300: The continued discussion
I am still getting comments and emails regarding my post on the movie 300 and how it sparked my thinking in relationship to current American culture and the war in Iraq. The latest comment accused me of idiocy in relating a comic book to current times, but they failed to realize that the Spartans indeed existed and with some further research you'd see a bigger picture of their history and culture. So I'm going to repost my comment to them here to give the discussion a bump.
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I love the discussion this topic is drumming up. It's driving the liberals crazy because they have erased the warrior archetype out of their memories. I am in fact applying the history and legend of the actual Spartan culture. The graphic novelist of 300 applied that history to his work, and after seeing the movie based on his work my curiosity was peaked enough to do some research on my own on the history of the Spartans. And what I found was a very gruesome way of life. Much harsher that I would prefer to live in. But there were many laws, values, and mores that I believe to be superior that we lack in our own American society.
Primarly, the warrior archetype that is held in such high esteem for Spartans, our military used to be heroes in the days of World War 2, now they are spit on in public by hippies and scum liberals. And that archetype is being sanitized away by not allowing our children to express that INTEGRAL part of the personality as heavily researched by world famous psychologist Carl Jung.
Another concept valued in Spartan culture, and being snubbed out in current American culture, is the belief in something bigger than yourself. God, country, family, teamwork...narcissism reigns supreme in our egoistic society. And it's disgusting. It is the root cause of all ills and evils: being selfish.
3 Comments:
Theren's nothing wrong with envying the beliefs of a long dead culture. But it's still dead. We all have to live in the present, with our technology and modern means to communicate. How we got to this point is more related to recent history. That history immediately supercedes what really happened in Sparta and the Persian invasion so long ago.
BTW: Technically it was Soviet Russia who beat Nazi Germany in World War 2. But people choose their own heroes. That's liberal but it doesn't stray from the facts.
By Bernard, at 6/06/2007 9:53 PM
Technology does change a lot of things. But human archetypes remain the same. Unexpressed in some form and it throws off our balance.
All cultures have had their trials and potential extinction. We are facing that today with illegal immigration and shrinking family sizes, or no family at all. Hispanic and Mexican families are continuing to have large families, while American families are limiting themself to their means (are smartly so) of one child, not much the two-and-a-half standard anymore. That does not replenish the numbers when two people have one child.
But if we stood up for ourselves and our culture and shut down the damn borders and limited the number of unskilled labor visas into this country we could sustain ourselves and have room and sustainable econonmy for everyone.
By Nicole Weeks, at 6/07/2007 6:47 AM
While I enjoy the movie 300 and all that bravado, I don't think a civilized society would get rid of children that aren't born perfect.
And I would definitely label that narcissism.
By Stiletto, at 10/19/2007 9:51 PM
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