Monday, May 12, 2014

The Child of Poverty and Plenty

I was bored in school. Sit, march, sit. Ugh. I daydreamed and didn't pay much attention. The minimum to pass, actually. Privately I followed my own interests.

The root of the word "education" is from Latin, "ducere," which means to draw or lead. The prefix "e" means "out of." So the teacher "draws out" the potential and the gifts of the student. Sometimes, yes. Mostly, no.

Since the teachers and schools couldn't do it, I did it myself.

One thing I did is read Greeks myths, many of which just fascinated me.

Let's take the god Porus, which was the god of Plenty, or Resource. He was seduced by Penia (Poverty) while drunk at Aphrodite's party. And who was Aphrodite? The goddess of love, beauty, pleasure and procreation.

So what is that myth telling us? Let's see...Plenty can turn into Poverty when you become drunk with love, beauty, pleasure, procreation. In other words, only a fool spends a lot of money on women! All I can say: heh heh.

Porus (Plenty) is the son of Metis (Wisdom). In other words, a wise man can gain his plenty, but if he becomes drunk with love, beauty and pleasure he can become impoverished.

Porus is also the brother of Athena, who is the goddess of "wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill." Wow. Those are the things that give you abundance!

And some people think those Greek stories have no relevance today.

Things get even more interesting.

The union of Poverty and Plenty gives birth to Eros (love). According to the Diotima, Eros is forever in need because of his mother, but forever pursuing because of his father.

In other words, Love is the child of Poverty and Plenty. You have enough of it (Plenty) to know what you're missing (Poverty) to make you whole (Eros doesn't just mean just "love." It means a union that makes you whole. The Greeks said it made the flowers grow.)

And ultimately, where does this Poverty and Plenty of Love come from? Why, the relationship with your parents.

3 comments:

Glen Filthie said...

I disagree with you Bob. Allow me to explain:

This psychobabble bullshit about 'opening up a students' potential' and 'drawing out their aptitudes' is a pant load of liberal horse shit. How do you quantify any of that? Hell, those pooch screwing union educators are telling us we don't even need report cards for our kids anymore! Wouldn't want to damage the pupil's self esteem, would we? (And God knows we wouldn't want those union fucks to actually get off the chairs they're warming and educate our kids!)

My take is that the public schools should provide the building blocks that allow people to think critically. Half of the kids under 30 can't do math - which is why they voted for Obama.

Kids don't need some idiot teacher to teach them how to think. They will do that on their own as you and I have done. (On might argue we did that in spite of their efforts to prevent it...)

Teach my child how to read. Teach my child numeracy. Stop filling them up with crap like warble gloaming, socialism, feminism, faggotry, and all this other crap those morons embrace.

It is time to go back to basics.

Robert What? said...

You might be under the impression that the purpose of the public schools is to educate kids. While they will learn some functional skills from time to time (which probably could easily be compressed down into just a 2-4 years) the primary purpose is to turn children into obedient, unquestioning, debt-acquiring worker drones (even if there are no actual jobs to work at). Towards that end they seem to be wildly successful.

Anonymous said...

Bob does not make the mistake of thinking that today's schools have anything to do with education.