Comments on: On Roman and modern virtues

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 18:40:11 +0000

Well that’s great, Rachel, until some nasty bastards come along and kill you.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 22:20:59 +0000

Even macho militaristic Empires must decline and fall. Is relentless expansion, slavery and frenzied trading the only definition of what it means to be successfully human?

I think we are a more feminised society: more nuanced, striving to be fairer, more emotive. Some people see that as feeding a victim cult, but I call it using your emotional intelligence as well as your brawn and your brain. More humane. You can call it niceness, but war is ultimately self-immolatory and the costs are huge – negotiation and discussion and diplomacy are the smarter, less resource-wasteful option.

I think humans are more than warring armies, slavers, macho dick wavers.

I’m proud to be nice. And I appear to be doing all right. I think we all are. Niceness rules, stick with it, it’s the future.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 20:24:06 +0000

Quite apart from being steeped in the loony Samizdata weltanschaung, I think that this is very dodgy classical scholarship indeed. I’m only barely familiar with yer actual Roman literature, but there’s nothing in the Aeneid which would suggest that the Romans had this sub-Nietszchean ethic.

By: dearieme

dearieme — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 01:30:13 +0000

Phil, no, it was just a guess. I’ll recant when I see headlines about the EU interfering to stop Murdoch having a monopoly of broadcasting the games. Or when there’s a parapremiership in football.

By: Phil Hunt

Phil Hunt — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 10:26:26 +0000

dearieme,

I don’t suppose you have viewing figures by any chance?

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 09:31:38 +0000

I wouldn’t want us to go back to the values of the Roman Empire but the pessimistic cynic in me says that we should prepare for war.

Phil, you say “what if the West was challenged by a populous and technologically advanced society that was prepared to be more hard-hearted than we are?”

I would replace “what if” with “when”.

Throughout history, every time we have let our defences run down, we have regretted it. As you say “Si vis pacem, para bellum.”

By: dearieme

dearieme — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 03:43:41 +0000

I don’t know whether it’s a virtue, but I suspect that the Romans were sincere in their heartlessness. The trouble with things like the Paralympic Games is all the insincerity: the viewing figues no doubt show that virtually nobody really gives a hoot.

By: Jamie K

Jamie K — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19:25:11 +0000

“Consider for example, the Paralympic Games where disabled athletes compete. The ancient Romans would never have done anything like that”

The Romans did have games like that, as a preamble to gladiatorial shows – fights between midgets and enormously fat people, for instance. The difference is that they meant them as slapstick comedy and we use them as a means of feeling good about ourselves.

I think what’s at issue here isn’t niceness so much as hypocrisy. Also technology: we have the media to bring us detailed news of all the bloodshed we require and to do so in ways that catch our attention. We don’t have to turn up at the local coliseum to see slaughter.

“A Roman would say si vis pacem, para bellum Ã¢â‚¬â€ if you want peace, prepare for war “…preparatory to a land grab in foreign parts. Some things don’t change at all.

By: Phil Hunt

Phil Hunt — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19:07:23 +0000

As an example of what I mean by my earlier comment, there is currently a British man on trial for murdering his severely disabled son. Now consider a society the same as ours but where severely disabled children were routinely killed; this society would save large amounts of time and money in looking after them, and if their parents went on to have healthy children, these would become an asset to society. Such a society woukld therefore be (slightly) wealthier than ours. If the society made lots of decisions differently to how our society does things, in order to increase their wealth and power, they could be significantly more economically succesful than us.

By: Phil Hunt

Phil Hunt — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 18:23:02 +0000

Third Avenue,

I don’t think that modern civilisation is inferior to the Romans, but I disagree with your comment “Yes, the Romans might well have found sporting contests for the disabled bizarre. To me, this suggests that modern Western society is vastly superior to the Romans.” What’s wrong with this comment is it takes modern Western values as a given and then finds other societies wanting.

If you take a society’s values as a given, then by those values, that society is very likely to come out well — for example, the Romans could say “we’re superior because we’re hard as nails and you’re soft as shit. QED.”

So, how do we decide what makes a society inferior or superior? I can think of two criteria (1) how happy and fulfilled people are in that society, and (2) whether that society has what it takes to survive and prevail.

Regarding the first criterion, I think the West is the best contemporary society — but then I would think that, I’m a Westerner, and therefore I’ve been indoctrinated from birth (mostly subconsciously) to believe in Western values. I’m not sure that people today are fundamentally any happier than they were wehen we were all hunter-gatherers. (though they do of course live longer).

By the second criterion, the West clearly is a very successful society, by far the most successful in the world today. But what if the West was challenged by a populous and technologically advanced society that was prepared to be more hard-hearted than we are? For example China. It’s not obvious to me that the West will still be on top in 2050 or 2075.