Kung Fu Monkey has some interesting thoughts on Frank Miller’s 300. I haven’t seen the movie, but it seems like something I’d probably enjoy. I’ve always really liked the story of Thermopylae, and recall enjoying Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Kung Fu Monkey liked the movie too, but notes that it has some very anti-American features, most notably the Spartans’ mocking of the amateur soldier.
At one point in 300, the Spartan narrator even tosses an offhand compliment to the Greeks. “Amateurs. They did their job … More brawlers than soldiers.” (I’m quoting from memory here). That bit of dialogue would fit perfectly in the mouth of the standard Dismissive Authority Figure in about a thousand American movies, who will Soon Be Proven Wrong.
When I saw a trailer for this movie I was kind of put off by the idea that a Spartan king would rally his people with a pep talk focused on freedom. Taking liberties with history too better tell a good story is to be expected, but the identification of Sparta with any notion of freedom went too far for me. Perhaps modern notions of freedom just don’t extend beyond the aggressive personal assertiveness that the trailer conveyed.
But Doug’s right that Kung Fu Monkey has some interesting thoughts, though “300” was just a convenient starting point.
I recently re-read parts of Howard Bloom’s, The Global Brain. I forget the exact terms, but he used the Spartans to illustrate conformity enforcers. Deviation from the norm was not well tolerated in Sparta. He used the Athenians to illustrate complexity generators. Their society produced a fair amount of variety.
In nature, he suggested, times of stress bring the conformity enforcers to the top. Times of plenty tend to bring the complexity generators to the top. My knee-jerk reaction is to think of the Republicans as Spartans and the Democrats as Athenians. Then I recall that there are very, very few Congressional Republicans who have actually served in the military whereas there are many Democrats. So, my knee-jerk reaction is probably erroneous.
I was reading another book which contained an excerpt, I believe, from Richard Dawkins, the Selfish-Gene. In any case, I was a bit startled at how little was actually required to initiate an evolutionary system:
1. Replication.
2. Deviation.
3. Competition.
The thing has to be able to reproduce itself. There has to be the potential that, on occasion, the duplication might not be identical, and there has to be competition to perform a pruning function. This is not at all limited to biological organisms. Ideas evolve in similar ways — consider language and religion for starters.
Not sure where I was going with this digression, but I thought I’d share.