war

[gaynor]

Oh most Michael of Moorcocks (and all other nomads),
What is the consciousness of warfare that it separates the eternal champion from all other individuals?

[Michael Moorcock]

?
Not following you, pard.

[Mespheber]

Maybe the question is: "how the Eternal Champions deal to be warriors or experiencing war?"

I would say: pretty well by Arioch!

[Michael Moorcock]

Well war's a simple metaphor for the human condition, I suppose.

[Morgan Kane]

if your read memories by warriors ( Red badge of courage for secession war, Remarque, Dorgeles, Barbusse for WWI or the naked and the dead from mailer for WWII ) much boredom .... and some moments of fear if you had time for that ....

[Michael Moorcock]

Cendrars good on that, too.

[Mespheber]

if your read memories by warriors ( Red badge of courage for secession war, Remarque, Dorgeles, Barbusse for WWI or the naked and the dead from mailer for WWII ) much boredom .... and some moments of fear if you had time for that ....

Not to mention horror at the highest level: friends sliced into pieces by machineguns and bombs, the smell of bodies rotting nearby... "War makes no one great" says Yoda in Empire Strikes Back... There are also heroic actions but one in the other, it is allways the same no matter it is peace or war in our time: all we have to do is to deal with the time which is given to us.

I remember a chat with a marocan girl who told me "I wonder why you, occidentals, allways understand events as conflictual..." That remains in my mind. Maybe there are other ways, could love and compassion be another path we're afraid to follow?

[Michael Moorcock]

Blimey, that's rich coming from a Moroccan, isn't it ? There were still 'harkas' being organised in living memory and one of the reasons the French were able to have effective control of the country was surely the traditional tensions between North and South. And isn't there still a conflict going on n Mauretania ? Don't get me wrong -- I love Morocco -- but I wouldn't have said it was exactly conflict free. Still, the point's worth making. As I quote Wylie in Cheering for the Rockets, it actually costs about the same to make peace rather than war. It's just easier to go to war.... And presumably it's still a more popular US solution to problems, if Bush's support is anthing to go by...

[Mespheber]

Blimey, that's rich coming from a Moroccan, isn't it ?

Why? Marocco is an old culture and is what remains onf the golden age of Spain while they were under muslim influence. War is not a privilege of occidental countries of course, but there are other cases of conflict in everyday life where we draw our swords more easily than any other. As you say, it is easier to go to war and we are fuckin' lazy on this matter!

[Miqque]

Again time to trot out one of my favorite theories. I feel clinical depression - which might better in this context be called "neurotransmitter dysfunctions" - is a pandemic codition, and that the resutant dysphoric conditions from such a neurotransmitter imbalance exacerbate conflict.

With smaller words, most people are very touchy and in a bad mood most of the time, ready to fight and looking for an excuse. This is combined ith the very human trait of wanting to be correct, and thus standing firm on any statement they have made. Even - or especially - if they have been proven wrong. People don't klike to be embarrassed in ay way. The onesmaking it to high government positiions live by the reputaion - be they dictators or elected. So any perceived threat becomes a clear and present danger. Now add the human predisposition towards erratic neurochemicals, and it's easy to see why things escalate into conflicts and wars. Look at families. Same thing happens, and often about petty matters. People struggle for power, for respect, for authority and even for something so basic as acknowledgement that they exist.

In the midst of all this struggle, with poorly defied emotions, a lack of knowledge that such reactions are not by any means healthy, and a power base to defend we can see that conflict is inevitable.

In my younger, more altruistic days I hoped for universal solutions to this problem. Except for pure fantasy and superhero-type escapades, there was no true solution that presented itself. For added atop everything I've just discussed, there is bad wiring, poor thinking, and basing one's thoughts on false precepts. (I'm thinking of such things as Africans who believe AIDS can be cured by having sex with a virgin; or that one race is inherently superior to another; or that age grants wisdom.) Few still have facts, fewer the ability to jettison flawed concepts used as a foundation, and still fewer of those the ability to evaluate and test given "facts" to see if they are indeed the truth. (The Galileo conundrum. If one knows the earth revolves around the sun, can one say the sun revolves around the earth due merely to social pressure and the need for self-preservation?)

Were very competent psychiatrists given the ability to screen those out from public office those who had personality or thought disorders we would have no one left in public office. Sane people avoid governmental entaglements like the plague.

Will there always be war and rumours of war? Yep. Until the Great Physician returns, at least.

[Michael Moorcock]

I have a huge love of Morocco and when we were based in the UK we'd go to visit friends in Marrakesh at least a couple of times a year. And I agree that one finds the last living remains of the great culture of Islamic Spain there. But it would be naive to believe that, until relatively recently, it was any fun to be a Jew there, for instance. We are all probably better off concentrating on cultivating our own virtues rather than criticising others' vices.

[Mespheber]

Weird, from what I've heard from locals there are plenty of synagogs in Marocco since centuries and jews seem to live more quietfully there than in France for example, and France is not that bad on this matter since 60 years...

My concern were less to point another country as better than considering that there may be another way to apprehend situations in life than get angry as Miqqe explained it cleverly. Since this chat with this woman, I'm really wondering if there is not other ways, if men are really made for fight...

[Morgan Kane]

man mind has been made by hundreds of millions of years of evolution and learning ......

But the way of doing war is a question of culture .. Each human culture has his way of doing war .....

[Michael Moorcock]

Any study of Moroccan history will involve the 'harka' -- the rallying of warriors of one tribe to make war on another. Frequently, because of bad maps or bad planning, the harka would fail to find the object of its venom and then the nearest mellah or Jewish Quarter (the word means 'salt' because the Jews were given the job of salting the heads of rivals or criminals) would come under attack. It was the first king of Morocco, heir to the Sultan, who invited Jews back to Morocco, just as Cromwell had done in 17th century England, for practical rather than idealistic reasons, in the main. The Moroccans I know had a saying still quite common, at least outside the major cities, 'Let a Jew into your house and you will have a month's bad luck'. Not the most philo-Hebraic statement I've ever heard. As I say, I love Morocco, but I wouldn't go so far as to say their history of treatment of Jews is especially virtuous.
Americans still believe that the French are very anti-Jewish, whereas of course anyone who lives there and has, as I have, many French Jews as friends, knows this to be nonsense. A friend of mine is currently asking me to find a French Jewish journalist who can write him a piece on this, since people like myself become tired of telling Americans that this is not the case. The anti-Jewish activities of a few, in most European countries, can't be taken as the prejudice of the many, any more than the activities of the American Nazi Party or the Ku Klux Klan are typical. We have had Klan rallies in our area where the anti-Klan demonstrators have considerably outnumbered the Klan members. My experience of the US is that it is still more of a racist nation than, say, France or Germany, but that still doesn't make it 'a racist nation'. Equally, Morocco is a far safer place for a Jew to live now than it was fifty years ago. We're all making progress, in the main! Now we've got to persuade Iran to remember her great past and to abolish racist rhetoric and we might be able to persuade the israeli right to abandon its racism, too.

[Mespheber]

In my experience, my country is not more antisemitic than others, but not less, far from that!

There are still a lot of people who have difficulties to simply use the word "jew" without feeling it as insulting. Antisemitism decreased because it became strictly illegal and is punished with heavy laws, but in hearts, it remains the same. In Europe, for centuries, we had the same kind of humiliations, sometimes we had to swear in front of power representatives on the skin of a pig or wearing yellow hats. Only Poland agreed us privileges we never had until WW2 tragedy.

@ Morgan: your words are obvious, however, I'm now more concerned of the way to make peace in other cultures than war.