Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number 126. There are a few books that sit or serve as the cornerstones of Western philosophy and have influenced approaches to life in everything from government to the military. One of those books is the Bible. The other books include the works of Shakespeare. Marcus Aurelius is also down there, right
alongside Homer. However, there is one other book that overshadows them all and stands as a groundbreaking work focused on relating history to the reader as a story of great men performing great deeds. The author laid the groundwork for subsequent generations in the west to understand human nature in crises such as plagues, massacres, and, of course, the endless nature of man
inside of warfare. Today, we will be pulling the leadership lessons for postmodern leaders from a hoary old book, a hoary old history, the history of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. Leaders, the lessons you learn and apply from, well, Thucydides can create ripples in the lives of people you may never even meet down and past the 4th generation. And we pick up with the history of the Peloponnesian War. We open with a, the Penguin Books translation by Rex Warner
with introduction and notes by Mi Finley. We're not going to be reading from the introduction or the notes today. Instead, we're going to jump right in to the book, and we're going to pick up with, well, Thucydides'
introduction. And I quote, Thucydides the Athenian wrote the history of the war fought between Athens and Sparta, beginning the account at the very outbreak of the war in the belief that it was going to be a great war and more worth writing about than any of those which had taken place in the past.
My belief was based on the fact that the two sides were at the very height of their power and preparedness, and I saw too that the rest of the Hellenic world was committed to one side or the other, even those who were not immediately engaged or deliberating on the courses which they were to take later. This was the greatest disturbance in the history of the Hellenes affecting also a large part of the non Hellenic world, and
indeed, I might almost say the whole of mankind. For though I have found it impossible because of its remoteness in time to acquire a really precise knowledge of the distant past or even of the history preceding our own period, yet after looking back into it as far as I can, all the evidence leads me to conclude that these periods were not great periods either in warfare or in anything else. In the years, for example, the country now called Hellas had no settled population in
ancient times. Instead, there was a series of migrations as the various tribes, being under the constant pressure of invaders who were stronger than they were, were always prepared to abandon in their own territory. There was no commerce and no safe communication either by land or sea. The use they made of their land was limited to the production of necessities. They had no surplus left for calf left over for capital and no regular system of
agriculture since they lacked the protection of fortifications. And at any moment, an invader might appear and take their land away from them. Thus, in the belief that the day to day necessities of life could be secured just as well in one place as another, They showed no reluctance in moving from their homes and therefore built no cities of any size or strength nor required
any important resources. Where the soil was most fertile, there were the most frequent changes of population, as in what is now called Thessaly and Boeotia, and most of the Peloponnese, except Arcadia, and in others of the richest parts of Hellas. For in these fertile districts, it was easier for individuals to secure greater powers
than their neighbors. This led to disunity, which often caused the collapse of these states, which in any case are more likely, than others to attract the attention of foreign invaders. It is interesting to observe that Attica, which because of the poverty of her soil, was remarkably free from political disunity, has always been inhabited by the same race of people. Indeed, this is an important example of my theory that it was because of migrations that there was an uneven development elsewhere.
For when people were driven out from other parts of Greece by war or by disturbances, the most powerful of them took refuge in Athens as being a stable society. Then they became citizens and soon made the city even more populous than it had been before, with the result that later Attica became too small for our inhabitants and colonies were sent out to Ionia. Another point which seems to be good evidence for the weakness of the early inhabitants
of the country is this. We have no record of any action taken by Hellas as a whole before the Trojan War. Indeed, my view is that at this time, the whole country was not even called Hellas. Before the time of Helen, the son of Deucalion, the name did not exist at all, and different parts were known by the names of different tribes, with the name Pelagasian predominating.
After Helen and his sons had grown powerful in Phytheadias and had been invited as allies into other states, these states separately and because of their connections with the family of Helen became to be called Hellenic. But it took a long time before the name ousted all other names. The best evidence for this can be found in Homer, who, though he was born much later than the time of the Trojan War, nowhere uses the name
Hellenic for the whole force. Instead, he keeps his name for the followers of Achilles, who came from Phaethetus and were, in fact, the original Hellenes. For the rest of his poem, he uses the words Danaans, Argives, and Achaeans. He doesn't even use the term foreigners, and this, in my opinion, is because in his time, the Hellenes were not yet known by one name and so marked off as something separate from
the outside world. By Hellenic, I mean here, both those who took the name of the city by city and as a result of common language and those who later were all called by the common name. In any case, these various Hellenic states, weak in themselves and lacking in communications with one another, took no kind of collective action before the time of the Trojan War, and they could not have united even for the Trojan expedition unless they had previously acquired a greater knowledge of seafaring.
So let's take a look at the life of our author Thucydides. Born 460 and died around 400 BC, Thucydides was an Athenian historian and gentleman, and general as well, not just a gentleman. His history of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens that lasted until the year 4 11 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of quote unquote scientific history by those who accept his claims.
And, his claims include, having applied strict standards of impartiality in evidence gathering and analysis of cause and effect without reference to intervention by the gods. He did mention Homer in that piece that I just read as outlined in the introduction to his work. Thucydides says, when he talks about himself on the rare occasions that he does in the history of the Peloponnesian War, that he fought in the Peloponnesian War itself. He contracted the plague and was exiled
by the subsequent democracy. He may also have been involved, we're not quite sure, in quelling the Samian revolt. A disputed anecdote from the city's early days says that when he was around 10 to 12 years old, he and his father were supposed to have gone to the Agora of Athens where the young Thucydides heard a lecture by the historian Herodotus. According to some accounts, the young Thucydides wept with joy after hearing the lecture, deciding that writing history would be his life's
calling. The same account also claims that after the lecture Herodotus spoke with the youth and his father stating, 'Alauros, your son, yearns for knowledge. Olaroz, your son yearns for knowledge. We know very little about the life of Thucydides, but we know quite a bit about his pursuit of knowledge through, of course, the history of the Peloponnesian War.
It has been studied in military schools, it's been studied in the Pentagon, and it's been read as a classical piece of literature for 1000 of years. And so now, we're gonna go back to the book, back to the Peloponnesian War, the debate at Sparta and the declaration of war in 4:32. We're going to pick up right there with the Corinthian speech at Athens. Spartans, what makes you somewhat reluctant to listen to us,
others, if we have ideas to put forward? Is it a great trust and confidence which you have in your own constitution and in your own way of life? This is a quality which certainly makes you moderate in your judgments. It is also perhaps responsible for a kind of ignorance, which you show when you were dealing with foreign affairs. Many times before now, we have told you
what we were likely to suffer from Athens. And on each occasion, instead of taking to heart what we were telling you, you chose instead to suspect our motives and to consider that we were speaking only about our own grievances. The result has been that you did not call together this meeting of our allies before the damage was done. You waited until now when we were actually suffering from it. And of all these allies, we have perhaps the best right to speak
now since we have no serious complaints to make. We have to complain of Athens for her insolent aggression and of Sparta for her neglect of our advice. If there were anything doubtful or obscure about this aggression on the whole of Hellas, our task would have been to try to put the facts before you and show you something
you did not know. As it is, long speeches are unnecessary. You can see for yourselves how Athens has deprived some states of their freedom and is scheming to do the same thing for others, especially among our own allies, and that she herself has for a long time been preparing for the eventuality of war. Why otherwise would she have forcibly taken over from us the control of Corcyra? Why is she besieging
Potidaea? Potidaea is the best possible base for any campaign in Thrash, and Corcya might have been contributed might have contributed a very large fleet to the Peloponnesian League. And it is you who are responsible for all this. It was you who, in the first place, allowed the Athenians to fortify their city and build the long walls after the Persian War. Since then and up to the present day, you have been you have withheld freedom not only from those who have been enslaved by Athens but
even from your own allies. When one is deprived of one's liberty, one is right in blaming not so much the man who puts the fetters on as the one who had the power to prevent him but did not use it, especially when such one rejoices in the glorious reputation of having been the liberator of Hellas. Even at this stage, it has not been easy to arrange this meeting, and even at this meeting, there are no definite proposals. Why are we still considering whether regression has
taken place instead of how we can resist it? Men who are capable of real action first make their plans and then go forward without hesitation while their enemies still have not made up their minds. As for the Athenians, we know their methods and how they gradually encroach upon their neighbors. Now they are proceeding slowly because they think that your insensitiveness to the
situation enables them to go on their way unnoticed. You will find that they will develop their full strength once they realize that you do see what is happening and still are doing nothing to prevent it. You Spartans are the only people in Hellas who wait calmly on events relying for your defense not on action, but on making people think you will act. You alone do nothing in the early stages to prevent an enemy's expansion. You wait until your enemy has
doubled his strength. Certainly, you used to have the reputation of being safe, and sure enough, now one wonders whether this reputation was deserved. The Persians, as we know ourselves, came from the ends of the earth and got as far as the Peloponnese before you were able to put a proper force into the field to meet them. The Athenians, unlike the Persians, live close to you, yet
you still do not appear to notice them. Instead of going out to meet them, you prefer to stand still and wait till you are attacked, thus hazarding everything by fighting with opponents who have grown far stronger than they were originally.
In fact, you know that the chief reason for the failure of the Persian invasion was the mistaken policy of the Persians themselves, and you know too that there have been many occasions when, if we managed to stand up to Athenian aggression, it was more because of the Athenians' mistakes than because of any help we got from you. Indeed, we can think of instances already where those who have relied on you and remained unprepared have been ruined by the confidence they placed in
you. We should not like any of you to think we are speaking in an unfriendly spirit, We're only remonstrating with you as is natural when one's friends are making mistakes. Real accusations must be kept for one's enemies who have actually done one harm. Then also we think we have as much right as anyone else to point out faults in our neighbors, especially when we consider the enormous difference between you and the Athenians. To our
minds, you are quite unaware of this difference. You have never yet tried to imagine what sort of people these Athenians are against whom you will have to fight. How much indeed, how completely different from you. An Athenian is always an innovator, quick to form a resolution and quick at carrying it out. You, on the other hand, are good at keeping things as they are. You never originate an idea and your action tends to stop short of its aim. Then again, Athenian daring will outrun
its own resources. They will take risks against their better judgment and still, in the midst of danger, remain confident. But your nature is always to do less than you could have done, to mistrust your own judgment, however sound it may be, and to assume that dangers will last forever. Think of this too. While you are hanging back, they never hesitate. While you stay at home, they are always abroad for they think that the farther they go, the more they will get while you think that
any movement may endanger what you have already. If they win a victory, they follow it up at once, and if they suffer a defeat, they scarcely fall back at all. As for their bodies, they regard them as expendable for their city's sake as though they were not their own. But each man cultivates his own intelligence, again, with a view to doing something notable for his city. If they aim at something and do not get it, they think they have been deprived of what belonged to them already.
Whereas if their enterprise is successful, they regard that success as nothing compared to what they will do next. Suppose they fail in some undertaking, they may good the loss immediately by setting their hopes in some other direction. Of them alone, it may be said that they possess a thing almost
as soon as they have begun to desire it. So quickly with them does action follow upon decision, and so they go on working away in hardship and danger all the days of their lives, seldom enjoying their possessions because they are always adding to them. Their view of a holiday is to do what needs doing. They refer hardship and activity to peace and quiet. In a word, they are by nature incapable of either living a quiet life themselves or of allowing anyone else to do so.
In our time, when wars begin because of seemingly transient reasons, at least to our postmodern mind, We fail as common folk and even as leaders to understand a concept called causaus belli. In the run up to the Peloponnesian War, the causaus belli, was as follows according to Thucydides, and I quote, both the Athenians and the Polyponnesians already had grounds of
complaint against each other. The grievance of Corinth was that the Athenians were besieging her own colony of Potidaea with Corinthians and other Peloponnesians in the place. Athens, on the other hand, had her own grievances against the Peloponnesians. They had supported the revolt of a city, which was an alliance with her and which paid her tribute, and they had openly joined the Potitanians in fighting against
her, close quote. Causes Belle I even applies now with the Ukraine war with Russia and the Israeli Palestinian, Israeli versus Arab, Israeli versus Lebanon, and Iran war going on right now in the Middle East. The reasons men have for war are many, but they can usually divide it into 2 categories, stated reasons and hidden reasons. Stated reasons are laid out in public speeches, proclamations, and even Thucydian history, and they are usually, later on or even before the war, codified into the
laws of a country. Stated reasons, give generals cover for sending folks out to the front rank. Unstated reasons are usually buried in memos. They are privately stated in small speeches in drawing rooms or in chambers or in quiet hallways inside of august buildings, and they are later written about later reported on, particularly in our era where everyone must know everything about everyone in unauthorized memoirs published long after the dead are buried and rotting in their graves.
Human nature motivates the start of many interpersonal conflicts. And, of course, because war is just interpersonal conflict at scale, human nature motivates the starts of wars between nations, and the things that operate in individuals' hearts and lives also operate in nation states' behaviors as causes, beli, for war, greed, envy, jealousy, and vanity. These are still the fuel in the engine of human nature, and reading the history of the Peloponnesian War from Thucydides, you get all of that.
Now, written 400 years before the birth of Christ, there is no Christian overtone to the history of the Peloponnesian War. There's no Christian overtone to Thucydides' description of the passions of men. We would get that later from Paul and James and Hebrews, but it still applies. Why do you have wars and fightings among you? Well, the answer lies deep in the heart of human nature. Back to the book, back to the history of the
Peloponnesian War. We're going to, we're gonna pick up with, with probably the most famous funeral oration in the history of the Western world. And we're going to read probably, if not all of it, at least most of it. Pericles was the commander of the city of of the forces of the city of Athens, and he was called, he was required to deliver a funeral orient oration. This is something that happened in the classical Greek world, and in the classical world period, in the west.
And, it is the most famous funeral oration probably in western history. We'll talk a little bit more about it after we read it. So you're gonna wanna settle in for this. Pericles' funeral oration. In the same winter, the Athenians, following their annual custom, gave a public funeral for those who had been the first to die in the war. These funerals are held in the following way. 2 days before the ceremony, the bones of the fallen are brought and put in a tent which
has been erected, and people make whatever offerings they wish to their own dead. Then there is a funeral procession in which coffins of cypress wood are carried on wagons. There is one coffin for each tribe, which contains the bones of the members of that tribe. One empty beer is decorated and carried in the procession. This is for the missing whose bodies could not be recovered.
Everyone who wishes to, both citizens and foreigners, can join the procession, and the women who are related to the dead are there to make their laments at the tomb. The bones are laid at the public burial place, which is the most beautiful quarter outside the city walls. Here, the Athenians always bury
those who have fallen in war. The only exceptions is those who died at Marathon who, because of their achievement, because their achievement was considered absolutely outstanding, were buried on the battlefield itself. When the bones have been laid in the earth, a man chosen by the city for his intellectual gifts and for his general reputation makes an appropriate speech in praise of the dead, and after the speech, all depart. This is the
procedure at the at these burials and all through the war. When the time came to do so, the Athenians followed this ancient custom. Now at the burial of those who were the first to fall in the war, Pericles, the son of Xanathippus, was chosen to make the speech. When the moment arrived, he came forward from the tomb. And standing on a high platform so that he might be heard by as many people as possible in the crowd, he spoke as
follows. Quote, many of those who have spoken here in the past have praised the institution of this speech at the close of our ceremony. It seemed to them a mark of honor to our soldiers who have fallen in war that a speech should be made over them. I do not agree. These men have shown themselves valiant in action, and it would be enough, I think, for their glories to be proclaimed in action as you have just seen it done at this funeral organized by the state.
Our belief in the courage and manliness of so many should not be hazarded on the goodness or badness of one man's speech. Then it is not easy to speak with a proper sense of balance when a man's listeners find it difficult to believe in the truth of what one is saying. The man who knows the facts and loves the dead may well think that an oration tells less than what he knows
and what he would like to hear. Others who do not know so much may feel envy for the dead and think the orator overpraises them when he speaks of exploits that are beyond their own capacities. Praise of other people is tolerable only up to a certain point, The point where one still believes that one could do oneself some of the things one is hearing about. Once you get beyond this point, you will find people becoming jealous and
incredulous. However, the fact is that this institution was set up and approved by our forefathers, and it is my duty to follow the tradition and do my best to meet the wishes and the expectations of every one of you. I shall begin by speaking about ancestors since it is only right and proper on
such an occasion to pay them the honor of recalling what they did. In this land of ours, there have always been the same people living for generation to generation up till now, and they, by their courage and their virtues, are have handed it on to us a free country. They certainly deserve our praise, even more so do our fathers deserve it. For to the inheritance they have received, they added all the empire we have now, and it was not without blood and toil that they handed it down to us of the
present generation. And we ourselves, assembled here today, who are mostly in the prime of life, have, in most directions, added to the power of our empire and have organized our state in such a way that it is perfectly well able to look after itself both in peace and in war. I have no wish to make a long speech on subjects familiar to you all, so I shall say nothing about the warlike deeds by which we acquired our power, or the battles in which we or our fathers gallantly resisted our
enemies, Greek or foreign. What I want to do, in the first place, to discuss the spirit of which we faced our trials and also our constitution and the way of life, which has made us great. After that, I shall speak in praise of the dead, believing that this kind of speech is not inappropriate to the present occasion, and that this whole assembly of citizens and foreigners may listen to it with advantage. Let me say that our system of
government does not copy the institutions of our neighbors. It is more the case of our being a model to others than of our imitating anyone else. Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands, not of a minority, but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the
law. When it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses. No one, so long as he has in has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty. And just as our political life is free and open, so is our day to day life
and our relations with each other. We do not get into a state with our door neighbor if he enjoys himself in his own way, nor do we give him the kind of black looks which, though they do no real harm, still do hurt people's feelings. We are free and tolerant in our private lives, but in public affairs, we keep to the law. This is because it commands our deep respect.
We give our obedience to those whom we put in positions of authority, and we obey the laws themselves, especially those which are for the protection of the oppressed and those unwritten laws which are which is an acknowledged shame to break. And here is another point. When our work is over, we are in position to enjoy all kinds of recreation for our spirits. There are various kinds of contests and sacrifices regularly
throughout the year in our own homes. We find beauty and good taste, which delight us every day, which drive away our cares, then the greatness of our city brings in in it about all the good things from all over the world that flow into us. So that, to us, it seems just as natural to enjoy foreign goods as our own local products. Then there is a great difference between us and our opponents and our attitude towards
military security. Here are some examples. Our city is open to the world, and we have no periodical deportations in order to prevent people observing or finding out secrets which might be of military advantage to the enemy. This is because we rely not on secret weapons, but on our own real courage and loyalty. There is a difference too in our educational systems. The Spartans, from their earliest boyhood, are submitted to the most
laborious training and courage. We pass our lives without all these restrictions and yet are just as ready to face the same dangers as they are. Here is a proof of this. When the Spartans invade our land, they do not come by themselves or bring their allies with them, whereas we, when we launch an attack abroad, do the job by ourselves. And though fighting on foreign soil, do not often fail to defeat opponents who are fighting for their own hearths
and homes. As a matter of fact, none of our enemies has ever yet been confronted with our total strength because we have to divide our attention between our navy and the many missions on which our troops are sent on land. Yet if our enemies engage a detachment of our forces and defeat it, they give themselves credit for having thrown back our entire army. Or if they lose, they claim that they were beaten by us in full strength.
There are certain advantages, I think, to our way of meeting danger voluntarily with an easy mind instead of with laborious training, with natural rather than with state induced courage. We do not have to spend our time practicing to meet sufferings which are still in the future. And when they are actually upon us, we show ourselves just as brave as those who are always in strict training. This is one point which I think our city deserves to be admired.
There are also others. Our love of what is beautiful does not lead to extravagance. Our love of things of the mind does not make us soft. We regard wealth as something to be properly used rather than as something to boast about. As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it. The real shame is in not taking any practical measures to escape from it. Here, each individual is interested not only in his own affairs, but in the affairs of the state as well. Even those who are mostly
occupied with their own business are extremely well informed on general politics. This is a peculiarity of ours. We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business. We say that he has no business here at all. We, Athenians, and our own persons take our decisions on policy or submit them to proper discussions, for we do not think that there is an incompatibility between words and deeds.
The worst thing is to rush into action before the consequences have been properly debated, and this is another point where we differ from other people. We are capable at the same time of taking risks and estimating them beforehand. Others are brave out of ignorance, and when they stop to think, they begin to fear.
But the man who can most truly be accounted brave is he who best knows the meaning of what is sweet in life and of what is terrible and then goes out undeterred to meet what is to come. Before we begin our analysis of Pericles' funeral oration, which is the classic example of political oratory ranking along highly alongside other political oratory in the long and sordid history of the west, We need to deliver another oration.
President Lincoln delivered the 272 word Gettysburg address on November 19, 18 63 on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Channeling Pericles, he said this, 4 score 7 years ago, our fathers brought forth of this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.
We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as the final resting place for those who here gave their lives that a nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men living in dead who struggled here have consecrated far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus so far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, That from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion. That we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. That this nation under god shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. The Gettysburg Address is the American example of funeral oration, short and to the point. We didn't even get through a third of Pericles' funeral oration, created for a different time of potentially longer attention spans.
Richard Ned Lebo, an American political scientist, characterized Thucydides as, quote, the last of the tragedians, stating that, and I quote, Thucydides drew heavily on epic poetry and tragedy to construct his history, which not surprisingly is also constructed as a narrative. Pericles' funeral oration stands as an example of such epic poetry. There is a monumental challenge, as Lincoln and Pericles would have recognized, to speaking over the
dead. How do you actually define what people have done when they have given the last full measure that they can give in this world, which is their lives? How do you define such a sacrifice? How do you place it in the pantheon of sacrifice on offer? How do you inspire those who are living, and how do you get them to think differently about those who are dead?
The challenge of speaking over the dead and managing not to make it maudlin and overly sentimental or crass and overly hard was equally matched by Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln and Pericles both stand as examples of long form funeral oration, and there have been none better, in the time since. Maybe that's because we've lost the ability, whether it be Christian or pagan, we've lost the ability to place the appropriate context of our lives within a much larger hierarchical order.
And as leaders, we have a responsibility to realize not that our egos are fragile, Pericles would have acknowledged that, but we have the responsibility to acknowledge that our lives, while seemingly precious and overall meaningful to us in the long pantheon in HIF history, might indeed be meaningless unless we can serve to give them meaning by actually sacrificing for the things that matter. This is our current struggle with meaning in the west, and we've covered that on this
podcast before. We are currently in a meaning crisis. I think we're about to turn the corner of it. I hope we're about to turn the corner of it. And Pericles' funeral oration and Abraham Lincoln's oration at Gettysburg give us examples of what others may say about us or examples of what others may not say about us if we don't get our act together before there's no more time left to even remotely think about getting it together. So what are we to take from the history
of the Peloponnesian war? And by the way, this is a robust history. It doesn't just include information about or the repetition of, Pericles' funeral oration, but it walks through the entire Peloponnesian War. The operations in Sicily and Greece, the end of Platea, the Brasilius in Thrace. Brasilius captures Amphipolis. What else? Let's see. Negotiations between Athens and Argos, the debate at Syracuse, what happened when the Athenians
arrived in Sicily, the debate at Camarina. I mean, this is a this is a comprehensive, history, and I would encourage you to go out and pick it up if you are a person who wants to understand how warfare in the west works. By the way, you will see a lot of, parallels to World War 2, World War 1, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the 2nd Gulf War, and the current wars that are going on as I mentioned before in the Ukraine, in the Donbas,
and Israel. You will see parallels because war is the father of us all. On this podcast, we try to get to solutions to problems this year, and the problem that we're trying to solve for by reading the history of the Peloponnesian War is not one of war. We can't actually solve that problem. Wars will outlive leadership as long as human nature is such as it is.
The problem we're looking to solve by reading the history of the Peloponnesian War, at least the problem that leaders should be seeking to solve by reading the history of the Peloponnesian War by by trudging through Pericles' funeral oration such as it were. The lesson that they are trying to pull from the text is this. History, philosophy, and theology used to matter more as tools for explaining the vagaries of our human nature under fire than
psychology ever did. Matter of fact, I would argue that for all of the insights that psychologists have generated over the course of the last 100 years, they still don't beat the insights you can get about human nature from history. We like to say that we're smarter because we can actually go inside of people's motivations, but I'm not quite sure that's
true. In our current bureaucratic era in the bureaucratic era in the west, where we are ruled over by scientific managerial apparatchiks, we have successfully separated people who think about warfare, even if they have metals on their breast, from the people who actually do the fighting. Think about it. How many philosophers do you know who go to war or who are even in blue collar roles such as carpentry or plumbing or electricity? And how many carpenters or electricians or plumbers do you know
who read deep philosophy? I would be willing to bet that it goes more one way than the other. And this is a real problem because the managerial class who leads the action oriented doers or at least gives them orders becomes puffed up by its own ego and its hubris and arrogance, which can allow it to leave its ivory tower of scientific managerialism descend deep into the trenches, and get its hands dirty.
This is why we like leaders who come from the dirt, which is something that the ivory tower managerial class cannot wrap their own hubris around. So how do we heal these challenges? How do we heal these rifts between people or should we even bother? Or will there always be rifts between the elites and the people who do the work? Folks wiser than me would, of course, say, yes. There will always be these rifts, and you can't get rid of them, Haysan, but I live in vainglorious
hope. I believe that the way to heal this divide, at least the way for leaders to think about and maybe act on healing this divide, is not by leveraging mass communication or mass media. The way to heal this divide is not through the, dispute the the the the the dissension or the dissemination, that's the word I'm looking for, of mass academic training or even mass conscription into a military that is as bureaucratically bad as the nation states it seeks to
protect. I believe that the way to heal the divide between the ego driven, scientific, managerial, apparatchic and the doer on the ground with their hands. The way to heal this divide is for families to abandon cities, move back to the land, and for fathers and mothers alike alongside their children or their children alongside them, start learning how to work with their hands again. Start getting back into the dirt. Teach the children this. Teach them well. Teach them how
to raise the chickens and the ducks and the horses. Teach them how to hammer the nails and saw the wood. The leaders that will come from those places will be able to deliver funeral oratory that will be stirring and uplifting and won't sound hollow or pointless because it will actually have hard experience embedded underneath it. And well, that's it for me.