i'm torn...
the last two weeks i have been exposed to different stories, views, and hence, emotions and thoughts on the whole concept of war...
talking with two high school classmates of mine, one who was stationed in iraq, the other, afghanistan, they represent very different results of fighting for one side and destroying the other... one firmly stands behind his country still, happy to fight "them over there, as long as it isn't over here" whereas the other has lost the cause, and cannot go back to organized religion, because it is this which causes one human to kill another...
watching "flags of our fathers" which portrays the repercussions of fighting in battles and watching someone who could be your brother, given a different set of circumstances, die in front of your own eyes, by your own hand... and then returning to a land where those battles are completely foreign but you are displayed as a hero...
walking through the war memorials in washington dc gave me some time to contemplate the reasons why those people are represented, whether by name or battle or nation... they fought to protect, to survive, to prove, to represent, to win, to lead, to follow, who knows? WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Cold War, War on Terrorism... it humbles me, thinking of those who fought so the U.S. is where it is today, but it worries me where we are going...
maybe its my ignorance, innocent, or pure optimism, but i just don't see why we can't see that we have our differences but we can live alongside those differences because more or less, we are all the same... we all bleed, no matter what ground we bleed on...
the thing that truly saddens me, though, is deep down, i know we will continue to add monuments... probably forever...
2 comments:
...at wounded knee... and the worst of it is that these religions have so much in common, only a choice of which prophet to follow. the one who claimed to be God or the one who claimed to be man?
> ... cannot go back to organized
> religion, because it is this
> which causes one human to kill
> another ...
As many things as can be laid at the door of organized religion, I don't think war is one of them.
War is, rather, a function of social organization itself. Now, humans are social animals, and social organization has given us many good things ... medecine, architecture, etc. On the other hand, complex social organization means that small groups make the decisions (see, for example, Roberto Michels' Iron Law of Oligarcy, nice article about it on Wikipedia. Dye and Ziegler's short text Who's Running America? is good for current stuff).
Complex social organization assigns us to roles, many of which we don't realize that we even play. The more complex the organization, the more specialized the roles must be. Most of the roles involve letting someone else make some of your decisions ... like how your taxes will be spent, and whether to go to war.
We may all bleed red, but as cogs in the wheels that run our various societies, we are very different indeed. And IMHO this is true with or without religion.
Religions usually preach against war, or at least aggressive war. But organized religions are usually reflections of the societies of which they are a part. Not always, but usually. Hence Gott Mit Uns and the like.
I used to teach university courses on war and like subjects. This doesn't make me the final authority on the subject by any means ... but personally, I'm a bit surprised that we have as little war as we do, and that it doesn't go as far as it could go. That's no comfort to someone who is maimed or killed, or sees their friends die ... but all in all I'm still surprised it's not worse.
regards,
JPB
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