Bushido on Nostr: Dyonekes of The 300 said to his fellow Spartans: “You fight for the man beside ...
Dyonekes of The 300 said to his fellow Spartans: “You fight for the man beside you.”
What does this have to do with Kipling’s quite more than two millennia later ?
👇🏽
In the context of battle there is a dissolution of the individual into the group, from which springs the unit or männerbund (alliance of men).
This is not a ‘democracy’ but a small unit of elites, each of whom would die for the other in order to live forever in the hearts and minds of their comrades.
In times of war, such a cohesive instinct prevails. The rational, hesitant, self-preserving mind, and anyone operating from that kind of individualist paradigm, is eliminated.
➡️ Warrior cultures spur men onward and drive each other upward by embodying and amplifying excellence.
To be clear, this is not the narcissistic urge for self-aggrandizement, but the desire to earn the good opinion of their fellows, and benefit them. Men become great individually so that they may be great collectively. This is how the individual inspires their comrades and vice-versa.
➡️
"The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack." - Rudyard Kipling
What does this have to do with Kipling’s quite more than two millennia later ?
👇🏽
In the context of battle there is a dissolution of the individual into the group, from which springs the unit or männerbund (alliance of men).
This is not a ‘democracy’ but a small unit of elites, each of whom would die for the other in order to live forever in the hearts and minds of their comrades.
In times of war, such a cohesive instinct prevails. The rational, hesitant, self-preserving mind, and anyone operating from that kind of individualist paradigm, is eliminated.
➡️ Warrior cultures spur men onward and drive each other upward by embodying and amplifying excellence.
To be clear, this is not the narcissistic urge for self-aggrandizement, but the desire to earn the good opinion of their fellows, and benefit them. Men become great individually so that they may be great collectively. This is how the individual inspires their comrades and vice-versa.
➡️
"The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack." - Rudyard Kipling