/lit/ - Literature

the Spartans, of course, had a system that was basically custom-built to produce people that the entire world of antiquity would have been terrified to fuck with. you wouldn't want them as your landlord, but when it was time to fuck up some Persians, what you want is people who

>do not ask how many, but only where they are.

you can't - we see this - *found a state* on this idea. this was Plato's dilemma. true, the Spartans win the Peloponnesian war, but ultimately it's Greece that loses it. you want Athens and Sparta to *get along* and bring out the best of *both* in each other, in a harmonious co-participation of opposites. Plato wrote a whole book about this, it's called The Republic and it's probably the single greatest work of Western philosophy. or it was, at least, for about 2000 years.

you get the idea. Plato did not lack for Cosmotech sensibilities, but he didn't invent it all himself, he borrowed it from the Spartans as well as the Athenians. Christendom also, as grand and glorious an experiment in Cosmotech as ever there was. and even Hegel and Napoleon. we need another dose of that. it will be small, and very humble. and it comes to be in a world of absolute chaos. i'm okay with Zen Acceleration for the time being. but it's pretty neat to think about.