The Warrior Ethos, by Steven Pressfield depicts the warrior’s mentality from ancient times to the present through a variety of different aspects and stories. In The Warrior Ethos, Pressfield states that men are not born with the certain qualities that make a good warrior, but instead are inculcated through years of training and indoctrination, stating at an early age. He shows how different societies have been able to instill the same or very similar ideals throughout history while maintaining their own unique characteristics. Things have changed from ancient Sparta, where parents would be enthusiastic about their children going to war, and even more elated upon learning they died valorous in battle. These days, most parents are a lot …show more content…
Things are now different in our American culture, but in the core of the test for your manhood it is inherently the same. For example, young men and women who join the US Military have to undergo their own “agoge” which would be boot camp/basic training, the most rigorous of these would be the United States Marine Corps Boot Camp, the Marines go through the most grueling time of their life during their agoge.Which in turn gives them the ultimate sense of pride in who they are because of the hardship Marines face during their agoge they tend to emulate the Spartans, not only for their warrior pride but in their moral values.Other things the Spartans valued, respect for elders and more senior military members have also transferred over to our culture in the form of modern military respect and …show more content…
military members who share harsh, traumatic, or even funny events obviously become closer through the bond of a mutual experience. This is particularly true for Marine infantry; many Marine are brought up in different areas of the US, with different values, ages, religious and political beliefs. However different we all might look on the outside, the fact that we’ve all been through good times and bad with each other makes us closer than any civilian could understand. After being a Marine, I find that I’m close to, and always will be, than my civilian friends who I’ve known for years. Along with this, Pressfield talks about how, under all the glory and allure of fighting for one’s country exists the real reason that warriors fight; for our brothers in arms. Political beliefs, government stances, and flags go out the window, only to be replaced by concern for the safety and well-being of the men to our left and right. All of these things are reasons why it is difficult for civilians to understand what it’s like to be a warrior. This is perhaps embodied best in our motto, Semper Fidelis; Always Faithful, to our brothers and those who depend on
...litary end even the women in Sparta would have been affected by the military ways of life almost as much as the young men. From childhood they were being primed to raise a family, they were taught in the ways of mid wifery, learning the correct manner in teaching the future young men of Sparta and keeping themselves fit to produce fit children.
are always a Marine and you will never let another Marine down.’ Etc. & etc.
Drill Instructors strip all your old values and Marine Corps values are formed. “There is no ‘I’, ‘I’ is gone” (p.60). To be a marine you must shed all thinking as “I” and “me”, and think as “we” and “recruit”. In American society, striving for independence is a goal for most people, and instead of working as a group we tend to compete with each other to get what we want. As a Marine you must think as a group, learn how to move as a group and you are drilled until not a single action is left to individual improvisation (p.64).
and Drill Instructors see Boot Camp. Why did he pick the Marines as his topic? Attracted to the Corps perception and morale, Thomas E. Ricks expresses the Marines as the only service still upholding its honor and tradition. Due to society changing into a commercial society with a “me” attitude, civilians focus on how they can splendor themselves with material items—never looking at the big picture at all that we can accomplish as a team if we give our heart and soul to life. Team means everyone on earth, for we are the people that provide for one another with peace and prosperity.
This is exactly how Spartans acted, and expected their children to act. This hardened personality starts at birth, when parents gave their child to the elders so they could examine him or her and make judgement on whether or not they should live. If a baby is weak or feeble, it was left on Apothetae, as Plutarch states in source two. This occuredd because the elder’s thought process was that if a baby is weak from the beginning, it is not worthy to live in Sparta, and would simply use up resources without giving back to society. When men went to war, their mothers often used the phrase “with your shield or on it,” when saying goodbye. This essentially meant that the son should either come home a hero or die for the state. This phrase’s meaning was quite literal, if a woman’s son came home after losing or doing something cowardly in war, she would oftentimes kill him and bury him without dismay. Using this for motivation, Spartan soldiers did all they could to win battles using both force and tactics. The way they acted ultimately brought great success to the state and they never lost a
Following negative feelings from close individuals in a Veteran’s life, a person taking part in war can become detached.
The life of a Spartan male was a life of discipline, self-denial, and simplicity as the Spartans viewed themselves as the true inheritors of the Greek tradition. This key to understanding the Spartans. The ideology of Sparta was oriented around the state as the individual lived (and died) for the state. Their lives were designed to serve the state from their beginning to the age of sixty. The combination of this ideology, the education of Spartan males, and the disciplined maintenance of a standing army gave the Spartans the stability that had been threatened so dramatically in the Messenean revolt.
When the marines had returned home, Corporal Weissert returned to an empty house without knowledge of where his wife had gone. Rather than let Weissert wallow on the street without a home, the men in Weissert’s platoon took turns caring for their friend and dubbed it, “Weissert duty” (Phillips, 48). The soldiers acted as though they were still stranded in a foreign country with only one another for company and support and shared a common language and their experiences, which civilians could only
He starts this by setting the audience in common ground with someone who’s life has been impacted by enlistment. “The men and women who do enlist deserve better than to die in the dirt and come home in a bag, or spend their lives in wheelchairs, and their parents should not have to drown in tears and suffer the heartbreak of burying their children (Paragraph 13)” Masciotra continues to captivate the readers into joining his side of the argument and to also feel the empathy that he felt as he was writing this. His use of firm imagery also aids in projecting a picture for the readers. Likewise, Masciotra makes an effort to distinguish a difference between the minds of regular men and women, and the parents of injured or deceased soldiers. “The ‘troops are heroes’ boosters of American life typically toss out clichés to defend their generalization – ‘They defend our freedom,’ ‘They fight so we don’t have to.’ (Paragraph 7)” Society doesn’t take time to put themselves in others’ shoes and acknowledge what the law enforcement has done for them; they brush this fact aside and forget to recognize the bravery and skill that these people have. Unfortunately, not every member of this force lives up to the standard that they are positioned in. As Americans, the nation is called to embrace and defend the country, no matter the circumstances. Following along those lines, Masciotra explains how people label the wrong groups, which results in fear and conflict. “Haurwas’...combat the hysterical sycophancy toward the military in a culture where even saluting a Marine, while holding a coffee cup, is tantamount to terrorism (Paragraph 12)” Masciotra implies the fact that even the slightest action could set off a social epidemic. Along with the conflict happening in the world today, with the amount of hypothetical terrorism increasing,
A soldier’s “greatest fear is not death but failure, and the shame that accompanies failure. More than anything else, warriors fear letting themselves down and letting their leaders and friends down at a moment when it matters most. They fear most not losing their lives, but their honor” (Nash, 2007, p. 25).
This particular asset is the brotherhood soldiers’ forged during battle. This, band of brother, creates a strong connecting between the soldiers, much like those of a tightly knit family. This connection allows the soldiers to watch out for one another, just as brothers do. She depicts that while men are at war, they use each other as support and motivation to help encourage their comrades to perform as instructed. She discusses the value of comradeship in the opening of the chapter, Love and Hate, “The power of love and friendship in enticing men to kill has been widely commented upon… combatants reported they were able to kill because of the love they felt for their comrades” (130). This proves that during times of war, soldiers look towards one another for encouragement and to achieve recognition to boost their psyche. This, in turn, helps the military keep the troop’s moral high and also helps creates a more affective killing machine. This helps the military’s objective and reduces down time caused by soldiers who are unwilling to fight in
The soldiers feel that the only people they can talk to about the war are their “brothers”, the other men who experienced the Vietnam War. The friendship and kinship that grew in the jungles of Vietnam survived and lived on here in the United States. By talking to each other, the soldiers help to sort out the incidents that happened in the War and to put these incidents behind them. “The thing to do, we decided, was to forget the coffee and switch to gin, which improved the mood, and not much later we were laughing at some of the craziness that used to go on” (O’Brien, 29).
The Spartan’s were a highly developed warrior based society. They came into the major military power through their highly developed military strategy. The men were required to be a part of the military if they were to be future citizens. The Spartans had a highly revered group of men, who decided if a
Spartans were a people of war who thrived on fighting, so naturally physical might was a much needed and wanted attribute. The children who were strong excelled to high levels in society while the weak either became farmers or scholars. The deformed or mentally handicapped were either shunned or exterminated. When a boy reached manhood, he would undergo a series of tests that involved surviving on his own and not returning to his home until he had brought home a trophy (usually an animal hide or etc.) that proved his worth as a warrior. At the age of seven, Spartan boys were taken from their mothers to military barracks for twenty-three years and were taught skills such as athleticism, discipline, hunting, survival, weapons training, and how to endure pain. At the age of twenty, Spartans became
courage as a virtue. Before long the Spartan way of life was more show then