I am still working away on my study of the Five Laws of Decline in history. In this short piece, the Spartan General Pausanias is bit by the bug for power, wealth, and status. Abraham Lincoln probably said it best when he stated (and I paraphrase), “Many people can handle failure. If you truly want to know a person’s character, then give him success.”  When a person experiences success, then one can identify if it went to his head, or on the contrary, if he recognizes it as a blessing to be thankful for. The LIFE business can help people become successful in their teams, but each person must build his own character. I have watched leaders like Claude Hamilton, George Guzzardo, and many more experience public success; however, their public achievements were founded upon private achievements as discussed in my All-Time Top 100 Leadership Book RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions for LIFE. In other words, build your private victories so you will be ready for the public ones.

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward

Seeds of the Five Laws of Decline
During the Persian War, when Sparta and Athens were still allies and on friendly terms, Pausanias, the Spartan general over the confederated Greek army, defeated the Persians at Plataea. In the process, he captured the tent of the Persian commander Mardonius. Although the battle terminated the Persian threat by routing the enemy, interestingly, it also initiated the FLD by whetting the appetite for wealth among the Greeks. Historian Evelyn Abbot explains the Greek’s surprise when they comprehended the level of wealth and luxury enjoyed by the invaders:

This was no other than the tent of Xerxes which at his departure the King had left for the use of his successor in the command. It was, of course, constructed with royal magnificence, resplendent with gold, and the richest embroidery; a sight such as had never before come under the eyes of the astonished Greeks. When Pausanias saw it, he bade the attendants prepare a meal as they were accustomed to prepare it for Mardonius, and at the same time gave orders to his Helots to cook a common Spartan supper. Then he summoned the captains of the Greeks to see the difference, “How foolish,” he exclaimed, “were the men who while they enjoyed the one sought to rob the Greeks of the other!” The sight of this magnificence seems to have sunk deeply into the mind and memory of Pausanias. Forgetting the infinite difference between freedom and slavery, he contrasted the bare and dreary life of a Spartan with the softness and splendor of a Persian satrap. His successes in the last two years had raised him to the foremost rank in Greece, and he had felt no scruple in claiming for himself the honors which had been won by the devotion of others. Was he to abandon his “great place” and return to Sparta, to be the subject of an infant king?

These seeds which took root within Pausanias’s mind, sprouted several years later when, with mainland Greece safe, the Greek confederation aimed to remove Persian influence from Greater Hellas. Accordingly, Spartan Pausanias, even though Athens had more ships and experienced leaders, was assigned Commander of the allied Greek navy. After another impressive victory at Byzantium over the beleaguered Persian fleet, the united Greeks were on the verge of accomplishing their goal. Curiously, however, Pausanias stopped the offensive strategy, and rumors began circulating out of Asia that he was in negotiations with the Persian King. In truth, they weren’t rumors. Pausanias had schemed with the Great King to marry one of his daughters and serve as a satrap in the Persian Empire. Not surprisingly, the allied Greek forces were not amused, and Pausanias, after having lost the confidence of his men, was recalled to Sparta to face charges of treason. The members of the Greek alliance transferred their loyalties to the Athenian contingent led by Aristides and Cimon.

Roman Ruins

I am working on a personal assignment to learn what made the Greco-Roman civilizations succeed for periods, though each, in truth, failed with time. In addition, I am searching for what the Anglo-Saxons copied from the Greco-Romans. Through learning what worked and what didn’t, perhaps we can improve the weakest portions of the foundation and strengthen society today.  This is one of the reasons I love the LIFE business so much, namely, having the time to develop models to improve people’s lives. The LIFE business is a system, just as society is. Therefore, by studying what works in one context, I learn what may work in another. When I add in the Plan, Do, Check, and Adjust (PDCA) steps, I can determine if the hypothesis is workable or not. Here are two paragraphs of a much longer analysis that the readers will see soon.

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward

The Six Duties of Society are the key functions that society must consistently perform to prosper. By contrast, the Five Laws of Decline are inherent within mankind and must be checked, or society will eventually fall through plundering its former prosperity. Both will be identified and explained through the study of Greco-Roman and Anglo-Saxon history. Because the Greco-Roman culture laid the foundation for Western society and the Anglo-Saxon cultures built upon it, they have many similarities. However, despite their valuable contributions to modern times, both the Greek and Roman societal foundations ultimately failed. Therefore, since today’s West is built upon this Greco-Roman foundation, isn’t it also probable that the modern West is built upon the fragile, as well as the secure, portions of the foundation? Perhaps through retracing the roots of Anglo-Saxon society, the foundation can be reinforced at its weakest parts through understanding the failure modes of the Greco-Roman past. In effect, leaders must learn from the past so they don’t ignorantly repeat it. In general, leaders have two essential tasks when dealing with systems and society. First, they must ensure the SDS are functioning properly; otherwise, society will neither prosper nor last. Second, they must design society to work with human nature, not against it. Society, in a word, must reward proper behaviors and punish improper ones in clearly defined ways. Since the FLD are natural laws of human behavior, inherent within every person to varying degrees, leaders who build society without comprehending the FLD are designing for disaster. Moreover, every successful civilization that failed did so through enabling the FLD. Originally, the society satisfied the SDS; however, at some point the FLD were ignited, cracking society’s foundation, and societal collapse predictably followed. In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that every single historical rise-and-fall example displays similar laws of decline activity—evidently because, although many things have change over time, human nature isn’t one of them.

The FLD are to the SDS what gravity is to airplanes: a constant impetus downward. However, there is good news. Just as a plane can overcome gravity temporarily, the SDS can overcome the FLD as well. Nonetheless, the plane must come down, as will every society, when the FLD are ignored. I don’t share the SDS and the FLD pessimistically; rather, the goal is to sober up an American society inebriated with personal “peace and affluence” while the FLD rot out the foundations. An understanding of the FLD will help leaders predict outcomes of various policies upon the SDS, similar to a cientist predicting the trajectory of a ball tossed in the air through comprehending gravitational constants. Interestingly, applying the laws of human nature to societal events isn’t new. Insurance companies, for instance, routinely predict human nature when assessing insurance rates for drivers. True, not all 18 year olds are poorer drivers than 35 year olds with several children; however, since the average 18 year old is a worse driver than the average 35 year old, the insurance rates are adjusted accordingly, thus proving the old adage: man as an individual is unpredictable, but man in mass is extremely predictable. Accordingly, the FLD cannot predict how any specific person will respond to certain policies; nevertheless, it’s remarkably effective at predicting how society in mass will respond. In fact, if politicians comprehended and applied the Six Duties of Society along with the Five Laws of Decline, they would rapidly improve society by creating rewards for behavior promoting the SDS and developing checks upon any behavior promoting the FLD.

Here is my final segment on the Peloponnesian War. Sometimes truth is more fantastic than fiction and Greek history is one of those times. Although I have read extensively in this area, when finally writing down my thoughts, I was shocked by the level of degradation in thinking possible if one does not maintain his absolute principles. One of the main reasons the LIFE Business operates with a Policy Council is to ensure that we  follow the principles espoused.  I remember when Dan Hawkins attending his first PC meetings. He was amazed as the ability for anyone to speak freely when he disagrees with the policy direction. In truth, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I would much rather have one of the PC catch a policy/principle mistake before we PDCA on the entire community! 🙂

In my book RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions for LIFE, I take a whole chapter to describe character, integrity, and principles. Each person should be working on improving his or her character and finding other top leaders to help them on the journey of life. This is exactly what the LIFE Business does, it provides a community of people, who are growing personally and professionally, to aid others on their success journey. I am thankful for leaders like Chris Brady, Tim Marks, and Claude Hamilton and the rest of the LIFE Founders for speaking into my life when needed. LIFE, in other words, is a team sport! Here is the final part of the Peloponnesian War.

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward

Athens, Sparta and their allies, waged a pitiless war against one another for nearly 30 years with brief respites. Athens failed invasion of SiciIy put them on the defensive, but Sparta didn’t have enough naval power to deliver a knock out blow. The war continued for over twenty additional years despite both sides having little to gain and much to lose. Athens treatment of Melios displays the corrosive effects of the FLD and is representative of the  tyranny practiced by the Athenian empire on its weaker sister cities. Thucydides, in his Melian dialogue, describes the unfolding Greek tragedy. Here is a small portion of the dialogue to convey the detrimental effects of the FLD on Athenian thinking:

Pericles Funeral Oration

Athenian: For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretenses—either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us—and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Spartans, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must

Melians: You may be sure that we are as well aware as you of the difficulty of contending against your power and fortune, unless the terms be equal. But we trust that the gods may grant us fortune as good as yours, since we are just men fighting against unjust, and that what we want in power will be made up by the alliance of the Lacedaemonians, who are bound, if only for very shame, to come to the aid of their kindred. Our confidence, therefore, after all is not so utterly irrational.

Athenian: Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist forever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do

Strikingly, Athens, the same city who fought Persia’s “might is right” pragmatism, now asserts the same “principles” in its contest with weaker Greek cities. This combination of hypocrisy and hubris has clouded the rationality of leaders in power since history has been recorded. Evidently, although many things have changed, human nature isn’t one of them. Thus leaders must remain vigilant against the debilitating effects of the FLD or it will destroy culture. In the Greek example, it gets even worse, for both leagues, in desperation, appealed to the Persian king for aid against the other. Remarkably, Sparta and Athens, the two former allies against Persia, rather than settle their differences, instead sought to align themselves with their former nemesis Persia. Persia happily complied, aiding Sparta with money and ships to destroy Athen’s superior seapower. Persia did this, not for Sparta’s benefit, but for their own, astounded at their opportunity to destroy both cities at once. Both leagues, willingly sold Greek’s freedom and future – another sad effect of the FLD in action – in an attempt to win the war. At the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War, each side was drained of men, money, and mind, leaving them prostrate before Macedonian machinations.