Athenian Opinion of Today's Government

An ancient Athenian would probably find many flaws with our system of governing, but would be overall glad and proud that democracy has survived and flourished at all. The Athenians believed strongly in their democracy, and fought hard to protect it, and they would be happy to know that others continued in that tradition. However, I think they would also be appalled at how little the average individual can participate in government. In Athens, virtually every citizen had a role in the government; we don't. They would also be shocked to know that people make a career out of politics; in Athens no one served for very long at all.

Mayan Values in a Modern Society

The Maya had many values which we still see in our society today. Religion was very important to them, so important that they would sacrifice themselves for it. There are those today who feel the same way, as we see from reports on suicide bombers, and other such people. A much more common shared value is that of a standard of beauty. The Mayans went to such measures as to physically alter babies in order to make them "beautiful," and to that same extreme measure we have plastic surgery. Yet even on an everyday basis we have pressure to look a certain way. We are constantly bombarded by media that tells us to loose weight, and our movie stars all are what our culture proclaims to be beautiful. Also, sports, particularly the ball game, were very important to the Maya. They used it in their religion, and our culture has almost a religious passion for sports. To say the least, they are at least very important to us, as evidenced by the fact that we pay people millions of dollars a year to play them for us.