the key word is survival on the new frontier
On the same weekend I watched Kill Bill, I also watched the documentary, Fog of War. That’s the film where Robert McNamara is allowed to give the story of his professional life, largely focusing on his role as secretary of “defence” during the Vietnam war. I didn’t really get into this film, which is surprising because I tend to like most documentaries (I need to add American Movie to my favourites list). My knowledge of American history is not strong enough to really know McNamara’s role. Of course, from his point of view, his actions seemed understandable and worthy of sympathy. Too bad about the carnage, but “we all make mistakes.” I just felt uncomfortable listening to him speak, because I kept imagining someone listening to Donald Rumsfeld explaining the Iraq war 20 years from now. Rumsfeld would sound incredibly reasonable and sympathetic if you hadn’t lived through his reign as secretary of “defence.” So I could never really get a handle on what the film was trying to say, other than a constant, vague sense that things were being misrepresented.
The film was structured as presenting 11 lessons that McNamara had taken from his life. The last lesson was, “You can’t change human nature.” In this context, it meant that people will always fight wars and, at best, you can hope to minimize the slaughter. My recent immersion into cultural psychology makes me even more suspicious than before of views of human nature that make it seem like current cultural practices are the result of natural, inevitable processes. The idea that humans are inherently warlike should be treated with great suspicion.
For one thing, I was reading that book on pre-industrial societies last night, and it was talking about how hunter-gatherer tribes never engage in warfare. There are individual killings, and sometimes feuds between kin groups, but never do the tribes band together, form coalitions, and wage war on each other on a large scale. Apparently, you get some of this with societies of herders and farmers, but the coalitions are ones of convenience that fall apart when the external threat that motivated the coalition vanishes.
And here’s the frightening key. It may seem like a conspiracy theory to argue that it is to the advantage of our “leaders” to create a 1984-like mental environment of constant war. But the argument of the book is that without a sense of external threat, humans would trend towards autonomy, rejecting the need for leadership.
I thought of this again tonight while watching George Bush sporting his army jacket, reminding us that enemies are waiting to attack, always. Doesn’t it seem a bit weird that a leader would want to remind us of his failure to stamp out an obvious threat? Doesn’t it seem like that should be embarrassing? Doesn’t it seem like he wouldn’t do it unless it served his interests in a larger sense? Well, it does to me.
It’s come to this...yesterday, a man was felled by a SWAT team for “standing suspiciously,” as the AP piece called it, in front of the Capitol building in Washington. For this, he was tackled from behind, snapping his neck backwards. It turns out he was an Australian citizen. Today, Australia’s justice minister, JUSTICE MINISTER, said, “I think that when you carry out a protest you should be mindful of how that could be perceived in relation to a security threat.” So passive, peaceful protestors deserve, no, are asking to be attacked – so says the country’s league of justice. Don’t get me wrong, I know how the guy could have been seen to be suspicious, but to pretend that perception had nothing to do with a purposeful frenzy of fear leads to a very boring blame-the-victim mentality.
Short story long, the current fear is not human nature. Fog of War – 4/10 positive, 3/10 negative – overall indifference.
The film was structured as presenting 11 lessons that McNamara had taken from his life. The last lesson was, “You can’t change human nature.” In this context, it meant that people will always fight wars and, at best, you can hope to minimize the slaughter. My recent immersion into cultural psychology makes me even more suspicious than before of views of human nature that make it seem like current cultural practices are the result of natural, inevitable processes. The idea that humans are inherently warlike should be treated with great suspicion.
For one thing, I was reading that book on pre-industrial societies last night, and it was talking about how hunter-gatherer tribes never engage in warfare. There are individual killings, and sometimes feuds between kin groups, but never do the tribes band together, form coalitions, and wage war on each other on a large scale. Apparently, you get some of this with societies of herders and farmers, but the coalitions are ones of convenience that fall apart when the external threat that motivated the coalition vanishes.
And here’s the frightening key. It may seem like a conspiracy theory to argue that it is to the advantage of our “leaders” to create a 1984-like mental environment of constant war. But the argument of the book is that without a sense of external threat, humans would trend towards autonomy, rejecting the need for leadership.
I thought of this again tonight while watching George Bush sporting his army jacket, reminding us that enemies are waiting to attack, always. Doesn’t it seem a bit weird that a leader would want to remind us of his failure to stamp out an obvious threat? Doesn’t it seem like that should be embarrassing? Doesn’t it seem like he wouldn’t do it unless it served his interests in a larger sense? Well, it does to me.
It’s come to this...yesterday, a man was felled by a SWAT team for “standing suspiciously,” as the AP piece called it, in front of the Capitol building in Washington. For this, he was tackled from behind, snapping his neck backwards. It turns out he was an Australian citizen. Today, Australia’s justice minister, JUSTICE MINISTER, said, “I think that when you carry out a protest you should be mindful of how that could be perceived in relation to a security threat.” So passive, peaceful protestors deserve, no, are asking to be attacked – so says the country’s league of justice. Don’t get me wrong, I know how the guy could have been seen to be suspicious, but to pretend that perception had nothing to do with a purposeful frenzy of fear leads to a very boring blame-the-victim mentality.
Short story long, the current fear is not human nature. Fog of War – 4/10 positive, 3/10 negative – overall indifference.
posted by H. Now at 8:25 p.m.
2 Comments:
I liked Fog of War.
I saw it was a protest piece that came out before the Iraq Invasion as an antidote the the self-righteous let's go to war attitude and fix the problem - showing that war was ultimately unrealistic, messay and stupid.
I also liked the way it was critical of the Japanese firebombing.
I saw it as presenting a more realistic portrait of history than the current idealised history of America as the heroic hegemon.
Oh well. Its message may be a function of the political environment it is viewed in. Before the Iraw invasion it was powerful. Afterwards, disappointing.
I had forgotten it had been out before the war. That would have been totally different - there was a real sense of unified opposition then, and a sense of defiance in hearing mainstream voices speak out in any way. I still would have liked to have heard more victims' voices, though, as I'm suspicious of a perpretator only story.
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