4 ms·

Hm, all most all of them are horrible. It's so impressive to me that we still proclaim Sparta as something worthwhile of praise when it was an awful inhumane cu

by tokai 5y ago

Hm, all most all of them are horrible. It's so impressive to me that we still proclaim Sparta as something worthwhile of praise when it was an awful inhumane culture and society that didn't even last that long.

mc32 5y ago
Aside from Sports (where competition is the whole point outside of the Ivy League), Sparta is always portrayed as cruel and inhumane, deservedly so. On the other hand, they were, apparently, good at waging war one way or another. I've not seen it associated with philosophy and civilization as Athens was, among others.
- jacobmischka 5y ago
  According to Deveraux (article series linked in another comment) they weren't even good at that!
  - forgetfulness 5y ago
    They had a professional officer corps and drills. In fact, that's mostly what the Spartiate class was really. Since other city states had armies comprised of the gentry donning a suit of armor when needed, it made a lot of a difference in that context. Well it turns out that you can have a worthwhile society while also having a professional officer corps and drills, it's just that the Spartans didn't.
  - cabalamat 5y ago
    Indeed. They were good are producing high-quality individual infantrymen. But (1) there weren't very many of them, and (2) there's a lot more to winning wars than how tough your infantry are. I'm reminded of Adolf Hitler and Hideki Tojo who both thought that Americans were only interested in money and sex, decadent, undisciplined and unmilitaristic (all true, to some extent), and that therefore they'd be easy to beat in a war. It didn't quite work out for them!
- clairity 5y ago
  > “…Sports (where competition is the whole point outside of the Ivy League)…” the point of sports in the ivy league is also competition, whether they’re able to be as competitive as other leagues or not.
  - mc32 5y ago
    You could be right and I might be wrong. I get the feeling for them it’s more focused on sportsmanship and fellowship than adversarial competition. If the focus were on winning then they’d recruit like the other schools for their sports teams (pac10, bigEast, etc. I know some have expanded and names have changed)
    - clairity 5y ago
      perhaps a greater percentage of ivy athletes play for "the love of the sport", as something less than 1% of all college athletes will go on to a professional career (and few of those will by ivy leaguers), but competition is certainly still central. folks who go to exclusive schools tend to be quite competitive, practically by definition. winning and being competitive are certainly not the same though. these athletes want to win, even if they're at a disadvantage and don't win as often as the big sports schools. note also that ivy leaguers tend to do better at sports in which money hasn't heavily distorted the playing field. the problem for ivies with respect to recruiting (for winning) is the academic admissions floor, not money (harvard and yale having two of the biggest endowments in history) nor necessarily even an aversion to cheating and corruption. top athletes are too conspicuous not to draw outsized scrutiny in that regard, and tarnishing the brand that way just isn't worth it.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Sparta was good at fighting, but bad at war! Spartans were known to have terrible logistics, they couldn't field an army for more than a year. Back then, most armies needed to live off the fat of the land and/or have huge supply trains to remain effective, and Spartans had neither skillset. (When talking Bronze age tactics: this was the key advantage of slingers, who could craft their sling-bullets from clay and rocks found near the battle areas. Mass production and distribution of arrows was still not mastered in the 1000 BC-era or so) As such, Spartans would "gloriously" run into a few battles, declare themselves superior, then go home. While the enemies would just keep marching towards their target, sustainably pressing forward. Its like watching an expert Sprinter battle a Marathon Runner. War is a marathon, not a sprint. Consider the Persian armies that fought against the Greeks: thousands of miles away from home. In contrast, Spartans fought on their home turf and barely were able to do so effectively. Sure, they won a lot of battles, but holding back the Persian army required more than just winning a battle here or there. ---------- That's why the Athenians worshiped Athena: the goddess of wisdom _and_ war. They realized that waging war was both an issue of might and intelligence. Intelligence to move your supplies and organize them so that your armies can stay in the field longer than your enemies. -------- That being said: the Marine Corps glorify the Spartan way of thinking, because the USA's Marine Corps are designed to be the spearhead of battle. The Army is more about logistics. Its got less glory but is more practical. They don't glorify the Spartan way.
  - Applejinx 5y ago
    Makes sense. It's like a perfect metaphor for imbalances between individualism and collectivism. Seems like Sparta internalized personal valor so intensely that the only collective good they could possibly understand, was to project the whole country as an imagined heroic individual, and then try to individually triumph in the name of that country. Meanwhile, there's a lot of countries out there with more of an interest in community spirit and collective action. I daresay there's good metaphors for leaning too far in that way, as well, but Sparta did get wrecked in the end by the collectivists, who quite simply out-organized them and provided better support for their soldiers. If honor dictates you have to jump over the ten foot wall ALONE, you ain't doing it, and humbler people who build a human pyramid and lift up those not good at climbing… their whole army's gonna be on the other side of that wall, anytime they want.
AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
The Spartans are the OG practitioners of Master Morality, as Nietsche would put it. That which is good is that which is useful, that which is bad is that which is harmful. Cowardice and the like are harmful, therefore they are bad. This is in contrast with the reigning slave morality of our times.
steve76 5y ago
It's awesome. Lycurgus of Sparta is a legendary law giver. It's illegal to be poor. It's illegal to be a victim. Fastest way to solve poverty or crime. Do you judge all societies equally? The Waring States of China, or African barbarity, much more brutal. They get a pass because you want a forced ambiguity and amorality.
mountainb 5y ago
Sparta's the model for Thomas More's Utopia.
rsynnott 5y ago
> It's so impressive to me that we still proclaim Sparta as something worthwhile of praise Do we? I thought it was fairly well-known to be extremely nasty.
- NoGravitas 5y ago
  It remains extremely popular with chuds, who actually want our society to be nastier than it already is.

by tokai 5y ago

mc32 5y ago

Aside from Sports (where competition is the whole point outside of the Ivy League), Sparta is always portrayed as cruel and inhumane, deservedly so. On the other hand, they were, apparently, good at waging war one way or another. I've not seen it associated with philosophy and civilization as Athens was, among others.

jacobmischka 5y ago
According to Deveraux (article series linked in another comment) they weren't even good at that!
- forgetfulness 5y ago
  They had a professional officer corps and drills. In fact, that's mostly what the Spartiate class was really. Since other city states had armies comprised of the gentry donning a suit of armor when needed, it made a lot of a difference in that context. Well it turns out that you can have a worthwhile society while also having a professional officer corps and drills, it's just that the Spartans didn't.
- cabalamat 5y ago
  Indeed. They were good are producing high-quality individual infantrymen. But (1) there weren't very many of them, and (2) there's a lot more to winning wars than how tough your infantry are. I'm reminded of Adolf Hitler and Hideki Tojo who both thought that Americans were only interested in money and sex, decadent, undisciplined and unmilitaristic (all true, to some extent), and that therefore they'd be easy to beat in a war. It didn't quite work out for them!
clairity 5y ago
> “…Sports (where competition is the whole point outside of the Ivy League)…” the point of sports in the ivy league is also competition, whether they’re able to be as competitive as other leagues or not.
- mc32 5y ago
  You could be right and I might be wrong. I get the feeling for them it’s more focused on sportsmanship and fellowship than adversarial competition. If the focus were on winning then they’d recruit like the other schools for their sports teams (pac10, bigEast, etc. I know some have expanded and names have changed)
  - clairity 5y ago
    perhaps a greater percentage of ivy athletes play for "the love of the sport", as something less than 1% of all college athletes will go on to a professional career (and few of those will by ivy leaguers), but competition is certainly still central. folks who go to exclusive schools tend to be quite competitive, practically by definition. winning and being competitive are certainly not the same though. these athletes want to win, even if they're at a disadvantage and don't win as often as the big sports schools. note also that ivy leaguers tend to do better at sports in which money hasn't heavily distorted the playing field. the problem for ivies with respect to recruiting (for winning) is the academic admissions floor, not money (harvard and yale having two of the biggest endowments in history) nor necessarily even an aversion to cheating and corruption. top athletes are too conspicuous not to draw outsized scrutiny in that regard, and tarnishing the brand that way just isn't worth it.
dragontamer 5y ago
Sparta was good at fighting, but bad at war! Spartans were known to have terrible logistics, they couldn't field an army for more than a year. Back then, most armies needed to live off the fat of the land and/or have huge supply trains to remain effective, and Spartans had neither skillset. (When talking Bronze age tactics: this was the key advantage of slingers, who could craft their sling-bullets from clay and rocks found near the battle areas. Mass production and distribution of arrows was still not mastered in the 1000 BC-era or so) As such, Spartans would "gloriously" run into a few battles, declare themselves superior, then go home. While the enemies would just keep marching towards their target, sustainably pressing forward. Its like watching an expert Sprinter battle a Marathon Runner. War is a marathon, not a sprint. Consider the Persian armies that fought against the Greeks: thousands of miles away from home. In contrast, Spartans fought on their home turf and barely were able to do so effectively. Sure, they won a lot of battles, but holding back the Persian army required more than just winning a battle here or there. ---------- That's why the Athenians worshiped Athena: the goddess of wisdom _and_ war. They realized that waging war was both an issue of might and intelligence. Intelligence to move your supplies and organize them so that your armies can stay in the field longer than your enemies. -------- That being said: the Marine Corps glorify the Spartan way of thinking, because the USA's Marine Corps are designed to be the spearhead of battle. The Army is more about logistics. Its got less glory but is more practical. They don't glorify the Spartan way.
- Applejinx 5y ago
  Makes sense. It's like a perfect metaphor for imbalances between individualism and collectivism. Seems like Sparta internalized personal valor so intensely that the only collective good they could possibly understand, was to project the whole country as an imagined heroic individual, and then try to individually triumph in the name of that country. Meanwhile, there's a lot of countries out there with more of an interest in community spirit and collective action. I daresay there's good metaphors for leaning too far in that way, as well, but Sparta did get wrecked in the end by the collectivists, who quite simply out-organized them and provided better support for their soldiers. If honor dictates you have to jump over the ten foot wall ALONE, you ain't doing it, and humbler people who build a human pyramid and lift up those not good at climbing… their whole army's gonna be on the other side of that wall, anytime they want.

AlgorithmicTime 5y ago

The Spartans are the OG practitioners of Master Morality, as Nietsche would put it. That which is good is that which is useful, that which is bad is that which is harmful. Cowardice and the like are harmful, therefore they are bad. This is in contrast with the reigning slave morality of our times.

steve76 5y ago

It's awesome. Lycurgus of Sparta is a legendary law giver. It's illegal to be poor. It's illegal to be a victim. Fastest way to solve poverty or crime. Do you judge all societies equally? The Waring States of China, or African barbarity, much more brutal. They get a pass because you want a forced ambiguity and amorality.

mountainb 5y ago

Sparta's the model for Thomas More's Utopia.

rsynnott 5y ago

> It's so impressive to me that we still proclaim Sparta as something worthwhile of praise Do we? I thought it was fairly well-known to be extremely nasty.

NoGravitas 5y ago
It remains extremely popular with chuds, who actually want our society to be nastier than it already is.