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On The Melian Dialogue

2018-11-27 · letter vlog · John · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Global development (also: History & curiosities) · mode: Personal essay · tags: heavy topic

John retells Thucydides' Melian Dialogue, in which Athens answered neutral Melos with 'the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must', and argues that although the powerful often prevail (as in child malaria deaths), human life is not a zero-sum game: protecting the weak makes life better for everyone.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The Melian Dialogue: classical Athens, the Peloponnesian War, the siege of Melos and the Athenians' reply

  • ★★ John says the Melian Dialogue happened about 2,400 years ago in ancient Greece; 5th-century BCE Athens was a democracy where Plato and Socrates philosophized and Sophocles wrote and held office. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John says Thucydides was revolutionizing the writing of history, and that we know about the Melian Dialogue primarily because of him. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ John says Athens was 15 years into the Peloponnesian War against Sparta when, in 416 BCE, it sent 38 ships and 3,000 soldiers against Melos, a neutral island about 110 km off mainland Greece, to capture it or force tribute. — 00:00:29

  • ★★★ John says the Melians argued it was immoral to attack a neutral people posing no threat, and that, per Thucydides, the Athenians replied that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. — 00:00:58

    “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”

  • ★★★ John says that after a siege the Melians surrendered, and the Athenians murdered all the men of Melos and sold the women and children into slavery. — 00:01:13

00:01:27 — Against power as history's guiding principle: the weak still suffer (malaria deaths), but life is not zero-sum and protecting the weak helps all

  • ★★ John says the Athenian line has reverberated through history; some argue it is history's guiding principle, the powerful extending their power while the powerless suffer. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ John thinks that view an oversimplification: humans are not merely power-seeking animals, and the human story cannot be understood as faces turning to power like plants to the sun. (hedged) — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ John says there are still many examples of the powerful doing what they can and the weak suffering: refugees, abuse of children and vulnerable people, and less funding for diseases of the poor. — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ John says 266,000 children under five died of malaria last year (2017), almost all of them poor. — 00:01:56 · malaria, child mortality
  • ★★★ John says those children did not really die of malaria, usually treatable with more robust health systems, but because the weak suffer what they must. (hedged) — 00:02:26 · malaria
  • ★★★ John says trying to become stronger and make others weaker is not a very effective strategy, personally or geopolitically: the Athenians lost the Peloponnesian War in the end. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ John says other people suffering less does not mean we will suffer more, because human life is not a zero-sum game. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ John says when more people can live healthy lives and seek education, life improves for the strong as well as the weak: more potential innovators, and we are a deeply interdependent species. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ John says 75 years ago even the richest could not prevent measles, and 150 years ago the most powerful had no air conditioning or cars; these changes came partly from seeing that more for me need not mean less for you. — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ John worries we are forgetting these lessons and embracing the Athenian worldview, which proved disastrous for the Melians and for the Athenians themselves. (hedged) — 00:03:24
  • ★★★ John thinks building norms and systems that protect the weak, from the Geneva Conventions to child labor laws, has made the world safer and more just for all of us. (hedged) — 00:03:24
  • ★★ John says much is left to do and, in a partly garbled closing line, that we need to stand with the millions of today's world. (hedged) — 00:03:53

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Classical Athens · Melian Dialogue · Melos · might makes right · zero-sum game

Also: People: Plato · Socrates · Sophocles

Works: Antigone · Oedipus Rex

Concepts: child labour · child mortality · democracy · Interconnectedness · malaria · measles · refugee · slavery

Places: Ancient Greece · Sparta

Events: Peloponnesian War

Policies: Geneva Conventions

Only in the description or credits: Thucydides

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