The Art of War

[Ian Livingston]

> Without "war", Idealists, Progressivists, and Pragmatists would have
> no use and wouldn't even exist.
>
> The whole call to end war negates the entirety of Modern thought.

War is hardly a "modern" problem; neither is opposition to war. How
many Pharoahs ruled the ancient empires of Egypt? That is a history of
thousands of years and we know only the names of the conquerors and
controversials. The majority, ostensibly peaceful rulers, faded into
obscurity. Hatshepsut's reign was notably without wars, and even young
Akhenaton was no warrior king, both, however, were violent in the
imposition of their ideas. All war is violent, but not all violence is
war. The impulse to violence is a result of selfish orientation, and
history celebrates tyrants precisely because they successfully enforce
their will over others. We start selfish and only by great luck
survive to move beyond selfishness and into historical obscurity.

When Gandhi adapted Thoreau's civil disobedience to a 'non-violent'
means of protest, he opposed the English and brought a shameful end to
the shameful English colonialism in India. And his end was violent.
Likewise, when Pitt and Wilberforce brought down the English slave
trade, they did so by acts of profound contention.

I think violence is inevitable. We experience the world subjectively,
and it takes an awful lot of practice to develop the sort of empathy
required to lead others out of self-service and into common welfare.
Then the leadership itself is controversial and inspires violent
reactions.

War is not inevitable. It is a result of chauvinistic nationalism,
which may or may not be on the decline. Contemporary warfare is based
on the economic needs of the complex that drives capitalism in the
modern world. If the economy is based on the production of arms, the
government will be obliged to employ those arms. Doesn't really matter
against whom our children go to fight.

But what about these kids that go to war? Can there be a way of
addressing them? After all, the war nobody shows up for is no war at
all, right? The anti-war movement of the late 60s and early 70s ran
afoul youth culture because of many paradoxes and obstacles. Most of
the people in the rallies had multiple, conflicting reasons for being
there, the dominant ones being that it was hip to protest, so you
could get laid by protesting, and you got to skip class and smoke lots
of pot. Only a minority of the protesters were actually against the
war on any moral grounds. Those few are the ones that interest me. How
did they at such tender years reach the stage of development necessary
to see that war is wasteful? Whatever informed their early development
seems worthy of study for use in childhood and adolescent education.

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 1:45 PM, Michael F <mff8785 at gmail.com> wrote:
> "They recognize universal values or ethics
> but fail to consider how pluralistic ones often create paradoxes and
> deadlocks."
>
> Paradoxes and deadlocks are the result of positivistic and pragmatic
> thought attempting to rhetorically glaze over "what is."  This goes
> back 500 years or so.
>
> Blood Meridian's Judge is a hyper-Modernized man and the evil that is
> at the heart of "us"(Modern Man: contemporary, both vociferous
> conservatives and liberals, and self-proclaimed university humanity
> profs).  We, Modern Man, all love war; gun-toting or protest sign-
> wielding or essay writing not mattering.   The Judge says it all on
> page 249:
>
> "All other trades are contained in that of war.
> Is that why war endures?
> No it endures because young men love it and old men love it in them.
> Those that fought, those that did not."-The Judge
>
>
> It amuses me to know end how outspoken positivists, pragmatists, and
> idealists want to end war, but the tools they employ are the essential
> tools of the war trade, just not as sharp.  Blunt tools, but not as
> sharp.
>
> "This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and
> authority and the justification."-The Judge
>
> Without "war", Idealists, Progressivists, and Pragmatists would have
> no use and wouldn't even exist.
>
> The whole call to end war negates the entirety of Modern thought.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 10:56 AM, alice wellintown
> <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Young soldiers and students are ignorant. They know little about
>> history, life, love, war. What little they know about the past allows
>> them to condemn its evils. They recognize universal values or ethics
>> but fail to consider how pluralistic ones often create paradoxes and
>> deadlocks.
>>
>> This is how the young look at history.
>>
>> It is relatively easy to look into the past and draw lines, seperate
>> the good from the bad.
>>
>> Formulating ethics for current problems and setting criteria for what
>> is good or bad action, or even defining what is evil in our current
>> affairs is not so easy.
>>
>> Unless we are merely talking about these as if they were a football match.
>>
>> Not when we are called to act.
>>
>> Once criteria are formulated, if we are required to act,  we must
>> accept that we will need to constantly improve our actions.
>>
>> Moreover, we can not reduce the war in Afghanistan & Pakistan ...to
>> old problems and ignore the emerging ones.
>>
>> More knowledge of history doesn't alway help as it often obscures
>> persistant problems or oversimplifies emerging ones.
>>
>> We can go on and on...but one thing even the young may see with ease,
>> war compounds and does not solve. Communication, not love,  is the
>> answer.
>>
>> We are in the middle of a revolution in communications (not
>> technology). So, we are everyday better able to communicate, to talk
>> our problems out and work toward solutions.
>>
>> Young soldiers and young students can understand this. Can you?
>>
>>> Is war Freudian? Attempts at return, or mimicry of the return to the
>>> mineral stasis through disintegration and decay?
>>> I wondered sometimes as I watched young students who had enlisted
>>> prepare to ship out whether it was duty or the hope for death that was
>>> the call they answered--a convenient and socially condoned suicide
>>> attempt. A way out for misfits who couldn't opt for the arts as a way
>>> to dump the parents, like Jim Morrison, etc. If you can't beat 'em,
>>> die. All the young men and women coming home now, alive by some ill
>>> fate, who turn the barrel back on themselves out of despair at having
>>> survived. There's a hole in the American heart.
>>
>



-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."