Remember them more honestly | Hacker News Reader

Remember them more honestly

thecritic.co.uk

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not.
So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.
What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

And all music is.

Vonnegut, 1973

And then they did it again not even 30 years later and would have done it again if it wasn’t for the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation.

Remember that when people talk about the superiority of western civilization.

I mean, Vonnegut sure as shit knew that when he wrote those words.

30 years later he was in the basement of a slaughterhouse when his countrymen firebombed him and the rest of the city into slag, after all.

And I distinctly recall a rather large and conspicuously non-Western nation being involved in that particular war. Possibly more than that, depending on how you count.

All that we have is a product of the west, there are arguments about why that is, but the fact remains

From religion to letters to numbers to agriculture to civilization itself, these are not the product of the west.

I think you are crediting too much to the west.

You can't really believe this, as it's so obviously wrong.

It is also a contention that has pretty racist adherents; Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment book comes to mind. This isn't a coincidence, as suggesting that non-western peoples have contribute nothing of value to this "we" is pure western chauvinism, which is racism's non-identical twin brother.

I have attended Sunday Remembrence at a cenotaph (in whichever town I resided that year) every year since I turned 18.

In each place it is somewhat different.

In my home town it was a small affair. Barely attended and some straightforward words. No depth of literature or political will; it isn't as relevant to them.

In my university town it was a diverse affair. Many ages, many creeds, many worlds. It was oddly right but oddly political.

In my current town. A military town if there ever was one; it is a despairingly religious event.

I don't feel any of these have been honest.

A small point of interest:

The author takes issue with a line in the song/poem "I vow to thee my country". The line is "the love that asks no questions".

Firstly, I confess to this being one of my favourite - if not my favourite - poems. And in that I must confess to have a different take on it; what the lyrics mean to me if you will.

I take a non-religious, but not strictly incompatible, reading. One where "another country" is an ideal to strive for.

I read the "the love that asks no questions" to be the unconditional love of a person for their country, and not an unconditional acceptance of their governement or a surrendering of will. Whether this is the original intention I do not know or really care.

It is in that line that these lyrics give me great strength. In a career where I can easily emigrate, having few living ties, I could very easily blame the country for all that I see as wrong and leave it.

But that of course doesn't help anyone but me - and likely only myself in the short term. My love for my country shouldn't be strictly conditional on the state those I disagree with have put it in. I have to recognise I am of my country. I have to recognise that it is my responsibility.

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