Original oil painting by: Grandfather’s wife
Grandfather says all human institutions succumb to hubris, eventually.
Grandfather says he thinks that’s not all bad, although he misses some of them as they excelled in their heyday.
The NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini comes to mind. Hubris lay in Toscanini’s increasing dissatisfaction under NBC.
New institutions arise to have their time and place in the sun and as usual with anything he can think of, there’s good and bad in the mix.
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About the Author: RD Blakeslee is an octogenarian from West Virginia who built his net worth by only investing in that which can be enjoyed during acquisition and throughout life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, like stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee Family
Hubris is inevitable, according to golden-age Greek tragedy.
But it presumes some attainment in life that is lost.
Question: Is it better to avoid attainment so as to avoid the downfall?
No way. Life’s more interesting with ups AND downs. A flat life is a boring one.
Question: is hubris REALLY inevitable? Or can man have some level of attainment without the subsequent crash?
The Greeks thought it was inevitable, linked to foreordained attemps to exceed the limits decreed by the gods.
A similar idea is found in the Christian doctrine of original sin: inescapable culpability from birth.
Mystic considerations aside: I don’t know of a single example of a human organism which has survived from antiquity. The disappearance has inevitably (it seems) been catastrophic, not evolutionary.
Similar to the lives of human individuals. They simply end.
https://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Amazon-will-go-bankrupt-Jeff-Bezos-keeps-13451525.php