A hard post today, friends. To read and to write. Hard for readers because it will contain some images that are disturbing, barbarous, even revolting. Hard for me to write for those same reasons and the fact that I must focus and make myself concentrate nevertheless. There is a point here that is important past measuring.
The images below show the destruction wrought in the First World War (1914 to 1918) in Europe, of course, but also in other theaters of the war and on the seas.
stretcher bearers after Battle of Passchendaele, 1917
dead German soldier, France, 1917
Armenian woman kneeling beside her dead child, killed by Turkish soldiers, 1915
(British Empire troops) East Indian dead, Battle of Tanga, East Africa, 1914
dead British pilot, viewed by German soldiers, 1917
Edith Cavell, British nurse, working behind German lines, saved lives of soldiers
from both sides, caught and shot by German firing squad, 1915
American field hospital, France, 1918
African-American soldiers, winners of French Croix du Guerre, 1919
HMS Queen Mary exploding/sinking, Battle of Jutland, taking 1266 men to their deaths, 1916
Latest estimates by historians for WWI casualties, run as high as 17 million dead, including over 6 million civilians. (More by far than I thought and listed on this blog a few months ago.)
Now we could post photos of the dead from the Russian Civil War that followed and was caused by World War I. Or the deaths that happened as the Ottoman, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian empires fell apart, deaths also caused by World War I. And those from World War II, several times more destructive than World War I. World War II was also caused by World War I via the humiliating terms forced on Germany by the Treaty of Versaille.
But what's the use of showing all those images? If, by now, any readers have not got my point, then more photos are wasting our time. The twentieth century was a steady stream of living nightmares from its beginning to almost its end. Arguably, we're still suffering consequences of the 1914 - 1918 war, though the deaths are beginning to dwindle in numbers.
Why do I bother to list and describe such horrors? Humans are warring animals. Get over it. Why worry about what we cannot change? Such worry is just wasted energy.
NO. IT'S. NOT.
The root causes of war do not lie in some indecipherable secret attribute of our species: they lie in differing cultures, with their differing belief systems, mores, and moral codes. But differing cultures are not incommensurable. We have tons of evidence to show that when the bullies have beaten and murdered each other and many others nearby, and have worn out their "anger", so-called "incommensurable" cultures find one another, meld, form hybrid cultures, and go on.
I don't know any of you personally, readers, but I can say with utter candor for myself, I'm fed up. Not with courage or cowardice or civilization or barbarism. I'm fed up with obstinacy and stupidity. None of the pains of war need to happen. We could write a culture for all humans to live by, and it could work, and we could re-direct our enormous energies to improving the odds of our species' surviving by moving into space in numbers while simultaneously cleaning up our planet.
Thus, I now can close by repeating why I hate postmodernism. All of its core ideas were in place in the thinking systems available in the West by 1912. These ideas are Nietzsche in nice clothes. We had them all well before the 20th century madness began. They did nothing to help men and women of goodwill prevent that madness and the horrors that it spawned. If anything, they set smart people from the universities of the West on complacent paths of mutual destruction. The West then drew in nearly everyone else.
What the social scientists and humanities profs said, essentially, was: "There are no such things as 'right' and 'wrong'. They are cultural constructs in every case, real and theoretical. The only bottom line is that when you are in Rome, in order to be 'right', you must do as the Romans do (or Russians or Chinese or Kenyans or Indians or Brits or Americans or French, etc.)."
What consequences did they really expect? For me, taking such a position - some of the smartest people we had and have! - taking that position is a cowardice of giant proportions. I will not do it.
"It's not up to us to solve such a dilemma" these people sometimes tell me. DAMMIT. There is nobody else. The capitalists, the generals, the socialists, the diplomats, the theocrats, etc., etc. ...they've had their turns. Humanity is hanging by a thread and down to its last hope: the thinking people of the democracies of the world.
I fear with every cell in me that if we continue to drift into more and more "particularism" - as the social scientists seem to be not only allowing but intending - more and more "special interest" groups will inevitably form and then become more and more alienated from each other. If we fail in the moral realist project, we are going to do it up really well this time. 20th century-style war with 21st century weapons, including the nuclear ones.
To my cultural anthropologist friends - and yes, I have some of those - I say: Have you really pictured what you're shrugging off?
So I'll say again. Right is what we are doing when we debate and discuss our disputes and agree from the outset to let the democratic processes of free elections, rule of law, and responsible government lawmaking solve them. At the very worst, we have to let our sisters and brothers with whom we disagree do what they have voted for. Then, as long as they are not violating the human rights of any individuals or minorities, we must let the errors run their course. Let reality be the arbiter. It will. When a system does not work, it will - given time - fall on its face. I am certain of it.
It took about 70 years for the people of the former Soviet Union to conclude in large majority that communism ("scientific socialism", "historical materialism", etc.) doesn't bloody work. But in the end, they did. And they dismantled it. We did not, as a species, have to fight the Armageddon War.
We can stop the madness. We just have to keep developing the moral realist model, the cultural materialist model that shows why democracy, with human rights and market-driven capitalism both under its umbrella, works. Then we sell it to the folk, everywhere.
Germans destroying the Berlin Wall, 1989
When men and women of my generation ("Baby Boomers") saw the Soviet Union come apart in the late 1980's - early 1990's, most of us were not really relieved. "Relieved" is not the right word. We were stunned. Amazed. I, personally, at first, could not believe it. A giant nightmare was finally over.
So I'll end by saying once more. We can do this. Smart people can develop and test and prove a model of how humanity could run, with all parts tuned and humming in harmony. Courage and wisdom. Freedom and love. Sensuality and spirituality.
You say you're weary. I don't want to know. I say, GET UP! Intelligence will save us or we won't be saved.
But in the shadow of the mushroom cloud, nevertheless friends, have a nice day.
The images below show the destruction wrought in the First World War (1914 to 1918) in Europe, of course, but also in other theaters of the war and on the seas.
stretcher bearers after Battle of Passchendaele, 1917
dead German soldier, France, 1917
Armenian woman kneeling beside her dead child, killed by Turkish soldiers, 1915
(British Empire troops) East Indian dead, Battle of Tanga, East Africa, 1914
dead British pilot, viewed by German soldiers, 1917
Edith Cavell, British nurse, working behind German lines, saved lives of soldiers
from both sides, caught and shot by German firing squad, 1915
American field hospital, France, 1918
African-American soldiers, winners of French Croix du Guerre, 1919
HMS Queen Mary exploding/sinking, Battle of Jutland, taking 1266 men to their deaths, 1916
Latest estimates by historians for WWI casualties, run as high as 17 million dead, including over 6 million civilians. (More by far than I thought and listed on this blog a few months ago.)
Now we could post photos of the dead from the Russian Civil War that followed and was caused by World War I. Or the deaths that happened as the Ottoman, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian empires fell apart, deaths also caused by World War I. And those from World War II, several times more destructive than World War I. World War II was also caused by World War I via the humiliating terms forced on Germany by the Treaty of Versaille.
But what's the use of showing all those images? If, by now, any readers have not got my point, then more photos are wasting our time. The twentieth century was a steady stream of living nightmares from its beginning to almost its end. Arguably, we're still suffering consequences of the 1914 - 1918 war, though the deaths are beginning to dwindle in numbers.
Why do I bother to list and describe such horrors? Humans are warring animals. Get over it. Why worry about what we cannot change? Such worry is just wasted energy.
NO. IT'S. NOT.
The root causes of war do not lie in some indecipherable secret attribute of our species: they lie in differing cultures, with their differing belief systems, mores, and moral codes. But differing cultures are not incommensurable. We have tons of evidence to show that when the bullies have beaten and murdered each other and many others nearby, and have worn out their "anger", so-called "incommensurable" cultures find one another, meld, form hybrid cultures, and go on.
I don't know any of you personally, readers, but I can say with utter candor for myself, I'm fed up. Not with courage or cowardice or civilization or barbarism. I'm fed up with obstinacy and stupidity. None of the pains of war need to happen. We could write a culture for all humans to live by, and it could work, and we could re-direct our enormous energies to improving the odds of our species' surviving by moving into space in numbers while simultaneously cleaning up our planet.
Thus, I now can close by repeating why I hate postmodernism. All of its core ideas were in place in the thinking systems available in the West by 1912. These ideas are Nietzsche in nice clothes. We had them all well before the 20th century madness began. They did nothing to help men and women of goodwill prevent that madness and the horrors that it spawned. If anything, they set smart people from the universities of the West on complacent paths of mutual destruction. The West then drew in nearly everyone else.
What the social scientists and humanities profs said, essentially, was: "There are no such things as 'right' and 'wrong'. They are cultural constructs in every case, real and theoretical. The only bottom line is that when you are in Rome, in order to be 'right', you must do as the Romans do (or Russians or Chinese or Kenyans or Indians or Brits or Americans or French, etc.)."
What consequences did they really expect? For me, taking such a position - some of the smartest people we had and have! - taking that position is a cowardice of giant proportions. I will not do it.
"It's not up to us to solve such a dilemma" these people sometimes tell me. DAMMIT. There is nobody else. The capitalists, the generals, the socialists, the diplomats, the theocrats, etc., etc. ...they've had their turns. Humanity is hanging by a thread and down to its last hope: the thinking people of the democracies of the world.
I fear with every cell in me that if we continue to drift into more and more "particularism" - as the social scientists seem to be not only allowing but intending - more and more "special interest" groups will inevitably form and then become more and more alienated from each other. If we fail in the moral realist project, we are going to do it up really well this time. 20th century-style war with 21st century weapons, including the nuclear ones.
To my cultural anthropologist friends - and yes, I have some of those - I say: Have you really pictured what you're shrugging off?
So I'll say again. Right is what we are doing when we debate and discuss our disputes and agree from the outset to let the democratic processes of free elections, rule of law, and responsible government lawmaking solve them. At the very worst, we have to let our sisters and brothers with whom we disagree do what they have voted for. Then, as long as they are not violating the human rights of any individuals or minorities, we must let the errors run their course. Let reality be the arbiter. It will. When a system does not work, it will - given time - fall on its face. I am certain of it.
It took about 70 years for the people of the former Soviet Union to conclude in large majority that communism ("scientific socialism", "historical materialism", etc.) doesn't bloody work. But in the end, they did. And they dismantled it. We did not, as a species, have to fight the Armageddon War.
We can stop the madness. We just have to keep developing the moral realist model, the cultural materialist model that shows why democracy, with human rights and market-driven capitalism both under its umbrella, works. Then we sell it to the folk, everywhere.
Germans destroying the Berlin Wall, 1989
When men and women of my generation ("Baby Boomers") saw the Soviet Union come apart in the late 1980's - early 1990's, most of us were not really relieved. "Relieved" is not the right word. We were stunned. Amazed. I, personally, at first, could not believe it. A giant nightmare was finally over.
So I'll end by saying once more. We can do this. Smart people can develop and test and prove a model of how humanity could run, with all parts tuned and humming in harmony. Courage and wisdom. Freedom and love. Sensuality and spirituality.
You say you're weary. I don't want to know. I say, GET UP! Intelligence will save us or we won't be saved.
But in the shadow of the mushroom cloud, nevertheless friends, have a nice day.
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