Taking the Pithos - Part Six

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, while most people been in prevented from moving from one location to another, perplexing exemptions have been given by politicians to the sports-entertainment industry, as many members of the public will have seen online and on television.

How do you establish values in relation to importance and necessity?

Such values are representations of leadership.

How do you define the meaning of victory in the age of climate change, biodiversity decline, and a highly disruptive pandemic?

The way of life of people who value the sports-entertainment industry highly is likely to be carbon-intensive, especially for those who have long enjoyed making long journeys in their leisure time in relation to that industry.

Perhaps such people otherwise feel they have boring, meaningless lives.  They may even consume various intoxicants in relation to their leisure time, to dull the pointlessness of their lives even further.

The Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee is certainly not pointless, even when taking the pithos and a krater to a biodiversity conference, a climate summit or a climatological needlepoint symposium.

The members of the committee obviously know the difference between a natural crater, a moderation krater and a crate of beer.

Perhaps you believe spectator sports and crates of beer are more important than the decline of biodiversity.

What do you know about King Croesus and the mythologies and symbolism associated with Kratos and Nike?

Perhaps you are familiar with one beautiful krater or another or another or another or another?

How do you compare one sort of hippocampus with another?

What would you buy if you had a billion croeseids?

Perhaps you would buy a sports team.

What do you know about the sports-entertainment industry?

Why are so many people interested in the win-lose competitiveness of sports, even in a pandemic?

Such competitiveness has much in common with black-and-white thinking.

How do you usually think about the meaning of victory?

When have you most recently felt victorious, whether personally or vicariously? 

How do you reflect on images of ruins?

What do you know about black-and-white dualism?

What do you know about false dichotomies?

How do you think about the future when reflecting on the past?

What do you know about the duality of good and evil?

How do you usually assess fantasy trophes and the value of trophies?

Would you be willing to struggle to win a teacup?

Are you capable of understanding the difference between:

a) a storm in a teacup, and 

b) a storm from a pithos, and 

c) an over-indulgence with a krater or two of purportedly diluted wine, and

d) the misused of a crate of beer, and

e) the misuse of social, political and economic power?

Perhaps you would prefer to recline on a klinē and think about the history of wine or the history of beer or the history of banquets or the history of receipts or the history of sports or the history of climate change or the history of precision embroidery or the history of trade or the history of drunkenness or the history of societal collapse.

Pithoi and kraters are important artifacts in the history of trade, of course, as are receipts.

Whilst collapsing supply chains have been common throughout history, so have human trafficking and forced labour.

Who usually has the opportunity to indulge themselves at a symposium or summit or similar event, and who does not? 

What has the history of climate change policy and politics taught you about self-indulgence?

Who plays politics and/or distracting games of kottabos at climate conferences?

Who enjoys playing drinking games and/or power games, and why?

Who has been throwing large sums of money into tax havens and real estate, and why?

How do you usually think about supply and demand?

How do you usually think about surpluses and deficits?

How do you usually think about needs and indulgences?

What do you know about slavery in ancient Greece?

What do you know about the concept of a level playing field? 

You may have been learning about the collapse of global supply chains for a while now or only quite recently.

But how have you been assessing consumerism?

What do you know about agriculture in ancient Greece?

What do you know about agriculture now in various parts of the world?

What do you know about pollination?

What do you know about the history of ecological collapse?

How often have ecological food chains and food webs collapsed?

What is currently happening around the world?

What is currently happening in Australia?

What is currently happening near you?

What is currently happening to you?

What is currently happening in the oceans? 

How do you measure the human cost of various disruptions?

Perhaps you would rather fill an oenochoe in a wine cellar and forget about the future.

How do you know a cellar is not a tomb?

Perhaps you prefer sitting quietly and thinking about the cosmos.

Perhaps you would rather take part in a kosmos.

Perhaps you would rather compare one ancient object with another and another and another and another.

Where are the Etruscans and ancient Greeks now?

The Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee hopes you are not taking the pithos or the amphora the wrong way. 

But what is the right way?

When do you know inconsequential events have been exaggerated by politicians?

When do you know consequential events have been ignored by politicians?

What do you know about money laundering through purportedly respectable businesses and other apparently reputable organisations?

What do you know about the influence of money laundering in politics?