Metaphysical excitement or neoliberal orthodoxy? Peaceful accommodation is possible only if the latter doesn’t try to destroy the former. From Alasdair Crooke at strategic-culture.su:
Europe has the elements to multi-culturalism buried within memory. We do have common sources that reach far-back.
(This article is based on a paper given at the XXII International Likhachev Scientific Readings, St Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences, 12-13 April 2024)
In Rome, there still exists – just – the Domus Aurea, the golden house. This was a vast complex built by Emperor Nero on the Oppian Hill after the great fire of 64 CE. Strikingly, it was based on the Architecture of an ancient Egyptian temple and was magnificently decorated with birds, panthers, lotus flowers and divine entities – again, all nature, in the Egyptian mode.
Indeed, Nero modelled himself as a Pharaoh in the shape of Ra, (or Apollo, if you prefer). And as the bridge between the material world and the immaterial.
Long story short, within 70 years, all trace of the Domus was gone. It had been ‘cancelled’ (in today’s parlance): stripped, and simply filled-in with earth; built over and completely forgotten.
The shift to the one dimensional ‘world’ was at the doorstep.
But then, in 1480, a young Roman walking on the Oppian Hill fell into a hole and found himself in a strange cave floating with beasts, plants and figures. He had fallen unwittingly into Nero’s palace. Romans had completely forgotten even it had existed.
Soon, the great artists of Rome were having themselves lowered on knotted to ropes, to see for themselves. When Raphael and Michelangelo crawled underground and were let down shafts to study them, the effect was electrifying, instant and profound.
This is the world we in the West have lost: The ancient world’s diversity and its metaphysical excitement.
After this momentary ‘flicker’ as the Renaissance took hold, the text of the Corpus Hermetica, known to antiquity, and thought to reach back to the ancient sage, Thoth, serendipitously arrived and was translated in 1471.
Hegemony Cricket doing peaceful?
It sounds like a great idea.
WAR is just the worst of man that brings out the best amongst a Band of Brothers.
It is not to be hated or loved.
On an Italy kick here lately with one patriarch side of the family from there and how about that Appian Way still standing today.
Italian Alps and Baltic Sea are bucket list items.
One never knows where their bones will rest but hopefully not under the Ozymandias sign surrounded by Brandon emojis.
Show no mercy, pity, remorse, when the comrades bing WAR to your door, after all they started it.