The Warrior Ethos

The dictionary defines ethos as: The moral character, nature, disposition and customs of a people or culture.

Once a Spartan boy stole a fox and hid it under his cloak. Some grown warriors stopped to question him on an unrelated subject. Beneath the cloak, the fox began gnawing at the youth’s belly. The boy made no sound but allowed the beast to bleed him to death, rather than cry out or reveal his deed.

The feat that inspires witnesses to honor it is almost invariably one of selflessness.

the Warrior Ethos enlists three other equally innate and powerful human impulses: Shame. Honor. And love.

This is the concept of leading by example. But it also embodies the ancient precept that killing the enemy is not honorable unless the warrior places himself equally in harm’s way—and gives the enemy an equal chance to kill him.

Honor is connected to many things, but one thing it’s not connected to is happiness. In honor cultures, happiness as we think of it—“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”—is not a recognized good. Happiness in honor cultures is the possession of unsullied honor. Everything else is secondary.

So that no man would have grounds to feel superior to another, Lycurgus divided the country into 9000 equal plots of land. To each family, he gave one plot. Further, he decreed that the men no longer be called “citizens” but “peers” or “equals.” So that no man might compete with another or put on airs over wealth, Lycurgus outlawed money. A coin su

The Warrior Ethos is taught. On the football field in Topeka, in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, on the lion-infested plains of Kenya and Tanzania. Courage is modeled for the youth by fathers and older brothers, by mentors and elders. It is inculcated, in almost all cultures, by a regimen of training and discipline. This discipline frequently culm

The idea of a rugged land can be applied psychologically as well. There’s a well-known gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps who explains to his young Marines, when they complain about pay, that they get two kinds of salary—a financial salary and a psychological salary. The financial salary is indeed meager. But the psychological salary? Pride, hono