Spartacus and the Quality of Life

I’m going to take off my nutritional pants for a moment, here, and pull my film-geek stocking over my head, and take today’s post in a bit different of a direction than previous posts.

Having been home alone for most of this weekend, I decided to go to the library to see if there were any movies I wanted to check-out.  The pickings were a bit slim compared to previous trips to the library, but I was lucky enough to run across Stanley Kubrick’s classic, Spartacus. Even though I had a fairly weak idea of what the whole plot of the movie was, basically a slave becoming an army leader was what I had in mind, I had heard good things about the film. I already knew about the legendary director Stanley Kubrick, and had made it a priority to see most of the films he had made.  And I had seen the Pepsi commercial that put a comedic twist on that very emotional scene towards the end of the movie where Spartacus is being searched for.  (That’s hopefully not too much of a spoiler for you.)

So I spent most of my Saturday evening, since the movie was 180+ minutes long, watching Spartacus. The plot was not far off from what I originally thought; basically a slave leading a rebellion against his masters that eventually grows large enough to take on Rome itself.  Apart from the times where the DVD skipped, I pretty much enjoyed the movie.

While I was watching, though, I couldn’t help but put myself in Spartacus’ shoes.  While I usually do this when I watch movies, I don’t really do it intentionally.  I tend to catch myself worrying about things the characters in the movie would be worrying about.  But these things usually are sort of irrelevant towards the plot of the film.

The thing that made me ponder a bit, and sort of slapped me in the face, was how terrible slavery truly must have been.  Being forced to do back-breaking work, never having the freedom to decide what you would like to do for the day, wearing poor clothes, and, worst of all, being treated as some sort of sub-human.  This is just a terrible way to be forced to live.  There is a scene in the film where Spartacus has a woman thrown into his cell so he could “get his thang on”, but Spartacus just looks at this woman and says, “I’m not an animal.”.  That really gave me an insight towards how slaves were treated and viewed upon, not just during the Roman Empire, but throughout history.

I’m not saying I thought slaves lived peachy lives before I watched Spartacus, I always knew being a slave was difficult.  For some reason, though, Spartacus just seemed to bring a different perspective towards that type of lifestyle I had never really fully acknowledged before.  I suppose it really made me thankful for the quality of life I have lived thus far.

However, this made me ponder a bit further on that phrase, “Quality of life.”  The more I thought about the “quality” of the life I am living right now, the more I began to wonder how much superior it is today than it was back than.

Don’t get me wrong, I think life today, in many ways, is vastly superior than the ways of old.  This is obvious.  What I am trying to ask here is this; we have been given a wide variety of privileges the majority of people in the past would have NEVER dreamed of.  We have technology, medical advancements, infinitely better sanitary conditions, etc… that make our lives so much easier to live. But the question is, are we really taking advantage of these modern-day miracles?  Are we really getting the most out of these priviledges we have been given in our lives?

I know for a fact that I don’t, lol.  For goodness sake, I sit inside most of the day doing stuff that just wastes time.  I watch television, I get sucked into facebook far longer than I should, I surf the web, I read books for a couple hours (okay, that’s probably not the worst thing I could do), and so on… But is this really the pinicle of human life?  Is this really what living has become?

To answer the first question, no.  To answer the second question, I certainly hope not.

Don’t feel guilty about any of this, though. Honestly, this is what most people know how to do and enjoy doing.  It’s what our generation has become; oh well.  I just can’t help but to think about Spartacus and what he would have done with freedom if he had been granted it.

He probably would have settled down, started a family, and died of old age, lol.  But he would also have had a much greater respect for the freedom because he had known what it was like without that priviledge.

Again, I’m not saying that living in 500 b.c would have been better than living the lives we do.  That’s a bunch of crap.  What I’m saying is that, thus far, the people who can read this blog post are probably living pretty priviledged lives in the sense of having freedoms many people would have died for.

(Don’t get me wrong, though, there still is an ample amount of suffering going on in this world.  Unfortunately, humans have, and always will, suffer.  It’s what we’re truly good at. And maybe the lives we live really aren’t as free as we make them out to be. But we better save that topic for another time.)

I suppose, thought, that Spartacus helped me realize that maybe I should cash in on some of these priviledges I have been given in my life.  Maybe do a little traveling while the world is still in relatively stable terms (I use those words a bit sparingly).  Go camp out in the mountains while we still have the funding to support search and rescue teams.  Because in all true honestly, we don’t always know when these priviledges are going to be there.

Thanks for enduring this long post.  Good luck getting through your Monday tomorrow!

E.M.R