The dictionary definition of ethos is:
‘The moral character, nature, disposition and customs of a people or culture.’
Ethos is derived from the same Greek root as ethics. The Warrior Ethos is a code of conduct - a conception of right and wrong, of virtues and of vices.
No one is born with the Warrior Ethos, though many of its tenets appear naturally in young men and women of all cultures.
The Warrior Ethos is taught. On the rugby fields in Manchester, on a longship in the Norwegian Sea, 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 culminates in an ordeal of initiation. The Viking youth receives his sword, the paratrooper is awarded his wings, the Afghan boy is handed his AK-47.
The Warrior Ethos mandates respect for the enemy. The foe is granted full honour as a fighting man and defender of his home soil and values. From Ragnar through Harald to Freudis and Leif and on down to Rommel and the Afrika Korps (with some notorious lapses, be it said), today’s enemy was considered tomorrow’s potential friend-and thus granted his full humanity.
Why do I talk about this Warrior Ethos and the enemy? What does that have to do with my life, my career, my goal and my relationships?
My answer to this is EVERYTHING.
Because you are your own enemy. We are fighting a daily battle against ourselves. And the sooner we replace ‘them, he, she, they’ with ‘I’ then we can start to move the dial in the right direction.
For most of us today, we live in a civilian society. It’s a pretty great place to be. A civilian society prizes and values things such as individual freedom. Each man and woman is at liberty to choose his or her own path, rise or fall, do whatever he or she wants (within the law), so long as it doesn’t impinge on the liberty of others.
It’s not always been this way. The Vikings, Spartans, Romans, Macedonians, Persians, Mongols, Apache, Masai, Samurai and Pashtun are examples of warrior cultures embedded within warrior societies. The warrior culture values cohesion and obedience. They serve and perform their duty. A warrior culture trains for adversity. Selflessness is a virtue in a warrior culture and sacrifice, particularly shared sacrifice is considered an opportunity for honour.
Does this mean that I’m advocating for us all to revert back to living in warrior societies?
Not at all.
The greatness of a civilian society is that freedom and equality are the engines that produce wealth, power, culture and art and unleash the greatness of the human spirit.
What about the Warrior Ethos?
We still see the warrior ethos in our civilian culture. It’s very prevalent in the military with a few having freely chosen to embrace the warrior ethos. But you don’t need to be in the marines in order to learn from, benefit of and embrace a warrior ethos.
A warrior living in a civilian society may not realise it but he has acquired an MBA in enduring adversity and a Ph.D in resourcefulness, tenacity and the capacity for hard work. The warrior skills are exactly what we can use to lift us up and sustain us and our families through the next stage of our lives and every succeeding stage.
The war remains the same. Only the field has changed. The warrior ethos is a mighty ally in all spheres of endeavour.
The warrior ethos sometimes get misconstrued as simple brutality and fighting an enemy as well as unnecessary violence. However true warrior ethos commands that aggression be tempered by self-restraint and guided by moral principle.
The Vikings are often erroneously depicted as savages however as a warrior culture, they had strong values and beliefs. Honour, loyalty, bravery, hospitality and reputation were paramount and these are common across many warrior cultures (although not all).
Besides this, believes such as Valhalla motivated the Viking warriors to be fearless in battle and die heroically as well as oral traditions such as the Drengr Code acting as a moral compass and even humility and moderation.
In the Bhagavad-Gita, a great warrior epic of India, the story is of the great warrior Arjuna, who receives spiritual instruction from his charioteer, who happens to be Krishna - i.e., God in human form.
What’s interesting about this story is that Krishna instructs Arjuna to slay his enemies without mercy. However the names of the enemy warriors, in Sanskrit, can be read two ways. They can be simply names. Or they can represent inner crimes or personal vices, such as greed, jealousy, selfishness, the capacity to play our friends false or to act without compassion toward those who love us.
In other words, our warrior Arjuna is being instructed to slay the enemies inside himself. The Bhagavad-Gita takes the warrior ethos and elevates it to a plane of the individual’s inner life, to his struggle to align himself with his own higher nature.
This is the true meaning that we place on the warrior ethos here at Steel Viking and when we speak about battles and the enemy and war, its the ones that we are facing internally that are important.
Leadership, discipline, motivation, focus, strength. These are all qualities that are needed when engaging in this work.
Stuart
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