Thread by @BretDevereaux

Alright, going back to live-tweeting my way through Steven Pressfield (author of 'Gates of Fire)'s rather...frustrating?...video series on the 'warrior archetype.'

You can see the two previous threads (which covered episodes 1-6) here:

https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1349218613983637504

So last time we worked through Ep. 6, "Come and Take Them" which was an account of Thermopylae that demonstrated a remarkably poor grasp of the historical battle or its sources and a general unwillingness or inability to read those sources critically as a historian ought.

This time it looks like we're sailing out of the Spartan-hagiography-by-way-of-gullible-readings-of-Plutarch and into Pressfield's actual theory tying this all together, with 'Episode Seven: What is an Archetype."

So here we go.

"Since we're calling this series the warrior archetype, we might as well define our terms"

Yes, good. But usually term definition comes first, not (at this point) almost an hour into a discussion?

"The sense that I'm using 'archetype' comes from Carl Jung; the Jungian Sense"

Oh dear.

I am not a psychologist, but it is my general impression that the field of psychology has largely left Jung behind?

So here is a pet-peeve of mind: outdated and largely abandoned psychology being used to frame historical analysis.

Now, sure, if you want to use Freud or Jung as a tool of literary analysis - esp. literature *after* Freud or Jung wrote which might be influenced by them, go ahead

But the only way that Jung or Freud are in any way remotely useful in understanding human cultures is if they actually managed to describe something fundamentally true about the human psyche.

In my view, historians ought to defer to specialists (read: psychologists) on that.

And my impression is that psychology, as practiced and studied today, has tended to regard Jung's theories as fundamentally unscientific and untestable and thus of little value in either research or clinical practice.

I follow their expertise on that point.

I think this is important because there is a temptation to simply take whatever historical theory of the thing that fits an argument.

I see this a lot w/ the use of economics in the ancient economy; whatever badly outdated economic theory fits a given argument gets used.

As a historian, I take the expertise of other fields as I find it. I can't be an expert in everything, so I have to trust other experts!

The option to cherry-pick theories isn't left to me; the historian ought to rely on the communis opinio in fields outside of their expertise.

Ok, let's let the video march on. But evidently Jung's 'warrior archetype' is going to be the fulcrum around this argument turns.

'Archetypes...come encoded with all of the information we need.'

So, 1) Azar Gat just has the better version of this argument when he argues for evidence that human beings are evolved for war. But he focuses on basic behaviors and social patterns instead of archetypes.

Pretty clearly, humans - like any social animal - have evolved some social behaviors! If that were all Jung said, it'd be fine. But the archetypes imply a lot more, with their link to the collective unconscious and - as Pressfield puts it - the implication of 'stored wisdom.'

But 2) this kind of archetypal thinking tends to collapse things that are contingent from culture to culture. I'm sure this is a point we'll come back to, but what a 'warrior' looks like is not the same from one place or one people to the next.

Even if they are embedded, somewhere, in the same evolved needs and root behaviors.

That critique has been made of Jung - that his psychology was rooted in imperial ideologies which sought to collapse colonized peoples into a single, uniform mass of 'undeveloped' humanity.

Long analogy comparing archetypes to software which comes 'already encoded with all kinds of information.'

Which is nonsense. 'Child' 'God' 'Warrior' 'Maiden' 'Mother' are all roles which are learned and which express and present differently in different cultures.

I taught a comparative myth course for a few years and while the course was designed to bring out common motifs between world mythologies, one thing that was so striking, for instance, is how different 'gods' are from one place to the next.

Are gods immortal? Are they good? What are the scope and scale of their powers? Can they be beseeched and if so how? Are they human in form?

We looked, for instance, at Loki and Anansi together - but is Anansi even a god?

Clearly there is a human tendency to imagine non-physical (=spiritual) forces in the world and to sometimes personalize those forces (but sometimes not), but beyond that?

Loads of cultural contingency. Lots of similarity, but also lots of difference. Not one bland archetype.

So the idea that there is some functionally complete 'chip' that just fills in all of the details the same way every time is silly.

I suspect we'll come back to this because it goes to the idea that there is a 'universal' warrior or war experience.

There is no one 'war' chip.

'Archetypes...according to Jung, they are universal..if we could go to a hunter gather tribe and access their warrior archetype it would be identical to that of a cadet at west point'

Sure, Jung says this, but as a statement of fact about the world...um [citation needed]!

Also, obviously not? Gat and L. Keeley (War in Human Civilization and War Before Civilization respectively) point in the direction of what war behaviors in the pre-historical past might have been like - I am largely convinced by them.

But it is a style of warfare so substantially different from 'conventional' war as waged by industrialized countries that our militaries respond with bafflement when they encounter it and call it 'unconventional' or 'asymmetric' war.

And whether it was highly trained West Point graduates or conscripted Everymen, those 'western' militaries have had to struggle to learn and adapt to that different style of warfare.

There was no 'chip' they could plug in to just 'get it'

Even though, to be clear, it is *conventional* warfare that is the aberration, and 'unconventional' or 'asymmetrical' warfare which is the historic norm (I think @MilHist_Lee has a project making this point)

'Archetypes just kick in in sequence at different ages'

I felt something, like thousands of developmental psychologist and educational experts suddenly cried out in frustration, and where suddenly silence. I fear something very silly has been argued.

Also, by the by, expectations about child development and behaviors also vary quite a lot, culture to culture. Even the terms and meanings to describe different age brackets - especially when connected to social/emotional change rather than physical - are flexible.

To take Latin, a 'puer' is a boy (clear enough) but there's no word for 'teenager.' iuvenis or adulescens - sometimes translated that way - are really from about 17 to about 30 (yes, THIRTY) representing 'early adulthood' the long period of physical but not full social maturity.

The categories for Roman girls and women were even less age-linked and almost entirely about marital/sexual status. A female Roman was called a puella (girl) from actual childhood until marriage, when she became a 'mulier' (=woman) or 'matrona' (after giving birth).

As you may well imagine, the behavioral and developmental expectations that went along with that frame of thought could be very different from ours!

A Roman female might be - and be expected to behave as - a 'matrona' (a full adult) in her late teens.

Those differences can't be compressed down into a single archetype. That said, it is no surprise that Jung thought they could - 19th and early 20th century scholarship is full of scholars blithely assuming that the standards of their culture were universally applicable.

The tendency to uncritically retroject modern-period European values in particular is a real enduring weakness of that older 19th and early 20th century scholarship.

He's recommending a book I haven't read 'King,Warrior, Magician,Lover: Roadmap on Traversing the Masculine Psyche'

I haven't read it, so I'll reserve my comments, except its hardly a promising title

Also, my cats are amusing themselves with a spring-door-stop and its hilarious

He closes on how using archetypes makes for powerful fiction. I'm sure it does.

I have to admit, one thing I find truly frustrating is how many storytellers fool themselves into believing that a good story is the same as a true story...

...or that being a good storyteller equips one in any way to be a good observer of contemporary society, or understander of past societies.

Lots of self-congratulatory 'stories are the most important thing' written by writers of stories.

On to Ep. 8, "The Warrior Archetype."

I find it odd that we covered so much Sparta so far, but no other culture. If the goal is to prove that this archetype as universal, we haven't any comparative evidence fit for the purpose.

But if the goal was to show how Sparta conforms to this archetype, then surely we ought to have begun with the archetype and then discussed Sparta afterwards so we could see the blocks fall into place?

I would not have organized things this way, but that's me.

"The warrior archetype kicks in...sometime around the age of 12, 13, 14"

If this were a student paper, I'd be writing "Evidence?" in the margins. And if the citation Jung, I'd be circling the publication date and writing "be careful of very old scholarship!"

Needless to say, this is not how (good) historians make and defend arguments. But this is a historical argument being made!

"For instance...when the warrior archetype kicks in, we suddenly want to put on a football helmet and beat the crap out of our buddies on the field."

Oh boy is that awkwardly universalizing the narrow US-experience when the rest of the world is thinking 'red card?'

Also, if the warrior archetype is linked to aggression, studies have shown that human aggression develops very early, often evident in infancy. Children are capable of intentionally using force on each other and violently competing for status in single-digit ages.

Personally, I am extremely competitive (too much so, honestly), but never felt the desire to express that physically. Sports of any kind never grabbed me; I always competed in mental activities.

Did my 'warrior archetype' just never 'kick in?'

"We have this tremendous urge to hang around with our peers...if we're 16, 17..."

Welcome to things that are very much socially contingent! Most societies do not separate into defined age-bands like this. Small hunter-gatherer groups don't (group size too small often).

The idea that all of the 18-year-olds ought to hang out together certainly doesn't appear in Greek or Roman thought, where mixed-aged groups are clearly preferred in social organization at almost every level.

My understanding is that the consensus is that the idea that defined age-bands should hang out together like that is largely a product of universal education and the need to brigade together students at similar stages of intellectual and emotional development.

Though I can't claim expertise on that point.

Nevertheless, I can absolutely say it doesn't seem to me to have been a common feature in pre-modern societies, which seem to me to almost always prefer cross-age-group groupings.

With the notable exception being the two big lines, between children and adults (often set in the teens) and the line between young adults and mature adults (often set in the thirties for men; the two lines are often identical for women).

But much variation culture to culture.

Mention of the agoge, "it was all military training"

It was not. There was no drill or weapon's training of note in the agoge. It was training in social obedience. For more, see: acoup.blog/2019/08/16/col…

The Agoge was not a school and it was not a boot-camp.

"what's interesting too...and it hasn't been studied that much; I wish it had is how the warrior archetype works for women..."

Gonna suggest it hasn't been studied in women as much because it is just as much BS mumbo-jumbo there as in men, but w/o the toxic-masculinity baggage?

"women in all female groups...I wish there was some real science on this"

It is moments like these I wish I was a different kind of specialist, but I am going to guess there probably actually is a lot of real science on that, it just doesn't flatter Pressfield's preconceptions.

That said, one thing I find honestly infuriating about these videos is how Pressfield is presenting himself as an expert on things he doesn't have expertise in.

We've already seen before what an absolute trainwreck his ancient history scholarship is...

...but, you know he's an old white guy sitting in a comfortable looking leather chair with a bookshelf behind him, so a lot of viewers will take him for an expertise - they will assume that there is some substance to back up his claims.

So far I haven't seen any.

This is a big part of why, for the bigger blog series I run, I am careful to include bibliography and reading lists - I want my readers to know that I have done my homework for real.

And it is also why I am careful to say "I don't know" when I don't know.

And "I don't know" is *not* the same as "we don't know"

The latter implies a question not yet settled by the field and ought to only be made by an expert in that field who can survey from some height to determine that the question has not been answered.

Anyway, what Pressfield is very good at here is presenting an image of expertise (probably easier as a white male with thinning hair, speaking from experience), but he has not actually done the legwork to earn that perception by actually building expertise.

Very frustrating.

Long personal anecdote about his marine training and the emotional impact of being accepted at the end of boot camp as a marine.

He attributes this to his 'warrior archetype' but the more obvious element is the scientifically well documented human need for social-group-belonging

The moment when I came back after defending my diss. at UNC and was greeted by my advisor and committee with "Congratulations, Dr. Devereaux" was also really emotionally moving! I was being accepted into the 'guild of scholars'

Not a lot of 'warrior' about it though.

Once again this point - about social structures, survival and the evolutionary pressure towards larger group sizes - is a point just made better and more clearly by Azar Gat without relying on Jungian mumbo-jumbo.

"Every aspect of the warrior archetype has a dark side and a light side"

...I know he's citing the book I mentioned above, but are we admitting George Lucas as evidence now?

Are the Spartans the Sith? They're Sith, right?

And yes, I know we're touching on the Jungian concept of the 'shadow' but I'm not sure that's any more helpful than just assuming this is The Force.

Alright now on to Ep. 9: 'Why Study the Warrior Archetype'

Which is a really good but difficult question, given that at this point I am pretty convinced that the 'warrior archetype' is bunk.

This is petty, but this isn't the shirt I'd have chosen for a video. The still picture doesn't quite capture it, but it's really difficult to look at with all of the bright white dots on a black background as he moves. Very distracting.

"Are we [studying the warrior archetype] because we intend to go to war?"

That point gets raised to military studies more generally (I address it here: acoup.blog/2020/11/13/col…)

But he goes with "for me it is about the inner war..."

I don't think that's a very helpful analogy.

I'm not a therapist or a self-help guru or even a particularly well-adjusted person, but being in a state of war with myself "in my own head" as Pressfield puts it, sounds like a pretty miserable state of being and not a very helpful or healthy one.

He talks about facing "the same enemies that a soldier faces on the battlefield...fear, complacency, laziness...arrogance, vainglory, self-doubt, lack of self-belief...all of those things that are vices that drag us down to a lower level"

So, I have a lot of things to say...

First, I find it really striking that 'right conduct' or 'just conduct' is nowhere in that list. Those are all things that hold one back from achieving one's goals, but not things which tell you "your goals are wrong and destructive and not to be pursued."

I was always really struck by the way Prof. (now ret.) Carlin Barton - (whose book on Roman honor, "Fire in the Bones" is a good one) - explained to me the Roman notion of how the ideal person was both powered by a sort of inner fire (virtus), but restrained as well.

J.E. Lendon brings this same dichotomy up in Soldier's and Ghosts in a military context, where Roman virtus (courage/zeal) struggles against disciplina (discipline) in the ideal soldier.

The good Roman was fired up with virtus, but restrained by 'pudor' (a sense of shame)...

...by reason (ratio) and by the sense of justice which proceeded from that reason.

But that sense of being bound, of being restrained, of being controlled (which is also super important in most other moral systems, e.g. Christianity and Islam) is not present here.

But there *is* an ideology in which "everybody is educated to become a hero" and where "life is permanent warfare" where "life is lived for the struggle" built on "contempt for the weak"

And it's fascism because I've been quoting Umberto Eco in this tweet.

(His essay, Ur-Fascism, of course, which you should read!)

I am obviously not saying Pressfield is a fascist - though he sure loves Sparta and I'd argue they were proto-fascist - but merely that those ideals lead somewhere rather specific and it is a fairly dark place.

I think this is a point that needs to be made in more depth that a tweet can manage, but what a lot of these 'cult of the badass' perspectives (be they life advice or bad history) have in common is this inchoate desire for conflict and the heroism that conflict provides...

...which are the ideological roots of fascist authoritarianism.

As Eco puts "the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience he more frequently sends other people to death."

Ok, we're moving in to the Bhagavad Gita which he says is the 'Hindu Bible' which is a gross oversimplification of the Gita's place in Hindu literature.

The Gita is the most primary Hindu text, but exists in a constellation of others texts and teachings.

"It's a short book, you can read it in an hour" - er. The Gita is a sub-unit of the much longer Mahabharata.

And I am told while one can *read* the Gita quickly, to actually understand its full religious import takes much more serious study.

In part because there is a vast apparatus of commentaries and supporting texts, along with important religious practices which either comment on or contextualize the Gita.

Alright, he's giving the Spark Notes version of the Bhagavad Gita.

I'm not really qualified to assess his reading of the Gita, but I don't have a lot of confidence given how badly he mauled the ancient texts I do have the expertise to assess.

And then he sets up the next episode where he's going to talk about how the Spartans (of course, ugh...) exemplify the...ideology and practice of the Gita?

This I am more comfortable calling BS on.

J.E. Lendon's Soldier's and Ghosts really is the best starting point for understanding Greek martial values. They are not about harmonizing the person, or overcoming inner failings, etc.

Greek martial values are all about the competitive demonstration of excellence.

Unlike the concepts of dharma and karma, the Greek concept of excellence (arete) is fundamentally amoral; the thread of connection to the 'selfless action' of the Gita is thin to the point of non-existence.

Now, obviously, the Greeks - and the Spartans - have an idea of the subservience or service of an individual to the community, but it is expressed as a obedience owed (and trained or enforced by violence) or a 'kratos' (power, strength) exerted by/to that community

Instead, the key focus is on the ἀγών ('Agon') - the contest, the competition, the struggle - the moment where two individuals, or two communities compete, with one proving its excellence (arete) over the other.

And the basic Greek assumption that comes out again and again in their writing is that all humans and all communities are continually seeking agones as opportunities to prove or demonstrate their excellence with the goal of being 'inferior to none.'

These are massive philosophical differences that Pressfield is just casually collapsing and pretending that the assumptions being made are universal and universally applicable.

They very clearly are not!

Lendon's book is actually great for this, because he juxtaposes the development of Greek martial values - which have to undergo some changes as their warfare changes! - and Roman martial values.

And they're really different, despite the two cultures being in conversation!

Roman virtus isn't Greek arete - the former is an impelling force, the later a quality of skill. Latin has 'discrimen' - the 'testing point' or 'point of decision' - as the nearest match for 'agon' but the 'discrimen' might not be a contest at all.

'Discrimen' means 'seperate' at its core (we get our word discriminate from it) so it has that sense of 'showing the difference' (like English 'proving one's quality'), but no contest is required.

A firefighter battling a fire is experiencing a moment of discrimen.

So, to conclude this thread for tonight, I think Pressfield has been very badly served by his theoretical framework. He's shaving the corners off of square blocks to make them fit into a round hole which was never very well made in the first place.

And really what is going on here is that he is mobilizing a form of history, badly bent in order to try to fit his modern model of (unhealthy) masculinity (he thinks it is gender neutral, but it's not and Jung of all people would tell him that - as does the book he's citing)...

...and then present that model as timeless when it isn't!

The one thing that emerges almost instantly with any serious cross-cultural study of masculinity is that it is often very different, culture to culture and period to period. There are some common elements to be sure...

...but not *these* elements or ideas or really anything so specific.

He's taking Ideal Modern Marine Man and presenting it as equivalent to Ideal Roman Man, or Ideal Early Christian Man, or Ideal Greek Man.

And it simply wasn't.

And what bothers me the most is I bet many viewers of these things will take both the badly mauled history *and* the distorted view of an 'eternal' masculine warrior-value-code as fact and try to structure their life around it.

But it's that age old historical error: carelessly retrojecting one's modern values back into the past and assuming that people in the past thought exactly as we do now.

Alright, g'night everybody.