8 ms·

Help Me to Die, O Lord

79 points by benbreen 10y ago

TempleOS 10y ago
God says... Ecuadorian's diuretic's Assyrian coquetting permeate COBOL's almanacs panegyric's workbench aboard deadest filet's freakiest Gounod ayes orphan Katrina Kara's sunsets snaky Akiva incubator tightest appointments operators hallucinate passwords Lebanese Brittany's than hearer listing
gyardley 10y ago
As far as I can tell, my great-grandfather's older brother committed suicide with his own infantry rifle rather than go over the top of the trenches again. The report from the military court of enquiry makes for some sobering reading - the statements of his platoon mates make it sound like he'd already been mentally ill for weeks.
cyberferret 10y ago
An incredible essay. That closing poem moved me deeply. What a terrible, terrible time in the history of mankind.
- plug 10y ago
  Indeed. I heard some of the Somme Commemoration on the radio the other day, and I was moved deeply by Charles Dance's recital of Siegfried Sassoon's "Aftermath"[1] > Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?' It's impossible to imagine the horror - even pondering the numbers of fallen in the first day throttles the imagination, let alone the horrific ways in which these men were murdered in swathes. All the more tragic that many of these young men left their homes to see the world and experience the adventure of war. They had no idea what was in store for them. [1]: http://www.potw.org/archive/potw160.html http://www.potw.org/archive/potw160.html
et1337 10y ago
As a game developer, it saddens me that this[1] is our industry's interpretation of WWI. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7nRTF2SowQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7nRTF2SowQ
- Retra 10y ago
  You're sad that people buying games are trying to have fun?
  - et1337 10y ago
    Not at all. I plan on buying and playing the game. I just think they could treat the subject matter with a bit more respect -- at least cut out the dubstep -- without ruining the fun.
    - debaserab2 10y ago
      On the contrary, Command & Conquer Red Alert piqued my interest in WW2 and made me explore and learn more about, and the game went as far as rewriting the entire plot of WW2. I'm not sure it's all that much of a bad thing that we retell an important part of our history in various different ways including forms of entertainment.
  - secstate 10y ago
    Erich Maria Remarque on his book, All Quiet on the Western Front: "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped (its) shells, were destroyed by the war." By reducing the suffering of those who partook in WWI to an adventure we insult all those who were destroyed by war.
    - Retra 10y ago
      And by asking everyone to remain perpetually solemn, the war never ends.
      - sporkologist 10y ago
        So we need to have fun with war, to make it stop? Not quite understanding you.
rwallace 10y ago
http://celtic-lyrics.com/lyrics/225.html http://celtic-lyrics.com/lyrics/225.html "For Willie McBride, it all happened again, / And again, and again, and again, and again." And still humans choose war when we could have chosen peace, and follow war leaders when we could have impeached those leaders and thrown them in prison. Probably there is an anthropic selection effect in that this conversation only happens between descendants of killer apes, but that does not excuse us from the last stage of the Great Filter. Will we learn in time?
- ams6110 10y ago
  War is in our nature, judging from history. I don't think that will change, but I hope I'm wrong.
  - sporkologist 10y ago
    As long as humans fight for resources, there will be conflict.
- james-watson 10y ago
  Ah, but there is great payoff for the Kings and Queens. Not so much for the pawns.
  - rwallace 10y ago
    Aye, at least given that they are programmed to behave as though their utility function consisted almost entirely of the thrill of wielding power. So, fellow pawns? Stop voting for the damned Kings and Queens. It's a secret ballot; your instincts telling you to vote for the likely next tribal chief are wildly outdated. Vote for whoever demonstrates the most distaste for war - even if they aren't going to win this election, you'll be sending the right message instead of the wrong one.
  - im3w1l 10y ago
    Raping and looting though. Couldn't you also be rewarded with land or was that only for the higher ups?
SubiculumCode 10y ago
Moving essay.
venomsnake 10y ago
An (un)surprisingly great tribute to that madness is the last episode of Blackadder goes forth (Goodbyeee). I honestly think that the last 5 minutes of Goodbyeee are the greatest piece of television ever filmed.
- cyberferret 10y ago
  +1. I enjoyed the first three Blackadder series as a rollicking laugh, but BA4 had an overall much darker theme - and that last episode, especially the last 5 minutes filled me with more sadness and tears than any other war drama movie ever did... The time lapse of the field at the end after everything falls silent...(excuse me, I have something in my eye!) Captain Darling: "rather hoped I'd get through the whole show; go back to work at Pratt & Sons; keep wicket for the Croydon gentlemen; marry Doris... Made a note in my diary on my way here. Simply says... 'Bugger...'"
  - dghf 10y ago
    Darling gets a couple of good bits in that episode. The part where a car comes to take him from his desk job at HQ to the front, and you see the driver only from the long shadow he casts on the office floor, is chilling.
    - venomsnake 10y ago
      I think that the best was - "We lived trough it - the great war of 1914 - 1917" ... and suddenly you feel like punched in the gut.
      - cyberferret 10y ago
        Yes, that brief glimpse of hope that was brutally torn away seconds later... The Cpt. Darling quote I mentioned earlier had that 'punch in the gut' feeling for me too, because it somehow brought to light how large his life was outside of the war... I began to wonder about Pratt & Sons - did Pratt have sons or other employees in the trenches too? Same with the Croydon gentlemen - how many of their 11 will die in the war and never play cricket again? Who is Doris and is she waiting anxiously at home for him? What will she do when she gets the telegram telling her he will never come home? After laughing at Darling as an idiotic, simpering, one dimensional character in the earlier episodes, it was awfully gut wrenching to see him here as a more complex personality with a full life, who was quite simply terrified at the inevitable prospect of having that very life ending in a few minutes time when they went over the top. 'Bugger' indeed...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
DominikR 10y ago
From todays perspective it's really hard for me to understand how different society must have valued their own young men to sacrifice 20.000 within 90 minutes without knowing for sure or at least having a high probability of succeeding. (Keep in mind that populations were generally everywhere much smaller than today) Today even the strongest militaries in the world are terrified of the possibility that they could loose a few thousand men within a few years of war. Maybe it's because we in the West have become so productive that we value every member of society much more. If it is so then it'll mean that eventually as every society gets richer over time it'll see these mass killings and sacrifices as pure insanity and refrain from it. I believe we would have less of a mess in the Middle East if there was economic stability and the young men there would have the means (and attitude which is often missing) to reach their goals without resorting to violence. After all it must be obvious even to the crazy people running ISIS that the state they are trying to build cannot be sustainable on the long run only through looting and killing their neighbours, even if they were to win every single battle. Eventually they would run out of neighbours that they can loot and what then? Edit: I criticise the attitude of men from the Middle East because since we have now many refugees and immigrants here I had the chance to meet many of them. I've not met a single one that didn't come across as a free loader to me so this leads me to believe that this is nothing unusual in their culture. So it's no wonder to me that they are generally poor over there while countries like Germany are rich.
- tremon 10y ago
  Maybe it's because we in the West have become so productive that we value every member of society much more I think it's less a matter of productiveness, and more a matter of connectedness: it's easier to send thousands to their death if they're not your peers. The increased mobility of our society (both social and physical) has blurred and removed many of the old divides (class, vocation, religion) and we're still working on removing others. Also, the increased transparency of wars and accountability of institutions plays an important role.
  - DominikR 10y ago
    As far as I know the number of friends or connections a person has has been relatively stable in the last few centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number It is not absolutely uncontested but I haven't seen any evidence that the number of connections people have nowadays has increased. > The increased mobility of our society (both social and physical) has blurred and removed many of the old divides (class, vocation, religion) and we're still working on removing others. I see more of an atomisation of society into ever smaller groups of minorities that fight each other and more class divide than ever. One other symptom of this is the radicalisation that we see particularly with young people. 20 years ago it would have been unfathomable to me to even imagine that teenagers born in the West would decide to join some crazy group that cuts of heads and throws gays off tall buildings.

79 points by benbreen 10y ago

God says... Ecuadorian's diuretic's Assyrian coquetting permeate COBOL's almanacs panegyric's workbench aboard deadest filet's freakiest Gounod ayes orphan Katrina Kara's sunsets snaky Akiva incubator tightest appointments operators hallucinate passwords Lebanese Brittany's than hearer listing

gyardley 10y ago

As far as I can tell, my great-grandfather's older brother committed suicide with his own infantry rifle rather than go over the top of the trenches again. The report from the military court of enquiry makes for some sobering reading - the statements of his platoon mates make it sound like he'd already been mentally ill for weeks.

cyberferret 10y ago

An incredible essay. That closing poem moved me deeply. What a terrible, terrible time in the history of mankind.

plug 10y ago
Indeed. I heard some of the Somme Commemoration on the radio the other day, and I was moved deeply by Charles Dance's recital of Siegfried Sassoon's "Aftermath"[1] > Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?' It's impossible to imagine the horror - even pondering the numbers of fallen in the first day throttles the imagination, let alone the horrific ways in which these men were murdered in swathes. All the more tragic that many of these young men left their homes to see the world and experience the adventure of war. They had no idea what was in store for them. [1]: http://www.potw.org/archive/potw160.html http://www.potw.org/archive/potw160.html

et1337 10y ago

As a game developer, it saddens me that this[1] is our industry's interpretation of WWI. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7nRTF2SowQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7nRTF2SowQ

Retra 10y ago
You're sad that people buying games are trying to have fun?
- et1337 10y ago
  Not at all. I plan on buying and playing the game. I just think they could treat the subject matter with a bit more respect -- at least cut out the dubstep -- without ruining the fun.
  - debaserab2 10y ago
    On the contrary, Command & Conquer Red Alert piqued my interest in WW2 and made me explore and learn more about, and the game went as far as rewriting the entire plot of WW2. I'm not sure it's all that much of a bad thing that we retell an important part of our history in various different ways including forms of entertainment.
- secstate 10y ago
  Erich Maria Remarque on his book, All Quiet on the Western Front: "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped (its) shells, were destroyed by the war." By reducing the suffering of those who partook in WWI to an adventure we insult all those who were destroyed by war.
  - Retra 10y ago
    And by asking everyone to remain perpetually solemn, the war never ends.
    - sporkologist 10y ago
      So we need to have fun with war, to make it stop? Not quite understanding you.

rwallace 10y ago

http://celtic-lyrics.com/lyrics/225.html http://celtic-lyrics.com/lyrics/225.html "For Willie McBride, it all happened again, / And again, and again, and again, and again." And still humans choose war when we could have chosen peace, and follow war leaders when we could have impeached those leaders and thrown them in prison. Probably there is an anthropic selection effect in that this conversation only happens between descendants of killer apes, but that does not excuse us from the last stage of the Great Filter. Will we learn in time?

ams6110 10y ago
War is in our nature, judging from history. I don't think that will change, but I hope I'm wrong.
- sporkologist 10y ago
  As long as humans fight for resources, there will be conflict.
james-watson 10y ago
Ah, but there is great payoff for the Kings and Queens. Not so much for the pawns.
- rwallace 10y ago
  Aye, at least given that they are programmed to behave as though their utility function consisted almost entirely of the thrill of wielding power. So, fellow pawns? Stop voting for the damned Kings and Queens. It's a secret ballot; your instincts telling you to vote for the likely next tribal chief are wildly outdated. Vote for whoever demonstrates the most distaste for war - even if they aren't going to win this election, you'll be sending the right message instead of the wrong one.
- im3w1l 10y ago
  Raping and looting though. Couldn't you also be rewarded with land or was that only for the higher ups?

SubiculumCode 10y ago

Moving essay.

venomsnake 10y ago

An (un)surprisingly great tribute to that madness is the last episode of Blackadder goes forth (Goodbyeee). I honestly think that the last 5 minutes of Goodbyeee are the greatest piece of television ever filmed.

cyberferret 10y ago
+1. I enjoyed the first three Blackadder series as a rollicking laugh, but BA4 had an overall much darker theme - and that last episode, especially the last 5 minutes filled me with more sadness and tears than any other war drama movie ever did... The time lapse of the field at the end after everything falls silent...(excuse me, I have something in my eye!) Captain Darling: "rather hoped I'd get through the whole show; go back to work at Pratt & Sons; keep wicket for the Croydon gentlemen; marry Doris... Made a note in my diary on my way here. Simply says... 'Bugger...'"
- dghf 10y ago
  Darling gets a couple of good bits in that episode. The part where a car comes to take him from his desk job at HQ to the front, and you see the driver only from the long shadow he casts on the office floor, is chilling.
  - venomsnake 10y ago
    I think that the best was - "We lived trough it - the great war of 1914 - 1917" ... and suddenly you feel like punched in the gut.
    - cyberferret 10y ago
      Yes, that brief glimpse of hope that was brutally torn away seconds later... The Cpt. Darling quote I mentioned earlier had that 'punch in the gut' feeling for me too, because it somehow brought to light how large his life was outside of the war... I began to wonder about Pratt & Sons - did Pratt have sons or other employees in the trenches too? Same with the Croydon gentlemen - how many of their 11 will die in the war and never play cricket again? Who is Doris and is she waiting anxiously at home for him? What will she do when she gets the telegram telling her he will never come home? After laughing at Darling as an idiotic, simpering, one dimensional character in the earlier episodes, it was awfully gut wrenching to see him here as a more complex personality with a full life, who was quite simply terrified at the inevitable prospect of having that very life ending in a few minutes time when they went over the top. 'Bugger' indeed...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

DominikR 10y ago

From todays perspective it's really hard for me to understand how different society must have valued their own young men to sacrifice 20.000 within 90 minutes without knowing for sure or at least having a high probability of succeeding. (Keep in mind that populations were generally everywhere much smaller than today) Today even the strongest militaries in the world are terrified of the possibility that they could loose a few thousand men within a few years of war. Maybe it's because we in the West have become so productive that we value every member of society much more. If it is so then it'll mean that eventually as every society gets richer over time it'll see these mass killings and sacrifices as pure insanity and refrain from it. I believe we would have less of a mess in the Middle East if there was economic stability and the young men there would have the means (and attitude which is often missing) to reach their goals without resorting to violence. After all it must be obvious even to the crazy people running ISIS that the state they are trying to build cannot be sustainable on the long run only through looting and killing their neighbours, even if they were to win every single battle. Eventually they would run out of neighbours that they can loot and what then? Edit: I criticise the attitude of men from the Middle East because since we have now many refugees and immigrants here I had the chance to meet many of them. I've not met a single one that didn't come across as a free loader to me so this leads me to believe that this is nothing unusual in their culture. So it's no wonder to me that they are generally poor over there while countries like Germany are rich.

tremon 10y ago
Maybe it's because we in the West have become so productive that we value every member of society much more I think it's less a matter of productiveness, and more a matter of connectedness: it's easier to send thousands to their death if they're not your peers. The increased mobility of our society (both social and physical) has blurred and removed many of the old divides (class, vocation, religion) and we're still working on removing others. Also, the increased transparency of wars and accountability of institutions plays an important role.
- DominikR 10y ago
  As far as I know the number of friends or connections a person has has been relatively stable in the last few centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number It is not absolutely uncontested but I haven't seen any evidence that the number of connections people have nowadays has increased. > The increased mobility of our society (both social and physical) has blurred and removed many of the old divides (class, vocation, religion) and we're still working on removing others. I see more of an atomisation of society into ever smaller groups of minorities that fight each other and more class divide than ever. One other symptom of this is the radicalisation that we see particularly with young people. 20 years ago it would have been unfathomable to me to even imagine that teenagers born in the West would decide to join some crazy group that cuts of heads and throws gays off tall buildings.