Saturday, September 20, 2003
The death of martyrdom in the West - A meditation.
Least I forget . . .
martyr
1. someone who dies for their religious or political beliefs, and whose death makes people believe more strongly in those beliefs 2. someone who tries to get other people's sympathy by talking about how hard their life is
The creatures that we (in the westernized world) have become are still willing to kill for the beliefs that they hold (as has always been the case), but are no longer willing to die for them. Along the bloody timeline of our military actions, I take as the fulcrum the Viet Nam War, which strikes a precarious balance between earlier, more costly (in terms of casualties), more ideological, and more importantly, more strongly BELIEVED IN wars (e.g. The Revolutionary War, The Civil War, WWI, WWII), and the later wars (Desert Shield/Storm, Op Restore Hope, Operation Endure Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, ect.) that were characterized only costly in terms of total expenditures (in billions of dollars as hundreds as opposed to millions of lives) and the strong DUBIOUSNESS of the ideologues behind them. An interesting correlative to this is the DUBBING OF WARS, where a the trend of an increased level of abstraction can be observed.
What has lead to this situation? I'm not sure. There is a dearth of the man who believes, or a dearth of that which is believable? Is this all due to some Nietzschean impetus? Was the (philosophical) origin of this new species his (in)famous dirge in Zarathustra? And was this more intoned much later (and more succintly) by NMH in the song Someone Is Waiting, or was Jeff just singing about his girlfriend?
Other items include the trepidation I have recently begun to experience due to the arrival of meta-martyrdom that is implied by the current vacuum. What will be it's nature? How will it go about re-engendering martyrdom in the West? What will it give us to believe in that is worth dying for?
meta-martyrdom (def. pending)
martyr
1. someone who dies for their religious or political beliefs, and whose death makes people believe more strongly in those beliefs 2. someone who tries to get other people's sympathy by talking about how hard their life is
The creatures that we (in the westernized world) have become are still willing to kill for the beliefs that they hold (as has always been the case), but are no longer willing to die for them. Along the bloody timeline of our military actions, I take as the fulcrum the Viet Nam War, which strikes a precarious balance between earlier, more costly (in terms of casualties), more ideological, and more importantly, more strongly BELIEVED IN wars (e.g. The Revolutionary War, The Civil War, WWI, WWII), and the later wars (Desert Shield/Storm, Op Restore Hope, Operation Endure Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, ect.) that were characterized only costly in terms of total expenditures (in billions of dollars as hundreds as opposed to millions of lives) and the strong DUBIOUSNESS of the ideologues behind them. An interesting correlative to this is the DUBBING OF WARS, where a the trend of an increased level of abstraction can be observed.
What has lead to this situation? I'm not sure. There is a dearth of the man who believes, or a dearth of that which is believable? Is this all due to some Nietzschean impetus? Was the (philosophical) origin of this new species his (in)famous dirge in Zarathustra? And was this more intoned much later (and more succintly) by NMH in the song Someone Is Waiting, or was Jeff just singing about his girlfriend?
Other items include the trepidation I have recently begun to experience due to the arrival of meta-martyrdom that is implied by the current vacuum. What will be it's nature? How will it go about re-engendering martyrdom in the West? What will it give us to believe in that is worth dying for?
meta-martyrdom (def. pending)
