Marcel Detinne

"Interpretation begins at the point where external perspective develops."
Marcel Detinne
"The Greeks and Us"

If we get to the point JP has gotten, a man abused by a woman mentally and physically, in a toxic relationship from which escape is life and continued imprisonment is death, and we are still able to say as he says, after pouring out the trouble of his heart to me, "maybe this is as good as it gets," then maybe we deserve what will most certainly happen.

Detinne's book on the Greeks is dead-on: that until we see the Greeks clearly, without the self-serving belief of a singular Hellenic heritage--with monopolies on high culture, democracy, and civil society--we'll never understand ourselves and continue to operate something of a sham civilization, chained to a fictitious past.

As far as the belief that all politics are personal, I am secure is this paradox: that the happier I am with my own life, and the beautiful one who's chosen to live it with me, the more unhappy I am with the world.