I'm going to take a break from my normal, kind of daily (even though my last post was Friday) rants on the Terminator world and all that cool philosophy stuff momentarily and focus in on why most of us are here today. Veterans. Our ancestors fighting for survival in new and dangerous places--- to fight for our peace and tranquility. Unfortunately, that goal has yet to be achieved. I am a very anti-war kind of person, ala Eugene Debs (former presidential candidate and workers' reform trailblazer). I think it's rather pointless and it often starts over trivial things like land settlements or oil or some other worldly concern that the rest of the world won't care about in a hundred years. OK, I am going to throw in a Terminator reference here, a quote from Sarah's co-worker in the diner from hell in T1: "Look at it this way, in a hundred years, who's gonna care?" Alot of people argue that it is necessary just in order to survive (see Darwin's Survival of the Fittest theory), and they have valid points. I'm not saying we should pull out of Iraq right now, because in the cruel and remorseless world we live in at the moment, we'd be viewed as weak and would thus become vulnerable to attack. I'm not condemning our ancestors who fought for our survivial, because as I said before, I'm here to honor them. They WERE in war... they knew that it sucked. They knew what pain was... what it was like to lose a close friend or a dear loved one... they knew more than we'll ever know. And alot of them made that ultimate sacrifice: death for their country... but not only for their country, for their family. For their friends. For their distant relatives and for people they never even knew. War has a unique toll on familial structure that causes a devastation that can be matched by no natural disaster... no other kind of untimely death. War is death, but death can lead to life. As I alluded to in my first blog, one door closes, another one opens. That's what our heroes fought for... life in death to counter death in life. They fought for us, they fought for our loved ones, they fought for our children... they fought for an end to fighting. They fought for Alpha to meet Omega.
"And in the evening, after the fire and the light, one thing is certain: nothing can hold back the night. Time is relentless, and as the past disappears, we're on the verge of all things new. We are two thousand years."- Billy Joel, "Two Thousand Years."
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"War has a unique toll on familial structure that causes a devastation that can be matched by no natural disaster"
ReplyDeleteI don't believe that's true. The death of a loved one in war, though tragic and painful, is often regarded as meaningful. The memory of a son lost in defense of the common good is much less painful than that of a son lost to an "act of God." War is a terrible evil. However, it's not the worst evil.
Well, since I'm under the impression that war is evil and anyone fighting in it isn't doing it out of their own interest but out of capitalist, greedy interest, I'll stick with my original position. I guess I should've worded it a bit better. While the said casualty of war was fighting for the common good, he wasn't fighting for his OWN good, so that's what I'm really trying to say I guess. Thanks for being my first commenter lol.
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