Saturday, December 24, 2011

Ancient Curses Modern Illusions

Live Science brings us news of an ancient curse, discovered in the 1930s when excavating an old well, which was just recently deciphered.

A fiery ancient curse inscribed on two sides of a thin lead tablet was meant to afflict, not a king or pharaoh, but a simple greengrocer selling fruits and vegetables some 1,700 years ago in the city of Antioch, researchers find.

Written in Greek, the tablet holding the curse was dropped into a well in Antioch, then one of the Roman Empire’s biggest cities in the East, today part of southeast Turkey, near the border with Syria.

This is an interesting archaeological find, but in today’s day and age most individuals will understand that this ancient curse is simply a stringing togther of words and nothing more than a wishful and illusory incantation, interesting though it is.

There are individuals, today, who remain under the illusion that curses, ancient or modern, are effective means of action to obtain certain ends, and though the majority of modern individuals will simply laugh or scoff at the illusion of written ancient curses, they remain under the illusion that written laws are effective means of action to obtain certain ends, as the following quote exhibits.

The resident moron of the Fox News Channel, John Stossel, just came out against laws that prohibit and punish the use of cellphones while driving. Does he not realize that these laws are designed to prevent harm to others? They are neither moralistic nor paternalistic. Sometimes I think Stossel is an anarchist rather than a libertarian. Either that or he doesn’t understand libertarianism.

That’s Keith Burgess-Jackson commenting on this John Stossel article, and while Keith is correct that such a law would not be an attempt to legislate morality, which cannot be done anyway, it would be paternalistic.  But more importantly, any attempt to legislate cell phone usage via the law would simply be a wishful incantation with the same ineffectiveness of ancient curse on a greengrocer, a modern illusion.

Posted by John Venlet on 12/24 at 08:35 AM
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