THE IDEA OF WAR
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), in writing about "the ancients" such as Plato and Aristotle, remarked:
"Those whom we call ancient were really new in all things...and as we have joined to their knowledge the experience of the centuries which have followed them, it is in ourselves that we should find this antiquity that we revere in others."
Pascal also said something to the effect that if the Greeks of antiquity had overly admired their own "ancients," they would not have forged ahead with all of their own discoveries.
Learning how to learn has been a real struggle for humanity. There are certain ideas that are so bad that in my view they should have hit the dustbin of dumb and dumber eons ago when human beings first began talking to each other. Accepting new ideas has apparently been even more difficult. Everybody knew the earth is flat. Everybody knew the sun and moon circle the earth. If anybody dared to disagree, let's stone, shoot, hang, burn that person.
But the idea of war seems to be one that we could outgrow. I can think of several reasons why war should be done with forever, but it just keeps morphing into more and more destructive wars. It's so easy: You have stuff I want, and I have armies and lots of weapons. If I attack you, I may win. Then I get your gold, your land, your stuff--and I have the fun of raping and pillaging and murdering, and all of it legit because whatever soldiers do in wartime is generally sanctioned as in "war is hell."
There are, of course, many young people with good moral standards and ethics, and they have learned that killing generally leads to more killing.
There are, of course, many young people with good moral standards and ethics, and they have learned that killing generally leads to more killing.
But then what would we do with all the surplus young men in a world where there are not enough decent jobs for them so they can settle down and have a family? The poorly trained troops that showed up near the end of WWII were unofficially called "cannot fodder." They were there just to give the enemy someone to shoot at.
Great idea. Send these young people to war. If necessary, create wars to send them to. Combat will either kill or settle them down if they make it home. And if women get too fractious and demanding, send them to war too and they'll soon find out all they were missing.
There's great entertainment value in wars. Where would Hollywood be without war movies and TV shows, especially those about WWII? Or publishers without war books?
What I think is that war--actual declared war like WWII, in which virtually the entire country is involved and we fight for our lives, gives us the adrenalin rush of a lifetime. Say you spend a year or two on the front lines (if front lines still exist), and your adrenalin pumps like crazy. Then: home. Happy, great to see family, friends, familiar places, and not to be shot at. But what about the boredom? It's different from battlefield boredom. Yet there's still that adrenalin, and what does a soldier who's been in combat do with it?
I think that's why, when I was a girl, every time I got up in the night to go to the bathroom, my dad, who slept in his boxers, would erupt from my parents' bedroom and charge into the hallway, shouting, "Who's there? Who's there?"
"Just me, Daddy," I would squeak, scurrying into the bathroom.
That's one of my "war stories." At the time it was a little scary. Now it seems kind of funny.
What's not funny is that my dad, when he was dying of cancer in 1989, felt an immense need to confess the things he had done in the war. They haunted him; the villages destroyed, the Japanese soldiers shot whose pockets contained pictures of their loved ones; his memories of shooting flamethrowers into caves knowing that the people in the caves were seldom soldiers but almost all children, women, and old people.
As he lay dying of cancer, Dad remembered the worst parts of war. He cried and, being a religious man, begged God for mercy. He could not forget, and he did not believe that what he had done was forgivable. Then a miracle happened. One morning he came out of his bedroom smiling and said, "I went somewhere last night. It was wonderful. I can still see the colors. Can you see the colors?"
Some people would say it was the cancer drugs. I disagree. I think there are forces at work in the world that we don't understand, and to which most of us don't pay attention. As far as my dad's experience, I can't prove it actually happened. But nobody can prove it didn't. My stepmom and I were both there, and we knew something amazing had happened to him.
After that, he no longer agonized about his war experiences, and he became peaceful, enjoying conversations with us and others until he, this Iowa farm boy, 6'3", broad-shouldered, who still had a grip that could crush my hand, faded out of this like. I hope he went to the place he had seen.
Some people would say it was the cancer drugs. I disagree. I think there are forces at work in the world that we don't understand, and to which most of us don't pay attention. As far as my dad's experience, I can't prove it actually happened. But nobody can prove it didn't. My stepmom and I were both there, and we knew something amazing had happened to him.
After that, he no longer agonized about his war experiences, and he became peaceful, enjoying conversations with us and others until he, this Iowa farm boy, 6'3", broad-shouldered, who still had a grip that could crush my hand, faded out of this like. I hope he went to the place he had seen.
