Name: On The Melian Dialogue
Uploaded: 2020-03-30T04:47:56.000Z
Duration: 4 min
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I've been thinking a lot about this famous moment in history.

It happened around 2400 years ago in ancient Greece.

The story stars the city state of Athens, which is widely credited for giving us so many of our ideas about democracy and freedom.

In the fifth century BC really was a remarkable place not only because it was a democracy, but also because Plato and Socrates were living and philosophizing.

Sophocles was writing and take a knee and edifice.

Rex, as well as serving an elected office and facilities, was revolutionizing the writing of history.

In fact, we know about the Milian dialogue primarily because of him.

So Athens was 15 years into the Peloponnesian War, which was fought against their great enemy.

That Spartans and the island of Meatless, which is about 110 kilometers off the coast of mainland Greece, was neutral in the war.

The millions were closely related to the Spartans, but they didn't fight with um, and then in 4 16 b.

The Athenian sent 38 ships with 3000 soldiers to capture the island of Milos or else forced the millions to pay tribute.

The millions were like, Hey, it's not moral to attack of people who are neutral, who pose no threat to you your Athens, you're the school of Greece, the cradle of justice and according to facilities thehe theme, Ian's replied, The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

After a siege on their city, the millions eventually surrendered, and the Athenians murdered all of the men of Mila's and sold all of the women and Children into slavery.

And that line the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must has reverberated through history.

Like some argue, it's the guiding principle of history that the story of humans is of powerful people doing whatever they can to increase and defend that power while powerless people suffer whatever they must.

I don't think that humans are merely power seeking animals and I don't think that you can understand the whole human story by seeing humans as turning their faces to power the way that plants turn towards the sun.

But around the world and across time we do find many, many examples of the powerful doing whatever they can in the week suffering whatever they must.

We see it in the experiences of refugee populations.

We see that Children and vulnerable people are far more likely to be abused and mistreated, and we see diseases that disproportionately affect the poor received less funding for treatment and research.

I mean, 266,000 Children under the age of five died of malaria last year, 266,000.

And on some level they didn't actually die of malaria, which, with more robust health care systems, would usually be treatable.

They died because the weak suffer what they must.

But again, I don't think that needs to be the whole human story, like trying to become stronger and make others weaker is not actually a very effective strategy, either personally or geopolitically.

The Athenians, after all, lost the Peloponnesian War in the end.

But more to the point, we know that other people suffering less does not mean that we will suffer Maur because human life is not a zero sum game.

In fact, when more people get the chance to live a healthy life and seek educational opportunities.

Life gets better for the strong as well as the week because we have more potential innovators to solve our problems and because we are a deeply interconnected and interdependent species.

Like 75 years ago, the richest people in the world had no way to prevent themselves from getting measles.

150 years ago, the most powerful people on earth had no air conditioning for their castles or cars to drive.

All those changes happened in part because humans began to understand that Maur for me does not necessarily mean less for you.

And I worry sometimes that we're forgetting those lessons that we are instead embracing the Athenian worldview, which proved so disastrous not only for the millions but also for the Athenians themselves.

I think building norms and systems that protect the weak from the Geneva Conventions to child labor laws has helped make the world safer and more just for all of us.

 Obviously, there's a lot left to do, but I think to do that work, we need to stand with the millions of today's world. 

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On The Melian Dialogue

vulnerable

strategy

embrace

ancient