Bret Devereaux

Maybe it's the bit where Alexander III ('the Great') is an ideal expression of 'the warrior' but evidently Philip II isn't? Or the Macedonians? Is it where he uses anecdotes he invented for fictional characters as equally valid for evidence as the historical sources? 4/18

Is it the part where he says that a Greek xiphos was 'half the length' of a Roman gladius? Or that he can't pronounce ξίφος despite presenting himself as an expert on Greek warrior culture? 5/18

Is it the part where he uncritically accepts all Spartan shields had lambdas on them when Plutarch contradicts *himself* on this point? Or just generally the way he reads Plutarch, writing centuries after the society he described effectively ended, utterly uncritically? 6/18

Is it the part where the leisured Spartiate aristocrats (who do no work, but instead are served by numerous enslaved people) are held up as a model of selflessness(!!) even when a cursory reading of Plutarch's Agesilaus or Agis or Cleomenes show them to be anything but? 7/18

Is it the part where he just flatly presents Carl Jung's work as a valid way to think about the structure of the human mind, despite it having been long abandoned by actual specialists in the field? 8/18

Maybe it's the part where he processes exactly none of the richness of Greek philosophy on how to live a happy, just, productive life and instead swaps all of that out for what is frankly a boy's philosophy of 'Just Do it!'? 9/18

Is it the part where he presents the 'warrior' and later 'soldier' as effectively the highest expression of human existence, the most fully actualized individual (because clearly the capacity for effective violence - real or symbolic - is the most important virtue)? 10/18

Is where, based on that in his last video he lumps together under the 'warrior archetype,' "anybody that is heavily into fitness, anything military, first responders, police" as if that's a categorization that makes any sense outside of dumb macho posturing? 11/18