{"id":338,"date":"2007-10-04T11:59:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-04T11:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2007\/10\/04\/338\/"},"modified":"2012-04-07T11:34:05","modified_gmt":"2012-04-07T16:34:05","slug":"338","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=338","title":{"rendered":"The War"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been watching the Ken Burns series on WW2 lately (\u201cThe War\u201d<\/a>, on PBS TV). It definitely is powerful. Burns is trying to show you what that war was like from two perspectives \u2013 from the homefront and from the front lines. The homefront stuff is interesting; it shows how life had changed in four typical American towns because of WW2. So far, our modern war on terrorism hasn\u2019t changed our daily life in America too much, aside from the increased security irritants (e.g., more paperwork to get a drivers license, more airport check-in procedures, more metal scanners at office buildings, etc.). But WW2 definitely made a big change relative to the way that things were in the 1930\u2019s, during the Great Depression. In some ways things got better because of the war, in some ways things got worse, but they definitely were different.<\/p>\n

Again, that\u2019s all quite interesting. But Burns goes for the gut when he turns to the war front. He wants you to imagine what it was like to be in a cold mudhole getting shot at, or up in a bomber plane over France with an engine on fire, or on a Navy ship in the Pacific with a kamikaze plane diving in at you. He wants you to know that war is in no way<\/span> fun. It\u2019s gruesome work done in awful conditions. He wants you to imagine the blood and screams when the guy next to you gets his face blown off by shrapnel. He wants you to know about field amputations for gangrene. He wants you to imagine being alone in the Pacific Ocean without a lifeboat, watching the last remains of your burning destroyer ship sinking under the waterline. <\/p>\n

I have had some trouble sleeping after watching all this. One way to feel better is to lionize these men, think about all the sacrifice they made for their nation and their fellow soldiers and sailors. Praise them for their great love of country and their incredible bonding with the other guys in the trenches. In other words, try to think about how some of the best human behavior shines through the awfulness of it all. E.g., Tom Brokaw\u2019s \u201cGreatest Generation\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I just read an article in the Atlantic that makes me ponder how war paradoxically brings out the best in people. Olivia Judson wrote a somewhat optimistic article called \u201cThe Selfless Gene\u201d, surveying various studies indicating that humans have inherited from their ape ancestors an instinct to cooperate with and even sacrifice for the group they belong to. Ms. Judson concludes<\/a> that this instinct can be directed by human intelligence to make things better for us. But there is a dark side, which Ms. Judson alludes to in the middle of her article. She says that the \u201cinherent selflessness\u201d of humans may well have developed as a tactic of war. Charles Darwin himself hypothesized that because of all the warfare that goes on between groups of apes (and humans), the groups that cooperate the most (to the point of self-sacrifice to save the group) will do better than groups where everyone is out to save their own behind. The former groups will usually beat the latter groups, and given the deadly nature of warfare, this means that more people willing to sacrifice themselves for the group will have children than the folk who didn\u2019t want to. <\/p>\n

Ms. Judson then reviews a number of formal scientific studies that confirm this Darwinian theory. And from that she draws a sunny conclusion. But after watching the Burns series on war, I draw a much less optimistic conclusion. All this willingness to suffer and die for one\u2019s country and one\u2019s fellow soldier is great, on one level. But on a higher level, it assumes that we are always going to form groups (based on nationality, religion, race, ideology, whatever) and make war against each other. That is also in our genes. The theory espoused by humanists and religious idealists that humankind is one big family that shouldn\u2019t fight amidst itself never gains traction. <\/p>\n

Living in peace appears to go against our nature. There have been a few short periods in human history where there wasn\u2019t much warfare going on. The 20th Century, and now the early 21st Century, hardly had any such periods. But even when there was relative calm throughout the world, just a few changes in weather or technology or ideology got one group upset with another, and the bang-bang started all over again. It doesn\u2019t take much to get this species marching its sons off to the battlefield. And it doesn\u2019t take much to convince them that they put their lives on the line. We get talked into war so easily. Again, it seems to be in our genes.<\/p>\n

Humans are the one species that can appreciate the notion \u201cit doesn\u2019t have to be this way\u201d. Once in a blue moon, humanity does go against its nature when intelligence indicates a better way. But with regard to warfare, I don\u2019t see much willingness to question it anywhere in the world. And that\u2019s not good, given all the mega-problems that are now brewing (global warming, nuclear proliferation, oil shortages, religious fundamentalism, unregulated global capitalism, etc.).<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to be alive to see the year 2100 come in (not even the 2050 mid-point). But I hope it all somehow turns out OK for today\u2019s kids, who possibly will. I hope that future Ken Burns\u2019 won\u2019t have to keep making documentaries like \u201cThe War\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been watching the Ken Burns series on WW2 lately (\u201cThe War\u201d, on PBS TV). It definitely is powerful. Burns is trying to show you what that war was like from two perspectives \u2013 from the homefront and from the front lines. The homefront stuff is interesting; it shows how life had changed in four […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2683,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions\/2683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}