I think part of what is making young people lonelier, in discussing why they're increasingly isolated, is that they're so afraid of meeting someone who doesn't hold their same beliefs, and instead of being just core beliefs it is kinda ancillary shit.

It's actually okay to disagree even on social topics! Even on some political ones! But I mean, online you can start with "i love this mutual but they have a really bad/uninformed opinion about x media"

I know this is IMMEDIATELY going to be taken in bad faith, and yes babygirl, you are so right, I DO want you to go make best friends with both the KKK grand wizard AND your nearest nazi leader.

But seriously, as someone who has spent two decades doing community organization: finding ways to connect with different people is so so so important. There are people i follow here who ate 80% smart and their brain falls out of their head 20% of the time and that is GOOD FOR MY MENTAL ECOSYSTEM AND GOOD FOR LEARNING HOW TO BE A PERSON

like. we can defy the christian god, in a way, because we can choose to not do what he says we ought to. sure. but we cannot defy greek gods in the same way, because the god is not just an entity that commands you but the very thing you are doing. apollo does not just send plagues, he is plague. you know apollo is real because there is plague. plague is not apollo acting in the world, it is an instance of apollo, in the same way that insight is athena, love is aphrodite, harvest is demeter, storms are zeus. gods are not commanding nature and sending signs and acting upon the world, because signs and nature and human nature are themselves the gods. the gods cannot be absent, because we still get ideas, and harvest, and go to war, and feel desire, and hunt. the gods cannot be defied because you cannot defy "getting ideas" or "harvesting" or "having sex" or "dying." to attempt to is entirely futile. like you cannot defy poseidon because you cannot defy the sea. you cannot defy aphrodite because you cannot defy love and reproduction. nature and human nature are unbeatable, and so the gods are unbeatable, because they are nature and human nature.

Spin the wheel. This Greek mythological figure is trying to kill you

Spin the wheel again. This Greek mythological figure is trying to protect you

you already found the birds reference (i’ll note here that generalizations like “ancient greeks believed” are inherently inaccurate when presented without a modifier, as i believe someone else mentioned earlier)

[edited bc i forgot some stuff] one story hera’s association with peacocks comes from the tale of argus panoptes, the hundred eyed watchman she assigned to guard Io (after hera turned her into a cow) presumably because their feathers (peacocks', not peahens') look like they have eyes (moschus, europa line 57ish) and ovid in metamorphoses 1.721-22 says hera put argus' eyes into her bird. athenaeus in the deipnosophistae 14.655 in the first or second century CE tells us that the peacock (ταώς in ancient greek) was a holy bird to hera in her shrine at samos. there’s an article by thorsten fögen from 2023 all about peacocks in greek and latin lit. before the peacock hera's bird was the cuckoo (see this museum entry).

lotos is tricky. the ancient greek word λωτός (i've linked an ancient greek dictionary entry) means so many different things - it gets latinized as lotus, which is the same in english as lotus flower Nelumbo nucifera (you're right - nowhere near ancient greece), hence the confusion. as for associating it with hera, in iliad 14.347, hera seduces zeus and a "dewy lotus" (λωτόν θ᾽ ἑρσήεντα) is one of the flowers that grows underneath their bodies. eustathius of thessalonica, a 12th century bishop, in his commentary on that passage, says this dewy lotus is distinct from the lotus in homer's odyssey, and he maybe says (read: we're not sure if this bit is genuine eustathius or a scribe adding their own opinions) that that lotus is used in oils for worshiping hera.