Unity

They lacked consciousness in the unity of life.

In the movie 300, the Spartans fight the Persians and fight in a formation known as the Phalanx, and there is a scene where the King Leonidas explains what a phalanx is. He explains that it is a unit of Spartans that fight as one and the Spartan’s main duty is to protect the Spartan next to him. The Persians could not defeat the Spartans head on because the lacked the notion of unity of people and life. The unity of life is when people understand that there is no point in using the superiority-inferiority complex, that using race to define someone will push you ahead. It is when people truly realize that the person sitting next to him is the same as himself, and that people don’t fight over petty things and can cooperate to make society better. The concept of the unity of life can sometimes be a paradox as most of the time, people unify under a single cause or idea which usually is in a situation of war. For example, the people of Scotland united against the British king in the time of William Wallace, and people united again in the Arab Spring to fight oppressors in their governments. It is a paradox because these people have united against an oppressor, so they have united to fight others. It is seen that people unify in revolutions and movements, but do not do so in times of peace, which is wrong. Usually, when a country gains freedom from an oppressor, they go through civil strife and conflict as seen in Africa and even the U.S. had the conflict of two internal parties which led to war. That’s the larger picture, and honestly, something we can’t really affect, but in our everyday lives, the concept of the unity of life can be exercised. We can just be nice to someone and that shows unity of life, as you see this person as your equal and treat him as you would want to be treated. The unity of life is something that we see missing in today’s world, and to be honest it is somewhat like Robert Owen’s utopia model. He was able to create this surreal utopia in his factory complex, but it just can’t be exercised globally, and that’s the cold truth. So we as people should exercise this unity everyday at our schools and workplaces, everywhere, and by unifying life on this small scale, it can grow larger and it might teach the world a lesson.