I have this hanging over my desk at home, over my computer, as a reminder. I made it myself on Publisher, so the Greek isn't perfect - it ain't got the diacritical marks, or whatever they is. One day I saw this yardstick frame at Wal-Mart (back when I used to frequent Wal-Mart, before it became Wally-World, bigger than Alaska, requiring huskies and a GPS to navigate, and left an enormous empty shopping center on the other side of town) and thought it was perfect. I had also read an interview of Yehudi Menuhin in BBC Music Magazine and this quote jumped right out at me. So this is a primitive, real life mash-up.
The Greek means: Of all things the measure is man. I took Ancient Greek a coupla decades ago to see if Aristophanes was as funny in the original as in translation. (He is.) There's more to translation than just changing one word after another into another language, as those of us who use Babelfish or Google Translate or some other automatic device have come to understand. For one thing, there is interpretation. Protagoras does not mean that Man is the example from which all other things are judged. He means pretty much what Yehudi Menuhin is saying: that a person cannot judge anything except by his/her own experience. Menuhin takes a little longer to say that this experience colors that person's perception. Because Menuhin's interviewers had unhappy childhoods, they assume that his must have been unhappy as well.
I have taken this to heart, as you can tell by these framed quotes I keep in a prominent place (I spend hours in front of them). I use them as a yardstick for my own opinions and I have caught myself many times being guilty of this sort of prejudice. My main weakness is stupidity. I absolutely hate it when I am stupid, which is fairly often, really. This self-loathing can be debilitating, so instead of being more careful or more reflective, I project my anger on what I perceive as the stupidity of others. I try to stop myself doing this, take a breath, and remind little me that I make stupid assumptions also or act without thinking.
But ...
I can remain silent no longer.
Of all the stupid, stupid, stupid things I've heard lately is that this election of Barrack Obama is a signal of the End Times. I hear this at work (okay, not that strange, living in the Bible belt), read urban legend debunkings of Nostradamus spams, and I've even heard it on Second Life-of-all-places. In my memory, they've been presaging the End of the World since that idiotic The Late Great Planet Earth book came out in the 1970s and all the Christian-types in college were going on and on about it. Well, Hal Lindsey's deadline has done come and went, chilluns. I didn't give it much of a thought at the time because apparently the brand of Christianity espoused by my family was more of a Say Your Prayers, Behave Yourself and Be Considerate of Others flavor. I don't remember anyone making any kind of a fuss over the End Times, probably because they were like death - something you have no control over, so why worry about it?
I was asked at one point, "What would you think if 20% of the population suddenly disappeared one day?" Ummm, Good Riddance?
So naturally I'm greeting reports of people running out and buying up guns since the election results came out with my characteristic eye-rolling. It's all good for the economy, I suppose. In the midst of the Millennial Panic the most I did was buy a small, disposable alcohol stove which could come in handy in the event of another ice storm which we're prone to in this neck of the woods.
So what do I worry about? Oh, my retirement. I keep telling myself that economic thingummies are cyclical and this too shall pass. With any luck, I'll be able to retire during an upswing. Then again, maybe I'll drop dead before that. My mom said "You always worry about the wrong thing!" - meaning "you" in the sense of "a person." Me, I assiduously worry about everything hoping they will all turn out to be wrong.
And the rest of y'all? Use your heads, people! In the Middle Ages the Black Death killed off a minimum of 30% of the European population, a mini-ice age brought on starvation and was followed by global warming, the ruling classes plied their profession with rampant brutality, in the name of Faith torture and murder by Christians on their fellow Christians as well as non-believers were by-words, and if that didn't bring on the End of the World, I don't think we have anything to worry about now. It's All About You, innit? Well, it's time to look outside your house, your neighborhood, your church, your religion, your city, your state, your country, your landmass, your century ... and look at the Whole Picture. This world is going to end, and no one can know the time or the how. It might be one of them asteroidy things. So just shut up about it, mind your own p's and q's, help your fellow man whether here or somewhere you've never even heard of, and pray if you got 'em.
