Recent from talks
Cloud cuckoo land
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Cloud cuckoo land
Cloud cuckoo land is a state of absurdity, over-optimistic fantasy or an unrealistically idealistic state of mind where everything appears to be perfect. Someone who is said to "live in cloud cuckoo land" is a person who thinks that completely impossible things might happen, rather than understanding how things really are. It also hints that the person referred to is naive, unaware of reality or deranged in holding such an optimistic belief.
In the modern world, a "cloud cuckoo lander" is defined as someone who is seen as "crazy" or "strange" by most average people. Cloud cuckoo landers often do or say things that seemingly only make sense to themselves; they also display cleverness at times in ways no one else would think of.[citation needed]
Cockaigne, the land of plenty in medieval myth, can be considered the predecessor to the modern-day cloud cuckoo land, which is depicted as a realm that could be seen as an escape from the complexities of real life. It was an imaginary place of extreme luxury and ease where physical comforts and pleasures were always immediately at hand and where the harshness of medieval peasant life did not exist.
Aristophanes, a Greek playwright, wrote and directed a comedy, The Birds, first performed in 414 BC, in which Pisthetaerus, a middle-aged Athenian, persuades the world's birds to create a new city in the sky to be named Νεφελοκοκκυγία (Nephelokokkygia) or Cloud Cuckoo Land (Latin: Nubicuculia), thereby gaining control over all communications between men and gods.
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer used the word (German Wolkenkuckucksheim) in his publication On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in 1813, as well as later in his main work The World as Will and Representation and in other places. Here, he gave it its figurative sense by reproaching other philosophers for only talking about Cloud-cuckoo-land. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche refers to the term in his essay "On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense".
In 1923 the Viennese satirist and critic Karl Kraus published Wolkenkuckucksheim (Cloudcuckooland), an adaptation of The Birds by Aristophanes.
Author Edward Crankshaw used the term when discussing the Deák-Andrássy Plan of 1867 in his 1963 book The Fall of the House of Habsburg (Chapter 13, "The Iron Ring of Fate").
The phrase has been used by British and American politicians as well as writers. Margaret Thatcher used this phrase in the 1980s: "The ANC is a typical terrorist organisation... Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land." Bernard Ingham, Thatcher's spokesman, who, when asked if the ANC might overthrow the government of South Africa by force, replied: "It is cloud-cuckoo land for anyone to believe that could be done". MP Ann Widdecombe used the phrase in a debate on drug prohibition with a representative of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation: "it is cloud cuckoo land to suggest that [people who don't currently use heroin would not start using it if it became legal]".
Hub AI
Cloud cuckoo land AI simulator
(@Cloud cuckoo land_simulator)
Cloud cuckoo land
Cloud cuckoo land is a state of absurdity, over-optimistic fantasy or an unrealistically idealistic state of mind where everything appears to be perfect. Someone who is said to "live in cloud cuckoo land" is a person who thinks that completely impossible things might happen, rather than understanding how things really are. It also hints that the person referred to is naive, unaware of reality or deranged in holding such an optimistic belief.
In the modern world, a "cloud cuckoo lander" is defined as someone who is seen as "crazy" or "strange" by most average people. Cloud cuckoo landers often do or say things that seemingly only make sense to themselves; they also display cleverness at times in ways no one else would think of.[citation needed]
Cockaigne, the land of plenty in medieval myth, can be considered the predecessor to the modern-day cloud cuckoo land, which is depicted as a realm that could be seen as an escape from the complexities of real life. It was an imaginary place of extreme luxury and ease where physical comforts and pleasures were always immediately at hand and where the harshness of medieval peasant life did not exist.
Aristophanes, a Greek playwright, wrote and directed a comedy, The Birds, first performed in 414 BC, in which Pisthetaerus, a middle-aged Athenian, persuades the world's birds to create a new city in the sky to be named Νεφελοκοκκυγία (Nephelokokkygia) or Cloud Cuckoo Land (Latin: Nubicuculia), thereby gaining control over all communications between men and gods.
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer used the word (German Wolkenkuckucksheim) in his publication On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in 1813, as well as later in his main work The World as Will and Representation and in other places. Here, he gave it its figurative sense by reproaching other philosophers for only talking about Cloud-cuckoo-land. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche refers to the term in his essay "On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense".
In 1923 the Viennese satirist and critic Karl Kraus published Wolkenkuckucksheim (Cloudcuckooland), an adaptation of The Birds by Aristophanes.
Author Edward Crankshaw used the term when discussing the Deák-Andrássy Plan of 1867 in his 1963 book The Fall of the House of Habsburg (Chapter 13, "The Iron Ring of Fate").
The phrase has been used by British and American politicians as well as writers. Margaret Thatcher used this phrase in the 1980s: "The ANC is a typical terrorist organisation... Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land." Bernard Ingham, Thatcher's spokesman, who, when asked if the ANC might overthrow the government of South Africa by force, replied: "It is cloud-cuckoo land for anyone to believe that could be done". MP Ann Widdecombe used the phrase in a debate on drug prohibition with a representative of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation: "it is cloud cuckoo land to suggest that [people who don't currently use heroin would not start using it if it became legal]".