good morning Hank it's Tuesday I've been
thinking a lot about this famous moment
in history called the million dialogue
it happened around 2400 years ago in
ancient Greece the story stars the
city-state of Athens which is widely
credited for giving us so many of our
ideas about democracy and freedom and
Athens in the 5th century BCE really was
a remarkable place not only because it
was a democracy but also because Plato
and Socrates were living and
philosophizing there
Sophocles was writing Antigone and
Oedipus Rex as well as serving in
elected office and Thucydides was
revolutionising the writing of history
in fact we know about the million
dialogue primarily because of him so
Athens was 15 years into the
Peloponnesian War which was fought
against their great enemy the Spartans
and the island of Melos which is about
110 kilometers off the coast of mainland
Greece was neutral in the war the
millions were closely related to the
Spartans but they didn't fight with them
and then in 416 BCE the Athenians sent
38 ships with 3,000 soldiers to capture
the island of Melos or else force the
millions to pay tribute the millions
were like hey it's not moral to attack a
people who are neutral who pose no
threat to you your athens your the
school of greece the cradle of justice
and according to Thucydides the
Athenians replied the strong do what
they can and the weak suffer what they
must after a siege on their city the
millions eventually surrendered and the
Athenians murdered all of the men of
MELAS and sold all of the women and
children into slavery and that line the
strong do what they can and the weak
suffer what they must has reverberate
through history like some argue it's the
guiding principle of history that the
story of humans is of powerful people
doing whatever they can to increase and
defend that power while powerless people
suffer whatever they must I think that's
an oversimplification I don't think that
humans are merely power seeking animals
and I don't think that you can
understand the whole human story by
seeing humans as turning their faces to
power the way that plants turn towards
the Sun but around the world and across
time we do find many many examples of
the powerful doing whatever they can and
the weak suffering whatever they must we
see it in the experiences of refugee
populations we see that children and
vulnerable people are far more likely to
be abused and mistreated and we see
diseases that disproportionately affect
the poor receive less funding for
treatment
research I mean 266 thousand children
under the age of five died of malaria
last year 266,000 almost all of them
were poor and on some level they didn't
actually die of malaria which with more
robust healthcare systems would usually
be treatable they died because the weak
suffer what they must but again I don't
think that needs to be the whole human
story like trying to become stronger and
make others weaker is not actually a
very effective strategy either
personally or geopolitically the
Athenians after all lost the
Peloponnesian War in the end but more to
the point we know that other people
suffering less does not mean that we
will suffer more because human life is
not a zero-sum game in fact when more
people get the chance to live a healthy
life and seek educational opportunities
life gets better for the strong as well
as the weak because we have more
potential innovators to solve our
problems and because we are a deeply
interconnected and interdependent
species like seventy-five years ago the
richest people in the world had no way
to prevent themselves from getting
measles 150 years ago the most powerful
people on earth had no air-conditioning
for their castles or cars to drive or
probably to be driven in all those
changes happened in part because humans
began to understand that more for me
does not necessarily mean less for you
and I worry sometimes that we are
forgetting those lessons that we are
instead embracing the Athenian worldview
which proved so disastrous not only for
the millions but also for the Athenians
themselves I think building norms and
systems that protect the weak from the
Geneva Conventions to child labor laws
has helped make the world safer and more
just for all of us obviously there is a
lot left to do but I think to do that
work we need to stand with the millions
of today's world Hank I'll see you on
Friday