The Philosopher's Attic

This story somehow runs deeper than you’d expect…

Is it really just a question of ‘desertion is a crime’ ? Or is there more to it than meets the eye ? It could be just the reactions in this context that made me jump, since the topic has been brought up a while ago already. Yeah… I guess it’s the harsh ‘what he did was wrong, so no pity’ conclusion that bothered me.
Apart from the fact that it’s a simple non-sequitur error to state that XYZ did ABC, which is a crime, so he has forfeited the right to ask for sympathy or pity from his fellow humans.
There’s something shameful in the above situation and I can’t quite put my finger on it yet.
No matter what reasons the GI or any other GI in any other situation had or has to decide that desertion is better than anything he thinks awaits him in the near future, no matter how elaborate the rational reasoning might be (since the Vietnam war ‘psychological problems’ is a good way to make a cowardly decision noble in retrospective and earn your oppositions respect, even if they don’t approve what you did), it doesn’t make a desertion right. Let’s take the example of the textbook Vietnam GI, already full of doubts when shipped into the Theatre. He keeps his doubt, thinking that it’ll protect him from any atrocity, helps him to stay the human being he was before ever getting there. One day he can’t stand it and just wanders off. Desertion. In our post-Vietnam times, I am quite sure he would be considered a noble spirit that followed his doubts on the military and the cause. The crime suddenly becomes less terrible to us (the military officials wont agree). And why is that ? It’s circumstance.
But, why should this case be any better than the one GI who doesn’t have a noble reason. Only weariness, fear, alcohol, drugs maybe and desperation ?

Apart from the fact that nobody can with full authority state that somebody got what they deserved, how inhuman can you be to throw such a judgement around ? I am talking about inhuman as ‘not according to first human reactions’ such as pity, sympathy, shock… Is it the Christian talking in me or the Philosopher ? I have no idea… I tend to think both. Hard to tell.

But as a Philosopher defining what a hero is, and how the word is used, falls smack into my field. In the beginning of reasoning (Greek Academy) a hero was somebody who partook in the Universal Idea of ‘bravery’, most often it was linked with toughness, absence of fear, physical and psychological strength… and nobility. Somehow the notion of ‘hero’ is always linked with the just cause. The term of hero applied to a Nazi soldier somehow doesn’t fit, does it ?
But since political correctness has stripped all discourse of the terms ‘good’, ‘evil’ or ‘just war’, we’ve come more and more to a diverse stance towards a hero. A hero can be someone fighting for his rights without thought for his personal well being, it can be a soldier perhaps, or a fire-fighter rescuing somebody else at the expense of his own health. But let’s say that we’ve all settled for a circumstantial attribution of the term. A war veteran will most often reply that the heroes are the ones that didn’t leave the battlefield alive, and that nobody is just a hero because of some mystical calling he had. It’s circumstantial. You’re thrown into a situation where you’re challenged beyond your capabilities. Beyond your own possibilities. The ones that decide quickly enough, hard enough or clement enough and live up to the task or the situation get to be heroes.
John Mann who in a trench behind the little Dutch village of Son threw himself onto a grenade in order to save his squad was no doubt a hero. He sacrificed himself for his comrades. One dead is better than 6. All for liberty and the just cause.

And what about the ones that cannot make that decision ? What about the ones that cannot bear the responsibility of their own choices ? Deserters and Cowards ? Why are we so quick to judge them ? Again, a crime is a crime and no matter what reasoning is behind it, it stays a crime. I’m talking about the human judgement.

Isn’t it just more simpler to speak a quick judgement on someone who reminds us of our own doubts and deficiencies ? That someone could have been us… anywhere, any time ? Not having been in the situation, how can we be sure that we would have lived up to the task ? The argument is gratious, I know. But still, it’s a valuable one. It’s this argument that makes us different from an ‘inhuman’ dictatorship who doesn’t accept human weakness.

Accepting somebody else’s weakness makes us truly human. In the simply act of sympathy or pity in this problem, we remind ourselves of our own fears and doubts and our own limitations.
It doesn’t make a deserter a saint. But sitting in a warm room with a nice cup of tea, it’s the only reasoning that can be considered truly ‘human’… and being a simple philosopher and no soldier, the only one I’ll follow.

yseult Politics/History, The Odd Philosophical Question debate, Philosophy

Ever asked yourself what if World War Two had been an online Real Time Strategy game…?

ROFL

yseult Personal, Politics/History

My mind was tickled by this post over at WildBillGuarnere.com: Post about ‘The Downfall’

Of course, generally speaking everything tickles my mind… professional deformation I guess. But this part of the post got me interested in a more particular way (I hope Antonius Lucretius doesn’t mind me quoting it here):

“…It always struck me as odd and quite hypocritical to qualify as “inhuman” the horrors committed specifically by the species “homo sapiens sapiens”.
Extermination camps were “inhuman”?
I’ve never heard of elephants doing that, or tigers..
Only humans. (…)
However hard you try you’ll never be able to kick Adolf Hitler out of the human race. He was one of us.
And that is what’s scary. And that is why we must remain careful.”

Now, there lies an interesting question here: why do we qualify utterly disturbing things such as the murder of several million Jews or the Mother killing 8 of her babies by burying them alive within the span of 10 years, as ‘inhuman’?
Antonius L. – in the above quote – reads the ‘everyday’ expression of ‘inhuman’ as ‘not human’. The first thing that springs to mind as being ‘not human’ would be ‘animal’. And there of course he is quite right to state that the expression doesn’t make any sense since such ferocious behaviour (to be qualified with the adjective of ‘inhuman’) can rarely be observed in the animal world. Nevertheless: ‘not human’ does not immediately equal ‘animal’. ‘Not human’ – from a categorical point of view – means just that: not pertaining to the human species. The expression does not in any way imply a marker that would lead to the category of ‘animal. And if it would, the marker would be rather pointless, since the species ‘human’ is contained in the genus ‘animal’ (cf. primary word sense ‘animated’ or ‘having a soul’).
It is true however that common semantics and language has imposed this relation between the qualification ‘inhuman’ and it being ‘animal’. This doesn’t make it more correct from a philosophical point of view, be it language, logical or metaphysical philosophy.
But that’s not really the point I will be trying to make here. The historical view on ‘how come’ does not help us with the ‘why’ in this matter.
Why do we qualify the horrors committed by the Nazi Regime for example, as being ‘inhuman’?

I’ll try to keep this argument as simple as possible… well, simplicity is a philosopher’s main goal if he or she is trying to do earnest work and not steam off a whole load of fancy words without meaning. To keep it simple I’ll go back to the historical stance for a moment. Traditionally speaking the one attribute that distinguisishes mankind or the human species from other animated species is (according to the theories you’re reading or following) consciousness, rational thinking, language, reason and judgement.
[Traditionally because some of this has been and will have to be further revised by current research on the rationality of apes, practical problem solving of birds etc. But since I am by no means a specialist in this field I will not go into this here.]
If rationality is the main difference between human beings and animals for example, the difference between the two adjectives ‘human’ and ‘inhuman’ can be summarized by the simple fact that humans think in a more or less ordered manner. (Meaning that the thought is not only triggered by environmental instincts.) Not only can a human being think about what he is doing or going to do, but he can also start to qualify and quantify his actions and possible consequences of these actions. Something that has yet not been observed in animals where the trial and error attitude is far more frequent. This is what you would call the ‘meta-level’.
This is only half an answer, but plainly put: we can think about ourselves and our actions. We have consideration and judgement.
The other half of a possible answer to the above stated question would be as follows. If we put aside the quarrel about free will, and simply state in a pragmatic way that it appears that we have a free will to choose between two courses of actions, then this ‘free will’ should ultimately be used in combination with our consideration and our ability to rational thought.
An SS officer who gets an order to kill 40 children that do not fit into a concentration camp for labour, is presented with a choice on several levels. On a general level he can choose between a human way and an inhuman way: think about his actions and thus choose the ‘human way’ or ignore any personal judgement or thought and blast away.
This is where morality chimes in. Recent research has lead to believe that the inner dialogue of rational thought about personal actions is the birth of any moral judgement or consideration. Let’s keep it simple and take this for granted like generations of thinkers (since Aristotle in fact) have.
Then the difference between ‘human’ and ‘inhuman’ is the simple fact of choice based on moral judgement, which will not be a choice at all after the moral consideration has taken place of course. No moral judgement – however twisted the mindset may be – will point towards shooting 40 children.

In short: qualifying the horrors committed by human beings as being ‘inhuman’ simply means not to follow the disposition of the human species to thought, consideration and moral judgement.
This is where the second part of Antonius’ quote comes in: “However hard you try you’ll never be able to kick Adolf Hitler out of the human race. He was one of us. And that is what’s scary. And that is why we must remain careful.”
True, but what’s more scary is how simple it is not to follow rational thought or judgement against better knowledge. So, the path to follow is not just to be careful, but also to continuously reflect our choices and judge them.
Only by retaining the lessons of History and reflecting them, can we ever hope to not repeat them.

yseult Politics/History