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300, Stoicism, and the Philosophical Life (Episode 117)
817 Plays9 months ago
Time for another Stoic movie review. This week Caleb and Michael talk 300. They cover the good, bad, and and provocative aspects of the film on the Spartan’s epic last stand at Thermopylae.
(02:29) The Movie
(06:58) Spartan Stoic Virtues
(08:36) Powers Of Perception
(15:00) Action Over Words
(19:48) What Winning Means
(24:26) Spartan Propaganda
(29:46) Sparta Was Not Stoic
(41:31) Steelmanning The Silver People
(47:25) King and Queen
(51:58) Summary
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Transcript
Introduction and Initial Context
00:00:00
Speaker
We end up with Plato's Silver People, where in, so in Plato's Republic, he talks about gold, silver and bronze and gold or the philosophers, bronze are like the craftsmen, silver people are the warriors, the
00:00:12
Speaker
Yeah. The security guards, the kind of the Marshall people. And you end up with this, like, I think this glorification of silver people and what that would look like at its ideal. And yeah, if, if that's what you think is best in life, that's what the best thing would look like. And there's going to be some character that feeds towards that goal, but that's not a philosophical life.
Host Introductions and Episode Agenda
00:00:35
Speaker
Welcome to Stoa conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiveros. And I'm Michael Trombley.
00:00:42
Speaker
And today we're going to be doing another movie review. So we're going to stick with the theme of Greco-Roman movies, I suppose. Greco-Roman tough guys stabbing people. Yeah, exactly. So we're going to, uh, other big film in this genre from the 2000s was of the movie 300. So that's what we'll be talking about today.
First Impressions of 300
00:01:11
Speaker
When did you first watch this movie? I can remember exactly when I watched this movie. I was like, must've been like 14. Would've been like first when it came out. I was pretty excited about it. I remember really liking it.
00:01:25
Speaker
I remember cause I was at like a us, I was away for a jitsu tournament and I can remember watching in the hotel room and being like, this is really cool. I don't think it had like a large impact on my character or anything, but I remember it being very cool. And I was like, that was an enjoyable movie.
00:01:42
Speaker
What about you? Yeah, I probably watched it around the same age, 13, 15 or so.
Comparing 300 and Gladiator
00:01:50
Speaker
And yeah, I also had a similar impression. I thought it was cool. It's like the first kind of movie I had seen of this type. But it didn't stick with me, say as much as Gladiator did. Like I think Gladiator is a movie I thought about more, but then 300 was like, that was awesome. And then, you know, what's next?
00:02:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of like candy or whatever. It's very sweet going down, but nothing to really chew on or digest after. I mean, some things that you want. We're going to do that, but didn't have a big impact on me. Seems like it was the same with you.
00:02:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's something I've thought about more, perhaps as I've gotten older, I feel like there's maybe a little bit more to reflect on.
Overview and Themes of 300
00:02:37
Speaker
But at least when I first watched it, you know, it wasn't that memorable. We're going to be looking at some of the philosophical themes, some of general reflections I'll be touching on. But before that, we should do a little bit of an intro to the film for those of you all who haven't seen it. And of course, there'll be spoilers.
00:02:59
Speaker
So 300, it's based off of a comic book by Frank Miller. It came out in 2007. And that comic book in turn is inspired by the Battle of Thermopylae, which was an epic last stand of a small elite Spartan force of 300 delaying a massive armies advance. So it was a battle between the Persians under Xerxes and largely Spartans.
00:03:29
Speaker
along with a handful of other Greek allies under King Leonidas I. So in the movie, the Spartans are portrayed as holding off the Persians and sacrificing themselves so that the rest of Greece has time to mobilize in self-defense. And that's the general story. You see Leonidas and his men
00:03:57
Speaker
leaving to hold off this oncoming horde fighting in a rather glorious manner and essentially doing what they intended to do, sacrificing themselves while the rest of Greece and the rest of the Spartan army is able to be mobilized in self-defense. That's the general thrust of the movie.
00:04:21
Speaker
Which isn't to say it's a general thrust of history. We'll get into this a little bit longer, but that's at least as far as the story of the movie goes.
Spartan Virtues and Stoic Admiration
00:04:32
Speaker
Look, it's almost an underdog story in some sense. Like the odds are as cool as the Spartans are portrayed. The odds are permanently stacked against them. Kind of like your rocky situation or something, which is maybe even if they're excellent, the kind of external circumstances are so far against them that even just to kind of stand up or have done well
00:04:57
Speaker
You know, have to have held them off for as long as they held them off. It becomes this kind of new standard of success, not about really winning the battle, but about, I mean, being excellent in that kind of defeat, or maybe changing the goal to not winning, but to delaying the inevitable.
00:05:14
Speaker
Right, right. So they're able to hold off the army from advancing in the small pass essentially until they are betrayed and a path is revealed where the Persian army can encircle the rest of the Spartans and that's that. But they're able to hold them off for two to three days or so.
00:05:36
Speaker
I mean the reason the Spartans are portrayed as losing is because they're betrayed by... FELTs. Yes.
00:05:48
Speaker
is in this movie, at least physically disabled, unable to be a proper Spartan warrior. And so sides with Xerxes kind of either out of revenge or to get what he wants, which is power and success that's not accessible in the Spartan life. So they don't really fail because of a fault of their own. If anything, maybe it's kind of a tragedy because they fail because of a
00:06:17
Speaker
either something not in their control or something that was a blind spot because of maybe trusting this person too much. So that virtue got twisted back against them. And that'll come up later as we talk about it. Yeah, we'll dive more into that aspect of the story.
00:06:35
Speaker
Uh, certainly, but I think what we'll do is similar to the gladiator discussion. Some of their other reviews is go through some of the aspects of the work, the movie that we think are a good, some that are not as good. And then think about, you know, what are some of the provocative sort of questions or anything else that we teased out that were interesting? Yeah, let's do it.
00:06:58
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, this first item that I picked out in terms of good aspects of the movie is I think it does capture some of those idealized, perhaps to some extent, mythical Spartan virtues that are captured by, and you see described by, some of the ancient Roman Stoics. So, Musonius Rufus has a number of citations. He talks about the Spartans a decent amount.
00:07:25
Speaker
And in particular, he calls them out as paragons of people who were able to not just endure pain, but not see pain as a bad thing. So he talks about an example of a young Spartan boy who, a classic stud view is that pain is not necessarily bad and pleasure is not necessarily good. And the Spartan boy was like, well, isn't pain good?
00:07:54
Speaker
And Sonya Strifica says, you want to be closer to this boy who's able to ask basic questions like this and cites other Spartans who are able to endure training and hunger, thirst, cold, beatings, and essentially endure hardship in the way that the Stoics admire. You know, they knew that these hardships were merely physical and perhaps there's even a kind of pleasure in being able to endure them and survive them and so on.
00:08:21
Speaker
And that's what you see portrayed in the movie. You see a bunch of exceptionally capable, almost superhero type men who are physically strong, withstand, pain, laugh in the face of death.
00:08:36
Speaker
Yeah, there's a kind of excitement or joy to the fighting in this movie. I think they show, which is what you were alluding to specifically with pleasure and pain, but the Spartans show that it is possible to have a different relationship with things or radically different perceptions of things that we in our society take for granted as being bad. So like death we take for granted as being bad. Pain was an example you raised.
00:09:01
Speaker
And so they show this first stoic claim that, you know, we're not troubled by, we're troubled by our impressions of things, not by the things themselves. The stoic claim that we are, we feel certain ways because of how we think about things, not by the things themselves. And a really easy way to demonstrate that is to have somebody feel differently about something that you think is making you anxious. You think death.
00:09:24
Speaker
He's making you fearful and anxious, and somebody is not fearful and anxious around death. Well, it's very clear evidence that it is our impressions of things, not the things themselves that are making us fearful and anxious. We recently had a conversation about criticism of stoicism, that stoicism is impossible.
00:09:43
Speaker
And one of the criticisms was that, or one way of putting that criticism was that there are some things that are just going to force certain reactions out of people. And you might say, like, you know, if you're confronted with death, you're just going to be afraid. And these Spartans, at least in the story, were people who were not afraid of death and show that that kind of impossibility
00:10:03
Speaker
If it's not wrong, at least it doesn't extend as far as people think it does. In most things we can reconceptualize.
Spartan Values and Their Perception
00:10:11
Speaker
There was a quote with Leonidas, and he was told that he was going to have to either surrender, retreat, or die, and basically responds, well, that's an easy choice because Spartans don't surrender and we don't retreat. So we're going to die. And the idea of framing choosing death is an easy choice.
00:10:31
Speaker
That's just, that's, it's both impressive, like again, this hero, as you said, but then also I think kind of paradigm change, you know, oh, that's even possible. It's even possible for a human to confront that kind of situation with that much conviction and confidence. You know, not even courage in that sense, just conviction about, well, this is the right thing to do.
00:10:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good point. It is a possibility proof in the sense that we know, of course, even though this is just a movie in some sense, it is idealized, a mythical, and so on. We do know there are characters like this today, and there have been people like this throughout history who've been able to perceive things like pain, adversity, death, and so on in a completely different light from the typical one.
00:11:17
Speaker
And we can also connect it to wealth. So I'll read a passage from one of Musaenius Rufus' lectures that connects to this general theme. Spartan boys who were trained to endure hunger, thirst, cold, beatings, and other hardships, raised in a strict environment the ancient Spartans were thought to be, and in fact were, the best of the Greeks. And they made their very poverty more enviable than the king of Persia as well.
00:11:47
Speaker
So there are a few different ideas and now you have that idea that training matters and that you see a little bit of the other film the Spartan ago gay and That it's possible to change yourself into someone who can endure someone who can value in the Spartan case martial virtues and not wealth and in fact
00:12:09
Speaker
have a kind of character that might even be enviable to people who are exceptionally wealthy. To the extent that the film communicates values, you're much closer to or at least feel more affiliation with the Spartans instead of the rich, wealthy Persian generals or Persian king in this case, Xerxes, of course. Yeah, there's another stoic idea there about
00:12:37
Speaker
Because it cuts two ways, right? The things that you think are bad or not don't actually have to be bad, like pain, training, poverty, at least in relation to the Persians. And then the things that are good are not necessarily good, right? So you have these very, in the movie, these incredibly rich Persians, but they're
00:12:58
Speaker
Xerces in particular the king but he's portrayed as being morally corrupt not the kind of person you want to envy or be like and so you know the people in the bad spot it's just an inversion right people in the bad spot the Spartans they have they have that character they have they're admirable and then the people in the good spot or the supposedly good spot the the wealthy
00:13:22
Speaker
leaders of the Persian army are almost detestable or at least not enviable in the way that's portrayed.
00:13:32
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's interesting. And I think that, I mean, I want to connect it back to the first Masonic quote, your first reference you made in the Masonic quote, which is this idea of like, you know, at least spend more time around these people, which is to say, hey, if you're if I think that's a kind of a stoic lesson, is that, you know, if you're only raised in one type of way of living, you can think it's the only way to live or you have to think these things way about things. And so I don't think the Stoics would encourage us to be Spartans.
00:14:01
Speaker
But Missonius's point was not to be a Spartan, but Missonius's point was if you spend time around people who can show it's possible to live differently, that can be very motivating and very inspirational about the kind of breadth of options we have available to us in ways of thinking about, again, things like death, pain, that we don't have to think about them the way we've been raised to think about them. Yeah, I think that's well put. I suppose if I just try to capture it.
00:14:28
Speaker
In this movie, you see some of that Spartan ability to have different perceptions about what is ultimately valuable. And some of those, for many people, I think you want to be, you know, if not a Spartan, you don't live in the Spartan world, obviously, something that's closer to that. Perhaps, you know, don't think pain is as bad, don't think wealth is as good and so on.
00:14:55
Speaker
Um, cool. What else do you got in terms of, uh, aspects of the movie you like? Well, another thing I like about the Spartans, um, again, besides just being like the very cool, they're very cool in this movie. Um, I think we can learn something about the Spartan action over too many words, even as Stoics. They're not, they didn't pontificate their values. They didn't talk about them.
00:15:20
Speaker
They just, they lived them. They, they enacted their values. Even if it meant death, even if it meant pain and hardship, they said, you know, it's better to die than to be a coward. And they went out and they died. Uh, it's better to, you know, die fighting for something that's valuable than to retreat, uh, and live, but, but, you know, harm your family or, you know,
00:15:44
Speaker
don't achieve your goal. And they went and they fought to the death and they did so, at least in this portrayal, willingly and gladly. I'm sure that some did, if not as cinematically, I'm sure there's a lot of accuracy there. And so I think that acting by your values
00:16:02
Speaker
is really, really compelling, especially in such dramatic situations. And there's this whole thing called Laconic Phrases, which are these pithy lines that the Spartans have. I mean, he got some great ones in the movie, but this idea of, you know, I'm going to encapsulate something in as few words as possible, and then I'm going to stand behind it with my actions. And that's going to make it way more compelling than if I wrote a whole dialogue about it, right? One line in the movie,
00:16:30
Speaker
You know, they're asked to give up their weapons by the Persian army and they say, you know, come and take them. And that's a, that's a factual line. Um, Mulan Labe. And that's just, that's just this idea that so much is communicated in so few words. There was another one, I don't think it was in the movie, but Xerces wrote and said, you know, if I, if I invade, um, I'll turn you out. Like if I, if I come there.
00:16:58
Speaker
Basically, I'll capture Sparta, and the Spartans famously wrote back with one word, which was if. If you come here, if you choose to do that, basically challenging Xerxes.
00:17:15
Speaker
I mean, it's not just that these are witty lines, they're great lines, but it's this idea that you're going to stand up behind them. There's action backing them and people reading them says there's confidence that these people mean what they say. And so they don't need a lot of words to communicate it. That I think is something I want to aspire to as well.
00:17:34
Speaker
Yeah, so this battle happened in 480 BC. Stoicism didn't properly get started until around 300, but I think the Spartans were a paradigmatic example of this Laconic tradition that the Stoics took up.
00:17:51
Speaker
any of the Roman Stoics, you'll find the sort of same aphoristic type style where they do their best to boil down their principles into a memorable, direct and short way.
00:18:06
Speaker
And one of my favorite parts of the movie is just that so many of the lines given to the Spartans is that you get many of these Laconic saints that appear in ancient historians, biographers, Plutarch, and Herodotus in the mouth of the Spartans. So I think that's awesome.
00:18:27
Speaker
There's a line when the Persians threatened to blot out the sun with their arrows, and the quick response, then we will fight in the shade. And that's recorded by a Herodotus. And then there's the queen, Gorgo, who has a number of reported saints and plutarchs, the saints of the Spartan women. I think my favorite of those is when
00:18:53
Speaker
King Leonidas is heading off to fight the Persians. She says, come back with your shield or on it. And I think that communicates that spartan, some of those spartan values of ensure that you win or you die doing your best to win, you know, die an excellent hit.
00:19:18
Speaker
There's another story, I think this is in Plutarch where apparently at the end of a battle, Spartans would be told who the fallen were and the family of the fallen would rejoice. And those who were related to people who had not died would mourn as there was some possibility that the people who had not died, they ran away or they acted cowardly or something of this sort.
Redefining Victory and Character Over Defeat
00:19:48
Speaker
Yeah, and that connects to one of my other points. I'm always looking in media or art or even just my own life, examples of people that win, even though other people would say they lost. These examples of a way, I don't know if it's like an obstacle is the way, but it's a way of, if you can recontextualize what's going on, to kind of pull victory from something.
00:20:14
Speaker
I mentioned Rocky earlier as an underdog story. And I think the reason this makes me think of Rocky is because that's a story where, spoiler for the first Rocky, but he loses the match, but it's like a happy ending because he fought so well. It's very impressive. And this, this situation where they won as in they got what they wanted, even though conventional wisdom would say that they lost, right? They were killed.
00:20:44
Speaker
which in conventional wisdom is probably one of the worst things, if not the worst thing that could happen to you. They were defeated in battle, but in their sense, they got the victory. And I mean, that connects back with the, if you died in battle, you got the victory, you won.
00:21:01
Speaker
Uh, and if you didn't, as you were saying, there's, there's this grief for morning. I don't know if that's true, but there's at least the concern that they didn't fight bravely. There's a possibility of, of not having victory. And I think, I think those kind of, those, those radical reconceptualizations of things are, are really valuable. Um, and this was a good example of it here. Yeah. Yeah. I think the reason that it's important to do that, I think, isn't just because, uh,
00:21:31
Speaker
there's something intrinsically valuable to re-conceptualizing things is that so much of, from the Stoic perspective, so much culture glorifies external things only, and those external events that are things that are not up to the people involved, the things that are random and doesn't respect people doing the best they did given the situation they faced, which is ultimately what's most important.
00:22:01
Speaker
That connects with the Rocky example. In both that one and this one, those are character judgments that they're taking as being more important than failure in external matters. Any film that puts that character, I think that ends up being kind of a stoic message.
00:22:23
Speaker
The personal victory becomes more important than the external defeat. And so as you said, what we get in this habit, this, I wouldn't say indoctrination, but just this pattern of thinking, because so much pushes us towards thinking about what's outside of you, thinking about externals, thinking about externals. So any sort of film or inspiring piece of media that pushes you back into, well, actually, what was really at fight?
00:22:50
Speaker
The real battle here was about their characters, right? And the Persians snuck behind, defeated them cowardly. The Spartans did not. And so there's two levels and on the character level, the Spartans won and it's a happy ending. I think they kind of like, I think they try to have their caking at two.
00:23:12
Speaker
Because in the very last scene of the movie, it's like, ah, now we're in a position to fight back because you held off the Persians. Like there's this thing of like, there's this kind of external victory, which is that you achieved your goal and delaying them. And now we were able to be more successful in a later battle. So that's kind of like, maybe that's because they wanted a happy ending for the movie.
00:23:33
Speaker
Um, and I think there's some truth that like, there's some historical truth to that certainly, but I don't think what the Spartans did was impressive because it succeeded in holding them off. I think it's, it's impressive because it's the, it's the internal battle, right? And I like it when it stays on that level.
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Or it's impressive because as it's portrayed in the movie, it was the best action for holding off the force. And whether or not the army that comes next plays their part or manages to win is irrelevant to the worth of the Spartans' actions.
00:24:16
Speaker
That's the better way of putting it. They did their part the best they could, and that's not impressive because the other people succeeded. It's impressive on its own. Right, right.
300 as Spartan Propaganda
00:24:27
Speaker
So another aspect I like about this movie, and I think this will get into some of the more thorny, controversial philosophical aspects, is that one reading of it is that if you took a Spartan and asked them to make an artistic film that expresses their values, sort of like modern Spartan propaganda or something of this sort, this gets pretty close
00:24:54
Speaker
to it. And what I mean by that is that Spartans, although there are of course some similarities with cultures in the past and so on, they were an alien society. They're very different from modern people and of course very different from ancient peoples as well, different from people in the other ancient Greek city states to say nothing of the Persians and so on.
00:25:18
Speaker
But what you see in this film is a kind of morality that glorifies beautiful people, strong people, people who are free, individual, and so on, and all of those people are Spartans.
00:25:35
Speaker
and it demonizes, seems as bad, the weak, the ugly, the effeminate. The Persians, they're displayed as either barbaric beast-like people or in the case of Xerxes, people who are oddly androgynous and effeminate.
00:25:54
Speaker
And then Ephialtes, the character who betrays the Spartans, he's a disabled, hunchbacked individual who was too weak to serve in the Spartan phalanx. In fact, he says that his mother took him away from Sparta because he was going to be one of the babies who Spartans
00:26:16
Speaker
would have discarded because you have this idea that Spartan society was exceptionally martial and they would discard any weak infants and so on. This is somewhat historically a challenge, but for the sake of this conversation, we'll assume that so. There's some complexity there.
00:26:38
Speaker
Anyway, you have this idea that here's this character. He's a hunchback disabled character. His physical deformities map onto his internal character, his vices. He's not someone who's able to control himself and have self-control in the same way that Leonidas is. So when he's rejected from serving as a Spartan, then he becomes a traitor, essentially for the sake of wealth, women, and so on. Which, of course, is not
00:27:09
Speaker
the modern view where you have stories like Beauty and the Beast, appearances don't match up to character or the hunchback of Notre Dame and so on. So in that sense, I think this film is interesting because it's in some ways a more genuine portrayal of antiquity
00:27:31
Speaker
than other films that may even, in a sense, be more objectively, historically accurate, because it does get some of that betrays, to some extent, some of that value system.
Art and Moral Perspectives
00:27:44
Speaker
And I think that there's a value to that in arts, whether or not you agree with that value system, there's a value to betraying how other people thought in an accurate way.
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I mean, I don't love some of those values, but I love this idea that it's how a Spartan would feel about being a Spartan or how a Spartan would feel like it emotionally resonates with the spirits of the Spartans in a way that I, you know, watching to me comes off as
00:28:19
Speaker
I don't know, sometimes gross at times or sometimes, um, not necessarily a value that I commit to or believe in, but it's almost through the lens of the, they're almost seeing the other people through the lens of the Spartans or how the Spartans would represent it. I think that idea of it being Spartan propaganda and then pulling you into that, the way that, that, that would feel to be a part of that. Um, yeah, that's a really valuable perspective.
00:28:48
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's perhaps one way in which this film is perhaps in a way more accurate than Gladiator for capturing at least part of the ancient world, where in Gladiator, this movie has some of these problems as well, which we'll talk about, which I'll complain about a little bit later, but I think Gladiator, you have that sort of
00:29:14
Speaker
view where, what is Maximus aiming to do? And some parts follow Marcus Aurelius to build out a republic. What is a republic? Well, it's very similar, at least it feels very similar to something like a modern republic or something of that sort. Whereas in this movie, you have this view up.
00:29:33
Speaker
good people, beautiful, strong, you know, bad people, deformed, effeminate, and so on, which is closer to what what the Spartans would have in fact actually believed.
00:29:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, if we're able to jump into parts that I thought that was bad about the movie, I mean, I guess there's two levels. You can look at it on one level. You can look at it like an accurate representation. I think that's right. On the other level, I thought that's I guess I just disagreed with some of the Spartan values. If we're putting it that is like an accurate representation of Spartan values. I think I just disagree with some of them. There's this emphasis on.
00:30:09
Speaker
Genuinely eugenics, at least in the film, about, you know, killing, killing babies that are unfit or doing the kind of training that would cause children to die. If they're unfit for a martial life, there is this notion of masculine ideas in a way that doesn't really resonate with me. I mean, I think there's.
00:30:32
Speaker
I, you know, my view of masculinity, I think there's I think there's definitely it's definitely important and that's a complicated topic. But my view of masculinity is not certainly is, you know, judging men that Xerxes has like makeup on, you know, and it's like, oh, he's a bad guy because he's got makeup and he's like kind of effeminate, as you said. And that's like that's like now you can code it is like this is the bad guy.
00:30:59
Speaker
That stuff to me doesn't track at all and is very strange. You're either Leonidas or you've got some sort of terrible facial deformity if you're on the Persian side.
00:31:20
Speaker
It's just, it's just, I just don't agree with it. You know, I mean, the same way that I think the, the Athenians would look at the Spartans, as you said, the Spartans are alien, right? The same way the Athenians would look at the Spartans and view them as alien or different, admire them for some things and judge them for others. I think there's stuff that's worth judging here.
Critique of 300’s Portrayal of Values
00:31:37
Speaker
And it, it, it idealizes some good things and some bad things, or it, it, um, demonizes some, some things that I don't think are worth demonizing. We talked a lot about the importance of what's inside. And there's a lot of judgment about what's outside too. Right. And a lot of glorification about what's external things, a lot of glorification of things that are outside of your control in terms of your, you know, your body, your beauty, your strength, things like that.
00:32:03
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose there are those different levels where you can react to it sort of as a film, as a work of art, or there's the, you know, how does this rank as a moral work? What values can I take away from it? And I think that...
00:32:22
Speaker
The fact that it serves as this kind of Spartan propaganda means what you can take from it is limited. But I do respect people who just try to portray things as they are without
00:32:38
Speaker
moralizing, if only because I think it's better to, you know, there's that line from Spinoza, you know, do not weep, understand. And before making a value judgment, it's better to see things as realistically as you can and then think about the moralizing, where occasionally the moralizing gets in the way of making judgments about the past or the present, I should say.
00:33:08
Speaker
Yeah, I guess like another way to frame this is that like a movie that portrays a cultural Perspective that I disagree with does not make a bad movie does not make a movie that should be made But definitely if we're you know if we did in the first part looking at things that we admire want to learn from the Spartans I think there it also reveals a set of things that I don't admire and don't want to learn from them and
00:33:32
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I suppose it's an interesting question for me because it seems like when you're pulling out moral values or lessons, the obvious one we've mentioned already, which is that you have that domination of pain, that self-mastery relationship with wealth and so on. And then one wonders, you know, what's left from 300 that you can take in terms of a positive lesson?
00:34:01
Speaker
I do think there are other aspects of either masculinity or philosophy, culture, what have you, that are worth taking from, or is it largely, you know, these other values are interesting to portray, and maybe historical artistic type sense, but we're not left with much else to take away.
00:34:27
Speaker
I think there's a set of, I think there is certainly a set of masculine ideals, but I think you can have those masculine ideals. Oh, I don't want to go too much into like the, you know, the kind of masculine versus feminine thing, but I think you can have those masculine ideals without hating
00:34:44
Speaker
What are to me external indications of things like if masculinity means something it means something to me internally about courage You know strength the ability to stay true to your word to do what you say And so the opposite of I'm not necessarily opposite masculine is not necessarily femininity, but something that would be You know betray that is something like cowardice It
00:35:11
Speaker
selfishness, weakness, lack of self-control. And I don't think those things need to be represented. I just don't see the jump to the external world, right? They don't need to be represented by being physically ugly. They don't need to be represented by having some sort of disability or by the man wearing makeup or something like that. And that kind of movement, I think the personality trait is really admirable. I think the portrayal of what you
00:35:38
Speaker
demonize or what the enemy is, is something that is confusing to me. Because I don't think that's necessarily what makes the enemy. I don't think that's that those external things are at what's at risk. But that's like a kind of a movie thing, right? You combine, you you you combine these tropes, you combine these kind of images to make up the
00:36:00
Speaker
to make up the villain or to make up the enemies. But I think, you know, if there's a stoic lesson, there's just a stoic, a movie to be, you know, it's just a stoic, we talked about the hunchback and what's your name. It's just a stoic, a lesson to have someone look at the hunchback and be like, Oh, well, you know, I don't really care what you look like. Like, let's talk. Like, what's your character like?
00:36:21
Speaker
To me, that is just a stoic of a lesson as to admire the person who fought to the death. Both of those are about focusing on the character instead of those external parts. I'm not sure if that answered the question exactly, but I think that's like the weird thing. It's like
00:36:37
Speaker
The Spartans, to put it differently, the Spartans idealize certain internal states and they idealize certain external circumstances and characters. And I think they got a lot of the internal states right. And I think they do a good job of not caring about external things that other people care about, like pain.
00:36:56
Speaker
like hardship, like death in battle. I think that's really admirable. But then I think the things that they judge externally are just as poor to judge as the person who wants material things, who wants the comfort and so on and so forth.
00:37:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's well put and that connects just to one of the things I don't like about the film is that it has that sort of black and white all or nothing absolute type thinking about some of these values, some of these questions. And it seems like the sort of thing that one also will get in most superhero
00:37:42
Speaker
Films as well. You just have these are the good characters. They have all the good attributes both internally and externally and it just so happens that The bad characters will they have but all the bad internal and external attributes? Yeah as well Or what ones we conventionally think of as good and bad
00:38:07
Speaker
I thought there was a funny line in the movie and just speaks to your point about like, oh, it's portraying as it was where Leonidas calls, um, the Athenians, the philosophers and the boy lovers. And he doesn't mean either of those things positively. And so you have Leonidas just like ripping into philosophy, uh, ripping into Athens, cementing themselves as the other, uh, but then in the good way. Right. And then, and then all this other stuff is kind of, um, as you said, if not evil, at least worse.
00:38:38
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I think you also have a little bit of a slip where modern values are sort of injected to the film nonetheless in the way that also makes it worse where there's a lot of focus on freedom.
00:38:58
Speaker
the Spartans fighting for freedom and little investigation. What does that actually mean for a Spartan? What's the positive view of life? And how does that map on historically, even for the mythical idealized version of the Spartans? You can say, well, it's going to be certainly quite a bit different than what we think of, what we think of today. And some of the modern tropes, I think, with the Senate and so on are
00:39:27
Speaker
don't land as well as a pure focus on the characters in battle and so on.
Modern Influences and Historical Accuracy
00:39:37
Speaker
You know, we get no discussion of slavery either. Um, or no kind of mention of that, but I can, you know, Kayla, my, my, my view has been really changed by what you said at the start. It keeps coming back to this view of it as Barton propaganda. Like, yeah, you probably wouldn't have that in your Spartan propaganda. So we see the kind of, um, we're, we're only getting a certain piece. Um, yeah, some modern values coming in this focus on freedom.
00:40:03
Speaker
And I think that that's that part, I guess that's why I was connecting about we don't see the slaves, right? As we don't, you know, the good guys don't own slaves. And so you're preserving their status as good guys from the modern lens by not portraying their kind of their slave ownership or their slave abuse.
00:40:20
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. I think you're also betraying them as more individualistic than they were, especially with the battle scenes where the characters will go off on their own, you know, dominate different Persians or die in a glorious way, when in reality, Spartan battles were communal. You know, they did in fact fight as
00:40:43
Speaker
the phalanx and to go off on your own would either mean you're routing the enemy and hunting them down or your phalanx has been broken and it's probably game over for your side.
00:41:02
Speaker
Whereas it seems like there's always that need a much more modern need to focus on the individual see them triumph as An individual in battle as opposed to that much more communal communal Centered focus that focuses on you know the man to your left man to your right and so on Yeah, and it just doesn't look as cool. I don't think that yeah, this is so much more boring It's like a rugby rugby scrum or something like this for a few hours, you know Yeah, that's right
00:41:33
Speaker
But so, I think that's one question is, if you're trying to make a steel man the Spartan approach, isn't it something like sometimes externals are indicators of internal values? And they're not always, which is why you shouldn't have the absolute thinking type approach. But there is a sense in which at least, I think it probably depends where you are in the modern world.
00:42:01
Speaker
And you can go either way, but sometimes external features of someone. If someone is obese, is that a sign that they lack self-control or is it just a sign of their disposition or something like this?
00:42:17
Speaker
And you want to say, well, it's probably evidence that they lack self-control in a way that someone is skinny, does not. But that doesn't mean you should make that absolute judgment. But it also doesn't mean you should blind yourself to the fact that you have evidence about that person, that you don't for some ordinary, skinny person. I haven't heard this steel man before. Is that just like the opposite version of straw man? Like a steel man is like the best possible version of it?
00:42:46
Speaker
Oh yeah, yeah, Steel Man's just trying to come up with, trying to be charitable. I'm gonna steal the Steel Man. I'm gonna use that from now on. Look, character influences your external circumstances.
00:43:02
Speaker
Uh, so people with better character, uh, will have more success externally than somebody in the same situation with the worst character. Um, or at least in many cases, that's the case. Certainly in cases, as you said, of like physical prowess that requires a certain amount of courage in the face of pain requires a certain amount of self-control.
00:43:23
Speaker
Not excluding the fringe cases where you could say, well, somebody maybe lacks self-control if they're like a obsessive exerciser or they're abusing steroids. It's kind of fringe cases. But if you think something of like, what would the perfect person be like? Well, the perfect person would probably not succumb to the vices of overeating, would not succumb to the vices.
00:43:49
Speaker
I don't know, of not being willing to exercise because they're painful or it requires a willpower or something like this. I think that's fair, but I think that, and this is one thing I wrote, is we end up with just Plato's silver people.
Philosophical vs. Martial Life
00:44:06
Speaker
In Plato's Republic, he talks about gold, silver, and bronze, and gold are the philosophers, bronze are the craftsmen, silver people are the warriors,
00:44:17
Speaker
Yeah, the security guards, the kind of the Marshall people. And you end up with this, like, I think this glorification of silver people and what that would look like at its ideal. And I think that, yeah, if that's what you think is best in life, that's what the best thing would look like. And there's going to be some character that feeds towards that goal.
00:44:38
Speaker
But that's not a philosophical life that puts the philosophy at the highest. And I think what's at risk when you start trying to think of the right way to say this, when you start making judgments like, oh, well, that person is not in shape, so that person must have a weak character. Once you start adding these sort of must judgment like that, you're just going to kind of make these categorization mistakes unless you know this person super well and you understand the situation really well.
00:45:05
Speaker
And then another point I would say to that is just like, you know, doesn't say anything about your character to have like a word on your face or to have, you know, a kind of asymmetrical look. There's this kind of there's this kind of idolization of beauty in that film that to me is.
00:45:26
Speaker
is not, well, that speaks to having good character. No, it's just beauty in itself is a value that they idolize, right? It's not, it's not that the beauty reflects something. It's not the beauty indicates something. Maybe it's like a rather poor proxy for character, but might as well just skip that then. Right, right.
00:45:47
Speaker
That is certainly a different case from the case where you can at least think, well, this external reality is evidence of internal character. So I guess there are different cases. There's the one where in some cases it's not any evidence at all, like having a hunchback or something like this, probably not much evidence at all of any kind of internal character.
00:46:12
Speaker
and then other cases where, well, you have evidence, but is that enough for a judgment? I think typically the Stoics are gonna say, no, but you also shouldn't. Stoics are very wary of judging other people, especially their character overall, but it might be relevant for making day-to-day decisions or something like that.
00:46:27
Speaker
Yeah, and then I would say there's the third case where Epictetus makes fun of the people who brag about their libraries and their book collection, right? Because how many books you read is supposed to be evidence for being a good person, and he makes fun of those people because I just skip the middle part. Cut out the middle man. Just be a good person. And so it's the same thing where it's like, look, if you're like, and you see this with workout culture, I want to be a certain person, so I'm going to develop my body to be a certain way.
00:46:56
Speaker
And everybody needs that, or you need a strategy of self-cultivation. And if you're going to pick one, I think exercise is a great one to do. But at a certain point, it's just like, you know, you can cut the middle man too. Or if you become the kind of person that goes around and just thinks the good people are the ones that are in good shape or the ones that are beautiful or able to fight like a Spartan, you fall into Epictetus's point where you're idolizing the people who can recite Chrysippus, right?
00:47:25
Speaker
Right, right. Yep, yep. Yeah, excellent point. Shifting topics a bit into perhaps another area where one could find a model as opposed to maybe some of these Spartan values that serve more as an anti-model.
Women in Spartan Society
00:47:44
Speaker
is the relationship between Queen Gorgo and Leonidas is a kind of model relationship, actually, which is not something I had realized the first time I viewed it. There's a very famous scene from 300 where Leonidas shouts, this is Sparta, and he kicks the messenger into the well. Before he does that app, the messenger has
00:48:12
Speaker
essentially insulted the Spartan people the Queen and so on and This being the case the onitis looks at Queen Gorgo for a implicit approval to Kill the messenger and there's that scene where he you know He's clearly he's squared off and then he looks back to the Queen and she nods and it's at that point where he yells You know, this is Sparta and kicks the messenger into the well
00:48:42
Speaker
And you get a sense throughout the film that decisions are harmonized between the two of them. You know, he decides to defy the Spartan Oracle, but he wants or requires her approval and her support so that he's gonna make this decision and he gets it. You know, the line that Gorgo gives, you know, the only woman whose opinion should matter to your mind
00:49:12
Speaker
And in the leaving scene, I think Gorgo provokes him to aspire to great things. Come back with your shield or on it. And in turn, the Oneidus is devoted to her, includes her in his thinking, his decision-making. And when he dies, it doesn't say anything about Sparta. His final words are, my queen, my wife, and my love, which I thought is in a way,
00:49:39
Speaker
In a way, it does give you a kind of model relationship between two characters who are hyper-masculine, hyper-feminine, but are harmonized in a way that even if they're separate, their spirits are, you know, they're so aligned, you get a nice picture of a relationship. Yeah, that's nice. I did think it was this, I did think, we've talked a lot about this about it being hyper-masculine, but it was absolutely a movie that said,
00:50:08
Speaker
There is, we're trying to achieve something here. And in trying to achieve that there's a lot of place for, there's a strong role for the women to play in that. And then I would say a strong, at least in the way it was portrayed in the movie, I'm not a historical expert on this, a strong kind of agency.
00:50:27
Speaker
from the women who also thought it was a good thing that they were doing, right? Who also were bought into this, into this goal basically of raising, giving birth to, raising and supporting this like these like super soldiers basically. There's something, I mean maybe that speaks to your individualism comment earlier.
00:50:48
Speaker
you know, about grounding this movie. He doesn't die and think of Sparta, but he dies and thinks of his wife as a romance. But yeah, that didn't occur to me. It's an interesting point.
00:51:00
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. It is true historically that among the Greek city-states, Spartans gave more of a place for women. There's that exchange between the messenger and Queen Gorgog and the messengers. Why is a woman talking to us, Xerxes messenger? This is no place for a woman. And there's a quick response. This is because Spartan women are the only ones who give birth to real men. And
00:51:31
Speaker
we can do another conversation contrasting the pros and cons of the different Greek city states. But as far as the place for women go, Spartans had more agency than say the Athenians, even if the Athenians were better in other respects. Cool. Anything else you want to say in terms of provocative points, any other items that the film made you think of?
Final Thoughts on 300's Stoic Values
00:51:58
Speaker
Um, I mean, I think by way of summary, I'm really taken by your propaganda comment. I think that explains a lot. And I think the danger like propaganda, like all propaganda is that if you watch it unreflectively, it makes seem, it makes, it tells a very black and white story.
00:52:15
Speaker
And I think there's worse stories to learn than the Spartan one, but I don't think the Spartan story is black and white. I think there's some stoic aspects to it. I think there's some aspect that I agree with, and there's some aspects that I don't.
00:52:32
Speaker
as a historical artifact or honest, it's not an artifact back from 2007. Um, but as, as, as a way to kind of get into this, that, that feeling of, you know, we're the best, we're the beautiful and the good. These people coming at us or the enemy, they're bad. This story, this feels black and white because to them it's black and white. I think it does a really good job of that. And as you said, portraying things without moralizing them.
00:52:59
Speaker
at least not moralizing them from a modern lens, maybe moralizing them even positively from an ancient lens if the Spartans did think they were cool and good. And so I think not one of my favorite films, but I think enjoyable, interesting, beautifully shot, and a good encapsulation of a lot of Spartan values in a way that I appreciated.
00:53:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think you can get some of those stoic values that we talked about in the very beginning, the focus on endurance, withstanding pain, not thinking much of wealth. It's not an exceptionally historical film, but I do appreciate that many of the lines are taken from ancient sources. That's awesome.
00:53:45
Speaker
that picture of Spartan values, Spartan propaganda, that is at least worth thinking about. It's worth thinking about these ideas, but about the past being a foreign country and so on, and value systems different from yours or mine. Awesome. Thanks, Gil. All right. Thanks, Michael.
00:54:08
Speaker
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00:54:26
Speaker
more stoic. And I'd also like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. You can find more of his work at ancientlyre.com. And finally, please get in touch with us. Send a message to stoa at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback, questions, or recommendations. Until next time.