Bret Devereaux

Anyway, what Pressfield is very good at here is presenting an image of expertise (probably easier as a white male with thinning hair, speaking from experience), but he has not actually done the legwork to earn that perception by actually building expertise. Very frustrating.

Long personal anecdote about his marine training and the emotional impact of being accepted at the end of boot camp as a marine. He attributes this to his 'warrior archetype' but the more obvious element is the scientifically well documented human need for social-group-belonging

The moment when I came back after defending my diss. at UNC and was greeted by my advisor and committee with "Congratulations, Dr. Devereaux" was also really emotionally moving! I was being accepted into the 'guild of scholars' Not a lot of 'warrior' about it though.

Once again this point - about social structures, survival and the evolutionary pressure towards larger group sizes - is a point just made better and more clearly by Azar Gat without relying on Jungian mumbo-jumbo.

"Every aspect of the warrior archetype has a dark side and a light side" ...I know he's citing the book I mentioned above, but are we admitting George Lucas as evidence now? Are the Spartans the Sith? They're Sith, right?

And yes, I know we're touching on the Jungian concept of the 'shadow' but I'm not sure that's any more helpful than just assuming this is The Force.

Alright now on to Ep. 9: 'Why Study the Warrior Archetype' Which is a really good but difficult question, given that at this point I am pretty convinced that the 'warrior archetype' is bunk.

I'm not a therapist or a self-help guru or even a particularly well-adjusted person, but being in a state of war with myself "in my own head" as Pressfield puts it, sounds like a pretty miserable state of being and not a very helpful or healthy one.

He talks about facing "the same enemies that a soldier faces on the battlefield...fear, complacency, laziness...arrogance, vainglory, self-doubt, lack of self-belief...all of those things that are vices that drag us down to a lower level" So, I have a lot of things to say...

First, I find it really striking that 'right conduct' or 'just conduct' is nowhere in that list. Those are all things that hold one back from achieving one's goals, but not things which tell you "your goals are wrong and destructive and not to be pursued."

I was always really struck by the way Prof. (now ret.) Carlin Barton - (whose book on Roman honor, "Fire in the Bones" is a good one) - explained to me the Roman notion of how the ideal person was both powered by a sort of inner fire (virtus), but restrained as well.

J.E. Lendon brings this same dichotomy up in Soldier's and Ghosts in a military context, where Roman virtus (courage/zeal) struggles against disciplina (discipline) in the ideal soldier. The good Roman was fired up with virtus, but restrained by 'pudor' (a sense of shame)...

...by reason (ratio) and by the sense of justice which proceeded from that reason. But that sense of being bound, of being restrained, of being controlled (which is also super important in most other moral systems, e.g. Christianity and Islam) is not present here.

But there *is* an ideology in which "everybody is educated to become a hero" and where "life is permanent warfare" where "life is lived for the struggle" built on "contempt for the weak" And it's fascism because I've been quoting Umberto Eco in this tweet.

(His essay, Ur-Fascism, of course, which you should read!) I am obviously not saying Pressfield is a fascist - though he sure loves Sparta and I'd argue they were proto-fascist - but merely that those ideals lead somewhere rather specific and it is a fairly dark place.

I think this is a point that needs to be made in more depth that a tweet can manage, but what a lot of these 'cult of the badass' perspectives (be they life advice or bad history) have in common is this inchoate desire for conflict and the heroism that conflict provides...

...which are the ideological roots of fascist authoritarianism. As Eco puts "the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience he more frequently sends other people to death."

Ok, we're moving in to the Bhagavad Gita which he says is the 'Hindu Bible' which is a gross oversimplification of the Gita's place in Hindu literature. The Gita is the most primary Hindu text, but exists in a constellation of others texts and teachings.

"It's a short book, you can read it in an hour" - er. The Gita is a sub-unit of the much longer Mahabharata. And I am told while one can *read* the Gita quickly, to actually understand its full religious import takes much more serious study.

In part because there is a vast apparatus of commentaries and supporting texts, along with important religious practices which either comment on or contextualize the Gita.

Alright, he's giving the Spark Notes version of the Bhagavad Gita. I'm not really qualified to assess his reading of the Gita, but I don't have a lot of confidence given how badly he mauled the ancient texts I do have the expertise to assess.

And then he sets up the next episode where he's going to talk about how the Spartans (of course, ugh...) exemplify the...ideology and practice of the Gita? This I am more comfortable calling BS on.

J.E. Lendon's Soldier's and Ghosts really is the best starting point for understanding Greek martial values. They are not about harmonizing the person, or overcoming inner failings, etc. Greek martial values are all about the competitive demonstration of excellence.

Unlike the concepts of dharma and karma, the Greek concept of excellence (arete) is fundamentally amoral; the thread of connection to the 'selfless action' of the Gita is thin to the point of non-existence.

Now, obviously, the Greeks - and the Spartans - have an idea of the subservience or service of an individual to the community, but it is expressed as a obedience owed (and trained or enforced by violence) or a 'kratos' (power, strength) exerted by/to that community

Instead, the key focus is on the ἀγών ('Agon') - the contest, the competition, the struggle - the moment where two individuals, or two communities compete, with one proving its excellence (arete) over the other.

And the basic Greek assumption that comes out again and again in their writing is that all humans and all communities are continually seeking agones as opportunities to prove or demonstrate their excellence with the goal of being 'inferior to none.'

These are massive philosophical differences that Pressfield is just casually collapsing and pretending that the assumptions being made are universal and universally applicable. They very clearly are not!