The Art of War

[Henry M]

"Only a minority of the protesters were actually against the war on
any moral grounds?" Was you there, Charlie?

That's not what I saw.  There was, of course, a natural hubris mixed
in with doing-the-right-thing-in-spite-of-the-frequent-exposure-to-the-likelihood-of-various-discomforts,
but Ian's facile broad-brush doesn't paint a very useful, or even
accurate, picture.  It's not how OBA pictures the movement, and it was
a movement, either.

AsB4,
٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
Henry Mu
http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20



On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 12:09 PM, Ian Livingston
<igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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."
>