“This is the factory of fear.”
The Spartan Dienekes, in Gates of Fire, referring to the human body, the mortal flesh
In heaven, or perhaps upon higher planes of reality, you and I may be present in some incorporeal form. We may exist in spirit only. We may be phantoms or angels or ghosts. Or, as the Hermetics believed, we may exist purely as thoughts in the mind of “the All”, their term for God.
But here on Earth, we have a body.
That body can be hurt.
That body can feel pain.
That body can be maimed and mutilated.
And that body can die.
Nor do you or I need to think about this or process it rationally and cerebrally. Our flesh does the thinking for us. Fear is built into our bones. The body will produce, all by itself in situations of peril, what scientists would call “involuntary autonomic responses.” Stuff we cannot control.
The throat goes dry, breath comes short, our hands sweat; they tremble; our knees shake. The voice vanishes or comes out in that “chicken voice.” We may shit ourselves, piss in our pants, lose all ability to think. We may drop everything in our hands, abandon those we love, and every ideal we believe in. We may run for the hills as fast as we can.
Alexander the Great toward the end of his life used to stay up all night, sacrificing to the god Phobos.
Fear.
In Gates of Fire, the Spartan captain Dienekes instructing his young protégé, Alexandros, indicates the flesh, the body.
This is the factory of fear.
He’s trying to school the young warrior in techniques to overcome this most primal of human (and animal) instincts—self-preservation.
His aim is to instill a Warrior Mindset, to impart a Warrior Ethos. The whole purpose of this code, this aspiration, this conception of honor is TO OVERCOME FEAR.
Hoplite warfare—Greek-style phalanx combat—was about fear … and whatever practices or laws or mindsets it took to overcome it, to produce in the individual warrior the reliable capacity to act in the face of fear.
Think about the build-up to a battle in that era. The action didn’t come at you out of nowhere like a contemporary ambush or IED or air attack. You knew it was coming. You had days, hours for the fear to build up, for you to think and anticipate and obsess about how you would respond in the fatal instant. Would you run? Would your knees turn to jelly? Would you be unable to catch your breath? Would you be killed or maimed?
Now you stand on the actual battlefield. You can see the enemy across from you. They’re banging their shields and thrusting their spears into the air. Their look is fearsome, with crested helmets and breastplates and shields, not to mention the sound of their shouting and their trumpets and drums.
Now you start forward, toward the enemy. You’re in your ranks, advancing to a cadence. Each step draws you closer to your own death. FEAR. The instinct of self-preservation is the strongest of all, not just in men but in beasts and even insects. And somehow you have to counter it. Somehow you have to find a way to keep going. And when the actual fight begins and spear-thrusts are being delivered at your throat, your eyes, your chest, you can’t run, you can’t take cover, you can’t strategically withdraw to some safe vantage from which you can shoot a rifle or call in an airstrike. You have to wade forward, amid the bedlam and the chaos and the confusion, and take down your man if you can and the man after him and the man after him.
And these clashes weren’t over quickly. The melee of thrusting and counter-thrusting could go on through stages of seeming victory, elation, the foe feeling before you, then suddenly turn about, with a sudden advance of the enemy on a flank hundreds of yards out of your sight and all at once your comrades and breaking ranks and falling back and bolting in terror all around you.
Fear.
When we study the Warrior Archetype today, we’re not undertaking this exercise because we imagine we’re going into and hand-to-hand battle against physical foes. We’re talking about fear. About our own fears. We’re talking about the same physical and emotional reactions that an ancient Spartan or a Roman felt on the field of battle.
How do we handle ourselves under conditions of fear? What resources can we call upon? Is there a mindset, a philosophy, a mental and emotional frame of mind that we can arm ourselves with?
You and I are human. We have bodies, and those bodies, just like Dienekes’ and Alexandros’, are factories of fear.
We’ll keep talking about this, and examining it, as we go forward in our investigation and our study of the Warrior Archetype.
Maybe the best of these yet. As a clinical psychologist, I enjoyed the comments on overcoming fear in “Gates of Fire”. Thanks for this series.
Fantastic. I have a new insight into taking the higher road, operating from a higher plane especially with the idea that this is where love exists.
Thank you.
Seems I’m often reading something else that resonates with what I see in this space. I was revisiting “The Dog Stars,” by Peter Heller. My buddies and I were talking about dogs getting older and I was recounting these favorite lines (in post-apocalyptic world, the main character Hig is thinking about his aging dog, Jasper): “He’s getting old. I don’t count the years. I don’t multiply by seven. They bred dogs for everything else, even diving for fish. Why didn’t they breed them to live longer? To live as long as a man.”
While digging for that line, I came across others (condensed, and note that Hig is not hugely articulate):
“In the beginning there was Fear. The flu killed almost everybody. The ones who are left are mostly Not Nice, why we live here on the plain, why I patrol every day. I started sleeping on the ground because of the attacks. Mostly the intruders came at night. They came singly or in groups, they came with weapons, with hunting rifles, with knives, they came to the porch light I left on like moths to a flame. I have four sixty watt panels on the house I don’t sleep in, so one LED light all night is no problem.”
No direct parallel with today post, really. Other than the theme of “fear” showing up on two screens at once.
Just put “Dog Stars” in my wish list. That is a terrific question, “…Why didn’t they breed them to live longer?” I’ve thought that myself hundreds of times.
The serendipity of reading about Fear on two different screens points, in my mind, to the validity of the message.
bsn
The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning;
Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air.
And he that stands will die for nought, and home there’s no returning.
The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.
A. E. Housman, Last Poems. “The Oracles”, stanza four.
Maybe fear is an over-used term? I preferred to call it ‘concern’:
Between 2006-2011, I had 14 embeds into Beirut, Iraq, Afg, totaling some 2 1/2 years. Ramadi, Fallujah, western Anbar, Helmand Prov. Combat Journalist during the exciting times. A fair amount of short firefights, and 2x vehicles in which I was traveling were IED’d, but not fortunately catastrophically. Some shrapnel in Afg. While I wouldn’t be hacked-up like Spartans or Persians, my concern was of burning. An IED was OK (I rationalized) , because I wouldn’t know. And let me re-emphasize that it was my choice to be there, so it was my karma if something happened. Not that I have a death wish; I knew my son and grandson would miss me, but my Sgt son understood and he’d take care of grandson.
Was I afraid before we went on patrol? Not for me – but I was VERY concerned that if we got attacked, I’d zig instead of zag and some young Marine would be killed or wounded trying to help me. That worried me 24/7, and I was hyper-vigilant on every mission; if I was going to get whacked, let it not be because I was a knucklehead, and please not let me be the cause of a young Marine’s death.
I also knew, to bring this back to ‘Gates of Fire’ context, that the Marines with whom I embedded would look after me as I would do my best for them. That put the odds in my favor., and was of huge comfort. Oh, the day after I was IED’d, and after I picked up some shrapnel? I unquestioningly went out again; as did the Marines with whom I was embedded.
Anyway; I hope this doesn’t destroy anyone’s ideas of combat, but thought to share.
Spot F-Bomb on!
bsn
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There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 1 John 4:18
Wise words.
2048
It is wonderful to be here with everyone, I have a lot of knowledge from what you share, to say thank you, the information and knowledge here helps me a lot
Informative blog.
It is wonderful to be here with everyone,
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