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It doesn't help that each new generation gets a barrage of propaganda pushed onto them equating military service with heroics, honour, patriotism, and so forth.

It doesn't help that each new generation gets a barrage of propaganda pushed onto them equating military service with heroics, honour, patriotism, and so forth. We could teach the next generation that war is bad, if we wanted to, but since the decision to go to war is made by the same government that sets the educational curriculum, well, odds are slim.

hilbert42 5y ago
"It doesn't help that each new generation gets a barrage of propaganda pushed onto them equating military service with heroics, honour, patriotism, and so forth." I certainly agree. In my opinion, the basic principles are simple but in practice things get complicated very quickly. If I'm not careful here I'll be quoting everyone from pacifists through to Clausewitz and we will all be bogged down in a mire of detail. This is a huge subject, thousands of books have been written about it. I'll keep it short. The propaganda and heroics are long inbred and they go back a very long way - thousands of years and there's no better place to start than with the famous Latin quote from the Roman poet Horace: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" "It is sweet and fitting to die for the homeland (one's country)" Just about everyone knows these facts but for the few that may not I'll repeat them. During WWI the English poet Wilfred Owen wrote probably the most famous poem of the War and it's a very cynical and poignant reminder of how terrible war is. Therein he lashes out against the wisdom of Horace's quote. Lttle else need be be said. The poem is short enough to quote here: . Dulce et Decorum est Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin, If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, Bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,– My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. ____ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_Decorum_est https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_Decorum_est https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_decorum_est_pro_patria_mori https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_decorum_est_pro_pat...
- 7952 5y ago
  History is a problematic subject because it creates false dichotomys all over the place. When actually sacrifice for your country, your community, or your friends is admirable. It is also an utterly pointless waste. A waste that can be justified at some levels of abstraction but not at others. These points are not inconsistent. But people want to take one simple truth away from the complexity. History has obvious lessons in hindsight and can be turned into trite propaganda in the moment.
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    Agreed, history is very problematic, it can and does create false dichotomies. My comment and your reply provide an excellent example of why it's so difficult to post an adequate reply in short HN posts (see my detailed reply to anm89 in response to a similar issue). No doubt, self sacrifice can end up being noble in circumstances where such action contributes to an overall better outcome but that's not the general case with WWI. (Please, I know that statement is grossly inadequate and that in specific 'local' instances it's not even correct—given that many of those soldiers who made such hugely noble sacrifices did so in order to directly benefited their buddies—not the nation state that actually sent them to war – however that explanation will have to suffice for now.) Whether Owen fully realized it or not, the reason why his poem is so often associated with the negative aspects of Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is that in the real political context of the First World War it is an undisputed lie. At the time, if the average soldier, French, German, English, US etc., etc. had been fully informed of the actual reasons for the start of said war—the horribly degenerate state of the underlying politics of the nation sates involved, the pathetically inept and inbred thinking of both English and European monarchies—just to mention a few, then these soldiers would likely have walked away from those hellish battlefields and left the fighting to the protagonists who actually stated the war. In short, millions of lives were lost unnecessarily over inept and faulty reasoning and the many 'petty' squabbles that occurred at both domestic political levels and similarly with international politics wherein diplomacy failed most spectacularly with enormously disastrous and tragic consequences for just about everybody. Moreover, many of these issues were never fully resolved let alone properly handled at war's end—Versailles and all that—which, in the end, led to WWII and even many more millions of unnecessary deaths. If ever there were a war to make Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori the ultimate lie then the First World War has to be its quintessential example (it's why I selected it as the example).

hilbert42 5y ago

"It doesn't help that each new generation gets a barrage of propaganda pushed onto them equating military service with heroics, honour, patriotism, and so forth." I certainly agree. In my opinion, the basic principles are simple but in practice things get complicated very quickly. If I'm not careful here I'll be quoting everyone from pacifists through to Clausewitz and we will all be bogged down in a mire of detail. This is a huge subject, thousands of books have been written about it. I'll keep it short. The propaganda and heroics are long inbred and they go back a very long way - thousands of years and there's no better place to start than with the famous Latin quote from the Roman poet Horace: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" "It is sweet and fitting to die for the homeland (one's country)" Just about everyone knows these facts but for the few that may not I'll repeat them. During WWI the English poet Wilfred Owen wrote probably the most famous poem of the War and it's a very cynical and poignant reminder of how terrible war is. Therein he lashes out against the wisdom of Horace's quote. Lttle else need be be said. The poem is short enough to quote here: . Dulce et Decorum est Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin, If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, Bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,– My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. ____ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_Decorum_est https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_Decorum_est https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_decorum_est_pro_patria_mori https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_decorum_est_pro_pat...

7952 5y ago
History is a problematic subject because it creates false dichotomys all over the place. When actually sacrifice for your country, your community, or your friends is admirable. It is also an utterly pointless waste. A waste that can be justified at some levels of abstraction but not at others. These points are not inconsistent. But people want to take one simple truth away from the complexity. History has obvious lessons in hindsight and can be turned into trite propaganda in the moment.
- hilbert42 5y ago
  Agreed, history is very problematic, it can and does create false dichotomies. My comment and your reply provide an excellent example of why it's so difficult to post an adequate reply in short HN posts (see my detailed reply to anm89 in response to a similar issue). No doubt, self sacrifice can end up being noble in circumstances where such action contributes to an overall better outcome but that's not the general case with WWI. (Please, I know that statement is grossly inadequate and that in specific 'local' instances it's not even correct—given that many of those soldiers who made such hugely noble sacrifices did so in order to directly benefited their buddies—not the nation state that actually sent them to war – however that explanation will have to suffice for now.) Whether Owen fully realized it or not, the reason why his poem is so often associated with the negative aspects of Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is that in the real political context of the First World War it is an undisputed lie. At the time, if the average soldier, French, German, English, US etc., etc. had been fully informed of the actual reasons for the start of said war—the horribly degenerate state of the underlying politics of the nation sates involved, the pathetically inept and inbred thinking of both English and European monarchies—just to mention a few, then these soldiers would likely have walked away from those hellish battlefields and left the fighting to the protagonists who actually stated the war. In short, millions of lives were lost unnecessarily over inept and faulty reasoning and the many 'petty' squabbles that occurred at both domestic political levels and similarly with international politics wherein diplomacy failed most spectacularly with enormously disastrous and tragic consequences for just about everybody. Moreover, many of these issues were never fully resolved let alone properly handled at war's end—Versailles and all that—which, in the end, led to WWII and even many more millions of unnecessary deaths. If ever there were a war to make Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori the ultimate lie then the First World War has to be its quintessential example (it's why I selected it as the example).