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I just watched the movie Agora starring Rachel Weisz as Hypatia a female mathematician, philosopher and astronomer in late 4th-century Roman Egypt, who investigates the flaws of the geocentric Ptolemaic system and the heliocentric model that challenges it. Surrounded by religious turmoil and social unrest, Hypatia struggles to save the knowledge of classical antiquity from destruction. Max Minghella co-stars as Davus, Hypatia's father's slave, and Oscar Isaac as Hypatia's student, and later prefect of Alexandria,Orestes. I believe this film is a metaphor for the system we have now in Western Europe which consists of a native Aristotelian, empirically based and philosophically tolerant culture that is being overrun by a dogmatic reactionary envious zealot culture form the middle east. The Christians in this film were the downtrodden the poor and uneducated who were easily persuaded by sociopathic leaders who subsequently blamed the oligarchic polytheistic leadership of late roman Egypt for their problems. It is easy to see how the envious mob subconsciously seeks to destroy that what makes them feel inferior even if it is to the detriment of scientific knowledge and understanding. The character of Hypatia is the anthropomorphized ideal of the rational philosopher king. She is bound by no man or the traditional cultural norms of the day be that raising children or seeking a husband. She is only interested in understanding the fundamental laws of nature and how they interact with the world she sees. She is envied, sexually idealized and stalked due to her exceptional talents and demeanor. As a person of her time she is placed in a sea of turmoil and unfortunately cannot stem the tide of reactionary destruction versus rational civilization. The roman authorities are forced to compromise with the unruly mob and allow them to destroy the library of knowledge that had resided tin the city for centuries. This is a classic example of a culture in decline as it accedes authority to those who are willing to exact violence to anything that it finds offensive. However since the emotion that fuels this violence is envy it seeks to destroy all that is beautiful so that it may not offend the less intellectually gifted. Modern examples are the promotion of white privilege, cultural Marxism, structural racism, and micro-aggressions. These are all just code words for making whites and in particular white males repent for their intellectual, artistic and societal achievements. The film ends with her former slave strangling her right after utilizing her intellectual gifts she discovered that the earth was not the center of the solar system but the sun. If western civilization continues down the path of accommodating the whims of the envious mob I fear we shall suffer the same fate as hypatia.
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