I was reading this article, most of which was of little interest, when I saw this:
The extraordinary longevity of Sparta fascinated 17th and 18th century political writers and philosophers. From Algernon Sidney, to Walter Moyle, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon of Cato’s Letters fame, the idealized lessons drawn from the Spartan experience in government had enormous impact on our Founding generation. Spanning some six hundred years, until the Roman conquest of 146 BC, the Spartan republic remains the longest lived in history.
Think of the word “Spartan.” It describes a life absent of, and indifferent to luxury or comfort. There is a chicken and egg question, which I cannot answer. I do not know if Spartans were incredibly K, and thus were incredibly indifferent to luxury, and this kept them incredibly K, or if they deprived themselves of luxury and comfort, making themselves incredibly K, and this caused them to deprive themselves of comfort.
But I do know that aversion to hedonism is the key to a long-lasting civilization. K-ify your youth with coming of age ceremonies, keep threatening national enemies, eradicate and eject the leftist rabbits at every opportunity, and create a culture that relentlessly seeks to embody K, and a government could last forever.
Enjoy great success, and then let your children partake of the dopamine at every opportunity, and it will not be long before your nation is at the verge of Apocalypse.
Spread r/K Theory, because this could be the last Apocalypse
[…] What Does Spartan Mean? It Means K-selected […]
The answer is a bit of both. Plutarch’s essays on Sparta, gathered in the Penguin book “On Sparta” goes into this in some detail.
Lycurgus chose to be K. There’s a nice article on him here: https://www.counter-currents.com/2012/10/lycurgus-and-the-spartan-state/
He the king’s uncle, but got kicked out of Sparta for opposing luxury, then later was able to come back and reform the place.
Makes me think of Theodore Roosevelt, who was also born in luxury but adopted the strenuous life as a young man to improve his health. His trust busting is in some ways similar to Lycurgus’ reforms, but unfortunately not as in depth or lasting.
You might like this page with several post I found on Sparta. I think this is the first. Down at the bottom of it’s page are several links to more post. Most of it sounds about right but I hesitate because he has post on Athens and most specifically Alcibiades that I know for a fact are wrong.
http://www.socialmatter.net/2015/09/07/the-spartan-empire/
The Spartans intrigue me also. It was said by ancient writers no one would really know how powerful they were in the future because they built no large temples or walls. Looking at the place now there’s not much of anything there.
Alcibiades, who I believe was the trigger for the downfall of Athens, had some training in Sparta and I think he had a Spartan nursemaid.
Hey anonymous conservative, can you explain where the r/K for Spartan with regards to slavery the helots. The whole society was base on the men training for war and women training for fitness but the whole economy rested on the helots farming. Helots was a race of people who got conquer by the Spartans and force to work. They hated the Spartans so much and would often start revolutions. This keep the Spartans for most of their history at bay from long wars in far away lands. It is interesting to look at the Spartans before and after the peloponnesian war. Their society was based on not family, the society would rise the kids. Men and women live separately and boys were made to leave at 5 from their mothers. Birth rates were dropping before the war and continue to decline after the war in a Japanese style while the helots were growing.
It needs to be said that the helots were freed after the Sparta’s defeat by Thebes in the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. It maintained its political independence until the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 BC.
I would be interested if you could more into this. I mean defeat and freeing of the helots and it was also the final push that force Sparta to stop getting Persian money. This might of save Sparta for another 200 years.
I am far from an expert in ancient history, so I am hesitant to speak authoritatively on the nexus between history and r/K. But you raise interesting points. I was mainly looking at the fact Sparta had a functioning government for so long, and the name was synonymous with harshness, and wondering if it was harshness and rejection of luxury that kept amygdalae functional enough to maintain a society. I was wondering if that was the big issue.
As you point out, there are a lot of other issues. Slavery is always an r-ifying force, as it gives wealth, with ease. Yet having an enemy population as slaves who periodically rebelled, could be seen as having a threatening enemy, which is K-ifying. I always assumed part of the US’s real slide into r began when the Soviet’s fell, and the US suddenly had no enemies to unite against.
In short, I am convinced amygdala is the key to human societal functionality. whether it comes from war, threat, rejection of luxury, harshness, disease, pain, famine, or some other horror entirely, when the brain is exposed to it, it develops the “painful” force in the brain which makes us act on perception, and that is what makes society function. Eliminate or even weaken the brains ability to crack the whip with amygdala, and everything will go to shit.
Aristotle wrote about the decline of the Spartans long before that in “Politics”. He specifically points out that the harshness observed in the way the men lived turned into extravagance and luxury for the women, and that the Spartan men being away in battle so long resulted in women dominating the political life and therefore leading to their defeat. Sounds vaguely familiar to the US where women were put into the factories during WWII and a few decades later feminism took off.
For the background on Aristotle’s comments check out this post: http://www.mikeanderson.biz/2009/06/plato-and-aristotle-on-sparta.html