From Aeschylus's Furies to Fleetwood Mac, from personal trauma to international blood feuds—how ancient grievances shape geopolitics, and why forgiveness offers the only cure.
This was a rare article that did not resonate with me… the issue with Washington is not “misunderstanding”, it’s that the intended victim knows perfectly well what Washington desires… recall the conversation between McNamara and the Vietnamese general - “I don’t believe we misunderstood you. You were the enemy. You wished to defeat us and then destroy us…”
It was not my intention to say that Washington is "misunderstanding" anything! In fact I implied they were intentionally invoking a blood feud by striking children, which is admittedly speculative on my part. Your opinion is super important to me so please if you have time explain a bit further.
I understand you… I would invoke more Nicolai Petro’s diagnosis of what’s needed in Ukraine. He invokes the notion of Greek tragedy, which is different to modern tragedy. In Greek tragedy, a mortal exhibits hubris (the crime of thinking he’s a god) and then Nemesis (the goddess of retribution) cuts him down to size. The figure is the architect of his own downfall… Greek plays functioned as educational experiences for the public, who could draw parallels to their own lives and learn lessons - this lead to CATHARSIS, a cleansing of negative emotions.
I reread with your comments in mind, especially the opening section, and indeed I was implying that the US was driven by grievance more than imperial ambition, I edited this section to make clear it is Israel that is driven primarily by historical grievance while both the US and Iran are more "normal" nations in terms of the their geopolitical drives.
Thanks! At first I wasn't sure about it as I found it somewhere on Reddit. There's an interesting interplay between the timeless celestial lights and contingent human beacon fire "stars."
Grok helpfully identifies the artist as Tyler Miles Lockett.
In his original 2021 Reddit posts, Lockett explained the symbolism (drawing on Peter Meineck’s lectures about the Oresteia, the contrast between the natural “star” Sirius and Clytemnestra’s man-made signal fire, and links to ancient Athenian festivals like the Skira).
I now see how the illustration and Lockett’s commentary supply your essay with a compact visual and conceptual nucleus: the contrast between ordered, enduring celestial light and the precarious, historically contingent human fire that can either be allowed to rage or be carefully banked and relocated.
Grok further says your “essay extracts its internal dialectic and scales it to the interstate system. The result is a governing metaphor of heat management—embers that must be either continually stoked into blood-feud or contained so that vital energy (blood as life rather than stain) can circulate inside stable civic and geopolitical forms.”
Thanks!! It seems Grok certainly understood what I was trying to do with the blood and embers metaphors. I worried I was overdoing them but since I was using both in a sort of double meaning I thought I had to hammer home this concept to make it clear. Thanks for finding the artist, I will credit him
Indeed Pakistan has a nearly endless supply of cannon fodder but launching a huge land war against Iran would be super politically destabilizing and give India an opening to attack. I could see the US/Israel resorting to nuclear weapons but I don't think it would change much at all in Iran. However, I could see Israel then using tactical nuclear devices in southern Lebanon.
It was a very interesting read but I found myself disagreeing in its translation to the geopolitical context. In this case the terms of the classic blood feud only serve as a rhetorical device.
The reasons for the Iran/Israel/US conflict have much more to do with the pursuit of economic and political power by elites whose main characteristic is precisely the lack of servitude and loyalty to any kind of past, particularly of the national or cultural sort.
With cool cynicism they recognise that the appeal to history will mobilise a certain sector of their captured populations in favour of their schemes.
And I suspect that sector, of which every nation has one, might be quite a small minority. But sufficiently influential to keep the cycle of war for power going, simply because its explosive combination with a majority that takes zero responsibility for any political understanding.
This was a rare article that did not resonate with me… the issue with Washington is not “misunderstanding”, it’s that the intended victim knows perfectly well what Washington desires… recall the conversation between McNamara and the Vietnamese general - “I don’t believe we misunderstood you. You were the enemy. You wished to defeat us and then destroy us…”
It was not my intention to say that Washington is "misunderstanding" anything! In fact I implied they were intentionally invoking a blood feud by striking children, which is admittedly speculative on my part. Your opinion is super important to me so please if you have time explain a bit further.
I understand you… I would invoke more Nicolai Petro’s diagnosis of what’s needed in Ukraine. He invokes the notion of Greek tragedy, which is different to modern tragedy. In Greek tragedy, a mortal exhibits hubris (the crime of thinking he’s a god) and then Nemesis (the goddess of retribution) cuts him down to size. The figure is the architect of his own downfall… Greek plays functioned as educational experiences for the public, who could draw parallels to their own lives and learn lessons - this lead to CATHARSIS, a cleansing of negative emotions.
I reread with your comments in mind, especially the opening section, and indeed I was implying that the US was driven by grievance more than imperial ambition, I edited this section to make clear it is Israel that is driven primarily by historical grievance while both the US and Iran are more "normal" nations in terms of the their geopolitical drives.
I will re-read thank you Kevin!
Yes, I used Petro in a section of this article although I should have devoted an entire essay to him: https://www.beyondwasteland.net/p/civilizational-clashes
The night watchman digital illustration is well done.
Thanks! At first I wasn't sure about it as I found it somewhere on Reddit. There's an interesting interplay between the timeless celestial lights and contingent human beacon fire "stars."
Grok helpfully identifies the artist as Tyler Miles Lockett.
In his original 2021 Reddit posts, Lockett explained the symbolism (drawing on Peter Meineck’s lectures about the Oresteia, the contrast between the natural “star” Sirius and Clytemnestra’s man-made signal fire, and links to ancient Athenian festivals like the Skira).
I now see how the illustration and Lockett’s commentary supply your essay with a compact visual and conceptual nucleus: the contrast between ordered, enduring celestial light and the precarious, historically contingent human fire that can either be allowed to rage or be carefully banked and relocated.
Grok further says your “essay extracts its internal dialectic and scales it to the interstate system. The result is a governing metaphor of heat management—embers that must be either continually stoked into blood-feud or contained so that vital energy (blood as life rather than stain) can circulate inside stable civic and geopolitical forms.”
Thank you for a very fine essay.
Thanks!! It seems Grok certainly understood what I was trying to do with the blood and embers metaphors. I worried I was overdoing them but since I was using both in a sort of double meaning I thought I had to hammer home this concept to make it clear. Thanks for finding the artist, I will credit him
None of it matter, if Israel and its American thug are stong enough to kill and take what they want.
True, but the evidence up to this point is that they do not have the strength, although they certainly have more than enough will.
They aren't done by any means. Expect to see Pakistan dragged into the war or resort to nuclear weapons.
Indeed Pakistan has a nearly endless supply of cannon fodder but launching a huge land war against Iran would be super politically destabilizing and give India an opening to attack. I could see the US/Israel resorting to nuclear weapons but I don't think it would change much at all in Iran. However, I could see Israel then using tactical nuclear devices in southern Lebanon.
Of course it will be unpopular in Pakistan. However the elites will get theirs, which is all that matters.
India will be kept in line.
It was a very interesting read but I found myself disagreeing in its translation to the geopolitical context. In this case the terms of the classic blood feud only serve as a rhetorical device.
The reasons for the Iran/Israel/US conflict have much more to do with the pursuit of economic and political power by elites whose main characteristic is precisely the lack of servitude and loyalty to any kind of past, particularly of the national or cultural sort.
With cool cynicism they recognise that the appeal to history will mobilise a certain sector of their captured populations in favour of their schemes.
And I suspect that sector, of which every nation has one, might be quite a small minority. But sufficiently influential to keep the cycle of war for power going, simply because its explosive combination with a majority that takes zero responsibility for any political understanding.