[lit-ideas] Re: Bad Poetry Competition 2011/ Rennie Airth
- From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 18 Jun 2011 13:18:52 -0400
Not perhaps as "detailed and philosophically sophisticated" as some here
would desire, but Jonathan Shay's Achilles in
Vietnam<http://www.amazon.com/Achilles-Vietnam-Combat-Undoing-Character/dp/0684813211>
has
some interesting things to say.
John McC
On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 12:50 PM, John Wager <
john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Donal McEvoy wrote:
>
>> --- On Sat, 18/6/11, John Wager<jwager@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> On the other hand, experience in war is often the main
>>> experience that forms one's outlook on almost everything
>>> else.
>>>
>>>
>> It would be interesting to see to what extent this plausible idea stands
>> up [to tests, for example], and perhaps also how this 'fact' is best
>> explained or accounted for - why, it might be asked, might an experience
>> that is relatively short in relation to a life-time, and which presents an
>> individual with problems and situations that are very atypical for a
>> life-time, not be relegated to some aberration but instead colour their
>> outlook in seemingly profound ways? [Does it really colour their outlook as
>> much it might seem, and what degree of variation is there between
>> individuals?] Is it because, for young men, war experience coincides with
>> their 'formative years'? Is it because of the 'life or death' nature of war?
>>
>> Many sub-questions arise. Insofar as persons do not want to talk about the
>> war (excluding the Germans, in their case the current scientific consensus
>> is still that's just because they're sore losers) is that because they have
>> relegated, or are trying to relegate, its impact as an experience? Insofar
>> as they are content to talk about the war in one way with those who were
>> also in the war, and feel differently with those who were not, is this
>> because they feel there is something here only others with the same
>> experience could understand? Does war change one's view of human nature?
>> Does it alter one's perspective on "life"? In what ways?
>>
>> As a potentially fruitful issue for examining human psychology generally,
>> there must be a book or two with all the answers?
>>
>>
>
> To take the last issue first: J. Glenn Gray's THE WARRIORS is one place to
> start looking. It's by a philosopher reflecting on his own experiences in
> WWII. It doesn't focus explicitly on veterans' "silence" but it does go
> into some insights that help to understand the issue. On the whole,
> "silence" seems to be a more philosophical than psychological topic, though.
> How might one collect enough "data" on silence to conclude that the most
> common reason for such silence is "x," whatever "x" is? Do you ask veterans
> who have never talked about their war "So, why haven't you ever talked about
> the war?" Or do you see if there is some kind of correlation between a
> medical diagnosis and silence? Or do you see if there is some kind of
> correlation between a particular kind of traumatic event and silence? And
> if someone says "I don't want to talk about the war" and the researcher
> presses on, doesn't that pressing on affect the answers given? I don't see
> how far one could get with this.
>
> On the other hand, suppose we take the aphorism seriously: What are the
> possible reasons for silence? How does silence function as a way of
> understanding one's past? How successful is silence in dealing with the
> past? How different is it to talk to someone who served with you, versus
> someone who didn't serve at all? We are now in more phenomenological
> territory, and this seems to be a fertile ground for philosophers to
> explore.
>
> Regarding the first issue: I can't speak objectively on this, not because I
> haven't read extensively, but because my own experiences would tip the scale
> to skew the test. I was in the army in Vietnam over 40 years ago, and that
> experience did serve as one of the main "spines" of my successive life. My
> experiences in war turned out to be almost identical to my experiences in
> peace: People forget, people are careless, people disappear. I really wish
> the war HAD been so radically different that I could just say "Well, that's
> just true in the war" and leave it behind. Consequences may be different,
> and war may sharpen your sight for things, but what I've seen since has
> always been filtered by a knowledge that the people who forgot their
> homework were really the same people who forgot to tell the artillery there
> was a village they shouldn't fire on.
>
> (OK, I REALLY REALLY tried to delete the rest of the following paragraph
> several times, on the grounds that it was self-serving and too commercial,
> but I just can't seem to get rid of it, so I'll just put this warning before
> the rest and let it stand:) I was also court-martialled in Vietnam for
> refusing to participate in the invasion of Cambodia, and my experiences in
> saying "NO" to the U.S. Army was probably the single most important lesson
> in power and bureaucratic organizations I ever had. I wrote a book on my
> experiences in Vietnam that I finally got published a couple of years ago:
> QUIET YEAR AT WAR. This tries to deal with some of the issues raised here,
> but not in as detailed and philosophically sophisticated way that they
> should be dealt with.
>
>
>
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--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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