Musing of the Moment: Isocrates on the Youth in Ancient Greece

I'm running an independent study with an undergraduate who wants to study classical rhetoric. 

As I was reading Antidosis by Isocrates, I came across this passage of his take on the problems among the youth in Ancient Greece. 

"It is from these pursuits that you have for a long time now been driving out youth, because you accept the words of those who denounce this kind of education. Yes, and you have brought it about that the most promising of our young men are wasting their youth in drinking bouts, in parties, in soft living and childish folly, to the neglect of all efforts to improve themselves; while those of grosser nature are engaged from morning until night in extremes of dissipation which in former days an honest slave would have despised. You see some of them chilling their wine at the 'Nine-fountains'; others, drinking in taverns; others, tossing dice in gambling dens; and many, hanging about the training schools of the flute girls."

I'm thinking "same as it ever was, bruh."

They're youth.

Today I think you could replace the drinking with smoking weed.

I am intrigued by the prospect of "flute girls" though. Most people associate flute girls with prostitution, but according someone who knows Ancient Greece better than me, they are not necessarily prostitutes.

Check out "Flute Girls" on Mindship.

Random Notes from a Crank

The current issue of Utne has three articles I want to share. 

The first is "Picture Day" written by a Bosnian-Canadian. It puts the refugee crisis into a more personal perspective. As she says, "Today, more than twenty years after my parents and I left Bosnia, there are still refugees in the world--hundreds of thousands of them, in fact. The current refugee crisis, fueled by wars in Syria and across the Middle East, has been immortalized by photos of families just like mine: men, women, and children sitting in bus stations waiting for food, trapped behind border fences, and holing up in dilapidated refugee camps."

Here's a good example of Girl Power: "Women Mayors Lead the Charge on Climate Change." 

A long and interesting interview with ecologist Carl Safina titled "Signs of Intelligent Life"  makes me want to buy his book, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. There are many nuggets of fact-based wisdom in the interview, but here is one of my favorites: "I think humans are the animal who embodies the most extremes. We can give ourselves credit for being the most technologically talented, the most compassionate, and the most creative, but we also must own that we're the most destructive, the cruelest, and the most violent." I have similar feelings as he does about religion.