The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.
― Thucydides
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Samizdata quote of the day – Thucydides once said…November 23rd, 2023 |
 11 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – Thucydides once said… |
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I heard that attributed to William Francis Butler’s biography of General Gordon, as noted by Tiwazdom. Of course it’s also quite likely that Butler was familiar with Thucydides’ quote; but too often it seems, neither is the thinking man capable of thought, nor the fighting man capable of fighting.
“If you make war on the Persians, a mighty empire will fall”, ‘n all that.
“The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.” – }
This seems to lie in contrast with Plato, who stated in The Republic that there must be a strict set of classes: warrior, trader and legislator. Of whom the legislators were to be wise, and the soldiers “educated in music and gymnastic” (these things “moderating and soothing and civilizing the wildness of passion by harmony and rhythm”).
He even went so far as to say:
Personally, I prefer what Thucydides (or rather William Francis Butler) said.
Ain’t that the truth.
“The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.” – John Gardner
The categorization is actually the damn problem. You start stovepiping things, you begin to run into the issue that Robert Heinlein highlighted: “Specialization is for insects…”
Socrates, anyone? He is more remembered as a philosopher, but the man was more than just that; he also soldiered and was a well-known athlete, a wrestler.
I remember the words that one of my mentors in the Army offered up, during some of the most rigorous training I ever experienced: “Everything applies…” That man was a monster, in terms of what he demanded of us. Give you an example… He’s been reassigned to staff, because he pissed off his company leadership. They were doing stuff that he called them on, and they “got rid of him” as being “difficult”. Turns out, he was right, and a couple of months after he was fired, the leadership team that fired him was turned into CID for a degree of corruption that boggled the mind. While he was on staff, the commander casually mentioned in his hearing that it was just too bad that the all-steel rappel tower we had the plans for was dimensioned in SAE, not Metric. Since we were in Germany, everything had to be purchased locally, soooo… Plans were no good.
Sergeant First Class Gunther took those plans home with him, and in the course of a weekend, he redrew and redimensioned them in metric. All fifty-odd pages of them… They were sent up for review by the guys up at brigade who’d said it would take too long and be too expensive, and they could not find a single error. The rappel tower went up without a hitch two years later…
Dude was a bit of a polymath. He taught himself computing with one of those European-only peers of the Commodore Amiga, and ran all sorts of things with it. They put him in charge of NCO training when we had a bunch of guys fail the Basic NCO Course, and we went from “worst rate of failure in USAEUR” to “You f*ckers are cheating…” in the course of a year.
Dude was actually smart. He ran us through the pre-course he was running, and we went out and did a walk-through “Engineer Reconnaissance” in the local industrial park. Most of us had no idea what we were looking at, but he was able, off the top of his head, to find about a hundred tons of potentially explosive materials just wandering through the storage yard. With the basic chemical symbols on all the drums, he walked us through taking “Safe to store…” to “Yeah, you don’t wanna move this, once properly mixed…”
Someone once asked him why he studied everything. At the time, he was reading a book on the Roman Limes, which were sorta close to where we were… His response was that “…everything applies…”, and then he walked us through the Roman fortification system and compared it to the then-extent Inner German Border complex, and demonstrated through practical historical example how little those fortifications did, when they weren’t fully manned by prepared and trained troops. The analogies he used made it very clear that we’d better be paying attention in class, or we were going to wind up like the latter-day Roman legions during the fall of the Roman Empire.
And, the weird thing was, he managed to make it both relevant and comprehensible to even the densest of us, without condescension or mockery. The man was an obvious “smart guy”, but he was also very well-grounded and down to earth. All self-taught, as well–No college degree. I’ve no idea where he picked up his drafting and engineering skills, but… Yeah.
Always wondered what happened to him. Lost track, after he retired…
So, in summary? The statements are all correct, in that if you make too clear a distinction, etc., etc., etc…. But, there’s a lot of follow-on: Stovepiping is bad, anywhere. You have to know everything about a given field, in order to be a master in it. If you’re a contractor that only understands framing, and knows nothing of plumbing, electrical, or HVAC? You’re in trouble; you have to know enough to be able to function at that intersection where all collide. And, that’s true everywhere in life. Generalists are almost always better off than specialists; they know more about more things, and can tell when there’s going to be an interaction issue…
@Sigivald: plumbing is an humble occupation until the shit spouts out of your toilet rather than drains, or the hot water is not, or there is no water at all.
Then plumbers are Gods.
My dad was a master plumber. The plumbing skills and knowledge he gave me are far more useful than what I learned for my honours math degree or my law degree. My wife gives not a rats arse for my knowledge of Group theory, or the law of torts, she wants hot water, cold water, and drainage all in their season and proportion.
And so do I.
The Hollywood construct “when the shit gets real…” is real.
Yes Kirk – Socrates fought at Marathon, as an infantryman.
Both Greek, Roman and Japanese (yes old Japanese) philosophy held that the the fighting man must also be a thinking man – and that the best in society should risk their lives. Even in World War II it was considered shameful for a rich man to “dodge the draft” in the United States – by the 1960s a rather different attitude was dominate in America, but then it was clear that the establishment did NOT want to win the Vietnam War (indeed “victory” was a forbidden word) and who wants to die in a way their government does NOT want to win? If a “political settlement” (i.e. a disguised surrender) was always the intention, and it is clear it always was the intention of Robert McNamara and others, then what is the point of risking your life?
The Greeks were undermined when they turned to mercenaries to do their fighting for them, the Roman Republic was really killed when General Marius (the uncle of Julius Caesar) created an army that fought for money, although it was Octavian (Augustus) who formally banned civilians from owning military weapons or engaging in military exercises and training unless they formally joined the (relatively) new army – bans that the Emperor Majorian repealed, but one can not overturn centuries of slavery over night – telling Roman “citizens” (the word had become an INSULT even in the time of Julius Caesar – he called his soldiers “citizens” to shock them into listening to him, as they had already got it into their heads that a “citizen” was a wildly inferior thing to a “soldier”) “you are free men again – defend the Republic!” was centuries too late, most Romans just submitted to their new Germanic masters without much of a fight (because the Roman citizens had become unused to fighting).
In Japan from the 1870s the new conscript army went hand in hand with the new system of state schools and the state takeover of Shine Shinto turning it into State Shinto – instead of warriors with a strong personal code of honour, the new Imperial Japan would be a land where masses of people were taught, in the new state schools, the new army, and even the transformed religion, to NOT think – or rather to think only what they were told to think (like Prussia – only more so). The stage was set for war and conquest (starting with the attack on China in 1895) – leading, in the end, to the downfall of the new Japan in the early 1940s.
However, beware the military man who poses as a philosopher (a lover of wisdom) – and is not one.
For example, Colonel Douglas MacGregor – when he talks of a “negotiated settlement” between the Ukraine and Mr Putin, or between Israel and Islamic terror groups.
The Colonel means the sort of “settlement” that occurred in Vietnam, indeed Indo China generally, or in Afghanistan – he means disguised surrender, betrayal and disgrace.
“But the Colonel has a fine combat record” – so did General Benedict Arnold (who had a better personal combat record than any other American General of the War of Independence), and that stooge of the Communists – General Butler of the Marine Corps (whose lies the historian Neil Oliver mistakes for the truth “he won more medals than any other Marine of his time” – yes he did, but he was still a serial liar who cooperated with people who wanted to utterly destroy the “capitalist” United States).
Being good at killing people does NOT mean you are a trustworthy man.
Both the ability to kill people and virtue (honour – truthfulness) are required, being a fine warrior is no substitute for being a good man.
Genghis Khan was a fine personal warrior and a brilliant General – but unless one is a really dark “Green”, who welcomes the reduction of the population of the world by (perhaps) as much as a tenth – Genghis was not a good man.
Kirker – Gunther sounds like the sort of person who is successful on the show “Forged in Fire”, the sort of person who can take a problem and come up with a solution, and personally carry out the solution, make-the-thing.
I wish I was like that – but I am not.
Someone like Neil Abbott, the competitor who turned judge, would be a good man to have around as things fall apart (which they will), and, Fred Z, I think such a person could turn their hand to plumbing.
Why were big towns and cities death traps before the mid 19th century? Because they either had no plumbing at all, or they got the plumbing wrong.
One lesson a maker must learn: “It isn’t just what it says on the box.” This also applies to soldiers, diplomats, and legislators.
Why are you quoting a dead white male?