The Tarpeian Rock; Or, America's Hard Decisions
Gregg Zegarelli Esq.
Managing Shareholder at Technology & Entrepreneurial Ventures Law Group, PC
Spartans threw deformed babies from the Tarpeian Rock. Actually, that is a myth. But, to be more precise, it is only a myth in implementation, not a myth in principle.
In fact, the Tarpeian Rock was a Roman (not Greek) punishment site that added insult to the injury; that is, a site of death reserved for the worst criminals who did not merit strangulation in the Tullianum. For the Greeks, the myth is more properly directed to deformed infants cast into the chasm at Mount Taygetus. [1]
But...but, these particular myths regarding the implementation of a principle do not contradict the underlying principle itself.
Indeed, according to History.com and other sources, particularly Plutarch, yes, Spartans did reject "ill-formed" and defected infants, being what we call today "infanticide," as follows:
All Spartan infants were brought before a council of inspectors and examined for physical defects, and those who weren’t up to standards were left to die. ... If a Spartan baby was judged to be unfit for its future duty as a soldier, it was most likely abandoned on a nearby hillside. Left alone, the child would either die of exposure or be rescued and adopted by strangers.
Babies who passed inspection still didn’t have it easy. To test their constitutions, Spartan infants were often bathed in wine instead of water. They were also frequently ignored when they cried and commanded never to fear darkness or solitude. According to Plutarch, these “tough love” parenting techniques were so admired by foreigners that Spartan women were widely sought after for their skill as nurses and nannies.
[*1] Now, when I have raised this point with those under my tutelage, I have done so in the formative of this question:
"Is it your reasoned judgment that the practice of infanticide by the Spartans was 'just being mean-spirited'? If yes, why? If no, why not?"
Only little children are privileged to say simplistically, "Those bad Spartans, killing infants! They are mean and evil." For adults properly educated in history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, human nature, and critical thinking, it's not quite that easy. [1.b] Adults must think like adults. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:11 "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." Educational principles tend to be welcomed until they wrestle to push aside a contradictive pre-existing thought. Critical thinking is only abrasive against indoctrination.
So, let us not judge others too quickly, as children may do, but rather consider as the best judges do, and as a professional network of adults, why human beings do exactly what human beings do, and take that "truth as a dish best served cold."
Thusly, critical thinking. Yes, Spartans, Nazis, and Americans have all done things to be considered within their respective contexts. Spartans abandoned deformed infants, and the United States—just like the Nazis—sterilized the mentally ill, for a reason, like it or not. [2, 3]
Let us start to consider the infanticide by use of the metaphor of the business profit trinary. That is, to consider the point of Sparta's reason (rational basis, if any) for infanticide in the metaphorical economic framework of business. Such as most metaphors, this metaphor is also imperfect, but that does not mean it is not a valuable tool for critical analysis by adults.
Business operates within a framework of one of three discrete states: a Loss Business, or a Breakeven Business, or a Profit Business.
The Loss Business cannot meet production with consumption. The Breakeven Business operates at a perfect match of revenue and expenses, but, without surplus revenue, has no fair discretionary planning capability. The Profit Business has surplus revenue and thereby has surplus with which to implement discretionary and strategic choices.
Economically systemically, we might say that only the Profit Business is healthy.
If the Loss Business is all alone, the Loss Business will not survive, because it is not able to meet expenses with revenue. It will fail.
If the Loss Business is matched with only the Breakeven Business and takes from the Breakeven Business, thereby socializing the loss, it will cause both to fail in due time, by making each business to become a Loss Business. Now two fail instead of one.
If all three business are socialized together, and, if the Profit Business has sufficient surplus revenue (profit) to backfill the entire loss of the Loss Business, then the Loss Business will become a Breakeven Business. If the Profit Business has only enough surplus to cover the Loss Business, then all three businesses will become a Breakeven Business, none failing immediately, but none healthy either. If the Profit Business does not have sufficient surplus to socialize the loss for the Loss Business, then all three businesses will be made to become a Loss Business, and all three businesses will fail, in due time. Now three fail instead of one.
Now, it might appear that a Breakeven Business will at least sustain, but the rub is that the world does not come in nice neat packages. Life is the endurance of sideswipes. A Breakeven Business might endure through a perfect static environment, but it has no discretionary income for strategic planning or for managing the adversity of unlucky accidents and external competition. Maybe it will get lucky and maybe it won't, but, either way, luck is bad strategy.
If that Profit Business has enough money to backfill the Loss Business and still have a surplus, it might appear that all is well, but all that is created is now two unhealthy Breakeven Businesses, and one less healthy Profit Business by unnatural contrivance.
Now, if we should contrive further unnaturally to force the Profit Business not only to backfill the two new artificially created Breakeven Businesses, but also to use even more of the Profit Business's own surplus revenue to socialize its surplus to make the two Breakeven Businesses into "Profit Businesses," thereby completely socializing the loss by the Loss Business, propping up by contrivance what should naturally fail by lack of merit, both the original Loss Business and the Breakeven Business will be very happy indeed, in fact, ecstatic for the artificial economic salvation and surplus, at the cost of the Profit Business and natural systemic health. The problem, of course (at least for purposes of the metaphor) is that the business that was operating successfully has been constrained and depressed to a burden in assisting two other businesses that are not healthy on their own, by failure of respective necessary merit, keeping artificially alive something that was not profitable. [5, 6, 15]
Jesus said as much, albeit in a different framework:
And to those standing?by, the master said, ‘Take the talent?from him and give it to the servant?with ten.' But they said to him, ‘Sir, he already has ten gold?coins.’ The master replied, 'For I tell?you to everyone?who has, more will be given and he will grow?rich.? But, from the one?who has not, even what he has will be taken?away. And throw?this useless?servant?into the darkness?outside, where there will be wailing?and gnashing?of teeth.’"
[4.1, 4.2, *5, *6] And Nietzsche might agree in principle that keeping the weak or unprofitable to survive by artificial contrivance contradicts the incentivization of others to become stronger, embracing self-power, and weakens the human character. [7.a, 7.b, 7.c] That is, to believe in the potential self-power of humanity is to prod and to abrase humanity, to toughen it up, contradict it by pain into strength, and not to coddle it. In Edward Gibbon's tome, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he attributes Christian values as a cause of the Fall of Rome. Nietzsche goes further and attributes Christian values as the cause of the Fall of Man. Of course, not all academic scholars agree. [7.d, 7.e, 7.f]
Irrespectively, it is self-evidenced that Spartans abandoned the weak because they believed that the weak would hinder their primary objective: the healthy sustainability of their culture. It is a hard decision, but I will suggest that it is not a crazy or evil one. Yes, Spartans loved each other, too. They felt the pain of humanity. But the Spartans loved their culture's survival more. No less than Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Homes in judging to sterilize the mentally ill to sustain America [*2, *3] or Abraham Lincoln judging that he would endure the blight of continued human bondage to sustain America. [8]
Warriors tend to see three things with regard to the strategic primary objective: things that help to achieve the objective, things that hurt to achieve the objective, and things that are irrelevant, which leaves only things that help or hurt the objective. [*8, 9.a, 9.b]
As to things that help the objective, they are valued and praised. As to things that hurt the objective, they are either converted to help the objective or they are destroyed, depending upon efficiencies. [*9.a, *9.b] Objective-based leadership is exactly what it is: having determined what must be accomplished, it is intended to be accomplished. "It is that simple," said Col. Jessep. [*3] Civil prudence and moral goodness are not the same thing. Wisdom is built into the decision, the strength is built into the courage and discipline of implementation. Each decision has a cost. Every single decision. The word "decision" is a form of "to cut." [*8, 10]
Now I will suggest that here is where a 21st Century academic type might go fatally cruelly wrong, particularly in a First World country. On a judgmental theoretical academic high horse, perhaps arrogantly, perhaps hypocritically, it is easy to condemn the Spartans for their treatment of infants, but that was the decisional cost, by empathetic perspective [10]; that is, for one thing to live, another thing must die. It is not a failure of empathy, but empathy otherwise directed. [11]
Life does not grant the utopian ideal. The pain for Americans has been deferred. [12, 13] The pain is deferred by the fiction of printing untethered fake money that provides the relief only in the moment. The Spartans did not have the luxury of creating a $36T debt, or printing unlimited money, or socialized health insurance paid with inflated ethereal dollars, or similar fancy academic economic devices and propped-up contrivances that are only temporary in effect. The Spartans had to make hard decisions with the objective of sustaining their life and culture, understanding what non-productive weight the Spartan society could endure, and then implemented to achieve the primary objective. [14]
We should watch it carefully, and critically. Anyone can talk about the pleasure of the solution, without identifying the source of the cost. It is vapid lip-service to give an effect without expressing the cause by how that effect is accomplished. Hard decisions as life presents, as it will always be. [*15] The pain comes either way, some now or more later. [16, *12] Master Shakespeare says, "What's past is prologue." Perhaps.
Often civility is undone by incivility. But, sometimes, civility is undone by civility. Great nations fall for different reasons. [*14, *15, 17]
"Scis quod lectionem intelligis, quando eam times." ("You know that you understand the lesson, when you are afraid to know it.")
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[4] ONE?: The LinkedIn Reference Set [#GRZ_183] 4.1 ONE: 949 [L14:28] ("Shrewd Planning"); 4.2 ONE: 1734 [L17:7] ("Exceed Expectation, Unprofitable Servant")
"Verum catino optime servivit frigus." ("Truth is a dish best served cold."); "Malum consilium fortuna est." ("Luck is bad strategy."); "Spes confusionem creat." ("Hope creates confusion."); "Vita seriem accidentium." ("Life is a series of sideswipes."); "Sapientia et bonitas non sunt idem." ("Wisdom and goodness are not the same thing."); "Prudentia et bonitas moralis non est idem." ("Civil prudence and moral goodness are not the same thing."); "Cogitatio critica tantum laesura est contra indoctrinationem." ("Critical thinking is only abrasive to indoctrination."); "Scis quod lectionem intelligis, quando eam times." ("You know that you understand the lesson, when you are afraid to know it."); "Civilitas per modum civilitatis destruitur." ("Civility is undone by civility.") ~grz
It would be strange if [the government] could not call upon those [mentally ill] who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence.
It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.
The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.
Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
"Something was wrong. I sat stunned trying to reconcile how one of my legal heroes, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., could have been so wrong, ruling to sterilize mentally ill persons. Was Holmes the U.S. equivalent of Nazi Franz Schlegelberger? Were American standards in 1927 that close to the Nazi standards, only a few years later, in 1945? So, maybe I now rationalize, or I am not excellent enough to judge the excellence of the greater Holmes, but I believe that Holmes has an exceptional power to analyze conditions.?For me at least, there is always something to learn with Holmes, and dismissing him as "mean" or "hate-filled" or unempathetic, was simply too easy. It is not always easy to understand an A+ player, and Holmes is indisputably an A+ player....So I stepped back from the superficial and reviewed the depth of it." Excerpt from Oliver Wendell Holmes and His Imbeciles - Stand for America? [*2]
* Gregg Zegarelli, Esq., earned both his Bachelor of Arts Degree and his Juris Doctorate from Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His dual major areas of study were History from the College of Liberal Arts and Accounting from the Business School (qualified to sit for the CPA examination), with dual minors in Philosophy and Political Science. He has enjoyed Adjunct Professorships in the Duquesne University Graduate Leadership Master Degree Program (The Leader as Entrepreneur; Developing Leadership Character Through Adversity) and the University of Pittsburgh Law School (The Anatomy of a Deal). He is admitted to various courts throughout the United States of America.
Gregg Zegarelli, Esq.,?is Managing Shareholder of Technology & Entrepreneurial Ventures Law Group, PC.?Gregg is nationally rated as "superb" and has more than 35 years of experience working with entrepreneurs and companies of all sizes, including startups,?INC. 500, and publicly traded companies.?He is author of One: The Unified Gospel of Jesus, and The Business of Aesop? article series, and co-author with his father, Arnold Zegarelli, of The Essential Aesop: For Business, Managers, Writers and Professional Speakers. Gregg is a frequent lecturer, speaker and faculty for a variety of educational and other institutions.
? 2024 Gregg Zegarelli, Esq. Gregg can be contacted through LinkedIn.
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Managing Shareholder at Technology & Entrepreneurial Ventures Law Group, PC
2 个月Tough circumstances require tough decisions.
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2 个月Not sure if you were a M*A*S*H fan but if so, remember the episode where Hawkeye, obviously being troubled by something, is forced to meet with Sidney, the unit's psychiatrist? After several sessions the source of his pain was finally revealed to be an incident where they were transporting a bus of S.Korean refugees. The enemy was getting near and they had to hide the bus in the brush. There was a crying baby and Hawkeye kept yelling at the mother to "shut that baby up". And eventually she did. By smothering it to avoid the groups detection. She killed her child so that they all could live.