The fog of war

There are plenty of good reasons for reading the classics, such as the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid. One of the best I've found is that it's a pretty good description of real life.

El Cabrero doesn't spend a lot of time at the legislature of my beloved state of West Virginia, but I was there enough this time to have a little mock Homeric deja vu.

In the Iliad, the tide of battle often switches back and forth, as various humans fight away and as various gods intervene here and there. No one really knows everything that is going on. As in the Aeneid, Rumor is the swiftest of the gods.

In the case of WV, the great god Randomness seems to have a lot of clout as well. Also prominent deities are Hades, god of wealth, Hermes, god of merchants and thieves, not to mention the great god Biscuit, patron of those who oppose menu labels with calorie information and the god of the gutless whose name escapes me at the moment.

At crucial times, Zeus weighs the fates of the combatants on his golden scales, which tip one way or another.

Of the many skirmishes this time, one of the most important ones had to do with the fate of WV's unemployment compensation fund, which is heading towards emptiness in the non-Buddhist sense.

A decent version passed the state senate, which included things that neither labor nor business was all that happy with. Then things hit the house side and everything was on again. In the end, a decent bill seemed to pass after some amendments.

The tide went one way and then another and even people I usually turn to find out what is really going on wasn't all that sure what was happening.

It can be quite a show but, alas, it is an epic without a bard.

AFTER THE BUST, a boom in bankruptcies.

WHAT'S NEXT? How bout doga, or yoga with dogs? While we're at it...

BETTER THAN A DOG? That may have been a factor in Charles Darwin's decision to marry. I could think of any number of things to say but will relinquish the opportunity.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Farewell to glory, plus stuff on the economy, fear, and whales

Statue of the death of Achilles, courtesy of wikipedia.

Goat Rope is all about the Odyssey of Homer these days, although you'll also find links and comments about current events. If you like this stuff, click back on earlier posts.

The visit Odysseus makes to the underworld is a turning point in the story. It can be seen as a kind of initiation, marking the end of Odysseus the warrior and the beginning of his return (although he ain't there yet).

He meets many people in the underworld. There's a sad encounter with the shade of his mother Anticlea, who died of grief after despairing of her son's return. There's a failed meeting with the ghost of Ajax, a mighty Greek warrior who went mad and committed suicide at Troy largely through the actions of Odysseus. Odysseus wants to make up but Ajax refuses to speak.

Lots of veterans--of war and peace--have lost people after having let them down in life and experience regret and survivor's guilt.

But one of the most important encounters is with the ghost of the warrior Achilles, who was given a choice between long life without fame and an early death but enduring fame. The Homeric term for fame or glory was kleos, which meant in part living on in song after one's death. Since the underworld was pretty grim, that was often regarded as the only meaningful form of immortality.

He did get fame--we're still talking about him today. But kleos turns out to have been an empty promise.

Odysseus, thinking him the most fortunate of men, greets him thus:

...Achilles,
there's not a man in the world more blest than you--
there never has been, never will be one.
Time was, when you were alive, we Argives
honored you as a god, and now down here, I see,
you lord it over the dead in all your power.
So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.

He's not buying it. In a shocking renunciation of the cult of glory, Achilles replies

No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!
By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man--
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive--
than rule down here over all the breathless dead.

I think this farewell to and disparagement of glory--coming from someone who got more of it than anyone else--marks the key difference between the Iliad as a poem of kleos to the Odyssey as a poem of nostos or homecoming.

One last word: Achilles' renunciation of the "glory" of war calls to mind a saying of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman:

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.

BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A JOB? Job seekers outnumber jobs about about three to one, according to the latest Economic Policy Institute snapshot. Here's a related issue brief on the subject.

SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH, FREE ENTERPRISE FOR THE POOR. That pretty well sums up Wall Street bailouts while millions of American families are feeling the squeeze. I can't claim originality on this one, but free enterprisers in a recession are kind of like the proverbial atheists in foxholes.

ON A RELATED NOTE, this item argues that gouging the poor lies at the root of the credit/housing meltdown.

WITHOUT A NET. As the economy tanks, millions of workers are watching the value of their 401(k)s evaporate. This McClatchy article suggests that the economic crisis may lead Americans to re-evaluate the current social contract.

THE FIX. Here's Paul Krugman on what the bailout might look like.

THE FEAR FACTOR. A new study finds some interesting connections between political views and the response to fear.

URGENT ANCIENT WHALE UPDATE. The early ones used their back legs to swim--a feature missing on more recent models. El Cabrero doesn't know about y'all but I find the evolution of aquatic mammals fascinating.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: DON'T EVEN ASK

ENTERTAINING THE CIVILIANS

Athena telling Diomedes to chill out. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The Goat Rope series on the Odyssey of Homer continues, along with links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

It is a fact of life that war has for thousands of years been a kind of entertainment, particularly for those not engaged in it at the time. This is also true when Odysseus finally makes it to his next-to-the-last stop on his lengthy journey home from the Trojan War.

He is hosted, pretty graciously, by the prosperous and peaceful Phaeacians. His hosts even offer games in his honor, although not those involving the fighting arts. As his host the ruler Alcinous put it,

We're hardly world-class boxers or wrestlers, I admit,
but we can race like the wind, we're champion sailors too,
and always dear to our hearts, the feast, the lyre and dance
and changes of fresh clothes, our warm baths and beds.

While they're not much for fighting, they love hearing about it. The blind bard Demodocus (see yesterday's post) enthralls his listeners, although his all-too-realistic songs of the Trojan War cause cause the battle-weary Odysseus to hide his face and cry.

As Jonathan Shay, author of Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming, put it,

The gulf between Odysseus and his civilian hosts is visible in their drastically different responses to the songs of Demodocus. This bard is the genuine article--the Muse whispers the truth of the war at Troy in his ear when he composes his songs. His songs, narrative poems like the Iliad, reduce Odysseus to tears, which he tries to hide. Afterward he proclaims that Demodocus sings with the truth of someone who was there himself. The Phaeacian civilians love these epic poems of war...--along with the harper's dance music and his bedroom farces...It's all the same to them. It's all entertainment. But for Odysseus, the truth-filled stories of the Trojan War open the gates of grief.

The Phaeacians aren't bad people. They just don't get it. Shay uses an example from the present to make his point:

Picture this scene: A Vietnam combat veteran goes to a family wedding some ten years after his service. (Odysseus is ten years out from Troy.) The band plays a Jimi Hendrix piece that reminds him of a dead friend, blindsiding him with emotion. He tries to conceal his tears, but a rich relative notices and says, "Why aren't you over that Vietnam stuff yet?..."

The song of Demodocus causes Odysseus to reveal himself and he finally begins to tell his own tale of the long way home. About which more tomorrow.

SPEAKING OF HOMER, here's an item on the evolutionary psychology of the Iliad and one on its use of humor.

POVERTY DAY. Yesterday the Census Bureau released information on poverty, income and health coverage for 2000. Here's some commentary by Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, along with a link to the Census data and here's an analysis of state data from the WV Center on Budget and Policy.

Short version of the data: poverty didn't change much. There was a small increase in median incomes and a small drop in the number of people without health coverage--BUT, and this is a big but--the numbers don't reflect the effects of the current recession. Also, if 2007 was the peak year of the economic expansion, the health care and poverty numbers are still worse than those of 2000.

AN ECONOMY FOR EVERYBODY? Three out of four Americans think the economy is getting worse. Here are some options for getting there.

MONKEY EMPATHY. Capuchin monkeys enjoy giving to other monkeys. Could it be the monastic influence?

URGENT NEANDERTHAL UPDATE. They might have been smarter than we thought.

MEDICAID. West Virginia's redesigned Medicaid program, called Mountain Health Choices, continues to be controversial. This Gazette article discusses a survey that showed most people in the program don't understand the two-tiered program, which offers a Basic and Enhanced set of benefits. Many people wind up in the basic program, which limits services and prescriptions, by default.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A WORD ABOUT A WORD

Rubens' painting of "Jupiter and Mercurius in the house of Philemon and Baucis," by way of wikipedia.

Welcome to Goat Rope's ongoing series on the Odyssey of Homer. Each weekday post contains a nugget from that great epic that has delighted people of all ages from ancient times. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

A central theme of both the Iliad and the Odyssey is the that of xenia or hospitality, a sacred obligation in parts of the ancient Mediterranean world. In those days, travel was dangerous and there was an acute shortage of Holiday Inns. It was a custom that a traveler could approach a house--generally but not always one of similar social status to the traveler--and ask for a meal and a place to sleep.

The host had a sacred obligation to wash, feed and shelter the guest and to take care of basic needs before asking any questions. The guest was to respect the host, take what was given and not abuse the privilege or outstay one's welcome. Often, hosts and guests exchanged gifts and retained a special bond.

It was a little risky and scary to take a complete stranger in, just as it was weird to put yourself at the mercy of a stranger if you were the traveler. For this reason, the custom acquired a divine sanction. One of Zeus' main titles was Zeus Xenios, or god of travelers and he was said to punish those who abused hosts or guests.

The ambiguity of the situation can be seen in the differing meanings of the word xenos: host, guest, stranger, alien, friend. You can see a little of this in English with the similarity between the words "host" and "hostility."

Abuse of xenia was the cause of the whole Trojan war. The Trojan prince Paris abducted Menelaus' wife Helen when he was a guest in the latter's home. Since all Greek leaders had sworn to uphold the marriage, the stage was set for war when King Priam of Troy allowed the couple to enter the city.

The obligations of xenia could also prevent people from fighting. At one point in the Iliad, the Greek Diomedes and the Trojan Glaucus decide not to fight when they realized that their fathers had been xenoi or guest-friends. They exchange armor instead (with Diomedes getting the better deal).

The Odyssey is all xenia all the time as Telemachus travels in search of his father and Odysseus bounces from island to island. There are very good examples of xenia in the story, such as the hospitality shown by Nestor and Menelaus to Telemachus and that of the Phaeacians to Odysseus. There are also examples of very bad xenia--like the cyclops who liked to eat his "guests" or the suitors of Penelope who abused their status as guests and devoured the wealth that belonged to the family of Odysseus. At one point, Odysseus, disguised as a beggar is abused by the suitors in his own home.

As in the Bible, sometimes divine beings would come disguised as guests--and woe to those who mistreated them. (For that matter, the story of Lot and Sodom in Genesis is really about the abuse of hospitality, not homosexuality.) The importance of hospitality is echoed in the New Testament epistle Hebrews (13:2), where it is said that

Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.

So just remember, if you want to stay on Zeus's good side, don't devour your guests or run away with the significant others of your host.

Is this a useful blog or what?

MY BAD. Those Gentle Readers who subscribe to Goat Rope via email may have gotten a mistaken post Sunday night. El Cabrero hit the wrong button and published an unfinished draft intended for later this week by mistake.

TOWARDS A GREEN ECONOMY. Here's something about what it may look like.

SOCIAL SECURITY may or may not be wearing a bull's eye again soon, but this memo from the Economic Policy Institute counters fear mongering about it.

POVERTY DAY. On Tuesday, the government will release the latest numbers on poverty, incomes and health insurance coverage. Here's a brief from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on what to look for.

MALE ANIMALS TEND TO BE SHOWOFFS to a far greater extent than females, with various kinds of wild displays. My guess is that you have already noticed this. Recent research in biology may have found a genetic mechanism that opened the way for all that strutting around.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

FAMILY VALUES, OLYMPIC STYLE

Zeus and Hera in a less rocky moment, courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme lately is the Odyssey of Homer, but you'll also find links and comments about current events.

Several Olympic gods are major characters in this story so it might be time to meet the family, starting with the older generation and the "royal family."

At the pinnacle of power is the sky god Zeus, who is associated with the thunderbolt and also the guardian of oaths and the laws of hospitality. He is married to his sister Hera, who gets the credit (or blame) for having invented that institution. The marriage is a bit rocky given Zeus' many infidelities with other goddesses and humans.

Zeus and Hera have two children, Ares, the despised god of war and Hephaestus, the lame god of the forge. He got that way after his parents flicked him off Olympus and he fell to earth. A master craftsman, he is known to use the tools of technology to even the score.

Hephaestus is married to "laughter loving Aphrodite," goddess of love and sexual desire, who has an ongoing fling with Ares (love and war--what can you say?) In Homer, she is referred to as Zeus' daughter although according to Hesiod she is older than the Olympic gods, having arise from the foam of the sea where the titan Kronos threw testicles of Uranus after castrating him. Kronos was in time overthrown by Zeus.

Intergenerational conflict seems to be an issue in this family...

Zeus shares dominion with two of his brothers. Poseidon is the god of the sea and is associated with earthquakes. He is extremely quarrelsome and unpredictable and is known to hold grudges--such as the one against Odysseus after the latter blinds his son Polyphemus the cyclops. Hades is god of the dead and the underworld. Theoretically, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades share the earth in common but Zeus is clearly the main dude.

Hades doesn't get out much, although he famously kidnapped the goddess Persephone, daughter of the earth and grain goddess Demeter, which led to the seasons of the year. Persephone divides her time between the underworld (winter) and Olympus.

You don't hear much about Hestia, sister of Zeus and virgin goddess of the hearth and domestic life, but she was central to private religious life in the home.

Some of the more interesting gods were the children of Zeus from his extramarital wanderings. More on them tomorrow.

A BLUNT INSTRUMENT. Here's more commentary on the RAND Corporation report that says military force is not a solution to terrorism:

"Military force usually has the opposite effect from what is intended: It is often overused, alienates the local population by its heavy-handed nature and provides a window of opportunity for terrorist-group recruitment."

SWIPE THIS. Is credit card debt the next economic bubble?

POWER OF PRIDE/SHAME ON YOU. Some researchers believe that human gestures of pride and shame or victory and defeat may be universal and inherited. At Goat Rope Farm, you could pick them up by copying the roosters...

URGENT NEANDERTHAL UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE FIRST OLYMPIANS

Dionysus and friends, courtesy of wikipedia.

The series on the Odyssey continues, although you'll also find links and comments about current events. If you like an occasional ancient Greek fix, please click on earlier posts. The series started Aug. 4.

As noted yesterday, the Greek gods who were such major characters in the Iliad and the Odyssey were a lot different from what we're used to these days.

Here's a striking contrast. In a monotheistic framework, it is idolatrous and impious to worship more than one god. In the Greek religious system, it would be just as impious to worship only one at the expense of the whole. That was one theme in the Greek tragedy Hippolytus by Euripides, in which the title character worshiped only Artemis the hunter goddess and neglected the love goddess Aphrodite to his own destruction. Like the letters of the alphabet or chess pieces or a deck of cards, the gods only made sense as part of a system.

Greek religion had no creeds or scriptures and didn't place an emphasis on personal piety or beliefs. Nor did it have as elaborate a system of priests and religious officials as many other societies.

The Greek gods weren't all that interested in micromanaging human morality either, although they did have some standards. Zeus, for instance, was the patron of oaths and the laws of hospitality which protected guests and hosts. Hera was the goddess of marriage (not entirely successfully). The gods tended to punish human excess and arrogance to protect the rights of supplicants and sanctuary.

If they didn't crave personal piety, they wanted respect. In a way, the gods couldn't exist without people to worship them and they enjoyed the aroma of sacrifices.

Aside from that, they didn't care too much about people. Some had their favorites, such as Odysseus' patron Athena, but in general they probably cared less for people than some people care for their pets.

On the positive side, it probably would occur to the Olympians to punish the majority of mankind in eternal fire, although they did reserve special punishments for people who personally ticked them off.

Next time: the lineup.

THE GOOD SAMARITAN should be welcomed back to the public sphere like the Prodigal Son, as this piece argues.

TIMETABLE? McClatchy reports that the US and Iraq are approaching an agreement on the withdrawal of US troops.

LEAVING WAR TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR. The US has spent $100 billion on private contractors in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.

CREDIT CARD DEBT is a serious issue for college students. In one survey, typical respondents will graduate with more than $2,600 of it. That's not counting student loans.

BIG BOXES GO SOLAR. A number of retail giants are installing solar panels on their roofs to capture energy.

ALMOST UFO HEAVEN. El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia has yet another distinction, as the Beckley Register Herald suggest:

West Virginia prides itself as a land of majestic mountains, sparkling streams, coal to feed hungry power plants, a unique place in American history and a fiercely independent people accustomed to overcoming hard times with a resiliency unrivaled by anyone else.

Now add another chapter to the 35th state’s storied history — more documented UFO activity than any other place in America.

Even eclipsing Roswell.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

YE GODS

The Olympians, courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope these days is The Odyssey of Homer, although you will also find links and comments about current events. The series began Aug. 4. If this is your first visit and if you find the subject congenial, please click on earlier posts.

A few years back, I was excited to hear that someone was making a movie about the Trojan War. Fool that I was, I thought they might actually stick a little to the Iliad. It was terrible! AND there weren't even any gods in it. I was mortified.

Talking about Homer without gods is kind of like playing a guitar without notes or chords. They are as much a part of the story as the people.

Still, Greek gods seem a little strange to people brought up on a legacy of monotheism. When many people today hear the word god, they imagine some kind of solitary being that is eternal, all good, all powerful and all knowing. None of these apply to the Greek version. Let's run down that list.

Solitary? Nope. There were a bunch of them. Aside from the Big Twelve (or Thirteen, depending on who you count) on Olympus, there were several dark, scary chthonic gods of the underworld, an older generation of imprisoned Titans, and any number of lesser divinities. It was a pluralistic view of the universe. Sometimes there were even different versions of the same god.

Eternal? Nope, at least not in the sense of always existing. The gods of Olympus were a few generations removed from the primal Chaos that Hesiod says was there "in the beginning." They are immortal and free from aging and sickness however. That's the main difference between us and them.

All good? Hardly. They could be petty, spiteful, lusty and vindictive. The philosopher Xenophanes wrote that

Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods everything that is a shame and disgrace among men, stealing and committing adultery and deceiving one another.

It's probably more to the point to say that Greek gods were beyond good and evil. Many were related to, if not personifications of, natural forces. And, as you may have noticed, nature isn't very moralistic or puritanical.

All powerful? Not quite, although they are very powerful. As Apollo warns the warrior Diomedes in the Iliad,

Gods are to humans what humans are to crawling bugs.

Still, one nice thing about polytheism is that the power of one god can be checked or influenced by others. A kind of divine coalition politics sometimes prevailed. Although the most powerful god by far is Zeus, even his power is limited by Fate.

All knowing? Not exactly. They know a lot and eventually find out a lot more but they can be fooled and tricked. They sleep and take trips and don't know what goes on at such times. At one point in the Iliad, the goddess Hera tricks Zeus into a zesty bout of lovemaking so that she can work mischief while he sleeps afterward. In the Odyssey, the sea god Poseidon takes a trip to visit the Ethiopians and nearly lets Odysseus get home early in his absence.

All these things made Greek religion a lot different from what we're used to. More on this tomorrow.

LET'S GET DIPLOMATIC. This NY Times op-ed by Nicholas Kristof talks sense about America's undervalued and underfunded system of diplomacy. He notes that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been one of the most forceful advocates of a greater investment in this kind of "soft power." You can't bomb your way out of everything.

EVERYTHING IN MODERATION--INCLUDING MODERATION. This item argues that voters are often more attracted by extreme opinions than by reason and moderation. That would explain a lot.

LOOKING FOR SOLUTIONS to our economic mess? Here are some solid recommendations from the Economic Policy Institute.

OLYMPIC QUESTION. Who would win in a competition between modern and early humans?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TWO KINDS OF EPICS

The rage of Achilles was the subject of The Iliad, an epic of kleos. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Aside from links and (occasionally snide) comments about current events, theme here lately is Homer's classic epic poem The Odyssey. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

The Iliad and the Odyssey, both attributed to the bard Homer, are the only two surviving epics about the Trojan War, a major theme of ancient Greek literature and legend. Most historians think that there really was a war between some Greeks and a city in Asia Minor (now Turkey) sometime around 1250 BC, although Homer's epics probably date from much later, probably the 8th century BC.

For that matter, nobody knows who Homer really was or whether the epics should be seen as the collective creation of generations of bards rather than a single individual, although many people incline to the latter view. One semi-serious joke says that the Iliad and Odyssey weren't written by Homer but by someone else with the same name.

Whatever can be said of all that, the Iliad and the Odyssey are two very different kinds of epics. The Iliad, which tells the story of the wrath of Achilles in the last year or so of the war, has been called an epic of kleos or the attempt to gain glory through valor in combat. The Odyssey is an epic of nostos or homecoming.

A word about both:

Kleos is often translated as glory, but it means more than that. Homer's characters had a pessimistic view of life after death. People in the underworld were shades of their former selves--jibbering bats, as one passage puts it. The only meaningful kind of immortality was to live and die in such a way as to be remembered in song and story after one's death. That was kleos.

Achilles in the Iliad is the perfect example of a hero motivated by kleos. He is given a choice between a long and peaceful but unremembered life or early death but lasting glory as a warrior. He chose the latter (although his ghost in the Odyssey regrets that decision).

Nostos (sorry for my horrible efforts at Greek) means homecoming, as in how a veteran of the Trojan War tries with or without success to go home and reintegrate into a peaceful community. It's about going from a state of war to a state of peace--if you're lucky. (Methinks it's also related to the word nostalgia.)

One of the challenges Odysseus faces in his homecoming is leaving kleos and the overwhelming desire for it behind.

But as many veterans and others have found, sometimes surviving war or other ordeals is sometimes less difficult than the homecoming. Many never quite make it home, whether home is considered literally or metaphorically. More on that tomorrow.

BOTTLE BATTLE. The movement against the environmental impact of and waste created by plastic water bottles is growing.

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT. A former white supremacist who broke with his past spoke in Charleston last night.

THE NOSE KNOWS all kinds of things. It helps you feel them too.

AW, HELL! Fewer Americans believe in it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE GODDESS STRIFE

Caption: This isn't one of her better pictures.

El Cabrero is a big fan of ancient Greece. Philosophy, art, literature, politics, history, a pluralistic approach to religion, name it. Unfortunately, the objects of my admiration sometimes had the self-destructive tendencies of the heroes of their tragedies.

They were like the Ziggy Stardusts of the ancient world. They took it all too far, but boy could they play guitar--or kithara, as the case may be.

Back in the heyday, Greece wasn't a unified country like a modern nation or an empire like those of Alexander the Macedonian or the Romans. It was a diverse collection of city-states which took political forms ranging from democracy to monarchy to tyranny to mixed governments. To the extent they were united at all, it was by language, myths, religion, and custom, including the famous panhellenic games which were the forerunners of our Olympics.

They had plenty of shortcomings but one of the biggest was an addiction to strife or Eris,which/who was also a goddess. According to the poet Hesiod in Works and Days, there were actually two goddesses of strife, one good one bad. The bad one led to war and destruction:

So, after all, there was not one kind of Strife alone, but all over the earth there are two. As for the one, a man would praise her when he came to understand her; but the other is blameworthy: and they are wholly different in nature. For one fosters evil war and battle, being cruel: her no man loves; but perforce, through the will of the deathless gods, men pay harsh Strife her honour due.

The other, theoretically at least, to led healthy competition:

But the other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and the son of Cronos who sits above and dwells in the aether, set her in the roots of the earth: and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with is neighbour as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel.

In practice, the two often get muddled together, as you may have noticed.

According to another mythological strand, the whole Trojan war grew out of the spite of the vengeful goddess Eris at not being invited to a wedding (although, in my experience, strife is usually at most weddings anyway, invited or not). She makes an appearance in Homer's Iliad with a particularly apt description:

Strife whose wrath is relentless, she is the sister and companion of murderous Ares [god of war], she who is only a little thing at the first, but thereafter grows until she strides on the earth with her head striking heaven. She then hurled down bitterness equally between both sides as she walked through the onslaught making men's pain heavier. She also has a son whom she named Strife.

Anyway, strife or Eris, whether personified or not, brought down classical Greek civilization. The fall was long and slow, but a major step on the way was the long and fratricidal Pelopponesian War, masterfully recounted by Thucydides. That will be the guiding threat through this week's posts.

I don't plan on working the parallels between the Greeks and us too hard but I think it's safe to say that this goddess is still with us.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. William Schweke of the Center for Enterprise Development recently published this op-ed about a rational approach to economic development for West Virginia (and elsewhere). He warns that

the state should not be frightened into radical proposals by the dogmatic anti-government crowd to cut regulation, taxation and other responsibilities to the bone.

WORTH READING. The latest edition of Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree is available. Jim, an Episcopal priest (yay team!), is a master of metaphors and this issue is full of them.

UNLEASHING WHATEVER DEPARTMENT. Meanwhile, over at West Virgina Blue, Antipode has published a good critique of Unleashing Capitalism, a libertarian tract that has become the Holy Writ of the WV right wing.

CALLING ALL WEST VIRGINIANS. I've noticed that readers of Goat Rope come from all over, but I'd like to ask those who live in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia to read this and respond appropriately in this economic justice campaign. Short version: please check out the link and contact the legislature (it's easy if you go there) to preserve access to education for welfare recipients. It's the best way for people to permanently escape poverty.

THREE ITEMS. For those who don't get the Charleston Gazette or the Sunday Gazette Mail, there are three items in there I highly recommend. One is an article by Paul Nyden on economist Dean Baker, who will be giving a talk in Charleston today on the theme of The Conservative Nanny State. Another is an op-ed by Perry Mann on a lifetime of reading. Finally, there is the heart-rending story by Tara Tuckwiller about a young girl from WV who is doing her part to stop the war in Iraq. Her mother is about to be sent there.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED