Ancient versus Today's Warrior Stories

Ancient warrior stories like that of Achilles in Homer's Iliad involve three different periods. The period of the Trojan war some 3200 years ago, some 400 years after the Trojan war 2800 years ago when Homer wrote his story, and today, when people still read and retell Achilles warrior stories like they happened yesterday. A recent essay in Aeon goes into much detail about Achilles' honor and propitiation where honor means redressing insult with anger by killing and pillage and propitiate means gaining the good will of the gods, usually also by killing and pillage but also by compassion and friendship within your own warrior culture. In modern times people still retell these ancient warrior stories and therefore in some sense continue to perpetuate these stories.

The Aeon essay retells stories about the brutality of warriors like Achilles, but also relates the compassion and friendship within Achilles' warrior culture. It really is not that clear that honor and propitiation are much more than justification for the angry selfishness of killing and pillage of one group by another group...or is it purely defense? Really, there are a large number of justifications for the selfish killing and pillage of war but the main one always seems to be competition for limited resources and a desire to acquire wealth and power, whether defensive or offensive. After all, the defense of one's own property and life is also the provenience of the warrior.

Civilization today faces yet another paroxysm of warrior stories driven by a different ideology than Achilles, but with much the same result...lots of people die with lots of property destroyed or taken from them by warriors for one reason or another. There seems to be issues with honor today as well as propitiation driving today's warrior cultures, and yet the essay does not draw the obvious comparisons of warrior stories of the past with those of today.

It seems that this retelling of Achilles' warrior stories after 2800 years avoids the obvious comparisons to the warrior stories of today. Killing for insult out of anger takes lives and property and fulfills one group's selfishness while sharing of the spoils and cooperation fulfills another group's compassion. However, only a very small fraction of people are part of today's warrior stories and the rest of us just read and repeat stories we hear from storytellers.

The obvious follow-on issue is the continuing desire of civilization to retell these ancient stories in all of their guises and therefore provide the seed for future warrior paroxysms. After all, people retell the stories that move them and forget the stories that do not move them. In a sense, the continuing popularity of warrior stories reflects a fundamental dynamic between compassion and selfishness that is as valid today as it was for Homer in his Achilles.

Wars then are not really an aberration of human nature but war is a part of human nature and warriors provide just another way for civilization to redistribute limited resources among different peoples with different ideologies. As civilization advances now to 7 billion people, it is clear that the warrior cults are a very small fraction of people but still a large number of people like to hear and retell warrior stories. Warrior stories still persist today because there are still limited resources and therefore conflicts among ideologies and warriors still one way to reallocate resources and power by killing and pillage.

Do We Matter in the Cosmos...

There are certain transcendental beliefs that are a part of existence: being, identity, beauty, truth, and feeling. A recent Aeon essay Do we matter in the cosmos  by Nick Hughes opens with several sweeping statements of how insignificant is the matter and action of civilization and earth relative to the total matter and action of the universe. Hughes never mentions the role of transcendent belief and in particular, that he first of all has being, an identity, knows beauty, acknowledges truth, and certainly has feelings as well. With these transcendental and therefore cosmic beliefs not measurable by Science, Hughes concludes that he is insignificant. After all, Science tells us that civilization is only ~10,000 years within a universe of billions of years it would seem all of civilization is therefore insignificant. It would take 100,000 years to cross our galaxy traveling at the speed of light and so with the limitations of matter and energy, people cannot visit other stars in the galaxy in the same way that people visit other places on earth.

The essay does not mention the transcendentals at all and mentions causality briefly. Hughes does not evidently believe in the uncertainty of quantum futures and the fact that our matter is quantum entangled with all of the matter in the universe. Quantum phase noise plays a particular role in our differentiation of a classical determinate reality from the many possible futures of the actual quantum reality in which we actually live.

In the end, though, Hughes essay does conclude that even though civilization is not very massive compared to the universe, the neural resonances and Grand Narratives of civilization are most of what matters to us here on earth. So even though the size of the universe boggles the mind... so what? Likewise, the microscopic size of matter also boggles the mind... so what?

"And whether or not they are objectively valuable, the ends that matter to us, the things that we care about most – our relationships, our projects and goals, our shared experiences, social justice, the pursuit of knowledge, the creation and appreciation of art, music and literature, and the future and fate of ours and other species – do not depend to any considerable extent on our having control over a vast but largely irrelevant Universe...Most of what matters to us is right here on Earth."

The essay argues that the time and space of the universe makes people and civilization seem insignificant in comparison since we cannot personally visit most of the universe. Hughes does not mention that the size of the atom is a microscopic world that we also cannot personally visit either. We also cannot visit the tens of thousands of miles of the vast matter of inner earth nor can we visit Venus' surface or the surface or interior of the sun. So there are a lot of places that people cannot visit and yet there is no mention of our insignificance as a result of not being able to visit the sun or the center of the earth.

People tell stories and share experiences about their discoveries and these narratives limits the possible futures that people discover. Travel across the universe requires the matter equivalent energy of the universe and a journey to the our galaxy center and back would not take 58,000 years for those travelers at the speed of light. A the speed of light, a traveler would only experience a moment of time in such a journey. Even at less than light speed, a space ship accelerating at 1 g and then using the supermassive black hole to slingshot a return to earth would only take about 25 years. Of course, during that journey earth would still age 58,000 years according to relativity and the spaceship would therefore return to a very different earth.

Also, the matter equivalent energy needed to maintain 1 g acceleration for 15 years is beyond science today but there might be ways to use galaxy spiral gravity waves to boost future journeys at this scale, so called gravitization waves. Gravity waves, after all, are something that science is just learning about and so maybe we can catch a gravity wave and surf our way to the galaxy center. It would take the matter equivalent of ~600 MW nuclear reactor to accelerate a 100 MT ship at 1 g for a year. After all, spacecrafts already use the gravity assist of earth and other bodies to accelerate and so future spacecraft may surf gravity waves for space travel.

We do matter in the cosmos since it is us who determines what matters to us and not anybody outside of our own local universe. The definition of a universe is the matter and action that we affect and that in turn affects us during our lives. The universe that we imagine does not exist until we experience that universe and so we are in fact the most important part of our own universe since neither it nor its uncertain future would exist without us observing it.