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To Understand Western Civilization Start at the Beginining
My children tell me this poem is not required reading in school any longer, but then it wasn't when I was in high school in the 1970's either. Western Civ was crammed into a semester. Understand who and what you are in an hour a day over a term. Yeah I am sure that is going to work out. But I got a drivers license and that at least identified my gender.
Otherwise lost in this age I decided to go back to the beginning, and like our hero depart this never never land the nymph Calypso tells me I am in where all is beautiful and there is no mortality. Ulysses knows who he is and leaves, preferring humanity.
In contrast we are unmoored from all we have been before. We have no epic mythology that tells us who we are. Instead we are informed by the cyclops television, desktop computer or smart phone. How reliable are the stories these things tell live by?
What I learned from Ulysses was I had the power to sharpen a stick and poke these monsters in the eye. Then set sail for Ithaca.
