People do not change that fast. “How we view the past has a tremendous influence on what we think about the present. In particular, the tendency to view the distant past as a time of unrestrained barbarism provides us with… Read More »New Acquisitions: How It Wasn’t: Game of Thrones and the Middle Ages, Part I
Not everyone needs to be classified. “Since its first edition in 1952, the DSM has gradually evolved from a slim document meant to standardize psychiatric recordkeeping into a sprawling classification system that shoulders a set of responsibilities it was never… Read More »You Aren’t In The DSM—Asterisk
There are different types of work. Only some are real. “our imagination of others’ work is a gross simplification, is incomplete, and is also fundamentally incorrect in various ways, depending partly on the differences in work and context between the… Read More »The Varieties of Human Work
You cannot win a war without strong economy. “Because Sparta produced so little of value, the Spartan state simply lacked the funds to supplement its operational capabilities. It could not afford foreign siege engineers or experts (an increasingly dire liability… Read More »Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part VII: Spartan Ends
Spartans weren’t super warriors. “Part of this, to be fair, is about time – tactical sophistication increases quite a bit from 500 to 50 B.C. But that’s the thing about judging the Spartans – the claim is often not “they… Read More »Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part VI: Spartan Battle
Having an assembly does not mean you have democracy. “I want to note this up front because it is important to recognize that the existence of a popular assembly does not make a Greek polis a democracy, nor does the… Read More »Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta, Part V: Spartan Government
Paradoxically, this has lead to their downfall. “First, we need to reiterate that a ‘poor’ spartiate was still quite well off compared to the average citizen in many Greek poleis – we talk about ‘poor’ spartiates the same way we… Read More »Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part IV: Spartan Wealth
Poor people are often extremely clever. “peasants, male and female, are canny survivors, not idiots, and they plan for these things (seriously, far too many of my students seem to instinctively fall into the trap of assuming serfs, peasants, etc.… Read More »Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part III: Spartan Women
Sparta was strange even for its times. “I want to open by stressing just how insane the previous statement is, that helots made up not only a simple majority of the human beings living under the Spartan state, but in… Read More »Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part II: Spartan Equality
It was worse than in the movie. “This is perhaps the most glaring way that 300 sugar-coats the agoge. In the film, Leonidas graduates by slaying a wolf that was hunting him. But it is almost certain that the real… Read More »Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part I: Spartan School