Mining the gold from history.
Mining the gold from history.
The history of the human race is complicated to say the least both morally and functionally. When you study the history of people you will be confronted with the contradictions of humanity. With this however you can find useful skills or mindsets from our collective ancestors. You really do have to pan for the gold from the muck in this process.
I have always been inspired by the people of the past, they always have struck me as borderline superhuman in their feats and accomplishments. Today I am going to focus on three distinct groups of people who were all warriors but what I am taking from them is not the martial aspects. We will instead be focusing on their greater call to humanity and attributes of nobility. The Samurai, the Knights and the Romans. These three groups have echoed throughout history into our times and continue to shape our world in many ways.
With the Samurai I am focusing on their aspects of discipline through service. The word Samurai literally means one who serves. This was intended towards their daimyos and the leadership caste in their culture. But I take it as a lesson towards how this type of service and be redirected towards ones peers and society at large. A Samurai was generally born into this strata of society and was instructed in the arts of war, poetry and governorship from a young age. These are noble pursuits when applied with a honest heart. The balance of these things can seem contradictory, but they are focused towards creating a balanced individual who can function in both peace and war. These traits are guided towards the service of their people. I have found in my youth I was fascinated by the warrior aspect and the glory of the Samurai charging into battle. Nowadays I see the poetry and the nobility of character to truly be the qualities that best serve my peers and society. When you are studying these people you will be struck by the brutality of their society and their culture. There is no way around that aspect, but you have to recognize that the past is functionally a alien planet to us. These people had very different carrots and sticks that operated in their daily lives. Their sensitivity to the disparagement of their honor leading to a great deal of death and brutality is a moral lesson to me. You do have to sift that out of the lessons they can teach you. That doesn't mean they were stupid they just really did live in a different world than we do.
The Knights are a fair bit similar to the Samurai they were also a warrior caste that people were generally born into. They also served their lords or kings. Their honor was absolutely a factor in the way they interacted in wider society. The crusades have even been called a exporting of the violence on peasants to the holy lands so they can at least be useful to society. Knights were very complicated and they didn't have the same standardization as the Samurai had largely due to them consisting of many different cultures and even religious beliefs. The code of chivalry actually has many different forms depending on the time and place of the knight. That doesn't mean it is useless however. The duty of a knight is to defend those who cannot defend themselves and to serve God. Nowadays, that doesn't mean you strap on a sword jump on a horse and ride into battle. But it can be used to help those who are in need. Cleaning up trash in your community is a knightly deed. Helping people move is a knightly deed. When you see people who need help you just help them without intent for reward but because that is what you are called to do in this life. There is absolutely a risk in helping people sometimes. However, that should not discourage you from helping people that is part of the cost of being a good person. You will always have trials in this life, there is no getting around it. You might as well have them for standing up and doing the right thing.
Finally, the Romans, they were misogynistic, murderous slavers who conquered people for the glory of conquering them. However, they did at points in time have a remarkable ability to united disparate people under a wider society and welcome them into their culture and ways. As a American I see this a refection of our ideals. People come from many paths in life and they will often conflict however our ability to focus on love and not hate allows us to rise up together. The Roman Empire covered land from modern day Scotland to Egypt today. The sheer amount of diversity they had to contend with is remarkable. They absolutely had their own forms of rather bizarre racism but they were able to administer and promote people from all over their empire into their government and high ranking positions of society. If these people could do it over a span of 2000 years and 600 years ago at the nearest point in time, we can absolutely continue this process in our society. People come in all shapes and sizes our differences make us stronger. If everyone is thinking and acting the same we will like the lemmings go off the cliff someday all while agreeing with each other about what a great idea that is.
To recap when you are reading history its good to know the order in which things happened why one thing lead to another. But it's much more important to take lessons our ancestors spent a lot of blood and lifetimes learning so we could benefit. We all stand on the shoulders of giants do not take that for granted. Like my dad always says life is a roller coaster it goes up and it goes down. We can however learn from past examples and save a few downs.
With gratitude and love,
Fox
One must wander into the mists of history to come out the other side wiser.
