An Essay on Patriotism, war and peace

This essay is a short exposition of my thoughts on the subject of patriotism, war and peace, in case you couldn’t tell from the title, it is not laugh out loud comic piece, although one may find it mildly amusing if one has a sense of humour not unlike that of The Watchmen’s Comedian.

What triggered this urge to put down in writing my thoughts is the advertisements promoting the different aspects of the Singapore Armed Forces. I feel that it is important to be a little more reserved and try not to rant on frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog, the way I usually write my blog updates, which I admit is a lazy way of writing. But also because I feel that this subject is one of great importance that is not as much discussed as other topics and it is easier to take it seriously this way.

But anyway, back to the advertisements.

I find it odd that there is not much dialogue concerning this, seeing as how many, perhaps overprotective, parents seem to be quick to lament the glamourisation of violence and war in video games, movies, television and even music, but do not find anything deplorable with the army advertisements.
Now, I concede that the advertisements in no way depict any form of violence, it is not so much the visual content that bugs, offends or gets my panties in a bunch, but the idea behind the advertisements. I can’t see why there is even a need for such advertisements considering it is compulsory for all healthy males to serve the country.

You see, even though it is not explicitly written, vocalized or in any way made known, there is the tacit acknowledgement that for the most part the army is involved in the training of killers, although it is swept under the carpet, kept in a secret dark corner of the attic and generally ignored.

Even if the advertisements had depicted scenes of violence or even murder. One suspects that people would be more willing to accept it as harsh realism than if the advertisement was for a video game.
This is where patriotism comes in.

Patriotism is largely not an odious quality to posses and is encouraged as much as say kindness, politeness and courage. But like most things in life should be practiced in moderation. Patriotism when taken too far leads to fanatism, which could expose itself as xenophobia and laughable bigotry that serves little more than fodder for amateur internet comics and stand up comedy, or even to rouse entire countries to war, such as in the case of Germany in World War 2.
From the above examples, it can be seen that patriotism can cause reasonable people to perform hideous deeds, it is almost as if it blinds them to logic and somehow transcends morality.

One might rebuke that in Singapore’s situation, the need for an army is for the purposes of defense, due to its small size and strategic location it is vulnerable to attack and so a strong army is necessary to act a deterrent for would be attackers. This may sound exaggerated, but that is not at all dissimilar to terrorism. Terrorism works by imposing a threat of violence in order to coerce its target to meet its demands. Juxtaposed that to the Singapore Army’s threat of violence in order to prevent hostile countries from attacking and maybe the statement I made earlier would be less of a hyperbole.

What then can be done to remove the threat of violence? Have all countries agree to relinquish all military power, that would be highly naïve and improbable, however attractive an idea it may seem. For even the destruction of guns and missiles as weapons, knives, forks, rakes, hammers, sticks, rocks can still be used and even if somehow it were possible to remove the pernicious potential of such objects, we still have arms and legs. Yes, it almost seems there is no limit to the myriad methods of causing harm that can be thought up by the human mind. But it perhaps should be noted, that guns and missiles and other such implements make killing so easy that it almost makes the act seem trivial, abandonment of these tools of destruction would not solve the problem but as long as such things exist true peace , I don’t think, can be achieved.

War, however much people speak about its horrors, they do not seem to be horrible enough to turn people away from it. But sometimes war is inevitable, unavoidable to protect our way of life, such as in the case of world war 2 where it seems war is justified (if the taking of life can be said to be justifiable) in that it prevented a megalomatic dictator from taking over the world. But think, these wars all stem from the agenda of a few individuals who somehow managed to invoke patriotism and playing on people’s emotions and fears to serve their own ends. That is why patriotism is so dangerous, it clouds people’s senses, appealing to primal instincts and fears rather than logic and morality, a siren’s song luring people into their doom.

Think now what an army consists of, not the policy makers and warmongers, they are made up of the pawns, the expendable tools, a mean to an end. They consist of people who like people in other armies believe they are fighting to protect their families and the things that are dear to them. By killing them, you believe you are preserving your way of life. But you cannot see that the people you kill are also fighting for the same things and that there are alternatives to resorting to violence.

You can choose not to fight. When the warmongers can no longer invoke emotions like patriotism to gather armies, they lose their power. Let them fight their own wars.

But what if you are forced to go to war under torture or execution? What happened to being willing to die for your country? Did you really mean you were willing to kill for your country?

This, of course, is only a conceivable solution if everyone in the world could be made to realise and follow this. Which you would think would be easy considering how everyone in the world SUPPOSEDLY WANTS WORLD PEACE. Maybe the world should be governed by beauty pageant participants.

It really annoys me to no end, that one of the ad campaigns involve asking the question “What will you defend?” when it could more accurately be phrased as “How will you justify murder?”

Education would be a vital step, but there also educated bigots and educated fools too struck by lassitude to use their brain. Then there are the people who just want to watch the world burn so they can say “I told you so”.

It seems I’ve gone round in a big circle and come to no clear solution, perhaps there is none, people of far greater mental capacities have bent their thought towards it but to no avail, every year they elect a person for the nobel peace prize but it seems we are still nowhere close to a solution.

John lennon posited that the idea of countries should be abolished. Philip K. Dick showed us that even a system to predict murders before they occur would ultimately fail.

I guess in our own small way we have to do our part. As Kurt Vonnegut once wrote (well, I'm paraphrasing)
"You’re got to be kind, God damn it, you've got to be kind."