The Warrior Ethos

“No, my friend,” said Alexander, setting a hand on the man’s shoulder and making him sit again. “For you are Alexander, more even than I.”

Every warrior virtue proceeds from this—courage, selflessness, love of and loyalty to one’s comrades, patience, self-command, the will to endure adversity. It all comes from the hunting band’s need to survive. At a deeper level, the Warrior Ethos recognizes that each of us, as well, has enemies inside himself. Vices and weaknesses like envy and gre

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

In 1912, the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton was seeking volunteers for an expedition to the South Pole. He placed the following ad in the London Times: Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful; honor and recognition in case of success. The next morning,

General Moshe Dayan, refused to discipline the man. “I will never punish an officer for daring too much, but only too little.”

Selflessness produces courage because it binds men together and proves to each individual that he is not alone. The act of openhandedness evokes desire in the recipient to give back. Alexander’s men knew, from their king’s spectacular gestures of generosity, that the spoils of any victory they won would be shared with them too, and that their young

Warrior cultures employ honor, along with shame, to produce courage and resolve in the hearts of their young men. Honor is the psychological salary of any elite unit. Pride is the possession of honor.

The point of the common mess was to bind the men together as friends. “Even horses and dogs who are fed together,” observed Xenophon, “form bonds and become attached to one another.”

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