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Transcript

But not all city-states in Ancient Greece were as static as Sparta. In fact, at least one was the complete opposite. While Sparta suppressed the creativity of its citizens and resisted any change, any innovation, Athens fostered a culture of creativity, trying out new ways of living, technological innovation, and conjuring up new philosophical ideas. In other words, where Sparta was a static society, Athens was a dynamic one. 

The Persian Wars had left Athens in ruins, but one statesman, Pericles, was determined to rebuild the city both literally and culturally. During his rule, between roughly 460 and 429BC, he did that in spades. Historians describe fifth century Athens as a ‘Golden Age’ or even the ‘Age of Pericles’, and for good reason. 

Under Pericles’ leadership, Athens made progress in nearly every dimension. Architecture blossomed, culminating in the famous Parthenon. Socrates established new modes of philosophical exploration, and Plato founded his Academy in the city. Historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides made their home in Athens, and their work is cited to this day. Artists and artisans alike created timeless works within the city’s walls, and free trade brought wealth to entrepreneurs and workers all the same. Politically, Pericles pushed for more democracy than Ancient Greece had grown accustomed to, establishing one of the most egalitarian societies the world had yet seen.

Artists, philosophers, freedom of movement, trade, and open political participation. If told about these facets of Athenian’s Golden Age, the Spartans just a few hundred miles away would have spat on the ground, dismissive or disgusted by such practices. But because of Sparta’s perfectly honed, creativity-suppressing culture, these Spartans would hardly have thought of these things in the first place. Sparta’s rigid hierarchies would never bend to incorporate, say, an eccentric philosopher, or a new way of doing pottery, or a fresh way of integrating new political participants. 

We saw the kind of memes that drove Sparta to stasis–namely, those that disable and suppress the creativity of its citizens. But what kind of memes drove Athens’ dynamism?

In Athens, Plato developed ideas we now call ‘Platonism’ or ‘Idealism’--that our physical world is but an imperfect copy of an abstract, unchanging world of forms. So, the chairs people created and engaged with in our everyday lives were merely approximations to the idealized chair that existed in Plato’s world of forms. Because abstract objects were the ‘true’ objects, Plato thought that we could understand how the world works by studying the world of forms, rather than by getting our hands dirty and exploring the corporeal world of the here-and-now.

But Plato’s greatest pupil, Aristotle, disagreed. Aristotle thought that we learned about our world, not by sitting in our armchairs and thinking about abstractions, but by going out into the world and studying and engaging with it directly. For instance, some call Aristotle the first biologist for all of his field work and taxonomic categorization of living things.

As historian Arthur Herman writes, “If Plato tells us to leave the cave in order to find a higher truth beyond the senses, Aristotle retorts: Don’t be in such a hurry. What happens in that cave is not only important, but the only reality we can truly know.”

Neither Plato nor any other Athenian seriously came down on Aristotle for dissenting from his teacher. On the contrary, Aristotle thrived, and he earned himself a swathe of students and founded his own school just outside of Athens called the Lyceum. Aristotle disobeyed his teacher, but not only was he not punished for it–he made progress because of it, and persuaded others to drop Plato’s ideas in favor of his own. 

The memes of Athenian society spread by surviving criticism–those ideas that survived the most criticism were retained and copied, while rival variants that failed to satisfy people’s criticisms fell by the wayside. These are the kinds of memes that define and dominate a dynamic society more generally–those that spread by enabling creativity and surviving open exposure to criticism, rather than by suppressing criticism and creativity as in the static Sparta. Athenian students copied Aristotle’s theory not because they felt psychological pressure to obey, but because they thought about his idea in light of competing ones, like Plato’s, and found them wanting.

Consider again the Spartan boy who seeks to copy the memes of the wrestler. He does not filter the wrestler’s sweep kick through his own criticisms. He wishes to copy the move only to the extent that it furthers his obedience to Sparta’s broader culture. He wouldn’t dare disobey by modifying the kick. On the other hand, an Athenian boy watching the wrestler may criticize some faults in the sweep kick, think of improvements to it, and develop his own version of the move. He then may try it out, and other boys, noticing the superiority of this new version, may do the same. This is Athenian dynamism in action–a bubbling cauldron of creativity, disobedience, novelty, and the eventual adoption of new ways of being. 

Sparta’s static society was defined by a tradition of obedience; Athens’ dynamic society, a tradition of criticism. 

Now, our society is the first to embody sustained progress over many generations, starting with the Enlightenment around the late seventeenth century. But fifth century Athens had the right institutions, memetics, and traditions to have had its own Enlightenment and never-ending stream of progress. Yet the Athenian Golden Age ended after less than a century. Why?

Even dynamism cannot guarantee sustained progress–indeed, nothing can. A few decades after Pericles’ death, Sparta defeated Athens in what is known as the Peloponnesian War. Blood is not the only thing spilt in war, and Sparta snuffed out Athens’ dynamism and optimism in her victory. Athen’s Golden Age had ended, and with it, the chance for unbounded progress in all directions. 

The death of Athens is a tragedy in its own right, but we should take it as a warning. For while our dynamism has lasted for over three hundred years already, we cannot–can never–rest on our laurels. As we’ll see, there are Spartas around every corner, eager to snuff us out. From both without and within, memes that spread by suppressing creativity and criticism threaten memes that foster them. But while victory is not guaranteed, we will only lose if we make the wrong choices. Neither God nor man nor fluke accident determines our fate. We alone can decide whether our dynamic society progresses until the end of time or goes the way of Athens.