8/30/10
Princeton professor Alexander Nehamas has just posted an interesting bit about censorship on The New York Times’ website in which he compares our attempts to censor parts of modern popular culture we fear - but ultimately can’t prove - corrupt our youth (e.g. violent video games) with Plato’s criticism of ancient popular culture (specifically works by Homer and the tragic dramatists) and its consequentially minimal role in his ideal republic. Ignore the repulsive copy-editing, or lack thereof; Nehamas might have a point.
8/21/10
humanae hostiae
Dr. Krugman’s latest piece in The New York Times may be a poetic and persuasive diatribe against the “policy elite” and the “responsible economic policy” they set, but it has also made me want to put him in a new level of Dante’s Inferno, one reserved for those who have offended the classics gods and us who follow them.
His article, “Appeasing the Bond Gods,” begins as follows:
As I look at what passes for responsible economic policy these days, there’s an analogy that keeps passing through my mind. I know it’s over the top, but here it is anyway: the policy elite -- central bankers, finance ministers, politicians who pose as defenders of fiscal virtue -- are acting like the priests of some ancient cult, demanding that we engage in human sacrifices to appease the anger of invisible gods.
It’s the end of the last sentence that gets me. While poetic, as I said, and over the top, as he said, the predicate implies that priests of ancient cults (“some” here being quidlibet, “whichever” or “any you please”) generally “demanded that we engage in human sacrifices.” As someone who has studied some of those “ancient cults” and has a professional interest in interesting others in them, I do not appreciate Krugman’s implication, intended or otherwise. Certain cults at certain times in certain places may have included human sacrifice as a regular practice, but that does not seem to have been accepted practice among the majority of cults in the Greco-Roman world - among which may be mentioned one famous cult in particular (hint: it revolved around a figure with the initials J.C. who was not Julius Caesar). Although non-classical cults have become and continue to be popular, a significant percentage of Krugman’s readers will no doubt associate “ancient cult” with the Greco-Roman world and therefore draw the conclusion that human sacrifice was commonplace there. I’m only sorry that such a respected and widely read economist can be held responsible for that assumption.
His article, “Appeasing the Bond Gods,” begins as follows:
As I look at what passes for responsible economic policy these days, there’s an analogy that keeps passing through my mind. I know it’s over the top, but here it is anyway: the policy elite -- central bankers, finance ministers, politicians who pose as defenders of fiscal virtue -- are acting like the priests of some ancient cult, demanding that we engage in human sacrifices to appease the anger of invisible gods.
It’s the end of the last sentence that gets me. While poetic, as I said, and over the top, as he said, the predicate implies that priests of ancient cults (“some” here being quidlibet, “whichever” or “any you please”) generally “demanded that we engage in human sacrifices.” As someone who has studied some of those “ancient cults” and has a professional interest in interesting others in them, I do not appreciate Krugman’s implication, intended or otherwise. Certain cults at certain times in certain places may have included human sacrifice as a regular practice, but that does not seem to have been accepted practice among the majority of cults in the Greco-Roman world - among which may be mentioned one famous cult in particular (hint: it revolved around a figure with the initials J.C. who was not Julius Caesar). Although non-classical cults have become and continue to be popular, a significant percentage of Krugman’s readers will no doubt associate “ancient cult” with the Greco-Roman world and therefore draw the conclusion that human sacrifice was commonplace there. I’m only sorry that such a respected and widely read economist can be held responsible for that assumption.
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