Ancient Greece - Lesson That Must Be Heard

Uncovering the truth was one of the values that Athenians appreciated and admired the most. While they tried to discovering it in every sphere both political and cultural, today in the flow of information distinguishing truth from propaganda became hard because of the fact that people are not media literate enough.

Even the huge time gap between Ancient Greek and modern civilisations, they both share some similarities, due to their democratic state, cultural life, ways of communication. Even though the system remained the same in the modern world, but the medium for perceiving the message had changed. How come? Festivals, being frequent in Ancient Greece, played an important role for establishing Greek cultural life. Aristotle thought it is crucial for people to watch tragedies. Most of them having catastrophic endings, encouraged the audience to think and distinguish truth from falsehood beneath character’s actions along with judging or moralising them. (The School of Life, 2015) Nowadays, theatres and cinemas introduce the audience a variety set of works, and most of the time they merely play the role of entertainment rather than chase an aim to teach educational lessons to the audience. We can draw a conclusion from here, why comedy plays and films became so widespread all over Armenia. Interaction between people remained active during Ancient Greek era. They gathered in large squares, got acquainted with daily news, had political discussions and even publicly persecuted those, who felt unworthy to their community. Information and the sources for getting news were less; hence the possibility to test its credibility was easier to track. In modern times, news channels usually tend to speak about information based on their socio-political views. This leads us to hear various news reports from different perceptive, making it harder for the audience to distinguish truth from propaganda.

Our society lacks having philosophers. Ancient Greece was blessed to have greatest minds to educate people, create social structures and guide them to get as close as possible to the truth. Eudaimonia (fulfilment) was the supreme goal for Plato to lead people accomplish it and for succeeding his plan, he opened The Academy. The role of the school, was not just simply teach its pupils mathematics or spelling, rather than show them how to be good and wise. (Chroust, 1967) Living in a mediated world, our society needs philosophers – decent mentors for helping them to discover the truth behind the endless flow of information. Media literacy is another option for raising awareness among citizens. While media surrounds us every single day, many schools’ education system does not take the issue of making pupils media litrate for granted. According to statistics, 82% of middle school-children couldn’t tell the difference between sponsored and real news stories. (Spilsbury, 2018)

Certainly, this doesn’t mean that Ancient Greece was a utopia, unable to record a single flaw in its society. Demagogies can be considered a strong case when propaganda won over truth. Cleon, on the most prominent demagogies that ruled in Ancient Greece, who was rather admirable for many Athenians, later caused crucial errors, resulting Athens defeat during Peloponnesian War. (Britannica) In fact, demagogies, were rather common in modern society as well, if take as an example for Hitler’s horrible actions. The whole issue does not lie within such horrible rulers, it’s actually because of the flaw in democratic system, which subconsciously forces people that take majorities opinion as an absolute truth. According to Plato, people always tend to go with what we call as “popular opinion”, a defect that lives within the society. It hides the truth from society and leads them to a blind path, where majority’s “truth” becomes universal.

It goes without saying why philosophers wanted to unleash the truth and educated people to discover it on daily basis. Living in a mediated world, educational institutions must adopt strategies for teaching students how to become media literate. Paying attention to the political news, citizens would be able to choose their leaders wisely, without being under the influence of “popular opinion”, which happened during last year’s mayor elections, where Hayk Marutyan won 80% of the votes. As Plato famously putted “The world will not be right until kings become philosophers or philosophers – kings”.