[lit-ideas] Re: Problem solving and war
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 12:39:17 -0600
LH:
Maybe one of the reasons I appreciate JL more than most of the others on
Lit-Ideas is that he values the meanings of words.<<
The implicature being that most posters to Lit-Ideas do not value the
meanings of words. Surely, Lawrence, you don't mean that. Surely, even if
you abjure the metaphor at the heart of every word -- and I've noticed you
don't -- but even if you think you do, surely you're not holding yourself up
as the epitome of no-nonsense meaningfulness.
If we use a word we ought to intend something by it and our intention
ought to grow out of its meaning, its tradition, how it has been used in
the past.<<
So the word 'silly', how should it be used? "The word's considerable sense
development moved from "blessed" to "pious," to "innocent" (1200), to
"harmless," to "pitiable" (c.1280), to "weak" (c.1300), to "feeble in mind,
lacking in reason, foolish" (1576). Further tendency toward "stunned, dazed
as by a blow" (1886) in knocked silly, etc."
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=silly&searchmode=none
JL insists 'silly' should be used to mean "holy". I agree since most holy
people act in ways thought silly by the serious-minded world. Think how
silly Jesus was: "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to
those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat
you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If
someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to
everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not
demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you." [Luke 6:
27--31] That Jesus was one silly God, I'm sure you'll agree.
Mike Geary
Memphis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2008 11:12 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Problem solving and war
If we don't
choose to rely upon common or at least previous usage, then we must define
our terms. A philosopher may say "whenever I use the term dasein I mean X
by it." Or if one is Martin Heidegger, he may leave the term poorly defined
so that all you know about it is that whatever it means to Heidegger that
meaning isn't to be found in a dictionary.
Let's return to the circumstances that set me off, the end of the movie
_Anzio_. Edward Dmytryk has Robert Mitchum, his war correspondent utter
this saw to a Major General: "Wars never solve anything. History tells us
that." He uses the word "solve" not in a philosophical sense but in a
common sense - at least I saw no hint that he was intending this word to be
taken in some new and unusual fashion. So what does "solve" mean?
The following is from the on-line American Heritage dictionary:
solve (slv, sôlv)
v. solved, solv·ing, solves
v.tr.
1. To find a solution to.
2. To work out a correct solution to (a problem).
v.intr.
To solve an equation: Insert the values of the constants and solve for x.
________________________________________
[Middle English solven, to loosen, from Latin solvere; see leu- in
Indo-European roots.]
________________________________________
solver n.
Synonyms: solve, decipher, resolve, unravel
These verbs mean to clear up or explain something puzzling or
unintelligible: solve a riddle; can't decipher your handwriting; resolve a
problem; unravel a mystery.
So if these are the things "solve" might mean, let us look for the "problem"
that some war-starters expect to "solve." Eric, it seems to me goes off in
the wrong direction. He looks for a hidden quibble held or entertained by
"the losers of a war." Losers and winners don't seem to evolve from the
need to solve something. The nation with the problem, the problem requiring
solution, the "war-starter" is where we must look, it seems to me. Who but
the war-starter would have the "problem" that requires a "solution"? I
suppose both nations could have a "problem" and start a given war
simultaneously, but I doubt it would help to explore that possibility.
Let's just take Germany. The movie was about a war the German's started and
Eric seems happy to consider that but he doesn't stay with the right words.
He moves off to "position." How he gets from "war never solves anything"
to a "position" mystifies me. It is a veritable problem requiring a
solution, but Eric's note doesn't provide it - although he seems to think
that it does.
[If it does, Eric, I missed it. Move more slowly from the definition of the
key terms "solve" and "problem" to your word "position" so I can follow the
bouncing ball.]
I have been reading the _On the Origins of War, and the Preservation of
Peace_ by Donald Kagan. On page 8 he quotes Thucydides to say that people
go to war out of "honor, fear, and interest." Kagan, an expert in such
matters, thinks Thucydides is right - well he doesn't exactly say "right."
He says, "I have found that trio of motives most illuminating in
understanding the origins of wars throughout history and will refer to them
frequently in this work." Fair enough, and he does refer to these terms.
In World War One for example, he says all the nations feared something.
Germany feared a two front war. It feared that France and Russia might get
together; so if they could just wipe out one front before the other got
started they would have just a one-front war. Otherwise, they thought,
Germany was doomed. I can understand "fear" quite well as a motive for the
various participants in WWI. I've read several books and almost all the
participants were afraid of something. The only possible exception was the
U.S. They entered late because their parent nation England asked for help.
But even the U.S. could be said to "fear" something when they formulated the
sentence, 'unless we enter the war, Britain may lose."
So there we have a very brief discussion of the motives for a major war and
all of them fit more or less well under the heading "fear." None of them
fit under a "problem" requiring a "solution."
If we move down the line from the "origins" of wars to the tactical
"problems" related to defeating the enemy in battle, then yes, we can say
the enemies approach represents a "problem" requiring a tactical "solution."
More than that it requires engaging the enemy and defeated him. If the
leadership selected the right "solution" then the "problem" presented by the
enemy would have been solved. More importantly he would have been defeated,
but I won't quibble. "Problem" and "solution" do mean something in regard
to tactics. But they don't mean anything that I can see in regard to the
origins of wars.
Let's take another war discussed here recently: The Falklands War. The
Falklands was claimed by the British during their empire days. The people
who live there are British and they don't want to be free of the British
Empire. They don't want to belong to Argentina. The Falklands are also
claimed by Argentina and one day Argentina occupied the Falklands. What was
their motive? Was it a problem they wanted solved? No, it rankled that the
British claimed this Island when they thought by virtue of proximity or
something else (Perhaps JL can provide a better definition). It ought to
belong to Argentina.
The British didn't really need the Falklands but could it afford to abandon
the 1800 people living there? British honour was at stake and so they set
sail. Once they got there then tactics became important. The land, the
disposition of the Argentines, the forces at the disposal of the British,
the three groups made of by the Martial Races the Scots, Welsh and Gurkhas
were set into motion in accordance with the tactical solution developed by
the British leadership. The Battle (War) was fought. The British won. The
Argentines lost. The 1800 Falkland Islanders were happy.
Eric moves on to the matter of handling conflict, and I strained to relate
this back to "problems" and "solutions" and couldn't manage to arrive there.
So while I couldn't arrive there, I can go back to the end of Anzio and
listen once again to "wars never solve anything. History teaches us that."
No, no, no, Dmytryk! That's utter nonsense.
Lawrence Helm
San Jacinto
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Eric Dean
Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2008 7:13 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] The things war never solves
Lawrence Helm defies anyone to say that wars never *decide* anything, by
contrast with the mulishly repeated nonsense that "war never solves
anything", as he characterizes the phrase.
I don't understand why Lawrence finds that phrase so nonsensical. The
phrase, it seems to me, means that the losers in a war generally do not take
the loss as the reason to give up the position they had previously taken.
I think that there's a hidden quibble about the meaning of 'taking a
position' at play here. Generally the losers of a war can no longer occupy
the position they previously occupied in the sense of having political
control over a geographic space -- Germany no longer occupied France at the
end of World War II, for example.
But die-hard Nazis did not give up the 'position' (i.e. the idea) that
Germany *should* occupy France.
That's the sense in which war never solves anything, as I understand the
phrase. The disputes that lead to war do not go away just because someone
wins the war and someone loses. All that happens is that the winner has a
greater chance of forcing the loser to act like he or she has accepted the
winner's views than he or she had before. Of course the loser might come to
resent the domination...
And if one understands 'decide' in the same sense as I'm suggesting one
might understand 'solves', then I would be happy to say that wars never
decide anything, other than who happens to have won that war that time.
One of the things we parents try to teach our children is how to handle
their conflicts without physical fighting, because the physical fight
doesn't really settle what's at issue in a conflict -- unless all that's at
issue is whether Mike or Sue gets to eat the last piece of pie... And while
Mike might get the piece of pie away from Sue by pushing her aside, Sue
might also look for a way to get her own back later, so even that physical
conflict that might be said to decide the question of who gets a particular
physical thing at a particular time does not decide the issue between Mike
and Sue for all time.
Parents don't succeed in eradicating physical conflict between their kids.
No more should we expect that arguments against war are going to eradicate
violent conflict between large groups of adults. But neither of those
points means we should abandon the effort to reduce the frequency of violent
conflict. One of the techniques in reducing such conflict is to remind
conscious adult human beings that physical conflict does not resolve
non-physical sources of conflict. That's every bit as true and practical a
bit of insight as is the notion that the aggressors in our midst aren't
going to stop because we wish they would.
Conflict will always be with us. It can actually be constructive and
healthy -- otherwise there wouldn't even be the phrase 'healthy debate'.
The real question is how we handle conflict, what we do with it, not whether
it exists. Physical conflict is destructive -- things get destroyed, people
get wounded, maimed and killed. Is it really such a naive and foolish thing
to look for alternatives for handling conflict that do not result in
physical destruction? Doing so needn't mean we abandon the capacity to
defend ourselves, nor that we inherently reject any argument for war. It
only means that we really do try to find alternatives before firing the
first shot.
Regards to all,
Eric Dean
Washington DC
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