An Arsonist Destroyed an Ancient Wonder of the World for Modern Reasons | Hacker News Reader

An Arsonist Destroyed an Ancient Wonder of the World for Modern Reasons

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46 pointsTheSpine24 comments

> The man who committed the act was said to be <OMITTED>, and the ancients attempted to wipe his name away from history.

Right, so maybe stop spreading it around? I mean, it's the only way to defeat him.

Young people generally have this idea that their name allows them to live forever if it is somehow preserved by repetition. It doesn’t. I had a dialectic materialist for a history teacher one term, and these notions are greatly muted when individual stories cease to be the center of all historical narratives.

Cue Fight Club: “you are not special...”

His Name Was Robert Paulson.

That seems a strange generalization. I haven't seen any idea that 'young people generally have this idea' at all. What I -have- seen, and experienced personally, is coming of age and realizing exactly what you say, that they aren't special, that they don't matter.

And whereas boomers tended to indulge in wanton hedonism, or pursuit of commercial gain to try and feel a sense of purpose (think midlife crisis, "the one with the most toys wins", etc), millenials and later have seen that that doesn't work just by watching their parents (and oftentimes either already experienced it, or don't see it as a possibility), and so are trying something different (though something also tried, historically). Oftentimes symbolic acts that will leave an impression on others; that at least makes their existence matter -to someone-, even if it's negative.

I remember being in school during Columbine, and a comment another kid made at the time struck me - "If I was suicidal, I'd want to go out with a bang too; at least leave a mark". He was under no belief that his name would be remembered, but he wanted to at least -make a difference- before he was gone.

Impact is everything, anymore. Whenever I think about what a good legacy is, or might be, I'm always stymied by the fact that nearly every figure in America's pantheon has been a victim of the cultural iconoclasm our society is undertaking. Whatever else they may have done, they're above all else, now racists.

In ten years, given the rate of social change, everything I do today will likely be considered outmoded, backwards and probably contemptible.

In our increasingly atheistic society, even if I have a negative impact on history, I will likely be unpunished.

If I wanted to make myself a legacy, and had suicidal tendencies, the shortest path into the history books is clearly a destructive one.

Well yes; you are correct. But, it's also meaningless. When I was 19, my girlfriend's 8-year-old brother killed himself on Father's day to get back at his dad. Almost all kids believe in some fairy tale about the afterlife, almost glamorizing it. So far, we have no evidence of anything like this. You can't be famous after you're dead because you don't exist at all. You'll never see the newspaper article, and frankly the world as you experience and believe doesn't exist outside of your head anyway. Nobody actually cares about you as you know yourself. If they ever do hear your name, it will be something else in their mind. The real you is at best somebody else's worm dirt. That thing you did is now just something that happened to somebody else. You're not even relevant anymore. When I was in school, it seemed like the whole point of life was to torture future kids with the requirement to learn your name. And yes, that is exactly why people take on a destructive path when generative significance seems impossible. It's easy. But it gets you nothing. I don't think it's so much atheism as much as dark nihilism. If you worshipped, above all, your own life, not your own pleasure or comfort, but life itself, the sanctity and freedom of your own mind, then you would not care about fame or the famous.

Cue Kevin Tillman: "He's not with god; he's ..."

At any scale, or with any perspective, all things become meaningless. You live, you die, others do the same.

Yet that rarely stops anyone from pursuing purpose or meaning, and for the ambitious, a legacy of any sort is the closest they'll ever be to reaching immortality, or relevance beyond their immediate sphere of influence. If you're purposeless, why shouldn't your decisions echo throughout history, and make you moderately less so on a less cosmic scale?

Nihilism is an outgrowth of atheistic convictions, when adopted without a supplemental normative framemework that prescribes and justifies a system of values, or when adopted by the depressed or otherwise mentally ailing.

I've seen no coherent argument that life should be considered sacred in the face of a universe devoid of meaning or purpose, whether one's own or that of others. The concept is hardly a cure for nihilism. Offering it as a more legitimate alternative simply because it's more comfortable or reassuring to many people occupying a nihilistic space.

I can't argue against this. Okay, another story: long ago I was in the Air Force, and I sat at lunch with a guy that was having his last meal before being shipped off to military prison, several years for admitting to taking LSD at a party after the fact. He told me he was looking forward to it, quiet time alone with his thoughts. Somebody very close to me called me two weeks ago and told me they didn't want to live anymore, and I told them that story, and they told me that it put things in perspective for them, and they were willing to keep going with that in mind. I've been pretty low. I've had a near-death experience. I can't rationalize the value of life versus the inevitability of death. But it just seems so pervasive in everybody that has come close.

I should also mention that this guy, with everything taken from him, made to feel completely insignificant, was able to save maybe a few lives, and he'll never know about it.

1st RULE: You do not talk about FIGHT CLUB.

2nd RULE: You DO NOT talk about FIGHT CLUB.

3rd RULE: If someone says "stop" or goes limp, taps out the fight is over.

4th RULE: Only two guys to a fight.

5th RULE: One fight at a time.

6th RULE: No shirts, no shoes.

7th RULE: Fights will go on as long as they have to.

8th RULE: If this is your first night at FIGHT CLUB, you HAVE to fight.

Herostratus Herostratus Herostratus

Censorship of history should be resisted, and the chance that this was his actual name is slim. And there were no doubt a great many other Herostratus' who didn't appreciate having to suddenly be embarrassed about their names.

The name "Gary" is disappearing for similar reasons. One criminal by the stagename Gary Glitter and suddenly a perfectly respectable real name is forgotten.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/are-you-call...

Once Herostratus's name is brought up, I think it will be fair to mention that the temple he burned was built by Chersiphron and Metagenes.

It probably has little-to-no effect on the decline in popularity of the name (especially looking at the time lines), but ‘A Gary’ has been a pejorative term for a bad skier for at least 20 years, if not longer.

I ski, but I’ve never heard of “a Gary”. Can I ask whereabouts you live?

I’m in the Pacific Northwest (from Portland, currently in Southern Oregon, moving to Bend in a few weeks). I heard the term primarily from East Coasters when I skied at Alta way-back-when. By the time I was skiing all over the place, around ‘04, it was ubiquitous everywhere I skied, at least for park skiers - Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Utah, Montana... It was the ski equivalent of n00b. I’m old now, so I’m not sure if it has had any longevity as a slang term.

I'm okay with censoring this bit of history (the vandal's name, not the event itself) personally, but that's beside the point. This whole article is arguing against publicizing the acts of fame-seeking criminals yet repeats <OMITTED> many times proving that his strategy worked. It's an oxymoron or something.

Also, I think your logic is faulty. If no one knows <OMITTED>'s name then they can't know to be embarrassed to share it with him. If the ancients had decreed that anyone who had the same name must change their name that would have let the cat out of the bag, eh? I think it must be that the ban was on telling the name of the vandal, not on the name itself.

As the article mentions, the name was already in decline well before Glitter was a factor. It just belongs to a certain tradition of English names that are slowly disappearing. Some of them disappear because they now sound pompous (like Harold), some because they sound too “vulgar” (which imho is the case for Gary). A lot of names survived only thanks to rigid traditions (“firstborn will have the grandparent’s name”) that have been slowly dismantled for a couple of generations.

If you really want to talk “infamous” names, you should pick the two classic examples: Adolf and Benito.

2000+ years too late, cats out of the bag.

It was rebuilt, though. The final destruction was by evangelical Christians around 407 AD. They couldn't tolerate competition.[1][2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_pagans_in_the_l...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Artemis#Final_destru...

Paywalled article. Is there another source?

You should be able to see it in incognito browsing mode.

https://outline.com/hUmf74

Thanks!

more annoyingly, it's not even paywalled -- it's just arbitrarily behind a login.

I use NoScript. Disabling JavaScript thus seems to disable that login/pay wall, to the point I didn't even notice it.

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