Greek Idiots - Democracy and Voting - Myth vs Fact

Greek Idiots - Democracy and Voting - Myth vs Fact In ancient Greece, the inventors of democracy set up a law that required every person to vote, regardless of who they voted for. If anyone was found not voting, the person would be publicly marked and labeled an idiot, someone who thought their own personal needs trumped those of the society around them, and over time, the word idiot has evolved into todays usage. -Â   Isaac DeVille, Michigan State columnist It just isnt true that all Greeks or even all citizens of Athens were required to vote, and its not true on many levels. Only males (free and, originally, propertied; later, also born to two Athenian-born parents) could become citizens.Only citizens could vote.These potentially voting citizens were limited to those without a personal or inherited mark (atimia) against them.In addition, whats true about one period of democracy is not necessarily true of another. 1275a: 22-23: A citizen defined in simple terms is someone who can participate in judging [that is, serve as a juror in the court system] and in governing [that is, serve in public office, which here means not just magistracies but also serving in the assembly and on the council in systems of government that have these institutions]. Stoa Project Aristotle www.stoa.org/projects/demos/article_aristotle_democracy?page8greekEncodingUnicodeC Politics Male Athenian citizens actively participated, but voting was only a part of what was meant by democracy. Speaking well and being physically present in the communal life were crucial.The Athenian assembly, which held 6000 citizens, decided most of the issues.Citizen-orators persuaded their fellow citizen-voters.The voting itself could be conducted by a show of hands, as is seen Aristophanes comedy Ecclesiazousai, where Praxagora describes the voting in the Assembly:Its difficult; yet it must be done, and the arm shown naked to the shoulder in order to vote.Officials chose the winner based on a visual estimate of the majority of hands. They certainly werent counting exactly enough to make sure there were 6000 hands on 6000 discrete bodies. Sometimes more secretive ballots were used small, colored balls placed in urns. 6000 was not the entire citizen body, although it was a hefty portion.A body of 6000 citizens served as juries, meeting about half the days of the year, with each of the ten tribes providing its required share.A lottery selected the 400 or 500 men for the third governmenta l group, called the boule. Steven Kreis The Athenian Origins of Direct Democracy explains the idiot reference in the student newspaper: At Athens, a citizen who held no official position or who was not a habitual orator in the Assembly was branded as idiotai. This is a far cry from calling the non-voter an idiot. Idiotai is also used to distinguish the common people from the poor (penetes) and the more powerful (dynatoi). Idiotai is also used for unskilled worker. While we dont know what the population figures are for ancient Athens, and it changed over time, if there were say, 30,000 male citizens, more than a third of them were actively involved in politics at times. If we followed the Athenian example, who would feed, house, clothe, educate, and medicate the families of the politicians? Pay for time spent fulfilling the civic obligation was at first non-existent. Aristotle has several passages in his Politics explaining why. Here is one: 1308b: 31-33: It is of the greatest importance in all systems of government to have laws and the rest of governmental administration so arranged that magistrates cannot profit financially from their offices. There is a passage from a work ascribed to Aristotle in a section about Solon that probably led to the columnists idea. It comes from Constitution section 8: Further, [Solon] saw the state often engaged in internal disputes, while many of the citizens from sheer indifference accepted whatever might turn up, he made a law with express reference to such persons, enacting that any one who, in a time civil factions, did not take up arms with either party, should lose his rights as a citizen and cease to have any part in the state. Although not the last word that could be said on the issue, modern Americans are not like classical Athenians. We neither live our lives in public nor do we all want to be politicians (although neither did Socrates, even though he sat on the Athenian Boule). Requiring us to be penalized for failing to go to the polling booths andmake choices on the ballot once every 4 years because thats what they did in the birthplace of democracy misses the point of the ancient Greek democratic process. Further Reading on Greek Voting and Idiots The Tradition of the Athenian Democracy A. D. 1750-1990, Mogens Herman Hansen Greece Rome, 2nd Ser., Vol. 39, No. 1. (Apr., 1992), pp. 14-30.The Athenian Assembly in the Age of Demosthenes, Mogens Herman Hansen. Review author: Phillip Harding Phoenix, Vol. 44, No. 2. (Summer, 1990), pp. 199-200.The Ten Archontes of 579/8 at Athens, Thomas J. Figueira Hesperia, Vol. 53, No. 4. (Oct. - Dec., 1984), pp. 447-473.The Duration of a Meeting of the Athenian Ecclesia, Mogens Herman Hansen. Classical Philology, Vol. 74, No. 1. (Jan., 1979), pp. 43-49.Christopher W. Blackwell, The Assembly, in C.W. Blackwell, ed., DÄ“mos: Classical Athenian Democracy (A. Mahoney and R. Scaife, edd., The Stoa: a consortium for electronic publication in the humanities [www.stoa.org]) edition of March 26, 2003. More of Democracy Then and Now Part 1: IntroductionPart 2: AristotlePart 3: ThucydidesPart 4: PlatoPart 5: AeschinesPart 6: IsocratesPart 7: HerodotusPart 8: Pseudo-XenophonPart 9: Q. Were All Ancient Greeks Required to Vote or Risk Being Labeled Idiots?

CBC STAT Professor Ramos Blog

CBC STAT Its 5 a.m. I’m on the unit doing my job minding my own business. I’m drawing blood on   patient after patient moving along quite nicely. I come of out of my fifth patient’s room I look around and see white coats everywhere. Uh oh, shit is about to hit the fan. My workload doubles in a matter of seconds. I’ve been a phlebotomist for ten years And I quickly learned this is not just about poking and getting blood.   It’s about talking to people. It’s about social skills. About Dealing with difficult people in the midst of difficult circumstances. â€Å"The hospital† is a teaching hospital, therefore the doctors are learning how to be doctors. These are called the residents, the ones in the white coats. The residents round in teams of six to eight with one attending. The attending is the teacher for the residents. Because they are learning how to be doctors, they really don’t know how to order lab tests. This leads to patients being poked four to six times a day minimum.   This in turn leaves the patients very frustrated and angry. Because of the size of the teams and the amount of patients they need to see, they don’t always talk to each other, causing many problems. Not only do they order the same lab tests over and over, they order them incorrectly. â€Å"Can we add a lactate to that?†, he so rudely asks as I have the needle in the patient’s arm. ( No I can’t add it. He couldn’t have told this before I came in the room?) Likewise most of the doctors do not have a good bedside manner or manners in general.   This is very frustrating to be around but I have to work with them so I learn to ignore it or shrug it off. This is not something that can be taught in a book like all of their other material, it is a process learned over time.   It’s pretty funny sometimes, to watch doctors who go to school for ten years, struggle with what to say to people. Due to the HIPAA law, it makes it more frustrating for me to do my job. This law doesn’t allow me to get mentally prepared before I go into the room. Sometimes I’m shocked at what I see, from a man with no face to an amputee.   HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This healthcare law provides security provisions and data privacy to keep patients medical information safe. This law is so strict that I’m not even allowed to tell the patients what I’m drawing their blood for. Therefore as a phlebotomist, I don’t even know why they’re in the hospital or what they have. If a patient has HIV, the nurse is supposed to tell me but often times she does not. When I walk in the room I never know what I’m walking into. This can be shocking not only visually but emotionally. Their condition directly effects their emotional state and their attitude.   I get smacked in the face with it. I saw a man with no face, his jaw was taken off, the top of his mouth and his nose. This man was not pleasant but I wouldn’t be either if someone took off my face. I could barely keep a straight face. Patients rip out their IV’S. There are dialysis patients, patients with liver failure, these patients are usually yellow. Patients are confused and often combative, they scream, hit, cry, and complain. All these physical conditions directly affect how hard it is to get their blood, physically and Socially. The sicker they are the more frustrated and rude they are. â€Å"You can’t get my blood, I’m a hard stick, they poked me 10 times in the ER† I hear this at least five times a day. Or my personal favorite, â€Å"Good luck, my veins are small and they roll.† I can get it, the nurses in ER couldn’t draw blood to save their life. I can’t tell the patient that though. Most nurses are rude.   Nurses are not the caring gentle people you might think. Some of them only become nurses for the money. Wrong move, those people do not belong holding someones life in their hands.   The nurses that do care become hardened to the things they see on a daily basis. I can understand. Nurses can draw blood too, they just don’t try. So I have to do it. â€Å"Do you have have a BMP for room 6 bed 2?† she says with a demeaning tone. Yes I have it here. â€Å"Can you do it next hes going to CT?’ And she walks away. Although its been ten years and now I’m an expert at drawing blood I don’t think its possible to ever be an expert in dealing with these people. I’m human of course and get frustrated too. It’s the field we’re in. We see some daunting things, it’s hard to watch. As a result people become hardened, Usually this happens by default and without the person being aware. It has advantages though. It would not be good if a doctor or nurse cried every time they learned a patient took a turn for the worse. Watching this transformation from sweet to hardened keeps me aware. I don’t ever want to become that way. Learning to deal with these people gives me motivation to be grateful. Its hard to be in a bad mood when I’m drawing a patient with a colostomy bag, or an amputee, or when the patient is crying because they are overwhelmed with their diagnosis.   After a while the procedure gets easier and easier, however it is oftentimes very heartbreaking to constantly see people hurting.   And It is easy to get caught up in the chaos, to get lost in the procedure, in the hustle bustle of the day.   It does help when the cancer patient I am drawing is the one cheering me up. I catch myself complaining about some silly little thing like forgetting to return an item to the store or because I’m not happy with my coworkers. The person in the hospital bed struggling for their life offers me a better perspective and tells me they will pray for me. It really makes me grateful for my health and for JESUS. I get a quick reality check. I’m Healthy, I’m working in the A.C. Li ving in beautiful southern California. I have a lot to be grateful for. I didn’t learn these lessons from just one patient, one nurse, or one doctor. I learned this through many of them over time. Nor did I learn it from one or two situations. It didn’t happen only once and then I learned and was a better person immediately after.   It doesn’t work that way, at least not the way I learn. It wasn’t easy learning to deal with these people, it took patience and practice. It was a long process but now I can usually let it roll off my shoulders. I am grateful because this a skill I can now use anywhere I go and for the rest of my life.