Whiners Never Win

"I don't feel good."

"I'm so tired."

"My boss never listens to my suggestions."

"My husband never cleans up after himself."

"I got passed up for a promotion, again."

"Why are people so [insert negative adjective here]?"

"Why does this always happen to me?"

Do words like these come out of your mouth (or crowd your thoughts) on a regular basis? These are the symptoms of Toxic Mind, a highly contagious condition afflicting millions of people worldwide.

Never heard of Toxic Mind? Sure you have. You just might know it under its synonym: being a whiner.

You don't want to be a whiner, do you? Always complaining, playing the victim, and blaming others for your problems? You know that moaning, bitching, and whining only worsen your problems, and yet you continue as if you are helpless, a slave to your condition.

Canadian FWP

Don't worry: there is a cure for Toxic Mind. You can reprogram yourself. You can train yourself to think more efficiently. Consider this an intervention!

The stuff I'm about to tell you is going to sound like common sense, and rightfully so. Understanding how the remedy works is easy; the real challenge is implementation. It's going to take practice and hard work, and even then you will backslide. But so long as you keep the principles I'm about to teach you firmly in mind, you will never contract Toxic Mind again.

Before we get started, let's confirm your diagnosis.

What is a whiner?

A whiner is the victim of endless misfortunes, tragedies, and injustices. Quick to assign blame externally, a whiner never turns a critical eye inward. He never attempts to identify the common denominator underlying all his problems: himself. Accountable for nothing, he spends his days fuming and stewing over slights both real and imagined, poised between discontentment and indignation.

The root of a whiner's problem is mental weakness. Accustomed to getting what she wants without resistance, the mere hint of adversity, of things not going precisely how she wants them to, sends her into a downward spiral.

She may have been an optimist once but "the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts" and her thoughts have become increasingly toxic. The more she indulges poisonous ideas, the deeper she plunges into whiner territory.

The whiner never wins; not because he never succeeds but because his Toxic Mind prevents him from appreciating his success. Instead of celebrating, he greets victory by focusing on its downside or the fact that things could've worked out better than they did.

Is this you?

If you're genuinely considering the question, congratulations: you're on the path to knowing yourself! The journey has its rough patches but be brave: you're one step ahead of the rest and more importantly, one step closer to self-improvement.

Just a side-note: you don't have to be a whiner in order to benefit from the forthcoming remedy. If you ever feel anxious, stressed, angry, jealous, bitter, vexed, frustrated, irritated, or perturbed, and would like to get a handle on these toxic emotions, the following is for you.

***

The remedy to your woes can be found in the Serenity Prayer made famous by 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous. It goes:

God grant me the serenity 

to accept the things I cannot change; 

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.

Now because I know a lot of my readers are godless heathens, here's another version from the Roman philosopher Epictetus:

"Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. Some things are up to us and some things are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices."

Some things are within our power to change while others are not. What Epictetus and the Serenity Prayer tell us is that we should distinguish between the two and focus our energies on the things we can change, taking the rest as it happens.

That last part might make you uncomfortable. Is Epictetus telling you to bear misfortune, tragedy, insult, and injustice without fighting back? To take the bad stuff passively, "as it happens?"

Of course not. The quote opens with "make the best use of what is in your power," meaning that if you have the ability to improve a situation, mitigate damage done, or resolve a conflict, you should do just that.

What use is whining when you can eliminate the source of your whining?

Do not whine: act.

What about the things that are completely beyond your control? Are you expected to bear these without flinching?

Not immediately, no. But with some practice you may eventually learn to silence the useless grumblings of your mind. Next time something vexes you, remember the following:

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

If you have done everything in your power to resolve a problem and your efforts have fallen short, or if an unforeseen tragedy or disaster has befallen you, you still have power over your own mind and the ability to move on without letting it poison your thoughts.

You always have a choice. You can suffer the effects of misfortune and let it spoil your mood for hours, days, months, or even years to come; or you can suffer the effects of misfortune, learn whatever lesson you can from it, and move on.

Remember that your mind generates the reality you experience. No one else sees what you see, hears what you hear, or thinks what you think. By changing the way you perceive the world, you alter your reality.

Or as Buddha put it, "All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world."

Thanks Buddha!

Once you train yourself to distinguish between the things you can control and the things you can't, you will find yourself transformed.

Insults will fly harmlessly past you--you can't control what people think or say about you, so why let it perturb you?

Setbacks and obstacles will become challenges and lessons--might as well derive some benefit from  otherwise negative experiences, right?

Lastly, the difficult people in your life will become sparring partners--who better to help you practice your new-found mindset than those who cause you distress?

So quit whining. If you can improve a situation, do so. If, on the other hand, nothing can be done, learn from the experience and move on with your life.

The list of things outside your control is exhaustive. Luckily for you, the only thing you need control over is yours and yours alone.

Learn to use your mind properly and you will have no need to whine or complain.

/rant over

Two Cent Rant: BC Teacher's Strike

Hey Jason: you wanted to hear my opinion on the teacher's strike?

Here's my two cents.

***

Let me cut to the chase: I believe that crime, unemployment, poverty, drug addiction, preventable diseases, teen pregnancy, and a slew of other problems could be greatly reduced by making a long-term investment in public education. What better way to inoculate our nation against the ills listed above than by investing in its future--the kids who will one day form the backbone of its economy and government?

Make no mistake: the initial investment will require careful planning and foresight. Intestinal fortitude will be necessary in order to stay the course and follow through with the plan. The return on our investment will not be immediate so we the people will need to exercise patience and, more importantly, faith--faith in the plan and those who concocted it: the bold and imaginative policy-makers we have elected to office.

But wait, what am I saying? Careful planning? Foresight? Intestinal fortitude? Boldness? Imagination? These are precisely the qualities lacking in our current crop of policy-makers. Our "representatives" are so far out of touch with the people and issues of the day that they barely deserve the name.

Let's be clear: MP's and MLA's represent themselves and a select few, not the masses. So whenever a group of people--be they veterans, postal workers, unions, researchers, or teachers--come into conflict with the government, I instantly side with the people. Anyone who buys the government's Kool-Aid should give their head a firm shake.

We've seen time and time again how the government excels at deception, manipulation, corruption, and, when its intentions are good (which is rare), incompetence. You don't need to understand the fine points of the issue at hand in order to pick a side. All you need to do is ask yourself: when's the last time the government lied, cheated, stole, or mislead the public?

I'll help you out.

Here's an article from the Vancouver Sun about how the BC Liberals, poised to take power back in 2001, promised pubic sector workers that they would not roll back contracts signed by the outgoing NDP government. The article goes on to detail how the Liberals did exactly that, reversing provisions in education and healthcare only a year after they promised they would do no such thing.

Here's another article about how the Supreme Court of BC has twice declared the dissolution of the teachers' contract at the hands of the Liberals illegal. But hey, who's counting?

So yeah, if I have to choose between a government composed of lying criminals and the people tasked with educating future generations of Canadians, I choose the people. Always.

The teacher's strike is pretty clear cut in my mind. BC teachers fought hard and willingly traded wage increases in exchange for a say in the size and composition of their classrooms. The government agreed to the terms and things were looking good until the Liberals took power and, in 2002, tore up the agreement, which was illegal by the way, just in case you forgot.

To reiterate: they were willing to forgo a raise in order to improve classroom conditions. They literally put the kids first, and the government screwed them over. 

BC's teachers are trying to get back what was unjustly taken from them over a decade ago. I don't think that's unfair, do you? But people aren't really talking about that. Most people I talk to are fixated on the money, so let's address it here and now.

Teachers should be making good money. No one blinks at the fact that MP's make 120K a year to lie, cheat, and steal, but when we hear of teachers making 80K after 10 years on the job we get our panties in a bunch. Do you realize what these people are tasked with? They're molding the minds of tomorrow. I hope you don't need to have kids of your own to understand the importance of this mandate. 

Even so, BC teachers rank 4th among the provinces with regard to salary. Add to this the fact that BC's cost of living and housing market are ridonculous and you start to see how they really compare to their counterparts across Canada.

Oh, and the summers. People love to throw that in there. "Fucking whiny teachers! I wish I had 2 months off every year." Do you also wish you could spend your evenings grading papers and prepping tomorrow's classes? Do you wish you could be responsible for 30+ kids , many of whom have learning, developmental, and language difficulties? Do you wish you could spend your own money on supplies and materials because there's no room in the puny budget?

I can hear you out there: "But-but-but--that's part of the job!"

Exactly. It's part of the job. So is having summers off. So get over it.

Bottom line: teachers are telling us that they don't have the resources necessary to do a good job. Their classrooms are too full, they have too many special-needs students, and they lack the resources to cope.

And since their job is to educate the next generation of Canadians--the people who are going to drive the economy and potentially govern the rest of us in the near future--I say we listen to them and tell the scumbag government to make good on the promises it broke--illegally, I might add again, in case you forgot--over ten years ago.

But if you ask me--and you did, so now you have to listen--the real issue is bigger than crowded classrooms and scant resources. The entire system is broken and in dire need of a makeover. I could go on and on but this video does a much better job explaining my views coherently:

Again, I hear you: "That's all fine and good, but where are we going to get the money to reform public education?"

Our government squanders tax dollars on all kinds of crap without our permission. Maybe if we hold them accountable for their actions we can free up some cash for the kids.

Just a thought.

Until then I'll continue to side with the teachers.

/rant over

Two Cent Rants

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” 

--Marcus Aurelius

I have an opinion about everything. Give me a topic--any topic--and I will give you an opinion. It may not be valid, and I'll be the first to tell you as much, but I'll offer it up nonetheless. Ignornance is no obstacle. If I don't know much about a given topic I'll do a bit of research, and then, voila! here's my opinion.

The thing is, opinions are like assholes: everybody's got one. To make matters worse, most people think theirs smells like roses while everyone else's smells like shit.

Not me. I know better. All opinions are equal. Some may appear more valid than others but in reality, they all smell like shit.

That's why I pride myself on providing insightful opinions, not valid ones. Insight is always valuable. It can give you a new perspective on a familiar issue or prompt you to consider a novel or unusual idea.

Remember my mandate? I'm the Meme Merchant, trading in ideas old and new, familiar and foreign, sane and insane. My goal? To help you see how everything is connected. Nothing stands alone, distinct and separate from the rest: all things stand in relation to each other like the different parts of a machine or components of a single organism.

Ideas are no different. Each one is connected not only to the mind that spawned it but also to every subsequent mind that carries and shapes it. Just as ecologists make no distinction between organisms and the environments they inhabit, neither should we distinguish between ideas and minds. Both are intrinsically connected and inseparable.

What is an idea without a mind to carry it? What is a mind devoid of ideas?

The organism-environment analogy is extremely apt. Certain minds make better ecosystems than others; likewise, some ideas thrive in certain minds better than others. Ideas that compete over the same psychological resources fight tooth-and-nail for survival. Some die out while others thrive and multiply, spreading virulently from mind to mind.

It's not a one-sided relationship, either. Some ideas pay huge dividend by helping us shape the world around us. Houses, cars, skyscrapers, computers, robots, and every other human-made object in the world owes its existence to an idea. Other ideas give us hope, belief in a higher purpose, or the means to master our unruly emotions.

The way we talk, dress, act, think--these are all byproducts of the memes we house in our brains.

In this context, it's easy to see why Marcus Aurelius felt the way he did. How can we take any opinion seriously when we know that it's just another selfish little meme wanting nothing more than to procreate, even at the expense of other ideas.

We're all meme merchants whether we know it or not. We're constantly trading opinions, ideas, trends, and beliefs with each other.

So far my exchange with you has been terribly one-sided. I've been selfish, writing about all the stuff that gets me fired up, never once considering what you might want to read about.

Any merchant worth his salt knows that commerce is all about supply and demand.

What is your demand? What ideas do you want to see stripped down and laid bare? What topic would you like to learn about but never had the time or motivation to explore on your own? History, politics, philosophy, pop-culture, sports, space, conspiracy theories, whatever. You name it, I'll write about it.

It may not be pretty but I promise it will be interesting.

Please send all requests to bellevue.estates@gmail.com, or hit me up on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.

I already have a topic for my first Two Cent Rant. Thanks to King Purcey and my little Pendeja for the request. I've been wanting to write about this topic for a while now but kept putting it on the back-burner. Well guess what? The time is now.

Want a hint? He's the hottest young politician on Parliament Hill (doesn't take much to win that contest) and if the latest polls mean anything (they don't), he might be the next prime minister of Canada.

Musketeer, or leader of the Liberal Party?

Till next week!

/rant over

Good Guy Cyrus (Cyrus the Neglected, Conclusion)

"Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whom he has taken by his right hand to subdue nations before him and strip the loins of kings, to force gateways before him that their gates be closed no more: I will go before you leveling the heights. I will shatter the bronze gateways, smash the iron bars. I will give you the hidden treasures, the secret hoards, that you may know that I am the Lord." (Isaiah 45:1-3)

On October 7th, 540BCE—47 years after the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of her people to Babylon—king Nabonidus, Nebuchadnezzar's son-in-law and  ruler of the Neo-Babylonian empire, was having a pretty terrible day. Cyrus the Great had just dealt his army a resounding defeat at the strategic city of Opis and now, the city of Sippar--Nabonidus' home away from home--was surrendering to the Persian king without a fight.

The citizens welcomed Cyrus as their liberator, and rightfully so. As Joseph Campbell wrote in Myths to Live By:

"[Cyrus'] idea for the government of an empire was neither to massacre nor to uproot, but to return peoples to their places, restoring them to their gods and governing them through subordinate kings of their own races and traditions."

When put in this light, it's easy to see why the people he conquered were so eager to overthrow their tyrannical rulers in favor of Cyrus' extremely progressive form of government.

Poor Nabonidus. Historians aren't sure whether he was actually a scumbag or just the victim of a posthumous smear job. What we do know is that he pissed off the priests of Marduk, the national god, by exclusively worshiping the moon goddess Sin. Whether that was enough to turn his people against him is anyone's guess.

Did I mention that Nabonidus was actually in Sippar when the city surrendered to Cyrus? He basically had to sneak out the backdoor while his own people cheered celebrated Persian liberation. Forced to flee, Nabonidus went to the safest place he could think of, the greatest city of the classical world, Babylon.

Due to its thick walls and strategic location on the Euphrates river, Babylon had long been considered impregnable. Attacking it directly would mean a lengthy and bloody siege for most commanders.

Clearly, Cyrus wasn't "most" commanders.

Instead of attacking the city in full force, Cyrus sent a small group of soldiers to redirect the Euphrates river just north of Babylon. This caused the waterway to sink to about waist-height, allowing the Persians to sneak into the city by way of its canals and bypassing her walls altogether.

Like Sippar, Babylon fell without a fight and on October 29th--which is celebrated in Iran as Cyrus Day--the Persian king entered the city in triumph and deposed of Nabonidus. 

The statues confiscated by Nabonidus were returned to their rightful places and all displaced peoples were allowed to return home. This included the captive Jews who were even given money to rebuild their holiest of holies, Solomon's Temple. With these acts of kindness and generosity, Cyrus earned a special place in Jewish history. In fact, he is the only gentile in the entire Bible to be called the anointed of God. 

Clever, wise, kind, and generous: these are not the qualities one typically attributes to a world-famous conqueror. Here is more proof that Cyrus was, and remains to be, one of the finest rulers our world has ever seen.

But we still haven't really gotten to the heart of the matter: Cyrus' motives. Why go to all the trouble of overthrowing oppressive rulers in Media and Babylon, subduing Asia Minor, liberating captives, showing respect to foreign gods and restoring their temples and shrines, and penning what some historians claim is the first declaration of human rights? Why give his new subjects liberty when the norm at the time was to enslave, massacre, and/or displace?

The answer--shockingly--is religion. Or more precisely, the religion of Persia during Cyrus' time.

You probably haven't heard of Zoroastrianism. With only 190,000 Zoroastrians worldwide at the moment, you could say it's long been on the endangered religion list. But in Cyrus' day Zoroastrianism was extremely influential, helping to shape and mold the beliefs of people far and wide and leaving a mark so profound that it can be seen even today.

The basic tenets of Zoroastrianism are simple: humans are caught up in the throes of a cosmic conflict between the forces of light and truth as embodied by the creator god Ahura Mazda, and the forces of darkness and deception as embodied by Angra Mainyu.

To the Persians, this conflict was bigger than race, tribe, and culture. All people, whether knowingly or not, were active participants in the war between light and dark. By thinking good thoughts, speaking good words, and doing good deeds (Humata, Hukhta, Huvarshta), people supported Ahura Mazda; by doing the opposite, they furthered Angra Mainyu's cause. 

This helps explain Cyrus' tolerance of other religions. What did it matter who his new subjects thought they were worshiping? So long as they lived peacefully in Cyrus' empire, they were reinforcing Ahura Mazda's cause, and that was all that mattered.

Cyrus saw himself as a pawn in this great cosmic showdown between light and dark. His conquests were not a shallow attempt to garner fame; rather, they were his attempts to unify the human race beneath the banner of truth and goodness. The Persian empire reflected his intentions: it was, during his lifetime, at least, a bastion of freedom and peace.

After Cyrus died, his empire did not flounder; instead, it expanded even further, taking Egypt--the only other "empire" in the area--and afterward turning its sights toward the city-states of Greece. And we all know how that ended.

At its height, the Persian empire encompassed 8 million square kilometers. It stood uncontested until 330BCE--a whopping 220 year--until the Macedonian Kid himself, Alexander the Great, swept in and took over.

***

So what can we learn from Cyrus' life?

Cyrus' military victories, while impressive, are of little interest to us. The world no longer needs conquering. What is pertinent is the man's beliefs and how they shaped his actions.

We need not believe in actual gods in order to see the basic truth in the Zoroastrian mythos. Each one of us is composed of two opposing impulses. We're bipolar apes, remember? Capable of empathy, love, generosity, bravery, as well as tribalism, hatred, rape, and genocide. Regardless of race, culture, or belief, we must all decide whether we will follow our savage impulses or our noble ones.

We must decide what will guide our actions: truth, goodness, and love, or deception, selfishness, and hate. Cyrus was motivated by the first three while Alexander was motivated by and large by selfishness.

Compare the fruits of each man's labor and you can decide for yourself what best fuels meaningful action.

Good thoughts, good words, and good deeds: cultivate these whenever possible and you too will have contributed to the cosmic conflict, of which we are all a part.

/rant over

Morning Prayer

"When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive--to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love." 

--Marcus Aurelius

Your existence is a miracle.

Before your conception, you were unfulfilled potential, a little angel awaiting its moment of manifestation alongside a million other hopefuls. What if another had reached the Gates before you, crossing after nine months the threshold into this vast and mysterious universe? Another would be here in your stead and you would be in the aether, formless, without voice or body.

Now think that your mother and father both overcame similar odds, and each of their parents, so on and so forth, ever backward, every step increasing the odds against your existence by millions.

And yet here you are.

What are these complaints, gripes, aches, irritations, discomforts, and desires when weighed against your very existence? These are the symptoms of life. They should be celebrated, not despised.

This is your brief moment of awareness, your one and only chance to make a contribution to the human masterwork of which you are but a tiny part. Like a cell you will soon deteriorate and crumble away, to be replaced by another while your parts are dispersed into the cosmos.

“What we do now echoes in eternity.” You will soon return to the transcendent, to the realm of unrealized potential to await whatever the universe has in store for you. What will you leave behind on this cosmic spec of dust? Will you slide off into the aether, forgotten within a generation or two? Or will you leave a lasting mark, something tangible that carries your legacy forward?

Will you, at the moment of your demise, regret that you lived poorly, that you wasted your time on meaningless pursuits while harboring grudges and fueling anxieties without purpose? Or will you sigh contently, knowing that you did everything in your power to play your part to the best of your abilities?

Appreciate all that life has bound to you and remember that your presence on this earth is a miracle worth celebrating.

Amun.

Policy by Other Means

(Tom Ippen is a History graduate from the University of Victoria who is currently pursuing his Teacher’s Certification. He also runs By the Gods, a blog on comparative mythology, and is a true dork among dweebs for all things historical and fantastical.)

Carl von Clausewitz, perhaps the most esteemed military theorist in the history of western civilization, described war as “the continuation of policy by other means.” Clausewitz was a Prussian General and scholar writing in the middle of the 19th century; he was a firsthand witness of the Napoleonic campaigns that rocked Europe from Lisbon to Moscow, but had no difficulty reconciling the horrific acts of violence he’d seen with the practical rulebook of European politics. Philosophers, soldiers, leaders and historians have set out to define war—that inescapable human phenomenon both reviled and worshipped, feared and obsessed over—but no single definition has won universal acceptance.

When war is a continuation of policy, it is unremarkable; it becomes predictable, mundane, and (most dangerously) acceptable. The idea that war is in itself an understandable or tolerable means to achieve political ends asserts that the people—the foundation of our state’s executive leadership—have put our stamp of approval on large-scale murder. It’s a bit of a drag to think about, right? But is war an inevitable human act? Is it the only guarantee when humans trade in their hunting spears and nomadic ways for ploughs and static settlements? If so, maybe seeing war as a continuation of policy isn’t so tragic after all.

The “Anti-War Camp” has become crowded in the last century. Gone are the days of Emperors, Generals and the nouveau aristocracy seeking glory through conquest. Humanitarian and economic achievements have taken the stage as the new benchmarks of both local and international esteem. Our elected representatives must reject and be seen to abhor violence of any kind, or else risk condemnation. Vocal warmongers in the west receive little notice and less credit on the political stage, in no small part due to a decade of expensive conflict in the Middle-East. These engagements provided little booty to parade around and plenty of casualties to consider. The most pro-military candidates must insist that war is “a last resort” carried out for reasons of self-defense. The shrinking “Pro-War Camp” is the refuge of the fundamentalist, the extremist, and the lunatic. But when war is still an option, even the last option, we should probably take a minute to think about whether we’re really “Anti-War” or not.

If we define “human behavior” based on our history as a species, it’s difficult to deny that war is a core piece of who we are. Ever since we started rolling in groups, we’ve been killing each other. And since there’s nothing on Earth more lethal than a group of pissed off humans, it’s understandable that the lion’s share of our technological and social advancements have been made with killing in mind.

That sounds pretty cynical, I know.

It doesn’t really matter how passionately non-violent you are when your neighbor feels differently. If he kills you, your peaceful ideology doesn’t live on; but the person who killed you, took your resources, and used them to procreate does live on, passing his DNA and ideology forward, his actions vindicated by his very survival.

Fast-forward through the ages and you’ll find the world today is still comprised of individual states with individual armies but with one key difference: today’s nation-state is permeated by an ever-growing backlog of knowledge from antiquity and beyond all the way to now. We have more knowledge than ever and, slowly but surely, we’re deciding—as a species—that killing each other en masse isn’t a viable solution. This, at least, is the fervent hope of Humanists and ordinary people all across the Earth.

The problem is that we’re still divided by borders.

Borders are arbitrary lines that define what can only be described as large-scale, extended families. A thousand years ago, my ancestor told your ancestor “stay on that side of the river, or I’m going to kill you.” Your ancestor agreed and now we’ve got France and Germany; Iran and Iraq, Yemen and Oman, Georgia and Armenia. Yes I’m oversimplifying, but I’m building up to something here so give me a second.

We’ve already drilled little holes into these walls: our ancestors, to their credit, realized that they could accomplish amazing things if they maintained their own ethnic or national identities, but agreed to trade materials with their neighbors. Today, we trade not only metals, grains, and energy, but information—constantly. Have you seen the internet? They’ve got some cool stuff on that internet!

Fighting to defend your country, community, and family is understandable. It’s always been about protecting your genes. But in a world where every state is connected in a web so extremely fragile and complex, the act of large-scale murder and devastation is nothing but a net loss for humanity.

Despite the imaginary lines we have drawn in the sand, and regardless of the arbitrary distinctions we make between cultures and ethnic groups, globalization has made a single state of our nations and a single family of our species. Given our past and our tendencies, yes, war is understandable. But it is also pathetic in the most profound sense, a futile method of conflict resolution, and another item on the long list of threats to our prolonged survival here on earth.

If war is a continuation of policy by other means, our “policy” is one of contempt for the species as a whole, nothing more.

Motives (Cyrus the Neglected part 3)

Despite the similarities between Cyrus and Alexander--both men conquered vast swaths of land, subjugated people from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and tolerated their foreign religions--it's clear that the two men were motivated by radically different things.

As we saw last time, the Macedonian Kid was driven by his lust for immortality. He considered himself Achilles reborn and his conquest of the known world was a means of achieving everlasting fame, nothing more, nothing less.

Alexander's motives manifest themselves in the way he managed (or more accurately, didn't manage) his newly acquired territories. He was the ultimate hands-off manager: he'd roll in, make friends with sympathetic nobles, pay lip service to local gods, appoint someone to run things in his absence, then move on.

Alexander had little concern for the people he conquered and as a result, he failed to capture their long-term loyalty. It's not that he treated his new subjects poorly, just that he was largely indifferent to their plight.

The complete opposite can be said of Cyrus.

Before we can truly appreciate Cyrus' attitude toward the foreigners he conquered, we must first take into account the standard practices of his times.

Let's start with the Assyrians. A militaristic people known for their depravity and sadism, they were fond of flaying their captives or staking them, taking care to avoid vital organs so that the victim would writhe and suffer for hours and sometimes days on end. When the Assyrians came knocking at the city gates, you had two options: surrender or endure unspeakable horrors.

Just enjoying the show...

The Assyrians were so nasty, it took a coalition of Babylonians, Medes, Cimmerians, Scythians, and Persians to take them down, and in the subsequent vacuum of power there rose two new dominant states: the Neo-Babylonian and Median empires.

The Medes were a tribal people whose king had always been more of a "first among equals" than a supreme ruler. In 553BCE however, some fifty years after the fall of Assyria, the Median king Astyages tried to overstep his authority and started punishing the tribal chieftains who were supposed to be his equals. The chieftains would have none of it. Harpagus, the king's own steward, enlisted the help of a young Cyrus who succeeded in overthrowing Astyages.

Despite their defeat at the hands of Cyrus, the Medes retained a prominent position in his growing empire. In battle they stood shoulder to shoulder with the Persians, fighting as equals, and many Medes were appointed to positions of authority, power, and prestige. Cyrus even made the Median city of Ecbatana his summer capital.

The time-share in sunny Ecbatana

See how radically Cyrus differed from the Assyrians before him? Rather than enslave and torture those he conquered, he made them a detrimental part of his empire, not as a gesture but with genuine intent. He entrusted his onetime foes with important tasks and respected their cultural and religious practices. He treated them as if they were his own people.

When the city of Sardis, a former ally of the deposed king Astyages and Cyrus' next acquisition, revolted against Persia, he sent Mazares, a Mede, to pacify the city. And when, after having conquered much of Asia Minor, Mazares died, he sent Harpagus, another Mede, to finish the job. These people were not merely pawns to Cyrus: he knew them intimately and made good use of their skills.

***

Of the two states to inherit the remnants of Assyria, the Neo-Babylonian empire was by far the strongest, surpassing the Medes in territory and military might.

The Babylonians weren't very nice to the people they conquered. They didn't employ torture and fear to ensure obedience though: they preferred to exile entire populations, sending them to foreign lands in hopes that it would break their will to fight.

There is one group of people in particular who were repeatedly subjected to this form of punishment. Brought en masse to Babylon in a series of forced migrations, they had once been the most prominent citizens and brightest youths of their land; now, thanks to their stubborn refusal to accept Babylonian rule, they were subject to king Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon.

Nebuchadnezzar, or Chad as I like to call him, was the oldest son of the man who liberated Babylon from the Assyrians. Like his father, he was an eager campaigner, taking over a sizable piece of real estate during his lifetime.
 

He was a great builder, restoring Babylon, which had been devastated during the reign of the Assyrians, to its former glory and building the Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient world.

I can see Diddy liking this place.

Chad demanded tribute from his neighboring states, a standard practice that is the ancient equivalent of a gangster selling you protection from bad people when the only bad people you need protecting from is the gangster himself.

The people of Judah, a small kingdom in the Levant, wouldn't stand for it. They refused to pay tribute and were besieged by the Babylonians for their insubordination. This culminated in 597BCE when Chad sent the Jewish king Jehoiakim to sleep with the fishes. 10 years later, Chad leveled Jerusalem due to further rebellion.

Old Chad was smart. He didn't torture and massacre the exiled Jews where they stood; instead, he sent their youngest, brightest, and most prominent citizens to work in Babylon. 47 years later, when Cyrus took Babylon without a fight, the Jews were still there.

Here we have our first chance to compare Cyrus directly to one of his peers. The Jews, after all, were the prisoners of the Babylonians, who were now themselves subject to Cyrus' rule. How did the Jews view Cyrus, the conqueror of their conquerors?

Join me next time for the conclusion of Cyrus' story and why anyone should care about his legacy.