The Obscene, The Sublime
A gentle rain falls under a gray sky. We need the rain.
Last night a group of us discussed the relationship between critical thinking and war. The first issue to be considered has to be what one has in mind by the term “war.” The soldier in a combat zone understands that the word is about the basics of survival, of fighting in order to preserve the life of the man or woman next to you in the dugout… Kill or be killed. The reckoning of life comes down to just that: death, — in that particular context.
One hasn’t the luxury of rational, utilitarian calculus of interest, — everything reduces to instinct alone. Just follow the instinct of the organism to survive. That’s all.
The option of petulant, childish, self-centered exclusion of others is ruled out if one desires to escape the nightmare of blood lust, to return home at the end of one’s tour of duty. You fight, kill in order to live, and you must fight as a unit. Such is the morality imposed by the circumstances, as inflexibly as if decreed by the gods. Nothing has changed for the soldier since Homer composed his tale of the Greeks and Trojans set on the plains of llium.
Two hours of quality discussion left me with a feeling of gratitude for our community of philosophers, my debt to each of them for what I’ve learned over many years of discussion on countless topics. About this topic I felt pressed by the enigma, the mystery that has tangled every other member of homo sapiens. Why, in the name of all of the gods, do we slide, as if pulled by a gravitational force into the maw of warfare, over and over again? The backward look makes clear the web of lies, the hubris, and even the avarice that culminated at a given time and place where the guilty and the innocent were arbitrarily offered on the altar of war. I know, I know: to live is to endure palpably the friction of circumstance. But to march willingly, or perhaps be drafted, reluctantly dragged over the precipice of war time after time… Who could maintain that the story of humanity is not a tragic tale?
I understand that the citizens of Ukraine know better than I the infinite sorrow of war. As well as do the hapless young men who have been conscripted to fight in Putin’s army.
A final thought: what are we missing about “human nature,” what do I fail to take into account that causes such vulnerability to war?
If we made a concerted effort to know more, to research the matter as if our “life depended upon it,” as we did when confronted with the COVID epidemic — would that make a difference? I would be willing to bet upon just such a “vaccine” for our minds and hearts…
But then we’d have to be willing to receive it.
Is there a counterpoint to these grim ruminations? Yes! This tune by the late great Barry White shows such an antipode within our experience.
