wordsmithic

[wordsmithic]

Dune landscape in Athens

Every year Greece gets sandstorms from the Sahara desert. Their intensity depends on the area and season.

#Dune #Athens #cityscape #urban #photography #video #sandstorm #dune part 2 #dune part two

[wordsmithic]

My Greek grandparents starved, lost family during the wars, got beaten as kids, got tortured by invaders. However they were legitimately scared about their grandkids. The "what are they doing to you??" question we often got from their generation in a horrified tone says a lot. They were worried about how much we had to learn, the 562 extracurriculars + extra tutoring for school, the pressure to get a degree (if not more) to be accepted in the most basic jobs, and if you want a job that pays normally you have to be daily bombarded with information in addition to the storm of more knowledge that you constantly need to be updated on to survive your day-to-day life.

We don't even get to build and own a house like they did, because things shift fast and our job skills can be compared to a global standard. Low wages aside, hometown market is often saturated, so to find work you need to rent some place elsewhere. This means that if you're living paycheck to paycheck, you lose your house as soon as you get fired. Because someone else owns the place, it's not your ancestral house.

Not to mention...apartments worse than my starving grandma's house cost half the average salary in urban areas where 70% of Greece is concentrated. Due to the hyperspecialisation of our society we have to pay for many services and prices have skyrocketed. Ofc you can avoid all this by living like a post-war Greek who didn't even step foot inside their local cinema and never drunk a gazoza. No one's stopping you.

Financial difficulties aside (cause you can live... mo(l)destly as we established), the other factors remain the same. Grandparents had it rough and worked hard to survive, and were still shocked by our isolated hyper-fast reality and the stress we quite literally can't afford to let go.

I get where you're going with this but they very much did have extreme stress back then. Usually about if they were going to have enough to eat

(summary of my ramblings at the bottom!) I apologise in advance for the essay, I might be in the wrong here, i'm not an anthropologist or a historian but I do have strong feelings about how all humans around me are stressed out of their damn minds to the point of being empty husks so here goes. i'm also posting this in case anyone has a different opinion/more knowledge. My grandmother was raised in the german occupation. Famously a period when people here starved to death. But it was mostly the people in Athens who did. My grandma didn't have proper food as a kid, but she ate weeds and slugs and fruit. And when the occupation ended, they were still dirt-poor, but there were legumes and chickens and bread to eat, even though our agriculture was obliterated by the war. I'm sure this differs from place to place, but for people in rural areas, living off of the land if they know how to grow a few crops is very much possible.

My parents are working all day at jobs that demand them to be mentally there at all times and behave a certain way, they often work during their free time at home, and they're still stressed about how to afford groceries and rent and bills, and they owe thousands to the bank. My great-grandmother had time to weave, take care of her garden and animals, go to church as much as she wanted, get a full night's sleep and have friends. She couldn't read or write but she didn't have debts to anyone nor any bills to pay (because that village got electricity only in the 80s). the pace of life and the amount of responsibilties we have to keep track of now is a constant source of stress that never ever stops. Not to mention the constant influx of information about everything, which we are not made to handle. I'm not saying it's a bad thing that we're always aware of what's going on in the entire world, I think it will bring about necessary social changes one way or another, but it has to get evened out and reduced at some point. There is always, constantly, many things to worry about. How many people have the luxury of letting their mind wander during their work hours? how many people have the luxury of saying, I am not feeling well today and it's raining, I'll just nibble on some bread and veggies and stay inside and not work? I absolutely wouldn't want to live back then because I do like running water and toothpaste and modern medicine and electricity, but specifically for the stress and anxiety, I believe we're at a very bad place right now.

This is why I mentioned other animals. They might struggle to find food and go hungry often in the wild, but if you put them in a limited space with constant interaction not on their own terms or crowded conditions or lack of peace and quiet or disrupt their natural day-to-day cycle they will 100% be miserable and die faster than they would in the wild, especially "smarter" animals.

TLDR: occasionally going hungry isn't the same as living your every day full of comparatively milder stress without breaks ever. our lives are way too full of responsibilities and keeping track of things now.

#Alsooo #other people might have different experiences but I've definitely seen the older generation Very Worried for us and how we live #You can't just “work the fields” in your hometown all year #because of saturation and low wages. #personal #hellas

[wordsmithic]

this is APPARENTLY a HOT FUCKING TAKE but

i would rather someone live out the rest of their life dependent on or addicted to a pain medication that helps with their pain, than suffer in pain that could be helped for the rest of their life just so self-righteous dicks can say "thank god they're not an addict"

#exactly!! #let people LIVE COMFORTABLY goddamnit #and also they can have solutions with different medications #disability

[wordsmithic]

it’s funny, someone said I was “based” for calling the United States a foreign country, but…..that’s just what it is to the rest of the world! like it’s not a radical or provocative word choice, that’s literally just how the majority of people on earth view it

#us centrism #usa hegemony

[wordsmithic]

[wordsmithic]

Interior of an Egyptian Temple by Albert Holz

#ancient egypt #egypt #egyptian #temple #temples #architecture #archaeology #history #temple of edfu #edfu temple #ancient world #albert holz #art

[wordsmithic]

#i missed the og #meme history

[wordsmithic]

#orthodoxy #architecture #photography

[wordsmithic]

citationless behavior

#personal #funny

[wordsmithic]

[wordsmithic]

View of the Church of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, 1815

By Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg

[wordsmithic]

#greek #greek posts #tumblr #greek tumblr #greek quotes #life quotes #quotes #ελληνικά #γκρεεκ #γκρικ ποστ

[wordsmithic]

Το εφεραν στο Ertflix!! 😲Για τους Ελληνες Σινεφιλ το συστηνω ανεπιφυλακτα!!

#greekposting #ελληνικα #ταινιες #ertflix #cinema

[wordsmithic]

The first object in space, animal in space, man in space, woman in space, black person in space, whatever other accolade - all were launched by the USSR. But, weirdly, if you Google them, the first to come up are all the first *American* object in space, the first *American* woman in space, ... and maybe a 'See also:' note for the actual, bit-too-communist answer.

[wordsmithic]

it's all in the eyes

#art

[wordsmithic]

Updated greek mythology au Miranda (Athena) from the other day (design notes below)

#amazing #Athena

[wordsmithic]

It's very interesting to read this because in Greece we don't think the Horse was crude or ugly at all. Is this the Anglophone or the Finnish perspective? Because we consider it quite a sophisticated construction. Also, in Greek we don't call it Trojan Horse. We call it Doureios Ippos, aka Wooden Horse. No idea why Anglophones call it Trojan Horse. I mean it's not a stretch but you're right that there are names that make more sense.

I am reading Stephen Fry's Troy and I have reached the bit about the Trojan Horse.

It's interesting how often in media, cartoons and the like, the Trojan horse is depicted as a crude, shoddy thing, something so ugly it's a wonder it's wonder they took it in. 

In fact it was built by Epeius, master craftsman whose craft did not failed him. The Horse was beautiful, with 'firerce white teeth', a 'purpnr fringed mane tasked with gold',  astonishing attention to detail.

Another interesting detail is how they seemed like idiots but the gods literally sent miracles to prove the Horse was blessed.

It's a reflection of our way of thinking that the ancients were just stupid and uncivilised and we're so much better now screw those cavemen 

Also, why isn't it called a Greek or Achean Horse?

#troy #greek tumblr #greek mythology #the iliad #odysseus #trojan war #trojan horse #Hellas #classics