The Peloponnesian War

I was walking through your bookstore and I saw the Peloponnesian War yeah you know one of my favorite books and I again I don't know I only make two nuclear war jokes a semester that's my my limit with my students but I think I've already reached it but you know in the last ten years before the president how we um kind of slanted that hadn't been as larger conversation nuclear war as in the past but that conversation between Sparta and Athens and whether to aggressively go on the Athenian part and invade um and what could happen with the consequences could be still feels as relevant and not like a piece or not but I always think a Syracuse you know sending the fleet to Syracuse and it was so awful that when people came back the few survivors of the fleet to tell the Athenians what had happened they wouldn't believe them yeah but the whole fleet could be gone they were executed for even saying it well when General Mattis was Secretary of Defense he assigned a history of the Peloponnesian War as a book for people to read because that what they call it the um the Thucydides trap the idea of it and send an dominant power and an ascended power and China and America would maybe talk about which one is ascended which one's dominant uh which is ironic but um the idea of how these clashes play out so instead of you know obviously the state in the defense department have access to latest cables latest studies, greatest intelligence and here they are reading a 25 hundred year old book about a war fought by ships that had ores you know to give you a sense of how long ago was the the ships would clash and then the men would jump off and fight each other with swords like as if it was the ground that's how long ago this was um and yet the same things are happening um i'm just writing about this in uh the book i'm doing now the the the the mellion dialogue or million dialogue like the most famous passage in the the history of the Peloponnesian War is basically Athens going to this little proxy client state and going might makes right is the strong do what they can and the weak struggle as they must right as today we talk about you know systemic racism and structural problems and intersection that is the same discussion right it's it's and but how many people that throw these buds buzzwords around could actually connect it to some sort of classical understanding of that some real insight into human nature that goes back far enough that you're not thinking republican democrat white black america whatever it's it's taking it back far enough you can see what humans do and how a lot of the systems we developed the stories we tell the institutions we build were designed to counteract those impulses yes right like the UN being one such invention right or treaties being another invention or the Geneva can we've we've invented stuff to deal with things and sometimes we forget the source of that insight or that hard one lesson and so to not have that historical basis it's just an enormous liability so people talk about stem and how you need to learn math of whatever but if you don't have an understanding of how humans work and how they've always worked what good is your ability to build really good rockets or whatever