Pussification VS The Spartan Way! Cost/Benefit Analysis.

A Crapsack World VS its polar opposite (That I am not sure what to call)

In general, humans today won't die from being eaten by predatory beasts, will have access to clean water, food, basic medical care and education at least up to functional litteracy.

This all sounds great but are we missing something?

There's always been this mystique of the Spartan Way producing excemplary examples of humanity so in making the whole world generally better, are we somehow making things worse?

Let the comments roll.

edited 3rd May '12 4:07:36 PM by Natasel

So you don't think the advances humans have made in furthering the species are worth the sacrifice of not being "tough"?

Without modern medicine there wouldn't be overpopulation and without industry there wouldn't be climate change. I vote for Spartans.

To be fair, we have gotten way too neurotic about a lot of things.

Still, something tells me going back to a system where babies that don't look strong enough are chucked off a nearby cliff and tweens get put through oft-fatal training regimens and institutionalized sexual abuse is a pretty crappy idea.

The Spartan way involved tossing out infants that didn't match up to their expectations and slavery. That's not exactly the kind of standards I want to be pushing today. We're not pussies, we've just learned how to build incredibly sophisticated machinery that make life less about "oh my god we might not survive today". And also it involves civil rights and generally teaching our children to not pointlessly be dicks to other people about things.

Their food was pretty shitty too.

We do not have Helots, so the Spartan way is unnecessary.

I suggest changing the title of the thread to "Epicurianism vs Spartanism, a Cost/Benefit Analysis". Less apparent bias, methinks.

Anyway, the benefits to living a spartan lifestyle (as opposed to life in Sparta itself) is: Self-reliance, confidence in being able to overcome adversity in a variety of circumstances, "horse-sense", "street-smarts", cheaper and simpler than more modern lifestyles, and so on.

The benefits of being an epicurist are a more comfortable lifestyle, redundancy in certain thing (you won't be totally up a creek if one of your three cars breaks down and that sort of thing, for example), more social acceptance (you're not viewed as a nutjob survivalist), and a life of ease to do the things you want to do, versus being busy having to do the things you need to do.

How's that?

And, a slave-base to sustain feeding your wonderful, hardass ideals.

Nah: give me pansy-assness vs pointless cruelty, any day. The world is cruel enough, we don't need to make it worse.

edited 3rd May '12 5:12:01 PM by Euodiachloris

Let's also keep in mind that the Spartans in the end proved less flexible and militarily capable than the Athenians in many cases, and those guys weren't exactly the hardasses of their era.

Not to mention a slave-base that stops you from sending your troops oversea.

Not entirely true. Sparta and Athens practically swapped roles in terms of flexibility towards the end (Spartan navy? WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?).

edited 3rd May '12 5:09:37 PM by IraTheSquire

I hope we are not basing the Spart bit on Sparta. They got their asses kicked by the other Greek City States after they got sick of their shit. Sparta's way of life effectively led to their decay and fall.

Not quite. The Spartans had no idea how to maintain their hegemony after their victory over Athens, so they became bullies (they weren't before, as they were quite isolationist). The reason why they failed was their adherence to the traditional style hoplite phalanx formation, which was beaten by Epaminodas who tweaked the Theban phalanx (12 men deep on the right side and less men on the left side, as Greek phalanx combat tend to rotate anticlockwise as dudes on the right, who are more exposed, huddle to the left due to the protection of the shields).

Both extremes suck ass to be honest.

Indeed.

Living a spartan simple life isn't bad. Living life as a Spartan...? Totally different, and probably illegal nowaways.

edited 3rd May '12 6:14:14 PM by pvtnum11

Between murdering children and raping your protege.. Yeah.

Wouldn't mind sending tweens to go hunt gigantic wolves like in 300 though. Props to the survivors, for they are worthy.

edited 3rd May '12 6:17:25 PM by Barkey

Or raping your children and murdering your protege. :o

The giant wolves might require advanced genetic engineering.

edited 3rd May '12 6:21:08 PM by IraTheSquire

We'll just have to revive some Dire Wolves...

God damn it. Why the fuck did all the cool mega-fauna from +10,000 years ago die off. Those mofos were awesome.

edited 3rd May '12 6:28:34 PM by Ekuran

Humans, probably. That or climate change. Or both (unless humans are a form of climate change).

Anyway, yeah. Spartan life wasn't exactly the best.

edited 3rd May '12 6:28:25 PM by Zersk

Uh, we killed them all because they were delicious.

Or competing with us for food. That or they pissed us off.

Their social structure collapsed inward as well. Plus the other Greeks they had conquered began open rebellion and then stomped a mud hole in the Spartans.

Like any great society that gets too big and too stubborn to change they stagnated. Between steady decay of their military, collapse of their society, and external pressures like constant war with the Persians and the Athenians.

Their military and political state relied on being Spartan by blood. They adhered to the law very strictly. At the start of the decay of the Spartan Hegemony they had a large population of Helots. This weakened their overall military strength and their society as a whole.

The begining of the end was when the Thebians beat the Spartans at Lectura. After that things pretty much went down hill for them.

After Rome conquered Greece, Sparta became a spectle a spot of interest to wealthy for their customs and culture.

On the flip side becoming extremely pacifistic is not a good idea either. There will always be someone way mroe agressive and willing to bash your head in. Pacifist societies would have two choices. Die or cease being pacifists.

Yeah i know the Golden Mean is not going to happen but you can try to strike some form of balance between being tough and strigent society and society that values life and learning.

As this pertains to countries in the modern era. At least some effort into being a bit less squishy would go a long way in some areas while being less agressive in others would be benefit a swell. This is entirely dependant on the nations in question.

The Peloponesian War killed more Spartiates than the Persians ever did. That was what caused most of the problems. Before there were enough Spariates to be soldiers to keep the Helots in check. Afterwards they had less Spartiate plus need soldiers to fill up those garrisons away from Sparta to maintain their hegemony.

Not to mention the external influences began to rot the Spartan society from within. Before the Peloponesian War corruption was almost unheard of as everybody lived up to their ideals founded by Lycurgus.

edited 3rd May '12 7:23:03 PM by IraTheSquire

I am definitely in favor of, er, "pussification" (although that's not precisely a term I would generally use).

We need more compassion towards less fortunate members of humankind. We need stronger restraints against the use of violence. We need better and broader education, and we need it to be more widely available. And so on.

That would make us stronger, not weaker. The Spartan Way does not create "exemplary examples of humanity" — it creates overspecialized beings with no taste or understanding for subtleties. The Spartans would have killed Stephen Hawking off.

The only aspect of "The Spartan Way" that I see as worth saving is a certain lack of concern for material goods and a taste for simplicity. That is something that our societies, and us personally, could perhaps do well to try to adopt.

edited 4th May '12 12:35:19 AM by Carciofus