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Why Men Love War (1984)

esquire.com

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Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#91
post #59

This writer circles poignant issues but I don't feel like he has enough insight to shed any real illumination on them. I'm actually pretty alarmed that he seems to think society no longer glamourises war and in almost the same breath describes how our cultural depictions are transmuted from showing outright psychopathy to evoking glamour (Wagner being played for the US invasion of Granada in 1983, 4 years after Apoca…

He fought in Vietnam. He has more than enough insight by definition.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#92

Fucking dickwads in this thread who can't understand that violence has solved more problems in human history than any other solution. Its like, "oh, I live in a peaceful society, therefore all other societies in the history of humanity should have known better" when they don't realize that america is very violent, has always been violent, and has more capacity for violence than any other society in the history of the…

Many people don't realize that violence is literally the foundation of our "peaceful" society. The policeman with his taser and handgun directly enforces peace in your neighborhood. The soldier with his rifle and cannons guards your nation's borders, and his violence is the reason you can work in peace in your air-conditioned office and blabber about which js framework to abuse this week.

You are 100% right. Violence (or threat of violence) is the answer to almost all problems.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#93

> But I believe that most men who have been to war would have to admit, if they are honest, that somewhere inside themselves they loved it too, loved it as much as anything that has happened to them before or since. This sounds conspicuously like the conservative version of the people who say "All men secretly desire to rape women."

War is not a natural state of men. It's a fucking dis-ease. Psychopaths love war. Period.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#94

Theodore Roosevelt, an admitted war enthusiast, once said: "A just war is in the long run far better for a man's soul than the most prosperous peace."

Do you have any insight or references I could read that would help me understand why someone would feel this way?

Michael Herr's Dispatches probably comes the closest.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#96
I was in the infantry for over a decade. I joined before 9/11, but I did reenlist some years afterward, and I deployed a bunch, and fought many times. The thing about the article is that he says right there in the first couple paragraphs... Nobody that hasn't been there will understand the core message here. Worse, it's not socially palatable to embrace your innate human violence, despite it being such an intrinsic biological function of survival. And so even if some people might understand something of what this guy is talking about, they'd never admit it openly, and generally the most appropriate response our culture expects is some kind of pearl-clutching. So that's what people do. Even if they're genuinely curious and want to understand. Even if they do understand this universal truth to some degree. The one thing I discovered that surprised me the most when I joined was how normal everybody was. Soldiers are people, too. Sure, there are psychos and shitheads and scumbags, just like any community. But we were all born on planet Earth.

What I mean to say is this: Violence is built into every human being. Or as one of my favorite quotes of Captain Picard goes, "The seed of violence is within each of us". When I joined the army, I realized the most dangerous thing that could happen is for regular people to think that they're not capable of the things they read in the news.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#97

> But I believe that most men who have been to war would have to admit, if they are honest, that somewhere inside themselves they loved it too, loved it as much as anything that has happened to them before or since. This sounds conspicuously like the conservative version of the people who say "All men secretly desire to rape women."

"All men" or "all people" is a trope that should be erased from our vocabulary. Most statements making claims (esp. about the motivation) of "all people" are incorrect. Every person has their own opinion, and you simply can't generalize . Unless it's naïve tautological claims like "all people need food to survive".

Actually, you really can generalise - about large, and especially about large homogeneous - populations.

For example - homosexual men are statistically more likely to belong to larger families. Evolutionary biologists believe that this is due to the presence of childless gay men benefiting the children of their siblings,thus genes that at first blush seem to be "for" non reproduction survive in the pool. (Someone should notify the Boy Scouts that they've got it exactly backwards).

What you can't do is generalise about individuals from their group membership (unless that membership is voluntary, and even that is fraught).

http://www.freedomkeys.com/ar-racism.htm

But yeah, looking at history, it really does seem like a lot of people, across racial, religious and cultural boundaries, loved war.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, in all of human history violence has been the go to solution: Problem: I'm hungry Solution: let's kill this mammoth and eat it (violence) Problem: there's not enough food Soloution: the neighboring country has food let's invade and take theirs (violence) Problem: I want to be king but I'm 2nd in line for succession Solution: assisinate the king and take his place (violence) Problem: over population in a region…

I don't know what you're trying to say. That violence has been used as a solution to problems? Sure. It has. That violence has, rarely, in some cases, been a sufficient answer for a problem? Sure. You cited a few. But that's not what you started out saying. You said that violence has "solved more problems in human history than any other solution" which is ridiculous. Oh, and I don't think hunting animals for food is…

[deleted]

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#100
That's a very personal testimony based on the own author experience, not an overall study on all army veterans. I doubt all veterans are "playing by the rules" by saying publicly how horrible the war is but secretly recalling the great moments. If we go that way, are all PTSD victims phonies part of the show? They're all part of making this narrative credible? Be serious one minute... What this guy enjoyed was the brotherhood and exceptional means mobilized for the purpose of the war, not the killing itself.
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