the background is the house of Philocleon, surrounded by a huge
net. Two slaves are on guard, one of them asleep.
SOSIAS waking XANTHIAS up
Why, Xanthias! what are you doing, wretched
man?
XANTHIAS
I am teaching myself how to rest; I have been
awake and on watch the whole night.
SOSIAS
So you want to earn trouble for your ribs,
eh? Don't you know what sort of animal we are guarding here?
XANTHIAS
Aye indeed! but I want to put my cares to
sleep for a while.
He falls asleep again.
SOSIAS
Beware what you do. I too feel soft sleep
spreading over my eyes,
XANTHIAS
Are you crazy, like a Corybant?
SOSIAS
No! It's Bacchus who lulls me off.
XANTHIAS
Then you serve the same god as myself. just
now a heavy slumber settled on my eyelids like a hostile Mede; I
nodded and, faith! I had a wondrous dream.
SOSIAS
Indeed! and so had I. A dream such as I never
had before. But first tell me yours.
XANTHIAS
I saw an eagle, a gigantic bird, descend upon
the market-place; it seized a brazen buckler with its talons and bore
it away into the highest heavens.
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i can forgive the
government just so long as
they forgive me
for believing in Democracy
"How does one fashion a book of resistance, a book of
truth in an empire of falsehood, or a book of rectitude in an empire of
vicious lies? How does one do this right in front of the enemy?
Not through the old-fashioned ways of writing while
you're in the bathroom but how does one do that in a truly future
technological state? Is it possible for freedom and independence to arise in
new ways under new conditions? That is, will new tyrannies abolish these
protests? Or will there be new responses by the spirit that we can't
anticipate?"
Philip K. Dick
r.i.p.
from pattern recognition to prejudice
memory and identity
the line between joke and deception
denial: the worst form of apathy
attention deprivation and abuse
matthew sweet - isolation
training
for dogs
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