Bret Devereaux

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!

Lendon's book is actually great for this, because he juxtaposes the development of Greek martial values - which have to undergo some changes as their warfare changes! - and Roman martial values. And they're really different, despite the two cultures being in conversation!

Roman virtus isn't Greek arete - the former is an impelling force, the later a quality of skill. Latin has 'discrimen' - the 'testing point' or 'point of decision' - as the nearest match for 'agon' but the 'discrimen' might not be a contest at all.

'Discrimen' means 'seperate' at its core (we get our word discriminate from it) so it has that sense of 'showing the difference' (like English 'proving one's quality'), but no contest is required. A firefighter battling a fire is experiencing a moment of discrimen.

So, to conclude this thread for tonight, I think Pressfield has been very badly served by his theoretical framework. He's shaving the corners off of square blocks to make them fit into a round hole which was never very well made in the first place.

And really what is going on here is that he is mobilizing a form of history, badly bent in order to try to fit his modern model of (unhealthy) masculinity (he thinks it is gender neutral, but it's not and Jung of all people would tell him that - as does the book he's citing)...

...and then present that model as timeless when it isn't! The one thing that emerges almost instantly with any serious cross-cultural study of masculinity is that it is often very different, culture to culture and period to period. There are some common elements to be sure...

...but not *these* elements or ideas or really anything so specific. He's taking Ideal Modern Marine Man and presenting it as equivalent to Ideal Roman Man, or Ideal Early Christian Man, or Ideal Greek Man. And it simply wasn't.

And what bothers me the most is I bet many viewers of these things will take both the badly mauled history *and* the distorted view of an 'eternal' masculine warrior-value-code as fact and try to structure their life around it.