Greece reminds me that history doesn’t judge. History doesn’t care.
Ah Greece. It’s nice to be back.
Greece holds a special place in my heart. And I know that these days I only live one side of Greek life. I live the beautiful islands and private yachts and cocktails at 3 in the afternoon side of it.
(You’ve got to try that side out. It’s fantastic.)
So maybe my view of things is a little martini-coloured, but this place is special. The land, the air… everything is ancient. And that makes everything feel epic. When you wander the streets of Athens, you have to wonder at how many people have walked these streets before you.
How many soldiers from how many wars? In greens fatigues or in bronze armour. How many merchants, selling fish, or fabric, or television sets to mobile phones? How many lovers, who got married, had kids, grew old and died… over and over again?
It’s easy to lose focus of history living in Australia. Western civilisation is still a baby there, and the indigenous civilisation before it had a circular, almost timeless concept of time. History (in a western sense) feels shallow.
But not here in Athens. Here history is deep, and it has a life of its own.
It’s humbling and liberating. It’s humbling because you become aware that 2016 is just one tiny notch on the bed-board of human history. To us, 2016 feels like it’s been pretty epic so far. Brexit and all that. But unless something pretty major happens pretty soon, 2016 will go down in history as a pretty unremarkable year. In a hundred years it won’t even deserve it’s own entry.
In a thousand years it just be lost in an entry marked – Digital Age. And in 3,000 years it will all just be lumped in with the second millennium.
~2000AD – America became an independent state. Powered flight was developed. Humans evolved an extra finger.
There are sites around Greece that had Greeks kicking around them 7,000 years ago.
That’s like thinking about from now to the year 9,000. Can you even imagine?
And when I think about someone living 7,000 years ago, I often imagine their life was easy. What did they have to worry about? They don’t have any of these real, 20th Century concerns.
But the truth is they probably experienced their lives with the same intensity I do. The concerns would have been different. I’m looking at how I can expand my business empire and forge it into a global business. They were worried about being massacred by neighbouring tribes and catching deadly diseases from chickens.
Wherever and whenever you live, life at the cutting edge of history is always intense. So much is unknown. So much hangs in the balance. It’s never a golden age until past-tense kicks in.
So I find walking side by side with history in Athens humbling. I know that whatever I’m stressing about today, will very quickly be forgotten.
Even by myself. I imagine 80-year old Jon will be looking back at this time – cruising on a private yacht, lunching on the islands, ouzo before dinner and a spread of amazing sea-food, and he’ll wonder why I spent my mornings hunched over a lap top, fussing about this and that.
(I even find that’s true after a few ouzos in the same evening.)
So this history is humbling. It reminds you that you’re not as special as you think you are.
But if you can be ok with the ego-shock of that, it can be incredibly liberating. Whatever you do today, no matter how spectacular your success or how hilarious your failures, it just doesn’t matter. There’s no way to make an argument that it matters.
You are totally free to do whatever you want. Kiss her, write a book, start a business, whatever.
History won’t judge you. History simply doesn’t care.
You just shouldn’t not give a toss about what history is going to make of you.
Because even history will perish sooner or later. It’s like that quote from Bertrand Russell, that I always found beautiful/exciting/chilling…
“… No fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave… All the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system… The whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins…”
Greece has buried more history than most civilisations can dream of.
But this isn’t a call to intergenerational selfishness. It’s not about giving the finger to our ancestors and our future generations. Rather, it’s about living fully in the moment, at the exciting knife’s edge of history, and simply doing what we are called to do.
So many people are living to be remembered. Why do you care? If you are remembered at all, you will be remembered as an idiot.
You are free. Do what you want. History won’t judge.
Why do people want to be remembered?
Marty s says
Hi Jon
I’ve spent a lot of time in Athens so I completely understand what you are saying.
Have not been back for five years though.
I might go tou chronou.
Cheers
Stamatis
ron goddard says
ha ha ..at last reality sets in jonno. nothing really matters and what if it did? you refer to the indiginous peoples here in the land of oz. we, as a caucasian group, as a band of roving barbarians, will never understand the reality of the great a serpent called wagyl. we ridicule this ‘fantasy’. the druids of old england were also ‘serpentwise’. does that tell us something? the indiginous ones left not footprints, no traces of prisons, tax departments, roads, freeways, etc. etc. etc. this is white mans creation.
but to answer your question about remembrance. simply it is ego driven, in the mind-world of certain types people who invariably dominate the landscape to the detriment of everybody else. you even admit that you wanna be worldwide in your business. egoism? the aborigines never had that..they truly lived in the moment. they knew that all is one and one is all. to them the place they lived was there. not somewhere else ..even in imagination.
vladimer lenin, remember him?, was quoted : that 95% of people are idiots, but they are useful. .his mission was not as history so badly tells us. his mission was to steal the tsars treasure worth $80bn.then. he was a st. petersberg jew and joseph stalin was a georgian jew.
they detested orthodox christians, russian and ukranian and armenian. they vurtually enslaved the populations of eastern european peoples until 1991. . the tsars treasure is still held by the jews : the rothschilds family. many attempts by the descendants of tsar nicholas 2nd to claim back the treasure have come to nothing. but is it worth anything to anybody? we can enjoy our life if we give a little and not take a lot. one man who is remembered is a man named jesus. he had nothing, wanted for nothing and gave only of his soul. that is what is written in the bible. so you better believe it. 🙂
cheers jonno, from your sandgroper mate ron..
Jenny Kennedy says
Slightly off-topic, but I’ve heard a wise saying: “Don’t fret / stress stuff unless it’ll still matter in 5 years time”.
Rick Eason says
Jon, you present “history” in the abstract. So of course it cannot judge, but that does not in any way support your conclusion that everything is meaningless. Nor does it come even close to dealing with the modern scientific inference to intelligent design of the universe, which has now consigned Bertand Russell’s evolutionary worldview to the dustbin of history.
Your speculations are imaginative and often funny, but a more authoritative view can be gained from our Creator’s love-letter to us, which in Hebrews 9:27 says: “It is appointed for humans to die once … and after that comes judgement.” Life is not meaningless, but only our Creator can reveal its meaning.
By the way, your understandable interest in Greece, has limited your historical horizons. Long before Greece had a crude form of democracy for a privileged few that was funded by enslaving other nations, there were great empires like Egypt, Assyria, Medo-Persia. Afterward came the might of Rome (another slave state), but all of them pale into insignificance when compared with the British Empire. This is true whether in terms of geographical size, population, technology, justice, freedom, or widespread economic prosperity. What is not generally understood, but is documented in my book “Playing God”, is that the greatness of Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the USA was built on and still depends on legal and constitutional values that reflect the love-based values of Jesus.
In other words, the Anglo-Sphere succeeded NOT through clever philosophy, but by tapping into the Creator’s view of truth and reality – a worldview in stark contrast to your suggestion that we surrender to the hopelessness of meaninglessness.
Brook Logan says
“Scientific” intelligent design? Very amusing.
Peter T says
Jon, have an ouzaki for me, stin iyiasou filai
Ken says
Hi Jon, Couldn’t help but remember what my (Rat of Tobruk) father told me about Greece. He said that when Hitler entered Greece, the Greek people armed themselves with pick handles, axes and what ever they could lay their hands on, to face the mighty German Army. Yes Jon, you have a lot to be proud of. Each and every one of them deserved a VC.
Ben Hurn says
Jon, that was eloquent and sobering. Thanks for the perspective kick and a moment of clarity in this strange and amazing thing we call life. Sorry you seem to get many inane and irrelevant comments – there is at least one here who relishes your words… however meaningless to history. I don’t write often, but please keep them coming!