by Greg Zwahlen
I don’t mean to take anything away from U.S. war veterans, but I think this quote from Kurt Vonnegut (in Breakfast of Champions) is apt this morning:
When I was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one and another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not.
So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.
Over at the Fayette County News, Trey Alverson published an insightful reflection on that passage:
An outspoken humanist and anti-war activist, Vonnegut spent much of his life trying to appeal to the better parts of our nature. Like so many other 20th century occurrences, the establishment of Veterans Day disappointed him. A holiday dedicated to peace and those who fought in the “War to End All Wars” was replaced by a holiday to honor a continually growing population of war veterans. The name ‘Veterans Day’ itself suggests that we will always have living war veterans to honor — that war will never be eradicated.
On Veterans Day 2009, we find ourselves at war again.
Maybe it’s ok that Veterans Day is the quietest of our patriotic holidays. It gives us time to reflect and think about the profound sacrifices so many have made and are making for this country. On Wednesday, I’ll call and thank the veterans I know.If Vonnegut were still with us, he might remind our leaders that the best way to honor our war veterans is to stop creating new ones.
posted November 11, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I love your last line, Greg. This was an especially poignant thought for me this morning as I listened to NPR’s report on the Fort Hood memorial service. I don’t think that those 13 lives had any ultimately greater significance than all the others lost on battlefields abroad, but they certainly reflect the need for an honest and paradigmatic shift in our military system and the cultural normativity of militarism. Thanks for this posting!
posted November 12, 2009 at 8:49 am
Ariel and Greg -
If you can find any practical (aka non-idealistic) way to end all wars, I’d certainly love to hear it. Some have suggested that, “if everyone would just practice Buddhism, we could end wars”, and I find that ridiculous, for two reasons: first, they say the same thing about every other religion, political ideology,belief, social structure, etc., and it fails, second, getting everyone to follow Buddha’s teachings will patently never happen in reality. I’m not saying it should be that way, only that that’s the way it is.
As a US Army Chaplain Candidate, I would like to see the end of all wars. I would like to see my calling become unnecessary. I would like to see the suffering end. I just haven’t found a way to make the end of war a reality. It may well be, as Edward Tick says in his book, “War and the Soul”, war is a universal human archetype which will not go away. Unfortunate, but true.
posted November 12, 2009 at 10:39 am
@Christopher
I don’t have a suggestion as to how we might end all wars. But I do agree with Alverson that if such a solution exists, surely the very first step is moving past the assumption that war will always be necessary.
The interesting point about both Vonnegut’s quote and Alverson’s commentary for me was that it is a shame that the worthy ideals of Armistice Day seem to be lost.
That said, there was an interesting article earlier this year in New Scientist titled “Winning the Ultimate Battle How Humans Could End War.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/18191185/Winning-the-Ultimate-Battle-How-Humans-Could-End-War
He writes, “A growing number of experts are now arguing that the urge to wage war is not innate, and that humanity is already moving in a direction that could make war a thing of the past.”
“Anthropologist Douglas Fry of Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland, agrees. In his book, Beyond War, he identified 74 ‘non-warring cultures’ that contradict the idea that war is universal.”
“Archaeologist Steven LeBlanc of Harvard University says that war is not a biological compulsion but a rational response to environmental conditions such as swelling populations and dwindling food supplies. He points out that some North American tribes fought savagely over
land and other resources before the arrival of Europeans. But warfare also ‘stops on a dime’, he says, as a result of ecological or cultural changes. In his book Constant Battles: Why we fight, LeBlanc describes how warlike Native American tribes such as the Hopi embraced peace when it was imposed on them by outsiders. ‘We are definitely malleable and susceptible to cultural influence,’ he says. Warfare is ‘not so hard-wired that it can’t stop’.”
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