Archive for October 8th, 2009
Damascus saved the ancient Greek culture
Posted by: adonis49 on: October 8, 2009
Damascus saved the ancient Greek culture; (October 10, 2009)
The German philosopher Heidegger stated: “Philosophy is purely Greek” and thus, the European love to believe that philosophy is purely a western conception. In “Aristotle at mount St. Michel”, the latest book of Sylvain Guggenheim, it is said in substance that Europe would not have needed the Arab civilization to accede to the Greek heritage in philosophy and sciences and that it is the Christian “Arabs” who introduced Hellenisms in the Islamic-Arab world. It goes on “As a religion, Islam didn’t offer anything to the European civilization, neither textual reference nor theological argument. It goes also in the legal and political domains.”
I got into thinking.
The Islamic armies defeated the Byzantium forces of Heracles in Syria and the Persian Sassanide forces in Iraq and expanded into Egypt during the second Caliphate Omar Ibn Khattab. Within five years, the Umayyad dynasty of Moawiyat decided on Damascus for Capital of the new Arab Empire.
Damascus was the hotbed of most of the Orthodox Christian sects that paid allegiance to the center in Byzantium and they were learned in the Greek language along with the Aramaic popular language. The “heretic” Christian sects had fled beyond the Euphrates River to the kingdom of Persia.
The Arab Umayyad dynasty relied on the Orthodox Christian educated people to translate Greek philosophy, medicine, mathematics, and science manuscripts into the Arabic language; the Aramaic language was the root language for the spoken Arabic language in the Arabic Peninsula and thus it was easy for the Syrian to adopt Arabic and translate the Greek and Roman manuscripts.
It is not that the Near East people just loved the ancient Greek manuscripts of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euripides, and Sophocles. It is more likely that most of the Greek schools of sciences, philosophy, and medicine were erected by Greek speaking scholars born on the Mediterranean shores from Alexandria, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey; those famous scholars span from Euclid, Thales, Heracles, Plotine, Zenon, Ptolemy, and passing by the great law givers and founders of the Roman Empire located in Beirut.
If the new Islamic Empire failed to settle on Damascus as Capital and opted to stay in Medina then it is very likely that the Greek manuscripts and culture would have vanished during the hegemony of the Arabic Empire.
I got into thinking.
If in the nick of time, the fourth Caliphate Ali ibn Abi Taleb decided not to defeat and pursue the army of Mouawiyat then the Capital of the Islamic Arab Empire would have been Koufa in Iraq. The ancient culture of Persia would have been the civilization of the land from the confine of China to England. What the European scholars love to label their race as Indo-European would have been a more fitting name: the Persian-Indian culture and civilization.
I got into thinking.
If the Prophet Muhammad did not adopt the Jewish Bibles and the Christian New Testaments as integral part of Islam in an attempt of consolidating common denominators among these monotheist religions then what kind of Christianity Europe would be having today?
Damascus saved the ancient Greek language. Damascus saved its culture. Like it or not, the European should be proud of their real Near Eastern heritage along the eastern Mediterranean shores. (More on that topic in following posts).
Fighting for the Man
Posted by: adonis49 on: October 8, 2009
Fighting for the Man; (October 9, 2009)
Food aplenty for the few:
They are addicted to junk food.
Leftovers for the leftover of humanity;
Delicious: hungry
Fighting for the traits, given and wanted traits,
Thriving for characters of the beyond;
Fighting for the provocation of the ambient collective;
The objective environment and the living one;
The ambient social, psychological, and family;
Fighting for the Man.
Toys aplenty for the few;
They are addicted to one-on-one machines.
Leftovers for the leftover of humanity;
A piece of paper and threads gets kites flying high; smiles even higher;
A couple of sticks get a team running and laughing;
An old makeshift ball got kids gamboling and shrieking with joy.
Fighting for the society of objects;
The historical environment, of body and soul;
The cosmic belonging, the instinctive thrust;
The defense of the ego and the taste to live;
The denying and utilization of the other;
Fighting for the Man.
Vaccines and antibiotics for the few;
Open heart surgery for the few;
They got to be ninety and end up in nursing homes;
Alone: the refuse of humanity.
Leftovers for the leftover of humanity;
Barely first generation antibiotics;
They don’t get to live long;
Their young memory didn’t erase the fresh good time.
They die within their community and among parents.
Fighting for the nutritional instinct, sexuality,
The race, age, gender, and life;
Variations in metabolism, language of the forms,
The sick body and the domesticated body;
The presence and ascendancy of the other;
Fighting for the Man.
Spaces and green horizons for the few;
They are addicted to tiny cubicles in overcrowded megalopolis.
Leftovers for the leftover of humanity;
Wind, dust, eroded land, dry earth,
A shade under an old resilient tree out in the nowhere;
A trickle of water of a drying source;
Crying babies, skeletal babies, over-stretched stomachs;
And white carcasses dotting the parched landscape.
Fighting for the emotive duality, the emotive matrix,
The emotive root of characters;
Getting a grip on the conscious, rhythm, perseverance;
Space and living duration;
The I, here, and now; in extension, in tension, and in intention;
Generosity and avarice;
Fighting for the Man.
Homes, gardens, and highways for the few;
They are addicted to driving and drinking.
Leftovers for the leftover of humanity;
Trekking for hundreds of miles; bare foot, crackling skin,
Sore dried up eyes;
To reach one of those Blue Tents
Erected and tended by romantic hearts.
Fighting for accepting reality;
Refusing reality, imaginary refusal;
The real, irrational and the surreal;
Carnal intelligence, dramatic intelligence,
Dialogue, rational arguments, democracy, discrimination,
The master action, the power of deciding,
The struggling with obstacles,
The greatness and misery of the will;
Fighting for the Man.
A car accident, a mugging,
A child left unattended, locked in a car,
A dog, a cat, an iguana for the few.
One million widowed, two millions disappeared,
Three millions refugees,
Four millions disabled in pre-emptive wars,
To depose a dictator here, a tough-minded leader there;
Five millions orphans, dislocated institutions and social fabrics;
Fifty thousands incarcerated:
Potential terrorists, with no hope for legal due processes,
For the leftover of humanity.
Fighting for the moral character, the moral act,
The religious expression of moral limitation;
Comprehending the Man is a science;
Far more complex and exhilarating
Than inanimate physical sciences;
You don’t need to be neutral in human behavioral sciences,
Just be plainly unbiased.
You don’t need to be odorless and insipid in social sciences;
I have got to be fighting for the Man!
Adonis Diaries 