I haven’t been using the WEIRD acronym very much lately. My head is buried in books that have taken me back to ancient Rome and Persia, and there’s another one which I am enjoying very much called The Rigor of Angels. As with my last day in the life post, I am still struggling with a varied set of first world problems that are taking up my disposable income and disposable time and giving me disposable headaches. Still, I’ve had time to wander out into the interwebz and chat with the rabble outside of this preserve of civility at Substack.
This is what has got my attention this morning. This and the fact of the escalating war in Southern Lebanon and the one still raging in Ukraine, and yeah who knows what the Houthis are actually doing today. The fickle eye of major media allows us to get disposably bored with their disposable information and say with all honesty that the LA Dodgers are interesting this season. I’m thinking about buying a jersey.
Dollar Street
Dollar Street is the map of people you can see, watch short videos of their family pix and check out their material goods. Family 171 lives in Jordan.
The family lives in Jordan. H is 60 years old and works as a driver. His wife E is 49 years old and they live with their 3 children in a rented 3-bedroom house. The family likes the peaceful and quiet environment of the house, but the only thing they dislike is that it has too many stairs. Their favorite item in the house is the blankets. The next thing they plan on buying is a smart TV. Their dream is to buy their own house someday.
I simply cannot imagine living on a budget of $600 per month, even though that’s what I made as a clerk for City National Bank in 1980. That is $2,170 in today’s money. Yesterday I watched, as I do, The World According to Briggs in consideration of where I might live in the US for under $1500 a month. It was both depressing and encouraging at the same time. There are still some places where you can hole up and survive the worst. Not that I’m prepping for prepping, but I would look for something rural in hill country in close proximity to a good sized Army base. A river would be a big plus. Hmm. Now I’ve got myself thinking.
Whenever my first world headaches distract me from doing brilliant work manifesting AWS architectures, I tend to read more books about military conflict. It makes me consider the blessings of my gated community. But I read something about the roads to Athens that reminded me of the metaphor of the shield.
The Metaphor of the Shield
Hoplites are those guys from that homoerotic movie 300 that launched a million memes about Sparta. If you remember, they collected into a formation called a phalanx in which spears protruded from just above the interlocked shields. Marching in formation made the phalanx very formidable but they did have two weaknesses. The first was being flanked, attacked from the side, but some adjustments could be made. No, the biggest threat to the unified strength of the phalanx was panic. You see hoplites are volunteers. That shield is their father’s shield. That spear was passed down, and the phalanx is comprised of ordinary peasants making $600 actual dollars per month. In ancient Greece it was a citizen militia. It was only as effective as its weakest link.
The man who asks what do I think I’m doing here. The man who stubs his toe or suddenly freezes. The man who carries a grudge or a superstition. All hoplites and all hoplite commanders knew that this vulnerability was ever present.
This vulnerability pales in comparison to the grudge of an aristocrat. It isn’t difficult at all to imagine a city under siege in which some spoiled rich bastard decides to open the back door to the enemy. You’ve seen such characters interviewed on TV hundreds of times. They tell you exactly how much they doubt the current regime. They tell you how much it needs to go the other way.
So I woke up this morning thinking how many traitors do we have in America. How many would do damage to the metaphorical shield of patriotism? How many would facilitate enemy action? How many are telling us that the system is corrupt and needs to be burned down? Probably a million. But are they the right million?
We have a lot of back doors. We can be degraded.
Beyond Hope
I conceptualize a spectrum.
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