It’s that time of year again, when I look back over the previous twelve months of blogging and wonder why I bother. Levels of interest and engagement, on every single measure, continue their inexorable decline – the fact that it’s only a 20-25% fall from the already-feeble figures of 2021 is due almost entirely to December, with the combination of my regular Blogs of the Year post piggy-backing on other people’s talent and popularity and a bit of gratuitous snark about #Receptiogate (now removed after a take-down notice from the alpaca whose image I used without permission). Maybe the blog post as a genre will make a come-back as a result of the immolation of Twitter; more plausibly, I should be thinking about how to re-tool my prolix ramblings for the world of TikTok… (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Melian Dialogue’
Here We Go Again
Posted in Musings, tagged economics, Melian Dialogue, Thucydides on September 29, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Events of the present and future will tend to resemble those of the past – or however else you want to paraphrase Thucydides’ key assumption about the usefulness of his work – or at any rate will remind us of them. This week has been very much a case in point, as commentators have looked back to previous disastrous budgets and currency crises in search of a bit of historical context and/or a yardstick for evaluating disastrousness for the present Kwartastrophic Trussterfuck. I’ve been thinking a bit about my early childhood in the early 1970s (and how much this may have influenced my current instincts to preserve vegetables and hoard firewood), but even more my thoughts have turned to the Greek economic crisis, prompted by the wonderfully Thucydidean phrase used by someone from Nomura finance in the early stage of the pound’s collapse, “hope is not a strategy”. Yes, it’s the Melian Dialogue redividus, once again pitting the Batshit Brexit Party against another inexorable facet of reality. (more…)
Weaponising Thucydides
Posted in Musings, Research in Progress, tagged international relations, Melian Dialogue, Russia, Thucydides, Thucydides trap, Twitter, Ukraine, war on April 5, 2022| 2 Comments »
‘Doom-scrolling’ is, I imagine, a familiar thing, that many of us have been doing far too much of lately. You may not, however, have come across ‘professional doom-scrolling’, which unfortunately does not mean you get paid for it, but rather involves justification of the activity through some sort of “but I have to do this for work”, addressed to frustrated loved ones and even to ourselves, to explain how this is not simply a deeply unhealthy bit of obsessive behaviour. It’s relevant to this piece I’m working on; I need to cover related issues in class next week; there’s a developing methodological debate that connects to my area. This practice is quite distinct from what we might call ‘catastrophe dissemination’, the uncontrollable urge to link current events to one’s own research in order to write topical social media posts and would-be popular comment pieces, although the professional doom-scroller may indeed end up writing such pieces as a doubling-down on their original justification for spending a deeply problematic amount of time on the Twitter. (more…)
Mwahaha Soon My Electro-Ray Will Destroy Amphipolis
Posted in Musings, tagged comics, Melian Dialogue, superheroes, Thucydides on July 24, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Not just at the moment, while my brain persistently refuses to sustain joined-up thought, but as a career-long habit, I come up regularly with ideas that I’m entirely incapable of realising; not only because of lack of time or energy but also because of lack of skill and talent. That’s my entire musical career, obviously – perhaps I should have tried to become a Malcolm McLaren-style impresario instead, finding other people (and other people’s money) to realise my plans – but also plenty of passing whims that swim into view around 4 am, hang around for a few days and then drift off again… (more…)
The Melian Dialogues
Posted in Events, Research in Progress, tagged classical reception, Melian Dialogue, politics, theatre, Thucydides on January 10, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Deal or No Deal
Posted in Musings, tagged Brexit, Melian Dialogue, Thucydides on October 18, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Not many posts at the moment as I’m struggling to keep on top of the teaching prep with two new modules this term, plus having to catch train before 7 am on both Thursdays and Fridays which then leaves me staring blankly into space by lunchtime. BUT! I am still capable now and again of stringing together a series of thoughts on the Twitter, which quite possibly get a bigger audience there, but if I copy them onto here I will at least have a record…
In the Melian Dialogue (Choose Your Own Adventure version), the discussion eventually ends up going in circles. There’s actually no limit on how long this can continue, but it’s pretty obvious after a while that talking has reached its limit. (more…)
Do What You Must
Posted in Events, Research in Progress, tagged Impact, Melian Dialogue, theatre, Thucydides on October 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I have sometimes reflected that my epitaph should probably be ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’ – especially when, as seems all too likely, I perish from a surfeit of missed deadlines. What I’ve always thought of as a boundless intellectual curiosity, able to get excited by and imagine my own contribution to any number of different projects, could equally well be described as a butterfly mind or a puppy-like lack of discrimination, randomly chasing cars and shiny things. The net result is the same, an excessive ‘to do’ list and regular bursts of apology-writing when the time and energy just run out.
Which isn’t to say that the original ideas weren’t good (more…)
Lawful Neutral
Posted in Events, Musings, Research in Progress, tagged classical reception, Impact, Melian Dialogue, politics, Thucydides, Victor Davis Hanson on June 18, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I’ve just discovered this blog post lurking in my ‘Drafts’ file, having apparently been created in mid-March; I can’t remember why I never got round to finishing it – unlike another post I started back in the autumn, which perhaps needs to wait for an appropriate moment – but that’s probably revealing in itself. Anyway, in a number of ways this unfinished discussion connects to what I was planning to write this morning, so I’ll post it here and then add current thoughts underneath…
If what you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If what you have is a copy of Thucydides, everything looks like the Melian Dialogue. (more…)
Letting Go
Posted in Musings, Research in Progress, tagged Impact, Melian Dialogue, politics, power, teaching, Thucydides on June 8, 2019| Leave a Comment »
This week is especially heavy on travelling, which is terrible for doing all the writing I imagined I’d get done once marking was out of the way, pretty terrible for my waistline as I resort too often to coffee and cake to keep going, moderately good for starting to work through the long list of overdue book reviews, and very good for blog posts. I’m currently, in theory, on my way to Zagreb for a doctoral workshop on pre-modern economics [update, three hours later: finally on the move…] On Tuesday I was in Manchester, and on Wednesday in London, for teacher-training sessions for the ‘Understanding Power’ project – aka ‘Thinking Through Thucydides’, but that name isn’t going to pull in the punters – that Lynette Mitchell and I have been developing with the Politics Project.
This was tiring, a little stressful – and finally a joy. (more…)
Lessons of War?
Posted in Events, Musings, tagged classical reception, Melian Dialogue, Thucydides, Thucydides trap on May 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »
What’s the key lesson of the Melian Dialogue? The dominant tradition has been some sort of variant on Crude Realism, from the perspective of the would-be superior power: justice only between equals, we the strong have the right to dictate and you the weak must comply, and forget all this nonsense about hope. The usual response, from those who reject such a worldview and/or, perhaps more significantly, aren’t in any position to pursue it, is to question and reject the Athenian logic, by detaching it from the authority of Thucydides and pointing to the consequences of their attitude. But of course it is also possible to be one of the Weak and nevertheless accept the logic of the Strong; like the prisoner in Life of Brian who praises the Romans for their strict approach to crime and punishment, or the cow at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, there are those who fully accept the right of others to dictate terms and exact obedience. (more…)
Sphinx 