Part Two - East vs. West - Spirituality

What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of thinking that one knows; for it is impossible to get a man to begin to learn that which he thinks he knows.

- Epictetus, "Discourses"

   In my last post on this topic, I was discussing what Edith Hamilton had said in regards to Eastern and Western art/spirituality.  She asserted that, in ancient times, the art produced in the West reflected its love of order and realism (relative realism anyway) whereas the art of the East reflected fear, chaos, and dark imaginings. Since most art is religious art, "art" in this context became synonymous with "spirituality". The spirituality of the East, she concluded, was despotic, irrational, and downright evil.  I disagreed.  What's more, I wondered what her motivations were in ultimately condemning Buddhism while writing under the guise of a discussion about The Battle of Thermopylae seeing as how the ancient Persians were certainly not Buddhists.      

   This leads me to my next point:  the ancient Spartans were certainly not Christians!  The Spartans weren't anything but Fascist animals whose modus operandi was entirely blood lust.  Now, an argument that the rest of the Hellenistic world - specifically the Athenians - could be made that they were the first to actually think about what they were doing in terms of spirituality, they were the first to question it all, they were the first to envision the idea of a personal relationship with God, and to ultimately deny their own myths in favor of the idea that God had to be always good (revolutionary at the time).  The Spartans didn't do any of that.  The Spartans didn't believe in anything but war.  The movie "300" was very popular among the video game crowd, but the historic inaccuracies of that film have been well-documented.  I like action movies, but I wasn't going to throw money at anything that aggrandized a group of people who "toughened" their sons up by throwing them out into the wilderness at the age of seven, "And don't come back until you've killed a slave or two!"  They were murders, sadists, and thugs of the most unnatural kind.  Indeed, the only natural urge they ever valued was rage.  Love, affection, mercy, family relationships, male and female relationships, hunger, sadness - all these things were weakness to the Spartans.  So, for the movie to portray the Spartans has "normal" and the Persians as "freaks" is contrary to reality.  Indeed, if modern man were to be stuck in a time capsule and shot back 2,500 years, everyone would appear to be quite freaky to him.  Furthermore, for Ms. Hamilton to use The Battle of Thermopylae as a backdrop for a conversation about how the Western approach to spirituality was superior to the Eastern approach completely ignores the fact that the very reason there was only a very small number of Hellenes fighting the enormous Persian forces was that everyone else  in Greece was too busy observing religious various religious festivals, the biggest one being the Olympics!  How's that for a denial of reality? 

   
Ancient Persia is modern day Iran, and the Iranians were incensed at the portrayal of the Persians in "300".  They should have been.  Considering how sour the relationship between the United States and Iran is, I totally thought the movie was a piece of propaganda.  The creators claim that it wasn't;  it was just meant to be a little bit of pornography for people who get off on violence more than sex.  And maybe they're telling the truth, and it was just poorly timed.  After all, "a small army of ancient thugs fights a large army of ancient thugs; small army dies" sounds unappetizing.  "A tiny army of superheroes stands up to an enormous army of ambiguously gay monsters; tiny army dies heroically" equals box office gold.   We don't want the truth; we want heroes.

   In a later chapter in "The Greek Way", this one specifically devoted to Herodotus, Ms. Hamilton finds the real heroes in the Athenians at the Battle of Marathon.

How could it happen like that - the little band of defenders victors over the mighty armament?  We do not understand.  But Herodotus understood, and so did all the Greeks.  A free democracy resisted a slave-supported tyranny.  The Athenians (Athenian soldiers) at Marathon had advanced at a run (i.e. willingly); the enemy's officers drove them (the Persian soldiers) into battle by scourging them.  Mere numbers were powerless against the spirit of free men fighting to defend their freedom.  Liberty proved her power.  A wave of exultant courage and faith swept through the city, and Athens started her career.

- pg. 135

  As a lover of Democracy and all the liberties that I enjoy as an American, I do hope that it happened that way, but nothing is that simple.  

    In the August 2008 issue of National Geographic (which, coincidentally, is devoted primarily to Iran) there is also an article on modern day Moscow. In it, an interviewee says, "Americans will never understand Russia because they see things as black or white. Russians see a gray area of 80 percent." I think that's true. Here in America, as they say on basic cable, "You're either in or you're out." Anything else is impossible to identify with. Hell, it's worse than that; it's not fit for prime time! But I am not a reality TV contestant. I'm becoming comfortable with uncertainty. Indeed, I'm finding that uncertainty is the very frame of mind one needs to learn anything.