(Answer at the end).
HAPPINESS
By Charles Kocian
A poll appeared last week showing that fifty percent of Democrats in the US are not happy with the Gaza genocide. The conflict in the Middle East has escalated after US strikes in Yemen, Iraq and Siria, and will seriously escalate to WWIII if the US strikes Iran. The EU is not happy as well, but for other reasons. Greece, the Netherlands, Germany, Romania, Belgium and Poland farmers have blocked roads and highways around major cities with lines of stagnate tractors. In some places they have cleaned up the roads and set fire to straw bales as barricades. They are not happy because of heavy regulations, low wages and cheap imports, including farmers from Spain, Italy and France. But France has a reason to be happy. Why?
Farmer’s protest in Germany.
France is happy because Notre Dame Cathedral will be inaugurated at the end of this year. French and other countries carpenters helped, using old techniques, to rebuild the woodwork of the roof and the spire after it was burned in April 2019. The head of restoration, Phillip Jost, said: “I feel very happy, very proud.” But, were French happy with Notre Dame in the Renaissance?
Notre Dame burning in April 2019.
Not for the French Huguenots, who were the Protestants that in 1548 rioted Notre-Dame damaging some of the statues they considered idolatrous. Louis XV forced them to convert to Catholicism during the persecution of Protestants in France two centuries after Notre Dame was built from 1163 to 1345. The cathedral is considered a jewel of medieval Gothic architecture just as the Parthenon is considered a Jewel of ancient Greek architecture.
The Right Hand of God Protecting Notre Dame. Source image: ICMA
Everybody knows the Parthenon, but few know it was built over the ruins of the old one. Indeed, the Persian Army destroyed the Acropolis when they invaded Greece. Athenian’s teenagers who saw it were shocked, because ancient Greeks believed it was a kind of heresy to destroy the Temples of their enemies, but the Persians did. After they were definitely defeated in the sea Battle of Salamis in 480 BC, the Athenian people left the ruins of the old temple for 30 years to remain the brutality of the Persian’s and, a century later Alexander the Great burned the Palace of Persepolis in revenge.
Burning of Persepolis, by Georges Rochegrosse, 1890, via Wikimedia Commons.
Thirty years after the Persians destroyed Athens, in the year 449 BC, Pericles, the great ruler of the Golden Age, impulsed the rebuilding of the Parthenon. Pericles as a boy, was an introvert aristocrat who preferred to be alone studying. The philosopher Anaxagoras was his teacher and friend that most influenced him. Pericles is considered the first politician that gave importance to arts, architecture, philosophy and democracy lifting Athens as a symbol of the highest man’s posibilities of excellence and eudaimonia.
Pericles rebuilt the Acropolis. Source image: GONZOfoto / Flickr / CC BY 2.0
CONCLUSION
Man’s reason, is its highest happiness; the irrational, its lowest pain.
Now answer to question 89.
QUESTION N° 89
The quality of our happiness depends on the quality of our emotions?
a) True
b) False
The answer is: b) False. The quality of our happiness, depends on the quality of our thoughts; the quality of our thoughts, on the quality of our concepts.
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