I’ve been seeing a lot of references to the Greeks these days. It wouldn’t really qualify for Plate O’ Shrimp status if it were all about Thermopylae. That would just be evidence of marketing for the movie. But what I’ve seen is evidence of how deeply the Ancient Greeks are embedded in our culture. Like Christianity, the Greek memes took advantage of the Roman organism for dissemination.
Anyway, here is what I saw within a 24 hour period. The History Channel put on a documentary about Thermopylae tied into the new movie, The 300. The documentary contains commentary suggesting that the stand-off at Thermopylae and a similarly daring naval encounter at the Battle of Salamis was critical for the continued existence of Western Civilization. If the Greeks lose those battles, Persia conquers Greece, and *poof* there goes the idea of democracy and self-governance. It’s all imperial rule from there on out.
Doghouse Riley had a post questioning the veracity of Frank Miller when he grouses about being taught by ex-hippies and Viet Nam vets. Miller is the comic book author who apparently wrote 300 upon which the new movie is based. (The number “300” is significant because that’s the number of Spartans who defended the pass of Thermopylae. They were initially supported by several thousand other Greeks. When the battle was lost, about 1,000 other Greeks remained behind with the Spartans to fight to the death and give the other soldiers a chance to escape. But, it’s the 300 Spartans who get the bulk of the glory.)
I saw a discussion in Howard Bloom’s book, The Global Brain where he compares populations under stress to Spartans and populations in good times as Athenians. The short version is that Spartans tend to unify and penalize deviation during times of stress. In human populations, one technique to make this happen is a culture that glorifies conformity through appeals to religion, ancestors, and a mythological Golden Past. During more prosperous times, populations tend to act more like the Athenians, glorifying innovation and tolerating deviations from the norm.
There is a similar discussion in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon where he talks about ongoing cultural battles between followers of Athena and followers of Ares. Some of that is available online here. The short version is that, though both are nominally gods of war, they go about it in very different ways. Ares’ main tools are fear, terror, and strife; and he’s generally incompetent. Athena, on the other hand, is very competent, and her tools tend to be along the lines of cunning and technology.
Let’s face it, Randy, we’ve all known guys like Ares. The pattern of human behavior that caused the internal mental representation known as Ares to appear in the minds of the ancient Greeks is very much with us today, in the form of terrorists, serial killers, riots, pogroms, and agressive tinhorn dictators who turn out to be military incompetents. And yet for all their stupidity and incompetence, people like that can conquer and control large chunks of the world if they are not resisted….
Who is going to fight them off, Randy?
Sometimes it might be other Ares-worshippers, as when Iran and Iraq went to war and no one cared who won. But if Ares-worshippers aren’t going to end up running the whole world, someone needs to do violence to them. This isn’t very nice, but it’s a fact: civilization requires an Aegis. And the only way to fight the bastards off in the end is through intelligence. Cunning. Metis.
It’s just a bit amazing to me how influenced we still are by a rather small population of Athenians and Spartans. How big were these cities? A couple hundred thousand? Can you imagine if every city of a couple hundred thousand were contributing as much to the culture as those two cities did? Part of it is simply lack of opportunity — the Athenians, generally, got there first and have occupied the field. A Plato operating today would have a tougher time being heard above the din. New inventions are tougher to come by because most of the easier stuff has already been taken care of.
Anyway, I can go weeks without hearing anything about the Greeks, so it caught my attention when a bunch of references cropped up within the past day or so.
Leave a Reply