[lit-ideas] Re: Bad Poetry Competition 2011/ Rennie Airth
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 10:36:26 +0100 (BST)
Thank you very much this John. To take one point...
--- On Sat, 18/6/11, John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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.
This makes much sense to me - that 'war experience' colours life after because
it sharpens or heightens perception of aspects of human behaviour and
competence that, in ordinary life, are there - but where perhaps the
consequences are not so marked or serious. I was about to say something else
but will stop. Re-phrased as this: while people's fallibility is perhaps to be
expected and allowed for, their attitude to their possible mistakes should be
one of vigilance and readiness to correct them - and yet this is so far from
the case with so many people, who are, to use your term, "careless". Other
words would be self-serving, self-regarding, arrogant and naive. For some
people the idea that what they do falls short of the highest standards is
preposterous and even when at some (unconscious?) level they sense that they
fall short, their efforts are directed not at raising their game but at
defending it as it is. Strange shrimps.
Donal
London
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