Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…Sure. And it’s not a momentary ephemeral thing. It feels like a thing that has lasted for many generations. And so that is an engine that propagates through time that carries that culture forward. And so does a similar thing apply for the Roman Empire in a different way? Maybe ’cause you say it’s a political kind of community, that means a set of ideals. And we’ll talk about, because those ideals become even more concretized and explicit, I think, through the East Roman Empire, because one of the things you talk about is that the citizens of the empire are kind of all connected, that they are- … engaged in this whole sort of machinery. Anyway, that’s a complicated way of asking, is, is there some elements that Greek pride, dare I speak, is there some kind of Roman pride that propagates the thing? Oh, there totally is. You can find authors and historical agents who definitely display this or talk about it. But we don’t wanna make that the center of the story or the basis for any analysis because… So what you’re observing in your Greek friends is also the result of modern nation building, is it’s the result of modern systems education, and sort of national identities, and these are fostered and created through all kinds of media and institutions. It’s, it’s just a different situation altogether. What you find in ancient republics or medieval states is more something like a consensus to be ruled, to be, to rule and to be ruled in this particular political community. Now, some members of it may definitely, and in fact did have this kind of pride. I’ll give you an example. So there’s an ambassador in the sixth century, and he’s concluding a deal with the Persians. And you know, the Persians are skeptical ’cause, you know, Romans can’t always be trusted. But this guy says to them, he says, “And let me just tell you, you’re making a deal here with the Romans. The Romans. The name should say it all.” Like, you, okay, and you get a sense that this is, he’s expressing a certain pride in, like, being a bearer of the Roman tradition and speaking for the emperors and the Roman Empire. I mean, that’s, for him, this was something very, very momentous. You find these kinds of examples, so these people exist. But I wouldn’t wanna make that the basis for like an analysis of how the society works as a whole. For the most part, it was something like a consensus where, you know, subjects or citizens, however you wanna call them, they agree to, um- Let’s say be taxed and be ruled by political authorities because of what they get in return, and there’s this kind of understanding of a mutual set of responsibilities. And my concern, among other things, is to try to explain how this society held together for so long. Pride, yes, among some people, definitely. You find it in the sources. But sources are, texts are written by literate, usually elites. So this is a small part of the population. We can’t automatically extend their attitudes to everybody else. So in dealing with everyone else, we have to work with different kinds of materials, different kinds of assumptions. We can’t just posit that they’re just proud of being Roman. They could have been. We don’t know that, though. We can see other sorts of things about them. Like, for example, did they pay their taxes? Did they try to rebel and leave the empire? So those are the kinds of things that, that, that I look for.…

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