Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

I read this entertaining 1998 historical novel, which glorifies the ancient military dictatorship of Sparta, in part because it cost only $7.99 for a Kindle download. Then I realized that I couldn't write a coherent review of it, because I still, in spite of the intervening years, am an incandescent tower of blistering but impotent rage at the senseless loss of life and treasure which resulted from the blunderings of the George W. Bush administration in the Middle East in the first decade of this century. This rage colored my every word and thought. It's not the book's fault that some people seemed to view it as a justification of the U.S.A.'s bumbling militarism. I'll try to write a review of this book sometime when I've calmed down, maybe in 20 years.

later

OK, I've taken some medication and had a nice lie down.

Why bother to read books? After all, there's no money in reading, and it will not help you to obtain a fashionably well-developed musculature. I don't understand why other people read books, but then again, I don't understand why people do pretty much everything, including but not limited to going to flea markets, voting for defenders of the rights of the well-to-do, and having interest in the lives of movie stars, to name just a few.

I read books because my mental picture of myself is a piece of meat in a cage. I am a prisoner, stuck like a bug in amber in a class, time, space, nationality, residence, psychology, and function. I often flatter myself that my place in the world is of my own choosing but it is really the result of forces which were in motion long before I was born and will continue to influence the world long after everyone's forgotten that I ever lived. Animated with that cheerful thought, I wonder if life appears this way to everyone else. Many people seem to be acting and behaving very differently from me, most relevantly, in this case, soldiers. Since it is not yet possible to engage in Matrix-like entry into soldiers' consciousnesses, the closest that I can get to understanding why soldiers act so completely different from me is to read books about them.

It's still difficult for me to understand why anyone would willingly ignore the pointless bullying, the tedious machismo, the cynical grasping and snatching after pathetic shreds of power, and the sheer unadulterated lunacy (all adequately portrayed in this novel) that seem to invariably accompany military life. However, I think that I caught while reading this book certain glimpses of a rationale, if something mostly disconnected from reason can still be called a “rationale�.

Why get up in the morning? Why take one route to work and not the other? Why order a croissant and not a banana nut muffin? Why do a good job at work when a crummy job will suffice? Why sit? Why stand? Why write a review for Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ that three people may read instead of, say, listening to Alma Cogan sing “Never Do a Tango With an Eskimoâ€� on Youtube for the umptee-umpth time?

When you are a part of a team, any team, it helps everything else to make sense. If you are part of a fighting team, life not only makes sense, but you have a purpose as well. You get up in the morning, you have a place to go. It makes a difference whether you shine your shoes. There's a right way to lay your shield on the ground, and a wrong way. You have friends and colleagues to admire, and to be admired by. You can't let them down by staying home on the couch and watching reruns of “America's Next Top Model�, because you promised to be at hoplite formation drills. You are a nobly small part of a fine upstanding tradition, without which the Persians would overrun civilization, leaving us to wallow in our own filth while listening to goateed Brooklyn hipsters complain about the deficit of adequate post-apocalyptic arugula.

I guess it's just about time for another dose of medication.

Before I join the line at the nurse's window, I'd like to say that reading this book about people with a purpose was a worthwhile use of time, but I'm not sure that present-day people who read this book and see their purpose reflected in the life and achievements of the Spartans actually understand the Spartans, or themselves.