>>40178750I guess! Right now I'm reading War and Peace and I just read Memoirs of Hadrian! Didn't expect to relate so much to Antinous.... he honestly would've trooned out in currentyear. Also the 1st century is depicted as very similar to our own w/r/t secularism being the norm (Hadrian's interactions with Judaism in particular and his shock at the Jewish rebels' tenacity in particular illustrates this heavily eye think. Hadrian is extremely perplexed by their willingness to wreck their whole lives and even die for their idiosyncratic cause rather than improve their economic condition and whatnot. Hadrian himself is perpetually aware of entropy's affect on rome and rome's ultimate doom even as he tries to keep it going for another hundred years. Hadrian is "bodily", to poorly summarize the book. I dunno how to say it any other way, Yourcenar very much frames the book around Hadrian's relationship with his body w/rt/t stoicism, Antinous, old age and whatnot. It's really freaking good.
>>40178766How does one get into Buddhism?
t. someone engaging with religion pretty much exclusively from a Christian perspective
>>40178796>The bill of rights is limited, which IIRC was the worry, but was ultimately the right move in hindsight. Yeah for sure. It's proven to be much more valuable than people like Hamilton envisioned, and protects the rights of the people in the face of growing executive power (which the founders, by and large, didn't expect. Hamilton/Madison expected the legislative branch to choke out the executive without explicit safeguards but it's really gone the opposite way over the past 150 years, for various reasons. The executive is much more powerful than expected.
>machiavelli is a tough thinker to grapple with, but I know he was likely a valuable resource. Yeah he's tough but really fantastic. keep meaning to study the Discourses more in depth but life and other interests keep intervening.
>would.If you ever see me in public you can rape me.
