Sacrificing

Let’s talk about sacrificing. It’s something lots of people do, whether voluntarily or because they must, and there’s a lot to be said for it.

Theseus, the ancient Greek hero, lived about 1200 years before Christ, and Mary Renault published two novels about him, and pointed out that his life had a great deal to do with tension between two different religious positions.

The Greeks entered what is now known as Greece approximately 4,000 years ago. They found people living there unrelated to them, with different DNA, language, and customs. By the time of Theseus’ birth the two cultures had been living together long enough to become somewhat used to each other.

Renault has Theseus be introduced to the idea of sacrifice as a young boy. The king horse of his grandfather’s small kingdom is about to be sacrificed, and Theseus objects. His grandfather tells him the sacrifice must happen, and Theseus asks why. His grandfather tells him it is a mystery, and that the sacrifice will please the god, thereby benefiting the  people of the kingdom. After all, the king horse was treated very well when he was alive. Now his sacrifice will pay for his good treatment.

From this beginning he learns that when serious problems come up that the king can’t resolve he is expected to sacrifice himself for the good of the people he rules.

When Theseus decides to travel to Athens to be recognized by his father he runs into a different culture and a different custom.

This is in Eleusis, a small kingdom of what the Greeks call the Shore People. Both they and the Greeks are polytheistic, but the Shore People primarily worship the Mother goddess, while the Greeks primarily worship male gods.

The Shore People sacrifice their Sacred King every year to make sure their crops grow and babies are born. The basic idea is the same, but the Sacred King of the Shore People has no choice in the matter. The Greek idea is that voluntary self-sacrifice gives the act its power.

Sacrifice was very important in the ancient world. It may once have been human sacrifice almost exclusively, though eventually animals began to be substituted for humans in most cases. But in important cases human sacrifice was considered more effective.

On reaching Athens Theseus is acknowledged by his father, but then decides the only honorable thing he can do is to join the teenaged boys and girls demanded by the Cretans (the most powerful nation in the Mediterranean at that time) to dance with the bulls, which was another form of sacrifice, though it had also turned into a spectator sport like much later examples.

While in Crete he manages to kill the Minotaur and escape back to Athens with all the people in his group. They stop on the island of Naxos on the way where he witnesses the people trooping into the mountains where they drink wine and frequently have sex, using the day as a way of blowing off steam and expressing powerful feelings in a usually safe way. This was their way of worshiping the god Dionysus, the god of wine. Renault expresses it as having a day to dedicate each person’s craziness to the god so that it won’t come out in some more inappropriate way.

But the ritual wasn’t safe for the Sacred King, who was often literally torn apart, as were animals, by the celebrants. Whatever the nature of the ritual, it released a great deal of energy. Camille Paglia tells us the word sparagmos is the word for animals and even people being torn apart. Theseus is repulsed.

Later, after establishing himself as king of Athens, he takes a trip to the Black Sea, finds a group of Amazons there, falls in love with one of them, who is known as King of the Maidens, and persuades her to come back to Athens with him.

Still later mainland Greece is invaded by a huge number of people, including the tribe from which Theseus’s wife came. After withstanding a siege for sometime, the Athenians attack their besiegers. Theseus is ready to die, and throws away his shield. He feels a spear or arrow coming towards him, and simply waits for it. But it doesn’t hit him because his wife, also a warrior and king, has cut in front of him. Since she was also a king, she could also make the sacrifice.

Theseus feels first empty, then enraged, and becomes berserk, unable to remember afterwards what happened. But he and the Athenian soldiers have driven the besiegers away.

Renault points out two other times in later Greek history in which the leader of an army made sure he died first so his side would win, so the idea of voluntary self-sacrifice continued, and arguably reached its apex with Jesus Christ,  the first self-sacrifice we usually think of.

But that didn’t make self-sacrifice popular. Powerful people preferred to make others sacrifice themselves for the benefit of their leaders. When Theseus is in Crete he sees the bull dancing, which he finds beautiful and exciting, as also less solemn than it should be, and the society as decadent. The Minotaur, who is the heir to the throne of King Minos in Renault’s telling, Theseus sees as sacrificing others for his own benefit, which is sacrilegious, in Theseus’s view.

Kings eventually stopped being sacrificed every year, and the custom of voluntary self-sacrifice died away too. The tradition of kings leading on the battle field passed slowly, but after the Middle Ages it rarely happened. Kings, dictators, and presidents stayed home and let others take the risks. It came to be considered patriotic to die for one’s country, but that applied mostly to the lower classes, The hereditary nobility had once been the military class, but became less important, and the most powerful and important people in most countries are no longer the military. Powerful people are no longer expected to sacrifice for the common good. Sacrificing is almost entirely the province of the poor now, because they don’t have the power to excuse themselves.

There was a lot of self-sacrifice in World War II. I find it amazing how the English were able to continue with their lives during heavy bombing of their cities, while cleaning up the destroyed buildings and taking care of injured civilians. But the war in Russia dwarfed what happened in England.

Hitler believed he could beat Russia quickly, and almost did so. Had not Russian troops been transferred from the far east to Moscow, the Nazis might have taken that city, and that might have effectively ended Russian resistance.

As it was, the war’s turning point came first at Stalingrad, and then at Kursk, where the Russian army stopped the Germans and sent them retreating back into eastern Europe. It took a lot of supplies from Britain and the USA, but the Russians had to do the fighting, and they did, at immense cost. Reportedly, one of the reasons they fought so hard was that deserters were executed, but I doubt that was enough to motivate them so strongly. That war is still called the Great Patriotic War in Russia, and that’s how Stalin had to sell it: a war to save Communism wouldn’t have gone over nearly as well, since everyone knew about the purges, famines, and prison camps of the Soviet Union. Apparently everyone felt they were in the same boat, especially after the Nazis had killed large numbers of people fairly indiscriminately.

Today the poor in the USA are being asked to sacrifice themselves again, and a cursory look on Google says that they don’t want to. A closer look finds that 49% of those polled are equally concerned with lives being lost and the financial impact of the disease, while breaking it down further (in one article) 26% were more concerned with saving lives, and 19% with the financial impact. There is also concern that, because of insufficient ability to test, we simply don’t know how much risk remains in going back to work.

Then there’s the question of who benefits most by the economy reopening. Some seem to believe it’s the people dependent on a regular paycheck, but polling seems to deny that. Of course such people are concerned, but most don’t want to reopen until they can be confident that most of the danger of infection is over.

And that suggests that it’s primarily business owners who want to reopen. In the case of small businesses, this is quite understandable. They have fewer resources than large corporations, and can’t afford not to work for long periods. Which is why I think small businesses in particular ought to be bailed out, along with families and individuals. During the Great Recession of 2008-9 it was the large corporations that were bailed out, and when the economy began to grow again it grew anemically. If anyone is to be bailed out, let’s do it from the bottom up. Poorer people will spend the money because they need to, while wealthier people will be able to save it. Poorer people are more reliable stimulators of the economy than rich people, who have more choice about whether to spend or not.

I’ve heard at least some politicians say that people shouldn’t be coerced into returning to work, but that doesn’t seem to be the common position. The president, and others of his party, want the economy to reopen for political reasons: they want to win elections in November. This is similar to the position of the gun lobbyists who are less concerned with the danger of children being killed in mass shootings in schools than with their guns possibly being taken away. They have been willing to sacrifice the children, and rich people are willing to sacrifice poor ones.

I think that, in the abstract, most people would be willing to agree that voluntary self-sacrifice has more power and virtue than coercion. The problem begins when the principle is applied to ourselves or people we know.