Help Me to Die, O Lord
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The report from the military court of enquiry makes for some sobering reading - the statements of his platoon mates make it sound like he'd already been mentally ill for weeks.
Today even the strongest militaries in the world are terrified of the possibility that they could loose a few thousand men within a few years of war.
Maybe it's because we in the West have become so productive that we value every member of society much more. If it is so then it'll mean that eventually as every society gets richer over time it'll see these mass killings and sacrifices as pure insanity and refrain from it.
I believe we would have less of a mess in the Middle East if there was economic stability and the young men there would have the means (and attitude which is often missing) to reach their goals without resorting to violence. After all it must be obvious even to the crazy people running ISIS that the state they are trying to build cannot be sustainable on the long run only through looting and killing their neighbours, even if they were to win every single battle.
Eventually they would run out of neighbours that they can loot and what then?
Edit: I criticise the attitude of men from the Middle East because since we have now many refugees and immigrants here I had the chance to meet many of them. I've not met a single one that didn't come across as a free loader to me so this leads me to believe that this is nothing unusual in their culture. So it's no wonder to me that they are generally poor over there while countries like Germany are rich.
I think it's less a matter of productiveness, and more a matter of connectedness: it's easier to send thousands to their death if they're not your peers. The increased mobility of our society (both social and physical) has blurred and removed many of the old divides (class, vocation, religion) and we're still working on removing others.
Also, the increased transparency of wars and accountability of institutions plays an important role.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
It is not absolutely uncontested but I haven't seen any evidence that the number of connections people have nowadays has increased.
> The increased mobility of our society (both social and physical) has blurred and removed many of the old divides (class, vocation, religion) and we're still working on removing others.
I see more of an atomisation of society into ever smaller groups of minorities that fight each other and more class divide than ever. One other symptom of this is the radicalisation that we see particularly with young people.
20 years ago it would have been unfathomable to me to even imagine that teenagers born in the West would decide to join some crazy group that cuts of heads and throws gays off tall buildings.
The trench system was put in place slowly over time, each increment the designers thinking it would only be a temporary set back. The start of the war was much more mobile with land being taken quickly. Initially the Germans had planned to defeat France within 6 weeks.
When this failed Germany was having a tough time on the Russian front and the Triple Entente saw an opportunity to reclaim lost land. Yet by this time modern weapons gave the advantage to the defenders and the war was in stalemate.
> Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'
It's impossible to imagine the horror - even pondering the numbers of fallen in the first day throttles the imagination, let alone the horrific ways in which these men were murdered in swathes.
All the more tragic that many of these young men left their homes to see the world and experience the adventure of war. They had no idea what was in store for them.
"For Willie McBride, it all happened again, / And again, and again, and again, and again."
And still humans choose war when we could have chosen peace, and follow war leaders when we could have impeached those leaders and thrown them in prison. Probably there is an anthropic selection effect in that this conversation only happens between descendants of killer apes, but that does not excuse us from the last stage of the Great Filter.
Will we learn in time?
Not so much for the pawns.
Rome fought off Carthage with just its small farmers. Probably did not have many urban poor at the time, either.
This same dynamic repeats itself in Byzantium [1], though with a more explicitly feudal flavor.
I'm not sure it's all that much of a bad thing that we retell an important part of our history in various different ways including forms of entertainment.
By reducing the suffering of those who partook in WWI to an adventure we insult all those who were destroyed by war.
I find this an interesting point of view. That said, there's also the point to be made that portraying wars as glorious adventures, we're definitely not helping to raise a generation of people who want peace.
Come to think of it, it may be that we're not showing enough violence when making media about war. I remember watching "Saving Private Ryan" as a kid. The opening scene of the Operation Overlord shook me very hard. Since then, when I think of war, in my mind I have a picture of young people dying horrible, painful and pointless deaths, crying out to their parents and God as they hold their own guts in their hands. I think this level of graphic presentation may be needed to really drive the point home.
Do you not enjoy any games/movies including non-fictional wars?
It would be disingenuous of me to say I've always felt this way. I was a Counterstrike junky in high school and I enjoyed a number of titles in the Battlefield series. So don't take my comment as a holier-than-thou indictment. But I have learned a different path and am trying to make a positive impact on this world.
If anything, I stand as a testament that that these games do not define us nor condemn us to being monsters. But I will discourage my own children from being entertained as they watch Hueys swing down over a Vietnamese village with Fortunate Son playing in the background as they bomb the shit out of a small village full of perfectly evil enemies. I did that, and I have learned that reducing the world to good and evil permeates every little interaction in our lives until it becomes exceeding difficult to live the Golden Rule of treating others as you'd like to be treated. Micro-aggressions against others dehumanizes us.
Lastly, you are correct, that imagined conflict is actually very valuable to teaching moral lessons, and there are plenty of ways to explore the idea of war with those who don't yet appreciate how destructive it is to reduce an actual conflict in our shared history to black-and-white terms.
And this is an advertisement for a game. Complaining about it not being serious enough is not really that different from complaining that alcohol commercials don't show enough drunk driving accidents.
In truth, though, this is a very weak argument as far as WW2 (and probably the upcoming WW1) games go, because they tend to have a storyline that largely follows the actual historical development - i.e. "Axis cannot win" - but with some considerable liberties. That, yes, can be kinda disrespectful in some cases.
It's a complaint that is biased in a particular direction. How would you feel if, in an alternate reality where Europe is the dominant power, you had a game about the US war of independence with US forces as DLC?
I'd say so. I mean, well, it's like having a game about the Eastern Front in WWII with the Soviets on one side and the Hungarians and Italians on the other end, with the Germans as DLC. It may make a killing in Hungary and Italy, but it's bound to give a completely deformed version of the truth to anyone who doesn't known much about the original events.
Look in the past week or two - the French have been commemorating Verdun, which was their WWI low point, but barely know about the Somme, which not only was the UK's low point, but also had half as many French casualties as at Verdun. Is it distasteful for the French to not commemorate the Somme? After all, the UK was France's major ally in that war, sending hundreds of thousands of it's youth to die for French soil.
Of course it isn't distasteful - the French national story is of Verdun, and they're not being distasteful by not ensuring all other major players get the same billing as they do in their own story.
The internet has killed imagination.
Because in real life teenagers aren't going to think after playing "Oh man war is surely fun" because they are not that stupid, you just pretend they are for your argument's sake.
I am sure that people do understand the difference between a game and reality.
Captain Darling: "rather hoped I'd get through the whole show; go back to work at Pratt & Sons; keep wicket for the Croydon gentlemen; marry Doris... Made a note in my diary on my way here. Simply says... 'Bugger...'"
I began to wonder about Pratt & Sons - did Pratt have sons or other employees in the trenches too? Same with the Croydon gentlemen - how many of their 11 will die in the war and never play cricket again? Who is Doris and is she waiting anxiously at home for him? What will she do when she gets the telegram telling her he will never come home?
After laughing at Darling as an idiotic, simpering, one dimensional character in the earlier episodes, it was awfully gut wrenching to see him here as a more complex personality with a full life, who was quite simply terrified at the inevitable prospect of having that very life ending in a few minutes time when they went over the top.
'Bugger' indeed...
Stephen Fry played his part brilliantly - He certainly epitomised the pompous brashness and careless disregard for the value of human life that seemed to be prevalent amongst the Generals and leaders of the time...
Necessity meant that they had to run it it in slow motion and with cut angles showing the same scene; that required the addition of a somber musical addition. The cross fade to colour at the end was a stroke of genius at the end to finish it off.
But basically the resulting effect was neither planned nor written; it was an editing necessity based on the lack of footage. This helped win it the BAFTA award in 1989.