Strugglin’

Thucydides invented friction-maxxing. His work holds out the promise of deep insight into the way the world works, offering understanding not just of past events but, through that, of present and future developments as well. ‘The human thing’ means there are common threads and patterns in all human activity, which can be identified and drawn out. But, implicitly, you have to go the long way round, to identify them and draw them out yourself by reading his whole narrative, rather than getting them handed to you on a plate; and explicitly it’s going to be a slog, as Thucydides explains that he’s written for the sake of truth and understanding, not easy reading. (Be ready to be shocked and offended at university, students told: Week 3 seminar, Thucydidean syntax…). Of course, that same Human Thing means that not everyone likes this approach; they want the insight without the effort. One might indeed have predicted the appeal of GenAI from the long tradition of people citing isolated…