War II

In 1958, I was a wide-eyed freshman Linus Pauling groupy at Cal Tech, following the man around as he hawked his new book NO MORE WAR, an idealist, a peacenik. Half a century later I've come to the conclusion that war must be built into our genetic wiring.

How else can you explain the extraordinary horrors that humans put themselves through? The Burns epic pulls no punches in showing us what war is like. Yet these images are no more horrific than the poetry of Homer in The Iliad -- and many generations, many centuries, separate those two reports of war, and nothing has changed despite the ever-present cries for peace among a minority of activists who see a better world.

But where is this better world? Not in Nature. In Nature, living things of all variety fight and eat one another. Why should we humans be different, be an exception to the laws of Nature?

One of the things that makes us different is a sense of individuation. We can go against the group tide. I admire individual pacificists (how can an existentialist not?) but I believe most peace groups are bad historians and bad observers of Nature. If you don't want to fight a war, don't. But if you want world peace, good luck. (my recent poem on the matter). This would require a true revolution of the human species -- perhaps the very revolution suggested by Norman O. Brown in LOVE'S BODY. (Here's a thought I almost find frightening: Brown's last great intellectual flirtation was with Islam.) I know of no peace group suggesting such a basic paradigm shift in thought, values, meaning, existence. Part of the focus of Brown's seminal study is to demonstrate through historic example how today's freedom fighter becomes tomorrow's tyrant. As he says so often, an old old story.

With regard to war, nothing has changed except that weapons have gotten bigger and more capable of greater horrors. And now extremist madmen are running around with small nukes -- you know they must have them, where else did all those Soviet weapons go to? -- with the promise that things will get worse before they get better, if indeed they ever get better at all. Maybe like Thornton Wilder says, once again we'll get by by "the skin of our teeth." I don't expect to be around to find out. Stephen Hawkings suggests we start our moon colonies now before it's too late. He's a brighter man than I.

Despite all this, it's a great day! It's a great day because I had my first Music Theory class, and that's going to be great fun, and because my teaching week ends in a few hours, and because I'm going out to dinner tonight with H, and because Sketch, our rat terrier, keeps a smile on my face as only a dog can. Even when he's torturing a stuffed toy -- and there's the dog/human condition for you.