I just finished watching Lions for Lambs. My parents didn’t like it, because of the abrupt, unsolved ending but I rather did. It seems more…honest. Movies that end with people getting fired and others dropping out of school aren’t so enjoyable to watch. But then, movies where everything ends up happy are pretty unrealistic. So I suppose you could say this preserves the realism while still maintaining a semblence of hope for the characters…by avoiding the end completely.
The pessimists would say, it failed. People died and the media-governed society went on to live unhappy stereotypes, kept satisfied by tidbits provided by government hands…The optimists would say, no! The government plan was exposed and the journalist regained her dignity and became famous!
And in the end, the soldiers died anyway, no matter the reputations saved or nefarious plans brought to light.
“Just another movie made to criticize the Bush administration,” is how my dad put it.
Well, probably. But I did think it was sort of sad how many high school students don’t know what country borders Minnesota. If the stats were true, I’m assuming.
Eh, war is necessary / war is unnecessary, what’s the difference, huh? You have the protesters out on the streets and the protesters who yell encouragement from their sofas at home. And then you have the protesters who don’t really protest at all until it’s the popular thing to do. I’ve always…disliked bandwagon junkies.
“Is war necessary?”
“Necessary? Naw, but it’s pretty darn essential.”
I could go through and explain how people are built to survive, to be ambitious, to be the top dog and all that. I could say, war keeps things shook up because it does. Keeps the population of third world countries in the balance, as ashamed as I am to say it. It’s a difficulty that brings out the best or the worst in a person, though some might have been better off staying home in their air-conditioned, freeze-dried homes. All nice and safe and they never realize, even when they’re dying or perhaps up until then, what cowards they are. How useless they are at pointing and shooting, or not asking questions. Yes, for some, war is not necessary nor essential because it would prove them to be weaker. I suspect that living in comfort your whole life turns out more cowards than any one country really needs. Or wants to admit. So for some, staying home would likely be the the better option, if not the safer one.
I’d like to say war, on a nation-wide or worldwide scale, is not the necessary thing. More, singular prejudices and the need to survive, to be on top, might lead one person against another person as easily as it would a group of people against a nation.
So no, not war in general. Small wars. Disputes that escalate until third parties decide they can use the opportunity to gain a foothold and jump on board, throw the dice in with one faction or another. Power games, power games–
And then there’re the times when some good comes of it. Everyone knows, that which does not kill you makes you stronger.
Ah, probably not true in the case of wars. But sometimes, on rare occasions, catastrophic loss and sovereign hatred can change. In a horrible, dispicable way…and then sometimes people have the fortitude to learn from their mistakes.
So when we’re gone, when our great-great-great-great grandchildren are bones six feet under, and all the buildings here are razed to the ground and the people have evolved beyond recognition. And every record of past histories has long been buried under change, under evolution and the need to move on…perhaps then, history will repeat itself. Over and over. But only eventually.
I’m all for peace. I love the idea that a person can be whatever she wishes. That a kid can grow up and not be drafted, a father or mother won’t be killed in roadside bombs, or a rift between neighbors won’t form in such a way that the hostility goes on for hundreds of years…
It’s all well and good. Realistically speaking, I even think it’s possible.
But a world without war, I believe, wouldn’t be so alive. The people could live fat and happy until the end of their days but what kind of end is that to civilization? You look in textbooks and see timelines, of past battles, of important people and places…well, they didn’t get there by living in comfort.
In terms of evolving, of making a difference, I don’t think I’d ever want a world without war. I say that because I haven’t seen it, I’m sure, but I can imagine, as that third party, what the consequences would be.
Like I’ve said before, sometimes you try so hard to solve the problem on one side of the boat, you reach so far, that the whole thing ends up tipping before you know what hit you. Except in this case, the boat wouldn’t tip. It’d sink. Slow but sure.
No one probably even understands what I’m trying to say. I’d put it in condensed format but that’d take all the luster out of it. All the meaning because words are just words without a setting and an imagination.
I want to try an example. Imagine…a world where everyone is at war. Every country, every person is at war with his or her neighbor. They live in constant fear. Children are drafted by the army because all the men and women of fighting age had long since died for their government. Values and morals mean nothing. All that drives the fight forward is stubbornness and a cause that is truely meaningless in the face of the body bags stacked in neat five-by-ten rows.
The land is raped by people with guns who call themselves soldiers. Civilians are no longer civilians because they’ve been forced to fight to protect themselves. Perhaps on the homefront, there is some speck of nationalism. In a few people, that is the driving force, that fanaticism. And then you have two types of people, the zealots and the frightened.
The end of the world, some would say. This is the end of the world, but eventually, nature would take its course. Some power would make a subtle, world-changing move and just like that it would end.
The truth, I think, is that if all the world were at war the war would end.
Perhaps not in two years, or two decades, or a century but it would end as sure as it would bring leaders and fighters out of the woodwork. Not like today’s wars, where one faction is depleted and restocks, then launches everything at the other faction who is depleted and restocks…it goes on. Even when one battle is won, there is another around the corner. Even with the victory of one war, there will be another sure as the sun rises and politicians are ambitious.
That’s one side of it. Then you have the possiblility of world peace. Yay! you say. Peace for all!
Things don’t look so good. You’d think peace would bring prosperity to all. But as the wars break up and the soldiers go home to loving, relieved families, there’s a new problem.
War makes people care because it holds hostage what a person loves the most. It takes away a father, a son, a daughter, a niece or nephew and the family is sick with worry. They donate money, set up protest rallies, stand up and believe in something. While all the inner cowards watch from their sofas at home, those with strength enough get up and do something. The threat propels them forward.
So what happens when there is no threat?
Beauty. Pages and pages of it, in every magazine and newspaper. Articles about celebrities, about new technology that cures cancer, about people rescuing cats from burning buildings and saving the blue whale.
Families are whole. There is no need for defenses, so Homeland Security and such organizations are split up and sent off. Food supplies are flown to impoverished countries and not a single child starves. In the U.S., the cities grow bigger than ever, bloated with immigrants and population booms. Buildings rise higher, bridges taller, streets longer. There are gardens, and art galleries and bakeries where once there were recruiting stations and army bases.
Years go by. The gardens are still there, wilted and brown from pollution, but they’re still there. Fire rescue is no longer needed because some scientist somewhere, who was no longer needed to fight in the wars, has invented a fire-proof, water-proof material with which to build homes. Another, somewhere else, has created a hands-off automatic pastry machine. Bakery employees are unneeded, and go off to seek other jobs. The art galleries are closed and converted into housing to accomodate the growing population. All the art, now, is online. With a click of a button, anyone around the world can visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
People don’t walk anymore. They are carried, by moving sidewalks and escalators for steps and they don’t even have to stand, if they don’t want to. In fact, they don’t even have to work. There are machines to do it for them! With such a high unemployment rate, the goverment is forced to go on a set-salary scale for every person, which of course they should’ve done long ago.
Journals publish musings by everyone. It becomes the law for them to accept every piece of work, so as not to create dissention within society. Even the prisons are shut down, because all of the prisoners are either rehabilitated or dead. There’s a strict death penalty, because of course no one wants to deal with criminals who will only try to provoke fighting, and fighting is bad.
No war, no crime, no effort.
It’s the end of the world, I would say. Not only would it eventually lead to a utopia (I’ve always hated utopias), but it would mean that no one meant anything. Each person would be reduced to that tally mark when the government official comes around and takes polls. One more number in the census, one more equal paycheck. No one would ever mean anything, would ever have purpose beyond living. Living for the sake of being alive might sound well and good, but it’s the reasons for living that give being alive its meaning.
Some disaster would come. Perhaps we would have steel walls and fire-proof homes. Perhaps we would never have cancer, or wars, and women wouldn’t get raped walking home and men wouldn’t get jumped for the twenty dollar bill in their pockets. But something would change everything, something no one could suspect.
It could be a disease. With nothing else to do, the government puts its head to genetic mutation research and what could the protesters say–at least they’re not making bombs! Some small anomaly would go wrong and disease would spread throughout the entire world. Unstoppable, because of that singular, all-enclusive arrogance and comfort that comes with peace.
Yeah, we forgot that part, didn’t we?
Live in one way for too long and you start taking it for granted. So when a virus, a new, never-before-seen one sweeps through the water system what defense do we have against it?
It could be a meteor. One big enough that it would kill any civilization, warlike or not. But at least the warring peoples would be wary enough, at the first signs of trouble, to take cover. At least they would be tough enough to withstand a trauma that no white-bread, spoiled, never-worked-a-day-in-his-life man wouldn’t.
Even if something like that didn’t happen, what would be the point of living if not to try to make something better? If nothing you did would ever change a thing, why do anything at all?
Sheep. We’d be sheep.
I like to think we have wars for a reason. That we have crime for a reason, and not just to make us tougher or learn from our mistakes. Not even to push us forward, that necessity would cause a society to develop new, advanced technology. Not even that.
Living in the absence of fear would be the worst thing that could happen. It would make the lower classes into those “pompous rich folk” some people so criticize. It would lower the uppers, until their way of life was not special at all and everyone would be equal.
Equality is one of those things that is better left imperfect.
I don’t enjoy the thought of people in pain. Of early death, of violence. But I also believe in the necessity of it, on some level. Not wars–wars might keep us on our toes but they aren’t exactly good for anything besides keeping that population line down. Without it, gruesome as it may be, I do believe the people who don’t die would be a whole lot worse off. In the long run, that is. I’ve always been thinking in the long run here.
-Shrug- Just thoughts. Just thoughts on the nature of war and the balance of peace and conflict, the balance that shapes heroes and allows healthy childhoods at the same time. Nothing important, I’m sure, though I really do think humanity is poking the bull and isn’t quite expecting the bull to pole back. Whatever you might take that to mean.
Baa.
She’ll like that one.