Heavy For a Blog on Advertising.

I never thought about this until I read "Hubris: Pericles, the Parthenon, and the Invention of Athens" by David Stuttard. I started the book a week ago and finished Monday night. I've been thinking about it pretty much 24/7 since I read the review in the Wall Street Journal, which you can read here.

Before I begin, I'd guess about 99.7-percent of world has no idea what the ancient Greeks meant by the idea of Hubris. 

I wish more people grasped the concept. 

Especially during our current benighted era.

The Greeks regarded Hubris as the worst of all wrongs.

 

Studdard writes in his introduction, "hubris originally meant a deliberate and dishonouring transgression of status boundaries, (i.e. when you get too big for your britches--over-stepping your bounds) often involving physical violence, with specific reference to the boundaries that were believed to separate humanity from the divine. In English, the definition has been broadened to include overconfidence or pride. In this book, readers should especially bear the former definition in mind.”

In Georgian words, the transgression of Hubris is when:
You start thinking your shit don't stink. 

You can do no wrong.
You're smarter than everyone else. 

The world owes you a living.

The laws that apply to regular folks don't apply to you.

I'd say, while I'm dishing out blanket statements, about 99.7-percent of the ad industry's problems stem from behavior that's been fundamentally hubristic. And about 99.7-percent of amerikaka's problems, too. Maybe 99.9-percent.

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Beyond Hubris, the Greek word, not the book title, what I found most interesting in Stuttard's book is the detail with which he writes about the great buildings of ancient Athens. Temples like the Parthenon, one of many sacred buildings Athenians built to venerate their gods, were not just buildings. In an age where few people could read (like today) they told the stories and myths of a common culture.

Where we see slabs of broken down marble, the Greeks saw more. Every bit of Greek temples had a meaning, and a story to tell. We don't see this today, because we haven't ever learned to read such things.

Each of the areas called out in the diagram above were "story-telling" opportunities. They'd be adorned by sculptures and friezes that imparted the foundation myths of the world's first Democracy. Battles. Gods. Victories. Epics.

Like a well-written long-copy ad of the old style, every corner holds something of meaning, and interest. Maybe even something more and larger.

Eventually, as Athens grew greater and greater, becoming the world's dominant power--having vanquished the <er> Persians and the Spartans, politicians and wealthy people (who, if not politicians, run the State) wanted to shift the credit formerly given to the gods for Athens' rise to themselves. As Stuttard writes, “the motivation behind temple building was not primarily religious but political. And the danger was that others saw this, too.” In fact, images of Pericles--bloated by Hubris--were positioned on formerly exalted and godlike places.

All this of course, living in tump's amerikka, scares the p-p-p-Pericles out of me. Seeing buildings renamed. Coins minted with his plastic "comic-book superhero" visage. And his proposed triumphal arch (when we are losing, while adding trillions to the indebtedness of the unborn) are all examples of Hubris writ not large, but XXXXXL, or even one-size-fits-all. 

BTW,
Hubris kicks another god, Nemesis, into action. She is surely waiting just off stage like any good Deus ex Machina. 

Nemesis is the “winged goddess, blue-eyed unbalancer of life, the scourge of hubris, punisher of mortals who transgress the boundaries that separate mankind from gods." Nemesis is the personification:
Of retribution.
Of payback. 

Of you'll get yours.
Of karma.
Of what goes around comes around.

Of 'you'll be sorry.'

You don't have to believe in the gods. You don't have to believe that there is any fairness in the universe. You don't have to buy any of it. You can call all of it a bucket of warm bushwa.

Personally, though (and this is a personal blog) I believe in Newton's Third Law of Motion. Living on the seashore, I believe it in part because I see it every day with the coming and the going of the tide.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

As an amerikan, I worry about amerikan Hubris. All who live under a criminal regime are guilty. Even those who speak out.