war moonshine I did my dream_time last night. 010927 ... silentbob there is no such thing as a holy war 010927 ... Black Argonaut strongest of the four horseman 030221 ... Mandy what is it good for? absolutely nothing. 030222 ... whoa-ooh-oh-oh huh! good-god! y'all 030222 ... bandersnatch fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity 030222 ... Cicero When I try to lay out my opinions on war I always end up more confused than I started. War is the most complicated, barbaric biproduct of the imperfect human mind. Anybody who claims to have the end-all war theory is lying to you. Anyone who calls upon history in an attempt to analogize every damned conflict is missing the point. 030223 ... x they sold great food at the protest. 030224 ... kerry "Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether ti is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denoucned the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country." ok, now think. can you think of anyone in this day and time, in this country, who might say or do something like this? does this idea at all familiar to anyone else? this is actually a quote from Hermann Goering, Hitler's Riech Marshall at the Nuremberg Trials after WWII. scary, huh? 030328 ... peyton a young girl give me a good luck charm put a snake on my neck and a bird on my arm I got a sheriff's name branded where I should have kept clean. If you get too close you're going to know what I mean. And I know when I'm old the only runnin' gonna come. Away from lips and the fork of my tongue. It only gets to me in times like these. And times like these are getting to me. Put your hand in the oven there's a heaven inside. It burns straight through but the devil don't mind. Because he takes what he wants and he finds what you hide. And it will buy you a place on the Lower East Side. I rolled a number last night and I walked in my sleep. I could feel all the nerves in the tips of my teeth. As they crumbled into dust and washed into the sea. Finally shut my mouth so I could hear myself think. It only gets to me in times like these. It only gets to me in times like these. It only gets to me in times like these. And times like these are getting to me. 030508 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Go into one of these and you're more likely to do something heroic. But you're also more likely to do something horrible. Maybe an uneventful life isn't so bad? No. Bad moral. Should say that there are other things more exciting than war. But it's fiction's standard conflict-generator. I guess humanity is sort of drawn to conflict... but the fact that so many of these are needlessly violent suggests a better way... but then again, I wouldn't have thought WW2 an interesting and researchable part of history and the Iraq war an interesting part of once-current events if I hadn't found them rather exciting. Fantasy-book mass violence (orcs against elves, Planet A against Planet B, etc) I don't see as evil. Just that it reflects war being such an apparently universal theme. Tolkien resisted calling Lord of the Rings an allegory, but it's hard not to see the influence of World Wars 1 and 2 in his plot. If the ring is anything, it's political power. Would desire for political power be the main root of war? Or is revenge and pride in one's group a better contender? Why am I asking these as if they're questions people can answer? 140726 ... e_o_i (I guess an anthropologist might say one of the first causes was plunder. You're hungry, the other group has more land and food, you fight them and take the land and food, you justify it later. But I'm rather out of my depth there - only read a basic textbook on the subject.) 140726 ... flux in the words of ДЕЛА ВАНТАЛЫ, "you cannot harm the universe" 140726 ... epitome of incomprehensibility But you can hurt your neighbour. Or help them. Or study historical_linguistics, but that's an option either way, I think. 220314 ... epitome of incomprehensibility David broke the news Saturday, going "Oh, did you hear about..." For a while, I didn't even want to listen to the news because it made me angry. Why is this conflict still going on? Why do ordinary people have to suffer because of violent leaders? Why doesn't one leader anywhere, ever, react to an attack by going, "You want a fight? No thank you, I'm not going to give you the satisfaction"?? But then it's not so simple. I can't blame people for wanting to protect others, and then the ones they want to protect are the ones more familiar to them. No, Netanyahu should never have pushed for settlements in the West Bank or tried to create a more authoritarian state. No, Hamas should never have attacked defenseless people at a goddamn music festival, of all places. But any and all sides trying to defend themselves can't be considered an absolute moral wrong; I can't blame Israel for that part and I can't blame other countries who are striking back at Israel for past wrongs either. But things haven't been that bad there since...well, maybe in my lifetime? I don't know. I don't know why I should take things personally either, just because my father's been there. It's not like we have any close connections. But it makes me sad, and since I keep turning emotions into anger, I get angry. And then instead of trying to see the good everywhere, I throw up my hands and go, "Both sides are wrong because both are motivated by nationalism!" I know. I know...it's way more complicated than that, in this case going back to World War 1 and the fall of the Ottoman Empire (or even to biblical times, because even if the modern nation-state was unknown then, empires weren't). But in general, why ARE people so attached to the idea of countries? Even in the short span of human history, places change hands and names all the goddamn time. Does it really matter whether the ground under my feet right now is the Dominion of Canada, or the Sovereign Republic of Quebec, or The Glorious Dukedom of the Loud Environs of Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport, as long as there's peace and freedom??? (Until someone says something making fun of any of those. Then I get defensive.) Pah. I don't know why I'm such a goddamn hypocritical angry pacifist. Or why I'm swearing like Holden Caulfield. But I should be glad that I have peace where I live, and try to help those that don't. But how?? 231010 ... e_o_i I should clarify the last bit: I don't mean to disregard or belittle people who feel a sense of community or identity with their country/countries. What I wrote then was more about my perspective and general frustrations with the world. I don't know why it's felt so tough these past few days. Maybe because I've been home for the fall break and bombarded, however non-violently, by audio news as I've been getting crafts ready for today. And those mundane doings were already stressing me out: having to last-minute-ly iron, glue, count, bag, and label a bunch of batik cards (this for a craft_show I don't have to be at physically except tomorrow, but I had to deliver things there this morning). 8.5 hours of sleep: good. Spread out over two nights: not so good. Pah. Irrelevant. Anyway. Dad, who went to Jerusalem and places on a language exchange, was the one who offered a wider perspective, if not exactly a happy one. We were talking as we walked Shiloh (after the aforementioned crafts were delivered). "This is the worst it's been in my lifetime," I said, about the violence in Israel and Palestine. Dad said that there was currently more violence going on in Yemen than in Gaza, but people here aren't as aware of it since it isn't as much in the news. War between poorer countries, countries not on the Canadian radar, doesn't get the same airtime. I thought about that. I ventured that there was also a war in Sudan. "By the numbers, that's probably worse too," he said, or something like it. You have to hand it to my father - he really knows how to cheer a person up. (It DOES make me feel better to have the craft stuff labeled and sent. And because of the break, I had three nights of substantial sleep before the two flimsy ones. But that's just about my small sphere of action. Not "irrelevant" necessarily, but small.) 231012 what's it to you? who go blather from