Kinder, Gentler War?

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

GMM responds:
"Forgive me -- it's been a while since I last read V., but as I recall, my take
on it was that EVERYTHING (not only, but including, war) was changed by the
"unique thing" that was born, that was both a symptom and a cause.
 
Or am I more full of it than the last time I checked?"


I don't think so.  V. is heavily indebted to Henry Adams, who saw the 
"continuity" snapping in 1900 (compare Virginia Woolf--"On or about December,
1910, human nature changed" in response to the first big show of modern art).

WWI was just the most obvious symptom of a deeper cultural malaise--and it
intensified things for many artists and thinkers of the early century.

I'd have to see the anthropologist's argument to know what to make of it--how
it views various cultures, for example.  
But to use the sorry example of the Western world, war could be an incredibly
brutal affair--technology just spreads it wider and digs it deeper.  (See the 
battle scenes in BRAVEHEART--perhaps the best thing in anotherwise overlong
and just competently-made film).


Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)