Greece's Advantage?

I’ve spent the last week and a half studying ancient Greece, Turkish Greece, as well as Greece today. I was originally going to spend some time studying ancient philosophers but the research began to morph. I was at a second hand book store and I bought The Illiad by Homer, so I wanted to learn a bit more about him as well as the philosophers I was going to focus on (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.) Then I remember that Archimedes lived around the same time that these guys did, and Archimedes is one of my heroes, so I couldn’t leave him out of my study. Then I thought that since I’d come this far already, I’d just learn about great minds from ancient history. But as I was writing up short bios to start with for each of these people, I began to realize that all but one or two were from Greece. So I thought “There must be something about Greece that is helping these people” this is why I decided to study Greece.

 

As I started studying, I’ve fallen completely in love with this place.

I haven’t found exactly what it is that is helping these minds, but I think there’s something to be said about studying where you know great minds have gone before.

For example, if I were born in Greece and I was into philosophy, I believe that knowing I lived near the place that people such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle had once lived, that might help me to be more determined in my studying. Also, ancient Greece had a unique type of art, most of their art was either very mathematical (for example, all of the amazing architecture) or it was symbolic and had a deeper meaning (either religious, philosophical, or telling a story.)

This would mean that if you wanted to be an artist, you would still be learning insane amounts of history, mythology, and mathematics. I believe this is what we here in North America have missed. Academics all coincide with each other as well as the arts, and we can use a gifting to understand a weakness. If you don’t understand math, but you are an artist, than you can learn through that. If you don’t know anything about history, but you love stories, than read some of Homer’s or Herodotus’ work. This is what I think made Greece flourish. One last thing is that Canada’s only been around for a fraction of the time that Greece has, so we haven’t had as much time for brilliant minds to be born. If you take a look at the approximate birthdates of different heroes form Greece, they were all fairly spread out, and that just takes time.