Demosophia

Sorry, I've Been Away

Not physically, but emotionally. Not only is it summer, and I'm having a little trouble making rent during the dog days when there's nothing much going on, but it's the Tour de France season, and I'm just a hopeless addict. I'm not sure how I feel about it though. Today's stage over the cobblestones made me nervous. As a gap opened up between Iban Mayo's group (one of the contenders for the overall General Classification win) and just kept growing I began to see myself falling further and further behind. I know what that "gap" looks like, and I know what it feels like to see it growing from a short distance to a yawning chasm. And he lost out because he just wasn't riding with a top team. The people around him, the group he had chosen for support and succor, were second rate. Once they'd lost the wheels of the faster, fitter, riders... they just lost the will of the pursuit. Mayo ended up almost 4 minutes behind the other contenders, due to what amounted to a mere moment of inattention. A metaphor for life? It makes one shudder.

Life probably isn't quite that harsh, for most of us. But for children born to parents unable or unwilling to nurture them in their critical first three years of life "the gap" begins to open. And the more people in the left-behind group the less well the overall society copes with cultural shocks of various kinds. We confront enemies who seem cleverer. We compete less successfully. And finally we're vulnerable to defeatism and demoralization. Eventually we're no longer in contention. The "break" comes quickly, and grows quickly.

A few weeks ago Gerard posted this:

Demosthenes, On Disagreeable Patriots

The explanation is the same as at Athens, that the patriots, however much they desire it, cannot sometimes say anything agreeable, for they are obliged to consider the safety of the state; but the others by their very efforts to be agreeable are playing into Philip's hands.

The patriots demanded a war-subsidy, the others denied its necessity; the patriots bade them fight on and mistrust Philip, the others bade them keep the peace, until they fell into the snare. [64]

Not to go into particulars, it is the same tale everywhere, one party speaking to please their audience, the other giving advice that would have ensured their safety. But at the last there were many things that the people were induced to concede, not as before for their own gratification nor through ignorance, but gradually yielding because they thought that their discomfiture was inevitable and complete.

A fine return the democrats of Eretria have gained for spurning your embassy and capitulating to Clitarchus! They are slaves, doomed to the whipping-post and the scaffold. A fine clemency he showed to the Olynthians, who voted Lasthenes their master of the horse and banished Apollonides! [67] It is folly and cowardice to cherish such hopes, to follow ill counsel and refuse to perform any fraction of your duties, to lend an ear to the advocates of your enemies and imagine that your city is so great that no conceivable danger can befall it.

Ay, and a disgrace too it is to have to say, when all is over, “Why! who would have thought it? For of course we ought to have done this or that, and not so and so.” Many things could be named by the Olynthians today, which would have saved them from destruction if only they had then foreseen them. Many could be named by the Orites, many by the Phocians, many by every ruined city.

It reaches right across the centuries, doesn't it?

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Posted by Demosophist at July 6, 2004 05:17 PM | TrackBack