Full Thread: Is War Fun ?
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Old January 25th, 2008 #8
Seaforth
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Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Meine Europa
Posts: 857
Default Re: Is War Fun ?

The question with the word ‘fun’ in it is loaded against positive comments about the concept of war and demands a ‘no’ answer.

Yet war has ‘other’ qualities that are hard to define!

Since I have never participated in active armed warfare and am now over 60 for better or worse I will never be in a position to give my own personal views based on experience on the subject

But ask yourselves why young men so willingly will go to war? They know full well that the risks are high that they could die or worse come home crippled. Yet they go! So it must have some qualities that resonate with the young male of the human species. Note I say ‘male’ since the female will unlikely behave in the same way. Is that because a small number of males are ‘expendable’ without greatly effecting the population growth? And those males that do come home victorious and whole most probably make good ‘breeding stock’ for the girls waiting for them.

But there are other issues. To name a few: camaraderie, to measure oneself against deadly odds and win, to feel the elation of being a ‘warrior’.

On the last point a few months ago I read “Metaphysics of War – Battle, Victory & Death in the World of Tradition” by Julius Evola.

First of all for those who don't know Evola is Italian and his works were written between about 1930 and 1950.
Throughout the book he repeatedly gives his views on what he considers made the Roman Empire tick.
In his book he describes the world of heroism, i.e. the frame of mind of the “warrior” and the justification of war -- but not that as a soldier who serves a master (possibly a decadent one) as a paid enforcer and killer – but in the sense of the human mind reaching a higher state of being and a deeper meaning of life.

He also explains what he calls a ‘quadripartition’.
In ancient and to a degree in modern times human society tend to establish itself in a natural hierarchy at four different levels.
- At the top there are the bearers of pure spiritual authority composed of an elite who rule and provide guidance to society.
- At the next level there is the “warrior aristocracy, the officers who execute physical power the kings, princes & knights, warriors or today the police and army.
- Then there are the “bourgeois middle-class”, i.e. those people who own businesses and initiate production, the merchants and farmers
- and at the lowest level the slaves or today the workers.

In one chapter he specifically deals with the “The Roman Conception of Victory” but in other parts he also deals with the Islamic fighter and explains well the significance of the warrior willingly dying in battle.
This is possibly well exemplified today by what was seen in the last war as kamikaze pilots and today in we call Arab suicide bombers.

Here the first chapter typed out by yours truly on the keyboard.

Quote:
The Forms of Warlike Heroism

“The fundamental principle underlying all justifications of war, from the point of view of human personality, is ‘heroism’. War, it is said, offers man the opportunity to awaken the hero who sleeps within him. War breaks the routine of comfortable life; by means of its severe ordeals, it offers a transfiguring knowledge of life, life according to death. The moment the individual succeeds in living as a hero, even if it the final moment of his earthly life, weighs infinitely more on the scale of values than a protracted existence spent consuming monotonously among the trivialities of cities. From a spiritual point of view, these possibilities make up for the negative and destructive tendencies of war, which are one-sidedly and tendentiously highlighted by pacifist materialism. War makes one realise the relativity of human life and therefore also the law of a ‘more-than-life’, and thus war has always an anti-materialist value, a spiritual value.”
A difficult book to read since it deals with concepts that are not considered 'modern' anymore.

Last edited by Seaforth; January 25th, 2008 at 03:12 AM.