The Phalanx of Open Hearts: How to Stand Against a Thousand Foes
I suppose the first thing I should do, just to get it out of the way, is to tell you all what a phalanx is.
Great. Now that you’ve seen it what I’m about to say will probably make a whole lot more sense. What every community needs to prosper is a phalanx of open hearts. Still don’t get it? Read on.
On the Defensive
The Phalanx has been used throughout history and even up to now in combat settings to give a distinct advantage on the battlefield, to intimidate, to reduce casualties, and even to take ground. In fact, Alexander the Great used it to conquer the world, and the Romans followed his example.
In combat the position is easy to understand: it requires every fighter to have a large shield and a spear, two of the cheapest and easiest tools available. It requires the fighters to work cooperatively to both defend eachother and to intimidate or actually attack the enemy, and it allows for enormous versatility while requiring relatively little experience.
So, why do we need to buy our youth group long spears?
I do not mean that communities need to actually practice deploying a literal phalanx (though it might be a fun activity), but I think that almost every community would benefit from the use of a sort of ‘social phalanx position.’
It is easy to see from the position above that it relies on teamwork, but it’s harder to see how the individuals are actually physically bound to eachother. In a Greek phalanx, your shield protects the man on your left, and the man on your right is protecting you. In a roman phalanx the man behind you is covering your head with his shield, and so on. This is a great analogy for how interdependent communities, and especially small or minority communities are. If one person steps out of line he is both vulnerable himself, and risking the whole community’s security. If one person is left to fall down, all of his neighbours suffer.
The phalanx position in a social setting involves covering eachothers’ backs, avoiding gossip and politics, and supporting other people’s efforts, even if they don’t exactly match your own. After all, we already know that most of successful leadership is about successful following anyway.
On the Offensive
The phalanx position, and the strong support of a community, are both excellent defensive postures, but they also offer distinct ‘offensive’ abilities too. The spears or lances of the phalanx make it a formidable foe, nearly impossible to rush or charge, but slow moving. Many people do not have the patience for either slow battle tactics, or for putting up with the idiosyncrasies of collective action, and prefer to rush headlong onto the battlefield.
There are two excellent examples of what happens when personal goals overcome collective action: one is the Battle of Hastings, the other is the Battle of Uhud. In both cases a strong defensive position was abandoned for greed, and in both cases the greedy were destroyed.
The phalanx does have an offensive posture though, and it is based on a measured, unstoppable advance. In the case of the Greek Phalanx, the position would push forward with three or more spear points leveled at each enemy at different lengths and different elevations, jabbing for an eye, throat or belly at as far away as 5 meters. The Roman phalanx used javelins, spears, and swords to increase range while remaining absolutely devastating at close range. Using two legions in phalanx position they were able to finish off a 15 000 strong force lead by the fearsome woman general Boudica with only 1000 men.
The key to the offensive posture is diversity. Using many different methods, different armaments, and different skills sets (Romans hand-picked left-handed people to march along the right side of the formation, facing their shields outward) the phalanx is able to slowly posture itself into a dominant position, and then devastate anyone who stands in their way, including cavalry, infantry, or even archers.
The analogue to this example is accepting diversity in your community, and promoting diverse interests and skill sets so that many different problems can be overcome. Again, holding you spear or sword or javelin, being left handed, or right handed, or anything else, you may feel that you are the fulcrum of the unit, but in fact the real power comes from the fact that everyone is there, everyone is willing to co-operate in a general way, and everyone is encouraged in their unique characteristics.
Open Hearts
The phalanx position, our community’s cohesive nature, protects us and nurtures us, but the open hearts are what prevent stagnation and give us the keys to enormous progress against insurmountable odds.
Whether you feel your community is not bound strongly enough together, or you feel it is stagnant or ineffective, hopefully the ancient phalanx position will be a reminder of how great even just 300 soldiers can be.
