striskk
Striskk
Call me out on misinformation. Feel free to request future essays. Dont steal my work. I write for fun.
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Why were humans given the ability to write if not to write heavily worded essays?
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With all of the temples scattered around Greece, one might be led to believe that great buildings such as the parthenon were used in much the same way as people use churches, synagogues and mosques. But, contrary to that belief, according to Sean and Colette Hemingway with the MET museum, temples weren't really used for religious deeds outside of being a representation of a god's might. The Parthenon specifically was set on a rocky mountain and that, along with its size, became a testament to the might of Athena, Patron goddess of Athens, as well as the power and influence of Athens. Temples such as the Parthenon were seen as a home away from mount olympus for the gods, and as such, just like you wouldn't go into someone else's house without permission, it was seen as an invasion of privacy to go inside of a gods temple.
There are a few instances to be found where this proves false. One such instance is, according to Peter Chrisp in his book The Parthenon–How it was Built and How it was Used, the parthenon was used as a treasury for the delphian league when the Greek city states were fighting against the persians–but this could just be a case of the government having more religious freedom from offending the gods than the common folk.
Religious practices of the ancient Greeks typically happened outside at an altar, where people could sacrifice animals such as ox, sheep, and goats, as well as make other kinds of offerings.
When the Roman empire changed its tune of religious tolerance and changed its official religion to Christianity, that changed the religion of all of the places that were a part of the roman empire, including, as it happens, Athens, greece. This change made it necessary to build churches to cater to the new religion, and it also led to the destruction or reform of the religious buildings that had previously been used. One such building was the Parthenon. The Parthenon was converted into a church and a place to hold a christian altar was added to the structure, as well as tearing down a wall to convert the previously two roomed structure into a one roomed structure to hold worshippers inside of. This was the first instance I could find of religious practices being held inside of the parthenon. A, surprisingly effective, way of getting the people to accept and start practicing the new Religion of the Roman Empire, was to assign reformed religious buildings with a saint that was similar to the god that the religious center used to worship. In the case of the parthenon, Athena became the concept of Holy Wisdom, and then later The Virgin Mary.
The Parthenon was used as a Christian church for 1000 Years, which is longer than it served as a temple to the goddess Athena. In 1458, the Turks took Athens and converted the parthenon into an islamic mosque and added a minaret to the roof. They painted over the paintings inside the building because they didn't believe in showing humans in art inside religious centers, but they kept the statues, which experts still debate about the reasoning for.
The venetians from venice, italy wanted to drive the turks from Athens, and during the attack that captured Athens, the parthenon was used by the turks to house women, children, and gunpowder. This choice doesn't seem very wise, but the thought process of the Turks was that, perhaps the Venetians wouldn't fire on the Parthenon because of all of its valuable art, so, logically, it would be the safest place. Sadly, the Venetians had no such reservations, and, after hearing that gunpowder was stored there, one fire from a cannon was all it took to shake the city and reduce the parthenon to mostly rubble. The blast killed at least 300 people.
In the years after that, tourists would come and take chunks of rubble home as souvenirs. An ambassador to Greece, Earl of Elgin, was an enthusiast of Greek art and architecture, and owned a vast collection of Greek works. Elgin gained permission to take parts of the parthenon's rubble that contained art, and it was likely under the assumption that he would take parts that were lying around, like so many tourists before. This was not what happened. Elgin used his permission to cut away pieces of wall to add to his collection. Later, Elgin sold his pieces, and they ended up with the British museum, who is known to covet and take things from cultures around the world for display, as well as at one point buying stolen pieces. At this point in time, many of the world's wealthy countries wanted a piece of Greek art for themselves.
Between 1820 and 1830 was a bloody war for Greek independence, where they were assisted by Britain, France and Russia. After their independence, Greece began to ask that the statues of the parthenon that had been taken in by the British museum be returned to Athens. The British Museum refused, and it is speculated that the reason is that if they had to return the statues to Athens, other cultures would start to demand their artifacts back.
Restoration of the parthenon is an ongoing effort, but pollution from the large city that Athens now is makes that difficult. Smog from gas emissions and cars, as well as acid rain continuously deteriorate the marble, making restoration nearly impossible.
It's important to understand the history of the parthenon because it tells a story of devotion, war, and greed, and can teach us a lesson on how we can prevent the great structures of our world from ever getting to the point that the parthenon has.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Parthenon." Encyclopedia Britannica,
6 Oct. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Parthenon. Accessed 9
November 2022.
Adkins, A.W.H. and Pollard, John Richard Thornhill. "Greek religion."
Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Aug. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Greek-religion. Accessed 9 November 2022.
Chrisp, Peter. The Parthenon How It Was Built and How It Was Used. Vol. 5,
Austin, Texas, RainTree Steck-Vaughn, 1998. Great Buildings.
Fangqing, Lu. "Architecture as Spatial–Textile Storytelling: Metamorphosis of
Frieze as a Narrative Medium Mediating the Panathenaia Festival."
Frontiers of Architectural Research, vol. 5, Dec. 2016, pp. 489-98.
Hemingway, Colette, and Seán Hemingway. "Greek Gods and Religious Practices."
Met Museum, Oct. 2003, www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/grlg/hd_grlg.htm.
Accessed 9 Nov. 2022.
Nardo, Don. A Travel Guide to Ancient Athens. Lucent Books, 2003. Travel Guide.
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Chinese Cultural Revolution
The chinese cultural revolution was less of a revolution and more of a period of political and social chaos centered mainly around urban China between 1966 and 1976. The only reason the Chinese Cultural Revolution is referred to as such is because that is what Mao Zedong, China's chairman of the time, wanted it to be. The name is more symbolic of what Mao hoped to achieve rather than what he actually did. Mao had hoped to achieve support and dedication of youth towards his ideal communism and a complete overturn and erasure of what are called the Four Olds from Chinese society; Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Customs, and Old Habits.
The Chinese Cultural Revolution was started in August of 1966 by Mao Zedong because of his growing concerns of the Soviet communist revolution going wrong somewhere, his fear of his political adversaries for his position, and because he wanted to reform the Chinese communist party to be more in line with his own beliefs.
Mao had the youth of urban areas assemble into what were called ‘Red Guards’, who were tasked with challenging and critiquing the loyalty and goals of Chinese government officials (excluding Mao himself of course). Mao also ordered the army to not act against the red guard so as to not impede on rooting out the weak of faith in the communist ideal that Mao had. The original purpose of the red guards was largely non violent, but radicals in the guards began to attack people they deemed as acting, dressing or even having a haircut that was associated with upper class. During this period, many cats were also killed because they were seen as a luxury limited to the upper class. The red guards later split into factions, becoming more mob-like in the sense that there were often conflicts between factions. Eventually, Mao realized that the red guards had gone out of his control and ordered millions of youth from cities be moved out to the countryside for what was referred to as re-education. These youths were effectively exiled through this ‘re-education’. Mao then ordered the army to restore order to China's cities, but violence by red guards was still prevalent. Members of red guards went as far as to attack embassies and ambassadors, no doubt putting China in a difficult diplomatic situation. The end of the ‘Chinese Cultural Revolution’ is marked with the death of Mao Zedong. It says rather a lot about the thoughts of the general public that the so-called revolution petered out with its figurehead's death. It seems that the Chinese public had little resolve to this cause and it was mainly carried out due to fear of the government, then later fear of red guard, and the love of Mao Zedong that also happened to peter out towards the end of this chaotic period.
The Chinese Cultural Revolution was not successful in many ways, one of which is that, as stated earlier, it was not a revolution, it merely wanted to be. Another reason it was unsuccessful if I am to treat it like it was a revolution is that it accomplished few of Mao's goals. In many cases, the revolution had the opposite effect of what Mao had wanted, as many tie this period to the later embracement of China to capitalist incomes. This period is also often tied to the seemingly manic obsession of China's leaders with political control.
So no. The Chinese Cultural revolution was not a revolution. And no. Even if this period of chaos could be considered a revolution, it could not be considered successful.
works cited:
Lieberthal, Kenneth G. “Cultural Revolution.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 29 Aug. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/event/Cultural-Revolution.
Phillips, Tom. “The Cultural Revolution: All You Need to Know about China's Political Convulsion.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 11 May 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/11/the-cultural-revolution-50-years-on-all-you-need-to-know-about-chinas-political-convulsion.
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The great resignation is a time period starting around 2020 and continuing on to now in 2022. It is characterized by many people quitting their jobs or retiring.
There’s lots of speculation for the reasons for why this is happening, including but not limited to; feeling undervalued at work, feeling like there is better use of their time, and burnout.
People feeling undervalued at work is nothing new. A lot of the time, they feel they work hard and get little to no recognition for it, or that people who are doing less are getting more recognition. The truth is, there is often no way to say for sure if a person is doing less than you in a work environment, especially with so much work happening from home offices. Regardless, this creates a bit of a tension between employees and their boss.
With so much work happening from home, it has become increasingly obvious to employees in home offices just how much of their time is spent working. According to NPR, the transition to remote working really puts an emphasis on the when and where of work.
Because people are quitting their jobs, this puts more work towards other people that stay in the company, causing their workload to increase, which can lead to more stress on the workers and burnout, causing the quality of work to decline, which in some cases can lead to a dangerous cycle of overwork, quitting, and burnout.
It is important to understand why people are quitting their jobs so we can understand how to keep good workers in the workforce, and make the work enviroment better.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/09/the-great-resignation-is-still-in-full-swing.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/14/the-biggest-reason-people-quit-is-10-times-more-important-than-pay.html
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1007914455/as-the-pandemic-recedes-millions-of-workers-are-saying-i-quit
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On May 2, 2022 a draft of an opinion of a justice of the United States Supreme Court was leaked. This draft contained information that implied that the case of Roe v. Wade might be overturned. This case decided that the constitution of the united states protects a womans rights to have an abortion, specifically the fourteenth ammendment, which declares equal protection of the laws and has been used in arguments for racial, gender and reproductive rights. Should Roe v. Wade be overturned, it would leave it up to the states whether or not to make abortions illegal.
The case against abortion is usually the same, calling it a form of killing. The people who are against abortion can usually be found to be religious, or vote a certain way, though it should be noted this is not always the case, and assuming so can be harmful and misleading.
The case for abortion has a multitude of reasons behind it, though they typically can be put into the category of freedom of choice. The reasonings include the right to decide what to do with your own body, gender equality, dangerous abortions and pregnancy rights.
The National Library of Medicine’s statistics on abortions are truly eye opening to the dangers to the women who choose to undergo them. It says that an estimated 42 million women choose to have an abortion per year worldwide, with an estimated 20 million of those being unsafe. Another estimate of 68,000 women die of unsafe abortion complications a year, with 5 million left with permanent health complications. The NLM also estimates that 220,000 children lose their mothers to abortions. These are mothers who already had children, and did not want to have another, couldn't afford it, or couldn't take care of it. You will notice that these are all estimates, as abotions often go undocumented, which poses the question, what if there are more?
Banning or making abortions illegal wont stop them, rather, just make them more unsafe for the people who undergo them.
Sources
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096738094/roe-v-wade-abortion-overturn-impact-world
https://abcnews.go.com/US/abortion-protected-roe-wade-overturned/story?id=84474352
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/30/opinion/abortion-dobbs-supreme-court.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/mother/for_1.shtml
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/adjudication
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood_v._Casey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobbs_v._Jackson_Women%27s_Health_Organization
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2709326/
https://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/commentary/2022-05-04-few-words-on-abortion.php
https://news.gallup.com/poll/246278/abortion-trends-party.aspx
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