[lit-ideas] Re: Sacrifice
- From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2005 15:09:11 -0500
In a message dated 2/13/2005 7:52:55 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
libraryofsocialscience@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
irrational self-sacrifice in the name of the nation, the way
in which soldiers were asked to go to their deaths by getting out of
trenches and walking into machine gun fire during the First World War.
____
When troops refuse self-sacrifice--and nations have never "awakened from
the nightmare of history" simultaneously--the nations in question are
defeated, conquered, partitioned, or destroyed.
So the "irrational" self-sacrifice might not be so irrational after all?
When people stop "believing" in their social groups, the groups
disintegrate and are replaced by other groups, groups that in some
fashion honor sacrifice. Hitler would have conquered the UK if it were
not for the self-sacrifice of Brits, such as the valiant air defense in
the Battle of Britain.
So what is irrational for the individual is often quite rational for the
group...and yet there are no individuals without groups and no groups
without individual members of that group.
In fact that's a serious objection to the notion of "individual
sacrifice." Individuals only exist by consent of the group and vice
versa. To speak of irrational self-sacrifice is to view that sacrifice
only from the perspective of the individual. Yet individuals do not
exist by themselves, but only in the context of groups.
And further, "irrationality" is determined post facto. We see the Nazi
self-sacrifice as irrational, as symptomatic of a psychotic state,
precisely because they were defeated, and because liberal democracies
got to tell the story.
Eric
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