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Why Men Love War (1984)

esquire.com

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Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#51

Post by robotresearcher »

noonespecial wrote: post #24
bazeblackwood wrote: post #22

Not that this isn't an interesting read (albeit mostly a lengthy rationalization of shared trauma) but they really need some better editors over at Esquire — spelling, spacing and grammatical errors everywhere. Edit: there appears also in the text, frequently, the world "tile" as an adjective. "tile night" "tile blackness" "tile war". Methinks someone needs a better find + replace regex.

Loos like a poor OCR of a previous text. All they really needed was a proofreader. Why they didn't even bother is the real question.

I can’t tell if that was funny on purpose or not.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#52

Post by tatersolid »

ShabbosGoy wrote: post #23
1000units wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War is a call to power and a purpose. It's also disgusting, but a man can get used to anything.

Since this was written in the 80s and it’s Esquire, it’s highly possible that the author is a military-industrial complex shill. Or an apologist at best. The only people who love war are corrupted individuals. They have no morals.

> The only people who love war are corrupted individuals. They have no morals.

Says a person who has never truly faced a grave moral test in his life.

I have known many veterans of horrific combat from Okinawa through Afghanistan. They all will tell you they loved it in some bizarre, insane fashion.

Yet these same people are the most trustworthy, truly moral people I have ever known. They have touched the abyss, and you and I have not. They understand things we never will.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#53

Post by JackCh »

aphextron wrote: post #44
JackCh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "people who will look you straight in the eye and laugh as they talk about murdering someone" Murdering, or killing? I ask because murder refers to a specific sort of unlawful killing, but it's not clear if you're using the term precisely. Most would probably say there's substantial difference between laughing about killing somebody who was trying to kill you (not murder) and laughing about killing a civilian in co…

One person's killing is another's murder. The act is the same regardless. There is no innocent self defense in war.

> "The act is the same regardless."

I think most would say context matters.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#54

Post by alexashka »

aphextron wrote: post #35

This is the single thing that freaked me out the most about our military and made me realize it wasn't the place for me when I joined at 17. Being a high school kid and meeting people who will look you straight in the eye and laugh as they talk about murdering someone, or watching their comrade's head explode. And not hypothetically, but in real, gruesome detail. I guess there's a need for that kind of person to exis…

A calf is no more perfect than the wolf that rips it apart and eats it. There's no reason to assume other people are like you, and that if someone's not, that they're better or worse, broken or holy.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#55

Post by mmirate »

saagarjha wrote: post #19
mmirate wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 42 American soldiers and many more Afghans were killed in the "Valley of Death" before it was finally abandoned, written off as more trouble than it was worth. Only 42 to get that nickname? After the World Wars happened? Wow. We've gotten soft in modern times.

More like, we’ve reduced the casualty rate in armed conflict? Plus, you’re forgetting about those who were killed that were not American.

The nickname was American and a symbol of fear/dread, thus I presume it was a result of the American deaths, not the Afghan deaths.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#56

Post by nbsd4life »

almostApatriot1 wrote: post #18
Mononokay wrote: post #5

> 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 to a degree more consensual. BDSM scores very highly in taboo surveys. I don't think the author would say all men love executing POWs or anything like that. Also, not to support that view, but the amount of sexual violence that has historically accompanied war is startling. There's obviously something to it.

> War is to a degree more consensual.

Nobody asked me if I wanted to be bombed.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#57

Post by Nzen »

mariodiana wrote: post #13
ISL wrote: post #2

This is a compelling long read. If the subject is of interest, the movie Restrepo and this talk from Sebastian Junger [1] may be of interest, too. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn0zEBhvwXY

The book, "War," from Sebastian Junger is well worth a read. I read it before seeing "Restrepo" (which I also recommend). On Goodreads, I wrote this about Junger's book and his take on men and war after finishing it: "[T]he experience of warfare seems to strike a chord deep within the psyche of the men in combat. The bonding among men, the heroism, the swinging extremes of victory won only by the palpable threat of m…

This reminds me of the comments [0] on skydiving and depression from last month.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16840955

> I heard a interview with a vet and climber once who described the appeal of alpinism as "all of the good parts of combat, without the shooting or any conscious thing trying to cause me harm".

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#58

Post by rootusrootus »

aphextron wrote: post #35

This is the single thing that freaked me out the most about our military and made me realize it wasn't the place for me when I joined at 17. Being a high school kid and meeting people who will look you straight in the eye and laugh as they talk about murdering someone, or watching their comrade's head explode. And not hypothetically, but in real, gruesome detail. I guess there's a need for that kind of person to exis…

That feels like a fairly unique experience. I was in the military and I don't recall ever meeting anyone with that sort of attitude towards killing or death. On the contrary, most everyone I knew was rather opposed to fighting and saw what we were signed up for as a necessity that we did out of duty to our country, not because we liked it.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#59

Post by pryce »

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 Apocalypse Now hit cinemas).

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#60

Post by pryce »

aphextron wrote: post #35

This is the single thing that freaked me out the most about our military and made me realize it wasn't the place for me when I joined at 17. Being a high school kid and meeting people who will look you straight in the eye and laugh as they talk about murdering someone, or watching their comrade's head explode. And not hypothetically, but in real, gruesome detail. I guess there's a need for that kind of person to exis…

I think often the amount of 'dirty work' we end up engaging in expands to fill the space allocated to it.
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