The Trojan horse

One of the fascinating aspects of the Greek mythology is that of the Trojan Horse. The ancient Greeks (Achaeans) waged a war against Troy (present day Tevfikiye in Turkey). The mighty Greek army, even after relentless aggression, could not enter the impregnable fortress of Troy. King Odysseus of Ithaca, one of the shrewd generals leading the Greek army devised a strategy that relied on the human greed, pride and naivety. They decided to return back to Greece, with their fleet of ships. However, they constructed and kept back a huge wooden horse outside the gates of the fortress. The plan was to hide the best warriors of Greece inside this wooden horse and hope for Troy army to take it inside their fortress. King Odysseus was sure that people of Troy would consider it to be the departing gift to their gods or acceptance of defeat from the Greeks.

Although there was some debate within the Troy army on what to do with this “gift” – Do they just burn it down or accept it with pride, eventually the pride and naivety won over and they took it within their walls. People of Troy celebrated the victory with great pomp and glory. Once people retired to the comforts of their homes, the Greek warriors hiding inside the horse came out and completely caught the Troy army off-guard. Troy was plundered by the night, and the Greeks had won, albeit in a deceitful way. The story is interesting, and there are several instances in today’s world where we let the Trojan horse enter our fortress and create havoc.

Trojan horse is a popular computer virus that presents itself as a legitimate program, once downloaded and executed, it gains the system access to do whatever the attacker intends to do. We also have viruses causing diseases like covid and flu that get into our body, from outside, causing severe impacts on our health. Although it’s not possible to completely avoid the virus invasion – in terms of health and in computing machines, we need to be always watchful – like installing computer programs only from known sources and using the quarantine approach for the viruses that affect humans.

Nothing comes closer to a Trojan horse like situation in health. There are delicious yet utterly unhealthy food and drinks that are like pure delight. The trojan horse is allowed inside our healthy fortress and once inside, it slowly starts its destructive process. The army starts invading internally and we start losing the war. By smoking, drinking soft drinks and alcohol, eating processed food, high carbs and sugar, we start the slow deterioration of our health, and let the external substances win the war. Let’s identify these Trojan horses, control our greed, not be ignorant, and keep our fortress as strong as possible.

We normally get the LPG gas cylinder delivered to our home; this is an external cylinder filled with LPG. We didn’t realize at the time, but there were some tiny cockroaches under the cylinder. We were quite naive to take it in without any checks and the roach infestation happened, and we had to do lot of work to clean that mess. This is a classic example of a Trojan horse with these cockroaches from outside wreaking havoc, multiplying and infesting the house. Although here it’s about the need (we need to cook!), we now do thorough check of the complete cylinder, also spraying some anti-roach liquid before letting it into our house.

The idea of blogging about the “Trojan horse” actually struck when I saw one post on X – one that depicted the impacts of Islamic extremism on the EU states. I don’t know what’s the exact reality, but what I have seen and heard from my colleagues and friends, there is an ongoing tension. The EU states gave refuge to homeless and people fleeing from battle zones, brought them into their country, gave them food and resources (Although there is both need and greed involved here on the part of EU, along with their socialistic views). But now that the migrant population grew sizeable in numbers, they create problems by demanding Sharia law and what not. I hope the EU sorts this out soon.

More often than not though, most of the damages happen due to “insider job”. There are countless tales in history where people have betrayed the side they were fighting with. Lot of wars and battles have been won and lost due to an insider giving crucial info and passage to lead the enemy straight into their homes – a tragic case of greed. These things, although can be managed to certain extent by taking everyone into confidence and creating that common vision, it just becomes a matter of ego and lure to jump the ship. For everything else, we need to watch out for that Trojan horse and be alert – Be very alert!