What's the deal with Panta Rhei?

Think back to the world between 600 - 500 BC....Western philosophy was just getting started because the Greeks had lots of free time thanks to some things like favorable climate and slaves doing all the manual labor. Heraclitus showed up somewhere in the sixth century back then, walking around and throwing out random witticisms while acting like a weepy jerk to everybody. Despite that, the guy became pretty popular with what he said and how he spoke - alliterative paradoxes that revealed deeper truths the longer you chewed on them.

Panta Rhei - everything flows - is one of his aphorisms. He clarified it by saying nobody can step foot in the same river twice...the river and the person have both changed on the second step. This holds true with just about anything experienced in life...many things may appear static, but time will always march on.

BTW - Heraclitus died covered in cow dung, trying to cure his dropsy (edema) by burying himself in manure. Which feels fitting somehow - even the guy who understood that everything changes thought he could hack biology with bullshit. Not sure why I wanted to include that; it just seemed appropriately absurd for a publisher named after his most famous line.

By RoyFokker - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10805964

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