The great thing about literature like the Odyssey and Marcus Aurelius is they offer us realistic parallels with objective life.
They should help us solve real life problems.
To reduce literature to an act of mere personal pleasure falls short. It is a spur to action, effective acton.
Ivanka, wife of covid jab killer and profiteer Jared Kushner, caught in E 17 449, seems to be using these books merely to polish her image.
If she really read the Odyssey she would be concentrated on the knives being sharpened to put her hubby in prison for covid era crimes and the imminent destitution of the entire family as civil lawsuits are filed and do something about it.
For Odysseus personifies true character, a person with a clear purpose, someone who wll overcome every obstacle to the fulfilment of his purpose with a fixed, dogged determination, who sees problems and finds creative solutions., a person of action.
Greek farmers sleeping at their road blocks over Christmas in the freezing cold are the heirs of Odysseus. They are people of action, ready to face the bitter truth their government is run by a Mitsotakis, Kushner, Soros mafia who want to take the last cent from their pocket and ruin their livlihoods and familes and all this while wives like Ivanka can lounge around in luxury feigning to read Odysseus, leading lives of self indulgence, self promotion and with none of the virtues and spirit of sacrifice for family, country which characterise the heroic Greek women like Penelope and Iphigenia.
The Greek farmers spending Christmas outside in the freezing cold with a spare fire to grill some meat are indivduals stright out of the pages of Homer.
https://www.newsbeast.gr/greece/arthro/12787430/eortastiko-trapezi-sta-bloka-estisan-oi-agrotes-to-vrady-ton-christougenon-fagito-mousiki-kai-minyma-synechisis-tou-agona
They are the ones like Odysseus who are getting ready to destroy the "Suitors", the lawless and foreign mafia which has occupied their house and country and who are threateing them, their wives and children in a carefully planned battle.
Odysseus is the opposite of the insipid, soft, escapist, devoid of character, resistant to reality, to tough, trials, who seeks to hide from life behind brands, images and virtue signalling
if Odysseus were in as much trouble now from prosecutors in Greece, albeit suppressed by corruption, but now rising again, as Jared Kushner, Trump and Ivanka he would be studying law books, Russian, Chinese and even Greek as the Greeks revolt against their covid killer tool Mitsotakis.
Having anticipated the problem, he would be ready when the time came to meet the legl challenges ahead.
The last thing Odysseus would be doing is living in denial and exposing himself to the slings and arrows of outraged victims.
His crew, who refuse challenges, who love softness, are turned into pigs by Circe and ultimately die after they fall for the temptation of eating the cattle of the sun.
The message of Odysseus is actually very much in line with the ethical teachings of Plato s Republic and Christianity.
It is that we must master the physical appetites, egoism, and the tendency to see everything as we want to, to indulge in wishful thinking, love comfort, the easy way, the soft optnion in order to think long term, big picture.
Absent from Ivanka s reading list is anything resembling philosophy or Christanity and so any connection to the ultimate truth.
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