I was surprised by how much war footage and gut-wrenching videos I could find online. More people should be exposed to those documents as a form of shock therapy. It gives weight and meaning to words so effortlessly spoken by our leaders. It might also help young people have a little more empathy for actual individuals, as opposed to abstract demographics.
The article reminds me of War against War!. It's a 1924 anti-war photobook (180 images) designed by German pacifist Ernst Friedrich. It's a sobering read. http://craigritchie.co.uk/archives/2581 [WARNING: 18+ NSFL]
EDIT: I added a few quotes describing the War against War! photobook.
> Outraged by the unprecedented barbarism and massive destruction of the First World War, Ernst Friedrich complied and published a collection of pictures and other visual material which attempted to illustrate not only the tragic human consequences of war, but also the lies and hypocrisy of the social, political, and economic forces that produced and promoted it. Aimed at an international audience with multi-lingual supporting text and captions, it was one of the first concerted photographic expressions of protest against the barbarism of modern warfare in all its tragic folly.
> Friedrich’s strategy was to present shocking images of the atrocities of war and then juxtapose the official German patriotic and military propaganda and rhetoric of the time with graphic illustrations of what this discourse actually produced.
> The horrific imagery builds gradually, commencing with illustrations of children’s toys and propaganda posters, followed by photographs of the soldier’s march to war, the privilege of the elites orchestrating the violence, the devastated and then forgotten battlefields [...] and the graveyards of the dead.
> The most unbearable pages are in a section called ‘The Face of War’, twenty-four close-ups of military and non-military survivors with huge facial wounds.
> Never before had the people there been subjected to such horrendous images of the savagery and the senseless destruction of the First World War. During WW1, most European governments forbade the publication of war photographs and few images of the war had appeared before the publication of Friedrich’s book.
Most of the big wars were/are ultimately started (or allowed to start) by politicians.
The word 'politician' can be thought of as a portmanteau: political technician. So the responsibility is on us to enforce this distinction: who among our political technicians is actually qualified to lead?
Heinlein's Starship Troopers had the right idea. I wish just one nation in the world would implement it. Maybe it would lead to a cascade of rationality, and future wars would become impossible as a result.
> Heinlein's Starship Troopers had the right idea.
I'm pretty unconvinced that limiting voters to volunteer military veterans would prevent war. I think it would instead lead to a government which is more able to successfully pander to those with a value-system that leads them to volunteer for the military.
It is ironic how that is a mirror image of fascist beliefs about military virtue. They wanted to give power to veterans so that wars could be started and won! They wanted to suppress the influence of weak willed peacniks. It is ironic that this could be reversed to imply that rationality means peace.
Heinlein had some pretty fascist ideas, and books like starship troopers project that in a comfortable form. It is easy to attach our own ideas of what is rational, but that is very subjective. To a fascist war is rational.
Heinlein's point was that one's vote is a huge responsibility, and that privilege must be earned: by demonstrably placing the needs of one's country above individual wellbeing. Thus only military veterans could participate in governance. Militarism doesn't automatically equate to fascism.
There are further ideas in this: that, having experienced a war, a (typical) person would never again allow such a thing to happen. That's sound thinking, in my opinion.
> Heinlein's point was that one's vote is a huge responsibility, and that privilege must be earned: by demonstrably placing the needs of one's country above individual wellbeing.
I find the unspoken assumption that the "needs of one's country" always mean going to war and killing other people curious. Is that the only thing that countries need? What about jobs, infrastructure, health care, pensions, education, social insurance, good laws, and competent government among many other things.
But none of that explains why the actual results would be better. You could make the same argument about other kinds of virtue like religion, property ownership, wealth, or ancestry. That may seem irrational to us, but it made sense to some people historically.
And the choice of service is completely subjective. Maybe only parents should be we to vote? Because only they can truly understand. And they have sacrificed so much for their children. So many sleepless nights!
But you did not pick any of those things, you picked military service. And military service is virtuous because of war! It would be very difficult to create a culture that glorifies military service, but treats war itself as repugnant. People are just not that nuanced. The realities of war are just too unimaginable for a person in a peaceful nation to really understand. That is why it is risky to glorify service in this way.
I agree that war will make people less enthusiastic about future conflict. But surely you need a constant supply of wars to allow you to recruit these rational voters. If you have 100 years of peace then the system fails.
The irony is that we have had many periods in our history when a huge number of voters and politicians had direct expert of war. Did it improve the prospects of peace? Who knows.
But of course, by allowing only people who have ties to one particular organization, you give too much advantage to that organization.
Only soldiers interests will be represented, nobody elses. And this matters crutially a lot. Moreover army spends a lot of time indonctrinating people - training, military discipline and so on. It changes them and their opinions.
Germany before WWII gave government jobs to ex-soldiers. Veterans being the ones who defined culture of those institutions had (according to historians) an impact on ease with which those institutions could be taken over and used for authoritarian purposes.
Except for the fact that its pandering to the survivors fallacy. Of course, the ones who don't want to fight wars won't be around - they'll have been dead. The ones who survived war, are more likely to want more war - especially when they emerge as the victor nation. Just look at how blood-thirsty the 5-eyes nations are, currently: none of them have truly 'lost wars' (i.e. fought on their own territory), only troops. Yet, here today, don't ask your average Aussie to ever criticise their nations war-making; they'll think you need psychiatric help for just questioning the Australian Defence Forces' heinous crimes...
Yes. Historically the more direct your experience of war, the less likely you are to survive. There are lots of WWII veterans who spent the war washing clothes and driving trucks miles from the front line. That is worthy of massive respect and gratitude. But it is not a passport to wisdom.
Ah yes. The kind of rational society that fights giant insects with lightly armoured infantry soldiers despite being highly technologically advanced.
A lot of problems are complex and require competing demands to be balanced. There is no single objectively correct solution to those problems. Rational intelligent people come to different conclusions. That is why we have politics, to deal with the messy complexity of the real world.
Treating rationality as a moral virtue just disturbs me. It is just a kind of moralistic discrimination based on things that may or may not indicate actual quality.
Sure, but they could have just thrown rocks from space, or nukes from orbit. A culture that can fly across the galaxy does not need to use infantry any more than a US marine needs to throw a spear. It is a very common thread in this kind of sci-fi. It is just more glorious to shoot the insect from close up. There is more opportunity for pointless sacrifice.
> If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off? Of course not. You'd paddle it. There can be circumstances when it's just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an axe. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him...but to make him do what you want to do. Not killing...but controlled and purposeful violence. But it's not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It's never a soldier's business to decide when or where or how—or why—he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people—'older and wiser heads,' as they say—supply the control. Which is as it should be.
Anyway, one thing I got from the book, even if Heinlein never explicitly made this point, is that public officials need to perform some service or somehow show that they merit being our leaders. People who did poorly in intro uni economics should perhaps not be determining national economic policy, for example.
I agree, so someone who did poorly at communism and socialism studies in the former ussr should not become a factory leader or economics minister- because if a university is good at something it is determinating people who are great knowledge repeaters and aggregators, but not determinating who is a good ad-hoc manager of completely knew scenarios.
I would rather prefer pure luck to that intelectual slaughterhouse suggested by the parent, with all the fency problems a goverment would inherit in academia. I can only imagine, what would happen, if some Aspi driven towards perfectionism regarding roadtolls, would do to a transportation-ministry- to compose the perfect system.
I rather have non government then this government.
In a society where politicians rely on a broad coalition of supporters in order to stay in power, I think it is an error to place all of the blame for misleadership on those same politicians. I think you have to first look at what incentives those politicians operate under and then look at which ones swim with or against those incentives.
I went to a First World War museum near the Italian Front as a kid. I will never forget this photo of soldiers who survived the war missing half their face.
I would argue that shocking young children or even teenagers may not necessarily help empathy. Empathy is a cognitive skill whose capacity is greatly reduced in children simply because of the way the brain develops. I would argue what is instead best is to acknowledge that and have lessons be based on helping children empathize with the great tragedy that occurred, in personal ways, or even help them wrap their heads around the sheer horror of it. It is unlikely they are fully capable but if they can develop their own ideas about the horrific events that occurred and why they are bad, then as they grow older they may be able to develop empathy from there about those events. Unfortunately, I fear this is becoming more and more difficult with the recent rise of nationalism in many countries...
The article reminds me of War against War!. It's a 1924 anti-war photobook (180 images) designed by German pacifist Ernst Friedrich. It's a sobering read. http://craigritchie.co.uk/archives/2581 [WARNING: 18+ NSFL]
EDIT: I added a few quotes describing the War against War! photobook.
> Outraged by the unprecedented barbarism and massive destruction of the First World War, Ernst Friedrich complied and published a collection of pictures and other visual material which attempted to illustrate not only the tragic human consequences of war, but also the lies and hypocrisy of the social, political, and economic forces that produced and promoted it. Aimed at an international audience with multi-lingual supporting text and captions, it was one of the first concerted photographic expressions of protest against the barbarism of modern warfare in all its tragic folly.
> Friedrich’s strategy was to present shocking images of the atrocities of war and then juxtapose the official German patriotic and military propaganda and rhetoric of the time with graphic illustrations of what this discourse actually produced.
> The horrific imagery builds gradually, commencing with illustrations of children’s toys and propaganda posters, followed by photographs of the soldier’s march to war, the privilege of the elites orchestrating the violence, the devastated and then forgotten battlefields [...] and the graveyards of the dead.
> The most unbearable pages are in a section called ‘The Face of War’, twenty-four close-ups of military and non-military survivors with huge facial wounds.
> Never before had the people there been subjected to such horrendous images of the savagery and the senseless destruction of the First World War. During WW1, most European governments forbade the publication of war photographs and few images of the war had appeared before the publication of Friedrich’s book.