I have been on this planet for 80 years now, and the world in which my parents grew up, and the social and political arguments being contended with, have apparently not changed. For over two centuries the realisation that modern wars are calamitous in the extreme, seems as elusive as ever. Many words are spoken and the appalling devastation is meticulously documented, recorded on film, studied and researched in universities and in all manner of media throughout the world. Still it goes on. Outrage and disgust are continually expressed and still it goes on.
That outrage and disgust is usually supported by the public, but the real sadness of today’s current calamity is the way the conflict has been used as a political shield and distraction by politicians to disguise their failures on their own home front. When asked about domestic issues, there is constant reference to Mr Putin’s war as the cause of all the ills that are at present disrupting societies. This persistent referral and evasion only emphasise the inability and powerlessness to stop the carnage and make Mr Putin, and by extension the Russian people, see sense. It equally points out the incapability and ineffectiveness of being able to deal with the pressing domestic issues at home.
Indeed the frustrations with Mr Putin and the additional stresses caused by the war in the Ukraine are not inconsiderable, but the methods of dealing with the collateral damage and the continuing domestic agenda of countries not directly and physically involved should be collaborative and not part of failing political agendas. Clearly the world is too interconnected to be dealt with from a narrow minded insular point of view. Surely in the last 5000 years we must realise that nationalism and xenophobia no longer have a place in human administration and politics, and yet they keep rearing up.
The contradictory approach to world affairs with government leaders spouting heroic and supporting slogans for the Ukrainian government, whilst in their own countries urging national sovereignty and taking control appears to me to be schizophrenic in the face of Mr Putin’s rhetoric. Is he not claiming Russian sovereignty over what he considers to be Russian land? Is he not trying to hold together what was once a Greater Russia since Peter the Great?
Is the United Kingdom not hell bent on keeping the Kingdom United? Is the Government in Whitehall not refusing to allow another Scottish referendum for independence? Is it not trying to keep Northern Ireland on side? Is it not also claiming to support Ukraine whatever the cost? Is it not saying we are with you and your right to be a sovereign nation in your own right and able to join the European Union and the NATO alliance (which is what they want)? Are not European and NATO nations not meeting together to try and find some sort of solution, and improve the security of their ‘alliance’? Does the Ukraine not want to be an independent State as part of a global Union?
How and why does a country’s leadership on the one hand display a common sense approach to union and the rule of law, and then insist on separation and willingness to breach its contract? The current British government is even more steeped in absurdity and contradiction that the last government. That was leadership by a clown, today it is leadership by Tinkerbelle. She is not in Neverland nor in Harry Potter land, she is in the real world. To waffle on about Mr Macron’s attitude to Britain as “The Jury is still out” and “He’s now my friend” smacks of school kids in the playground. Is that where she thinks she is?
It is not by insisting on our differences that agreements are made, but by promoting our common interests. Mr Putin seeks to demonise the western democracies with claims of Nazism and subversive aggression towards the Russian State. Ms Truss seeks to demonise her detractors as left wing anti-growth subversives, whether they be foreign or domestic. sponsored by the BBC. More school yard name calling. This is what happens with leadership gone to the head. Any criticism is a siege.
This was evident with Donald Trump from the outset. His go -to reply to what he considered difficult questions was insult and derision. His natural inclination is towards verbal abuse in every situation. One only need look at the evidence available on YouTube. He behaves in every way as if he’s still appearing on the apprentice. He is forever on TV. Putin likewise is not averse to a good pantomime as is evidenced by his show of annexation of territories in the Ukraine. Likewise his various meetings with his cabinet sitting some distance away from him as televised for the networks. His threats are of course all too real and dangerous. This is the scenario of the madman with his finger on the button.
How did it come to this? Why do the Russian people accept dictatorships so easily and for so long? Why do 95% of the British public, after so much struggle to now and again elect a caring administration, allow 5% of the population to continually come back and tear it down? How did a people brought together under an excellent Declaration of Independence and Constitution ever elect a Donal Trump? Why have the events of the last 5,000 years not led to a more civilised and unified world? Are the philosophies and numerous lessons learned not available?
Here is a list of people who have, since the 6th Century BC, offered opinion on how we conduct our lives, or rather some insight as to what we do and possibly why. This is not a definitive list, but it’s enough to be going on with:
Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Heraclitus, Parmenides. Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Descartes, Diderot, Fichte, Hegel, Hume, Hobbes, Kant, Kierkegaard, Leibniz, Locke, Machiavelli, Marx, Montaigne, Montesquieu, More, Nietzsche, Pascal, Rousseau, Sade, Smith, Spinoza, Stuart Mill, Tocqueville, Voltaire, Adorno, Horkheimer, Arendt, Bachelard, Baudrillard, Bourdieu, Camus, De Beauvoir, Derrida, Dewey, Durkheim, Foucault, Freud, Habermas, Hayek, Heidegger, Husserl, Nozick, Karl Popper, Rawls, Ricoeur, Sartre, Sloterdijk, Walzer, Hélène Cixous, Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, Elizabeth Anderson, Michele Moody-Adams, Martha Nussbaum, Donna Haraway, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Sara Heinämaa, Kate Kirkpatrick, Carolyn Merchant, Kathryn Sophia Belle, Amie Thomasson, and there are many others.
This is clearly not a comprehensive list, but on the whole these people have explored a variety of facets of human beings, how they might think and how they function. Truth and opinion are very big items with them all. Some of their personal attitudes may be suspect, and some may be quite rigid whereas others are more fluid and open to variation and change of thought. For some religion plays a big role whereas others are firm atheists. None of them is without opinion and would never be in the ‘Don’t know’ box on a poll, but on reflection I don’t really know. I believe none of them would sanction violence.
One of the early philosophers mentioned above, St. Augustine, pondered the problem of a Just War in the early 5th Century around 426AD. 1,551 years later, in 1977, Michael Walzer, another of the above, revisited the concept in his work Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations published by Basic Books.
I have not read Mr Walzer’s work, but I assume he looks at the problem in a similar fashion to St Augustine as ‘The right to go to war’ and ‘the right conduct in war’. On both of these criteria Mr Putin is a dismal failure. As hard as he might like to claim, there is no justification for his invasion of Ukraine. On the evidence we see nearly every night on our television screens, there is nothing about the prosecution of his war that could possibly be classified as good conduct, not even efficient conduct, but crimes against humanity, yes.
So after 2500 years of the outpouring of writings from the above list of names, essentially coming to similar conclusions about violence, it is more than just prevalent in our global society. From Thailand to Texas, Christchurch to Calgary, London to Birmingham etc.. it does not go away.
On the day that I was born, German submarine U-435 attacked Allied convoy OP14 west of Jan Mayen Island and sank four ships. US Merchant Ship Bellingham, was sunk but no one died, Survivors were picked up by HM Ship Rathlin; HM Ship Ocean Voice was sunk but no dead. 5 Naval staff officers. 25 Soviet passengers. Survivors picked up by both HMS Seagull (J85), and landed at Scapa Flow, and Zamalek, and landed at Glasgow; RFA Grey Ranger Oiler. Sunk by U-435 W of Jan Mayen Island. 6 dead. Survivors picked up by Rathlin; and US Merchant Ship Silver Sword sunk 1 dead. Survivors picked up by Rathlin and Zamalek and landed at Glasgow. I was being born just over 3000 miles away.
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| Jan Mayen Island |
There were many more military actions on that day. I believe 1939-1945 was a just war. As to just conduct, it led to the Nuremberg Trials. The conduct of the Nazi regime was the most horrific event of the 20th Century. I came into this world in a very low key area of the Bronx, New York City, a few days over 80 years ago. No one had a smart phone. If things had gone another way, I would not be alive to have one now. How does one make it stop?
Happy Birthday Edward
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