Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
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00:00 Leadership lessons from Thucydides' Peloponnesian War history.
04:33 Nomadic living caused instability; Attica remained stable.
06:46 Thucydides: Athenian historian of Greece's fragmented past.
13:18 You enabled Athenian aggression by inaction.
15:18 Athenian mistakes aided us more than you.
19:41 Grievances lead to war: stated vs. hidden reasons.
21:18 Human nature drives personal and national conflicts.
27:01 Excessive praise breeds envy; traditions honor ancestors.
28:04 Praising democracy and honoring fallen heroes today.
32:43 Athenians value discussion and foresight in decision-making.
37:00 Defining sacrifice and meaning in modern times.
40:46 History's lessons shape understanding of human nature.
42:02 History offers deeper insights into human nature.
45:12 Practical skills enrich future leaders'.

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Episode Music: Gluck - Iphigenie En Tauride - 1. Akt Nr.01-Nr.10
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Opening and closing themes composed by Brian Sanyshyn of Brian Sanyshyn Music.
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Creators & Guests

Host
Jesan Sorrells
CEO of HSCT Publishing, home of Leadership ToolBox and LeadingKeys
Producer
Leadership Toolbox
The home of Leadership ToolBox, LeaderBuzz, and LeadingKeys. Leadership Lessons From The Great Books podcast link here: https://t.co/3VmtjgqTUz

What is Leadership Lessons From The Great Books?

Because understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand (yet) another business book, Leadership Lessons From The Great Books leverages insights from the GREAT BOOKS of the Western canon to explain, dissect, and analyze leadership best practices for the post-modern leader.

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.