The Art of War

[Ian Livingston]

Henry,

Actually, yeah, I was there, though I was young--not yet of draft age.
And there were, as I said, multiple, conflicting reasons for being
there. Still, I stand by my experience, which was that the rallies I
saw were attended by a majority of people who were there for the
party.  For many of the young men involved, the chant was "hell no, I
won't go," because they didn't want to go get shot at. It was a
selfish motivation, not a moral one. It was truly a minority who saw
the war as an expression of moral decay under nationalist propaganda.
It is the ones who were there out of conscience that interest me. And,
yes, I contend they were the minority of protesters--a contention that
is upheld by interviews conducted both at the time and later, by
social theorists and psychologists. I can name a few names, if you'd
like, but I'd rather not have to go back into those books at this
moment, as I have other reading in mind. I will, though, if you would
like to read up on it a little.

On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 10:00 AM, Henry M <scuffling at gmail.com> wrote:
> "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."
>>
>



-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."