Tag Archives: Alexander the Great

The Nature Boys, Part One… A Supermarket in California

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“What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon”
Allen Ginsberg – A Supermarket in California.

Hi folks welcome back to this week’s Tale of History and Imagination. Since completing the piece on Altamont (if you haven’t read yet please scroll down the page a little – it was a 4 parter) I have been a little curious about something I know, or suspect I know, only the outlines of. Being a little time poor for a few weeks I haven’t done all the spade work on this yet, but I figured this week I’d share my thought process, and next week look at a chunk of it. I had a question:

If you take it that the fallout from The Altamont free concert was the beginning of the end for the hippy, peace and love mass movement (and let’s face it there was quite a bit going on in 1969 that contributed) – then where does the hippy movement begin? Who were the first hippies?

Now, on a page in a notebook I keep on my bedside table I have a brainstorm, a mind map. It contains the outlines of my current knowledge on this question. In the middle, encircled “who was Hippy patient zero?” In a circle close to this are a handful of names. One of these ‘Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters’. Now Kesey, an author whose best known work “One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest” became a major film in 1975, starring Jack Nicholson and featuring a cast which included Taxi’s Danny Devito and Christopher Lloyd, was definitely an early hippy. He had come from the Beat Generation, and thus was a bridge between the two movements. He was an early adopter of LSD. With his entourage of non-conformists which included the Grateful Dead (then called The Warlocks) ,he, and his ‘merry pranksters’ hopped aboard a psychedelic patterned bus in 1964 and travelled the USA spreading peace, love… and acid. The Red Dog Saloon, a bar in the largely abandoned former gold mining town of Virginia City, Nevada is also in this circle. All the cool people hung out there. There was a sense of commune about the place. People did a lot of peyote there, and many of the jam bands which became associated with the summer of love got their starts playing there.

In an outer circle I have a handful of philosophers. Now Diogenes of Sinope has to be considered right? Living in Greece in the 4th century BC, he had come from a well off family, but very publicly walked away from materialism when he ‘defaced the money’ then hit the road, leaving all he owned behind. Diogenes lived in a turned up barrel, or tub. He hung out with the animals – having all but joined with a pack of stray dogs. He did outrageous things like walking through the streets in the middle of the day with a lantern proclaiming he is looking for an honest man, but cannot find one. He was a fierce critic of society, feuded with Plato for a while, and challenged authority wherever he could. Legend has it Alexander The Great just had to meet Diogenes when travelling through Corinth on his way to conquer the world, so he made his way out to the barrel. Spotting him sunbathing and staring intently at a human bone he came rushing up asking the philosopher if there was anything he could do for him.

“Yes” Diogenes replied “Stand out of my sunlight” A little taken aback Alexander replies “If I were not Alexander I should wish to be Diogenes”. Unimpressed Diogenes replies “If I were not Diogenes, I would still wish to be Diogenes” and went back to staring at his bone. I think at least in terms of anti-authoritarianism Diogenes would have found kinship with the hippies?

In this circle I have several other philosophical names- Epicurus, who lived in a commune and believed in a lot of the same peace, love and nature messages of the hippies. The Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama who pondered on the meaning of existence while sitting under the Bodhi tree, who gave up a life of comfort for something more meaningful, and whose philosophies filter down to the hippies. Ditto Lao Tse, who dropped some seriously laid back wisdom in the Tao Te Ching for the Chinese people in the 6th Century BC, before jumping on the back of an oxen and riding off into the sunset.

Much closer to the centre I have the Mazdakian movement written down. I currently do not know a lot about Mazdak, here’s what I can tell you, off the top of my head. Mazdak was a Zoroastrian priest with a commune in Persia around the early 6th century. Though Zoroastrianism was still the religion of choice in the empire, his brand was quite heretical. He preached peace, love, communal living, free love, and a vegetarian diet. More down to politics than anything else Mazdak fell foul of the authorities and the Mazdakians were rounded up. Mazdak himself hung upside down and used for target practice by the archers some time around 528 AD.

Closer again, the Merrymount colony of Quincy, Massachusetts. The Merrymount colony turned on, tuned in and dropped out. They found free love, eschewed much of their clothes, fell in love with nature and grew their hair long… till the Puritans showed up in the 1620s and told them to get a haircut and a real job. I have a little question mark next to Henry David Thoreau , author of the transcendentalist novel Walden (and last weeks opening quote). A bigger question mark next to St Francis of Assisi. A big circle around their precursor, The Beat Generation. Both movements were similar, and a number of beatniks, maybe most notably the poet Allen Ginsberg, who struck up a close friendship with Bob Dylan and was heavily involved in the anti-war movement.

The Nature Boys, however – a group who largely centred round a raw foods supermarket in Laurel Canyon, Southern California are the group which most interests me at the moment. In my opinion they are absolutely fascinating, and on occasion pop up in some odd cultural places…. And no I don’t mean
styling and profiling, jet plane riding, rolex wearing, womanizing professional wrestlers.

Next week, the Southern California Nature Boys, and the story of eden ahbez – the non-capitalization is very deliberate, he thought only God and Infinity were important enough to have capital letters.

This Tale is part one of a two part series. To read the rest of this story click here.

Originally published 28th July 2019 on the Tales of History and Imagination Facebook page. Copyright 2019 Simone T. Whitlow.

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The Temple of Artemis

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Hi folks, just a quick foreword. I wrote the following post in late February 2019, in the wake of American actor Jussie Smollett’s unwise publicity stunt. For future readers, Smollett was on a popular show called Empire, and looking to leverage a rise in white supremacist violence against people of colour, and the LGBTQI+ – both fair descritpors of Mr Smollett- for a little publicity. It backfired horribly when it was revealed he’d paid a couple of acquaintances to rough him up and hang a noose around his neck while pretending to be Trump supporters.

My piece was a musing on the topic of Herostratic Fame – the pursuit of fame at any cost, by any means necessary – and how the act of authorities demanding no-one uttered the name of the Herostratuses generally causes the opposite to happen. This was all good and fine…. until a far right terrorist went on a rampage in Christchurch, New Zealand days after, killing 51 muslim New Zealanders. In the wake of March 15th, the consensus was to not name the killer – To name him makes him a martyr to future shooters, and may inspire future mass shootings.

Sadly, there is a viral element to actions like those of the Christchurch shooter. It has been observed in the actions of mass shooters across the world, and specifically in the USA. In a 2015 article for the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell wrote Thresholds of Violence – apparently the study of a wave of riots in the 1960s (a far more understandable phenomenon in my books) shone a light on the viral nature, and increasing normalization of mass shooting. It is well worth the read.
One may imagine this little blog post got a LOT of views in the wake of March 15th 2019. The topics may be a little apples and oranges, there may be a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t element to it all. I believe it utterly fruitless if you hope to consign someone like the shooter to the trash heap of history, but in terms of not naming the shooter in the near future – for both crisis management, and humanitarian grounds – absolutely. Do not utter his name.

Were I ever to write on the shootings at some point in the future, I would intend to honour, name and remember both the 51 Muslim New Zealanders who were murdered by a weak, ineffectual man, and the heroes of the day. When writing of the shooter, I’d denounce him for what he is, to quote Christopher Hitchens new commandments a “…psychopathic criminal with ugly delusions”. Future writers will name him. I’d only ask they do not lionize him.

This piece was originally titled “On Herostratic Fame…” Today I am re-christening it “The Temple of Artemis”.

Hi folks welcome back to Tales of History and Imagination. I’m working from a laptop this week as my tablet is in the shop being repaired – it took a tumble off the work desk over the weekend and needs a new screen. This also means I don’t have Photoshop – sorry if this week’s pictures are a little uninspiring.

This could be listed as a “Tales of History and imagination are all around us” post, the topic jumped into my head in the wake of the Jussie Smollett incident, although it is fair to say his case only loosely fits the purview.

Today we go back to ancient history, to a famous date in 356 BC, to recall the 2nd biggest event of that day.

The Temple of Artemis was built in the Greek Enclave of Ephesus, in what is modern day Turkey. One of Antipater of Sidon’s Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it had three iterations- a Bronze age temple built in the 7th Century BC and destroyed by a flood, a second iteration paid for by their Lydian overlord, King Croesus (the man who gives us the term, not well used these days “As rich as Croesus”), and a third version eventually demolished for good by Goth invaders in the late 4th Century AD. Our story today is concerned with the second iteration.

Oh, I should mention, Artemis is the Greek goddess of the hunt, wilderness, wild animals, the moon, and chastity- In Rome their version was Diana.

A statue of Artemis

The second temple of Artemis was impressive for its’ time. 115 metres long, 46 metres wide, and 40 metres high – much bigger than the Parthenon, (which is just shy of 70 metres long and 31 metres wide). What also made it impressive was that it was the first Greek temple to be built of marble. Now of course you couldn’t completely build a temple out of marble at the time. There were wooden braces helping to hold it all together, and a wooden roof. There were heroic scenes from Greek mythology on show throughout the temple, including the Amazons, who in Greek legend sought protection from Heracles in Ephesus. At the altar, open to the air, there was a wooden statue of Artemis, possibly carved out of ebony – though I have seen it claimed it was made from cedar. On 21st July 356 BC an incident occurred at the temple. Two things of note happened that day, and I should mention if our protagonist could look into the future 3 or 4 decades I think he would have picked another date. If he could look forward to November 22nd 1963, where very little was being said about the deaths of CS Lewis and Aldous Huxley due to John F Kennedy’s assassination, or 25th June 2009 where Michael Jackson’s death overshadowed Farrah Fawcett’s passing he would have learnt a little something also. Herostratus however was overshadowed by the birth of Alexander the Great. This stress on fame is pertinent to our tale.

In the early morning of 21st July 356 BC, chaos broke out in the streets of Ephasus. A huge cloud of dark smoke rose from the temple. The entire building enveloped in a wall of flame. Someone had climbed up into the rafters and set the place on fire. The historian Plutarch later wrote of the terror and despair as Ephesians

“…ran through the city beating their faces and crying out that that day had brought forth a great scourge and calamity in Asia”.

The destruction of the temple alone was bad enough, what upset the Ephesians more was that such a calamity could happen must mean Artemis had deserted them. Amid the chaos a young man – possibly a foreigner or a slave – of whom very little is known, stands there looking very pleased with himself. He stops panicked Ephesians here and there to comment on how incredible the fire was. The young man happily told all around him, he was the arsonist. He invited them to also admire his handiwork. Herostratus, the young man in question, was soon brought in. Though happy to confess he was tortured just to make especially sure he was the firebug.

Herostratus destroyed the Temple of Artemis because he wanted to do something the world would remember him for forever. Aghast, the Ephesians executed Herostratus, then forbade the utterance of his name for all eternity, a “damnatio memoriae” (condemnation of memory). If the Ephesians could have looked forwards to 2003, they may have moderated this action somewhat.

In 2003 Barbara Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for $50 Million over an unapproved aerial photograph of her oceanside home (one of 12,000 photos taken to document coastal erosion). Her action turned an obscure site with few views and only 6 downloads of the photo (2 of which were by Streisand’s lawyers) viral. Thousands downloaded “image 3850”. The site had close to 500,000 views in the following month. The “Streisand Effect” can have quite the kickback.

The Ephesians never faced the same kickback. Of course they would have other troubles. The aforementioned Alexander the Great would conquer them in his war on Persia. After his death his general Lysimachus tried to relocate them out of existence, which did not go well for him.. but those are stories for another day. Of course people spoke his name, quietly, because he was taboo – and we all like to live a little dangerously. Ancient historians Theopompus and Strabo discuss him by name. Medieval English author Geoffrey Chaucer references the incident in “The House of Fame”. Sir Thomas Browne mentions him by name, pointing to how his name has outlived the names of the judges who sentenced him. Cervantes mentions him in Don Quixote. Herman Melville, of Moby Dick fame wrote in “Mardi, and a Voyage Thither”

“whoso stones me, shall be as Erostratus, who put torch to the temple…”

On 6th October 1939 Adolf Hitler made a speech to the Reichstag, translated

“It is clear to me that there is a certain Jewish international capitalism and journalism that has no feeling at all in common with the people whose interests they pretend to represent but who, like Herostratus of old, regard incendiarism as the greatest success of their lives”

In more recent years he pops up from time to time. The iconiclast and writer Gore Vidal mentions him in the novel Two Sisters. Jean- Paul Sartre wrote a short story on the tale. Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky delves into the tale in his 1979 film Stalker.

I don’t think we use the term enough these days but to seek Herostratic fame means to commit a criminal act for the notoriety.

Originally posted 25th February 2019, before many New Zealanders realized the extent to which far right ideology existed in New Zealand. Edited 2020. Copyright 2019 Simone T. Whitlow, unapologetic leftist, humanist and progressive.