In Our Hearts We Heard Beautiful Music That We Could Not Reproduce…

I find it to be one of the most hilarious attributes of our species that we can dedicate so much time to the discussion of ethics but when left to our devices we seem to contradict our lofty words with unjustifiable actions on the regular. When we are engaged in activities such as, say, sex or war, we bare fangs which no amount of words could dull. We express a dark lust beyond the literary efforts of the finest minds. I find it hilarious because, if I were to see it in any other way, I would be forced to admit that we, as a species, are wholly insane.

I spent the morning sitting in on a discussion panel arranged around the question of Ethics during a time of war. I thought that this discussion would be more geared towards a dialogue about the role of the philosopher during war, or more broadly, about the application of philosophy to the activity of war.My anticipations were proven false almost immediately.

The panelists were wisely selected for their diversity, not only in the geographies which divided them but also in the fields in which they worked and the different degrees to which they performed in these fields. From left to right there was a French philosopher who taught at a military institute who appeared to be listening to the panelists as if he was their therapist. Next was a British man who looked like an old manager of mine. He was young. He hailed from England where he taught Ethics. Next was an Irishman with long white hair and a dapper bow-tie who spoke of the ethics of technological implementation in combat. He was a self-declared Technologist. Then there was a Rear Admiral from the Navy who works with the Joint Task Forces. She represented the calm intellectualism of the military at its most reasonable. She was followed  by an American professor who has taught Ethics in military academies for most of his life. Next to him was a man who taught ethics in Israel.The discussion was moderated by a woman we had met yesterday. She runs the Ethics department for the University. She spoke to us about pulping the uniform of a young man she knew who is now dead. He died in combat before the philosophers had finished discussing whether or not the war should be condemned.

They represented a broad spectrum of death and destruction, their pasts and their lineages collaborating to fulfill a nearly complete history of the Western worlds brutality. Their political opinions quite clearly spread the entire gamut of  relevant philosophies on the nature of war.

It is not in my power to represent word for word the proceedings of this discussion, but I would like to make an attempt to discuss some of its themes and the ideas which it has brought to the front of my mind.

The first important theme to present itself in a string of dialogue was the danger of the sense of removal that plagues society when war is waged more and more remotely. The Technologist emerged first on the scene with a rather unpopular opinion that higher death tolls are a greater deterrent to the waging of wars than low. He illustrated with his clever words a picture of a world in which humans didn’t have to suffer the damage done to the heart because the job could and was being done by machines which carry no trauma. This illustration was an obvious Dystopia intended as satire. The point that he was trying to drive home was that we need to feel the horror of war to limit our capacity to allow ourselves to engage in it.

I think that ten years ago his job would have seemed silly, but now that there are such fantastic obscenities in the sky, like “Project Vulture”, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) which can stay aloft for upwards of one month at a time, a vicious armory in the sky prepared to disgorge its deadly bowels on the homes and vehicles of any unruly citizens, one’s hand is almost forced. Since it has already come to pass, we must decide quickly whether we think things of this nature are good or bad. There is no time to dilly-dally.

It was almost ironic, though really just suiting, that the Israeli man took this opportunity to discuss his particular breed of dualism, for he prefers, apparently, to always have two ideas to discuss. This was a theme with him throughout the lecture. In one hand he wished to hold Reciprocity, and in the other the distinction between combatant and non-combatant. This is a problem that plagues his home land and a question which I am sure he toils on endlessly.

I found him difficult to deal with. He said the word “reciprocity” a dozen times, though I never knew exactly what he was talking about. I could only gather that he was alluding to the Palestinians with that dangerous vagueness of the Philosopher. He preened himself on the contemplation the Israeli state has put into Ethical engineering though as his words left his mouth with the weight of lead my mind was taken to the photos that I saw in newspapers of tangles of wire protruding from piles of rubble which used to be houses and I remember the rumor of death in those photos and I was forced to wonder how much this man’s talk was worth when artillery rounds have so much more impact than philosophical doctrines in today’s day and age.

Occasionally the American professor would chime in, always with relevance to the question at hand. He operated as the moderator, informing the audience how to look at the information they were being provided with and reminding us of the important questions.

The Rear Admiral lost her sharp military poise only once when she rolled her eyes in response to a remark made by the Technologist when he responded to a question about how peace would truly be reached by curtly stating that first people must stop killing one another. Her eyes rolled to the very back of her sockets with a look of such profound disgust that she was forced to launch into a crystal clear defense of the military.

In lieu of discussing the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan which seemed the most pressing strains on the military, she chose to discuss the militaries response to Haiti, which happened to be an armed response, though she ignored that part. Haiti led her to talking about Africa. She imparted on us that she hoped for peace as well, but while there are places where people are controlled by unlawful and undemocratic warlords there will always be a need for certain people to not be peaceful so that most people could be. It was a Utilitarian argument. She would have done well to quote Hume once or twice, but Hume does not factor into her Standard Operating Procedure.

She represented the kind of military that one can really believe in, but it was not the military that I saw. Her concept of the military does not allow reflection the racism and psychotic violence of her conscript warriors.

All the while the French man sat gloomily and all knowing at the end. When he spoke his words seemed to wither as they left his mouth and when he spoke of life, he said the word “life” with such resignation and withdrawal with a deep and sad look on his face as is the French way.

The British professor’s moment to shine came when asked if the nature of war had changed over the ages. He wisely delineated between the nature and the character of war. He said that the character of war must change to survive, but the nature of war is always the gruesome same. In this way war seems almost human, going through stages in development though maintaining the same fundamental principles. I was very charmed with the idea.

Where was all the Kant, the Adam’s, the Bacon, even the Nietzsche? In the case of the Technologist I felt I was missing Asimov’s robotic law.

These people have established the foundation of the ethical dilemma. Individually they laid claim to the major schools of thought which, when isolated, define where human’s draw their ethical motivations and how they ought to process ethical information. They have discussed the autonomy and the heteronomy of man and the importance of these two camps. Their words try to make sense out of what the duty of the individual, the citizen, truly is.

But nobody seemed interested in utilizing these themes here. None of these people seemed interested in talking about the moral responsibilities of the citizen. They were too busy condemning the actions of one group or political party (in every case the enemy of their home land, or in the case of the French man life itself or some vague form of God) while puffing with pride at all the hard work their home lands have invested into moral behavior despite the nastiness of all of those “thems.”

When all the words were said and the event was done, with the smokers twitching nervously in their seats, the questions formed up in a long line in front of the microphone. A shaky WWII veteran stood at the front of the line. He took his time to say that talk is all fine and good, but the words of people who have never actually known war about the subject of or the nature of war were all void of meaning. The audience applauded him. He wore a Veterans for Peace t-shirt.

The panelists were quick to throw out their wartime credentials, though none of them had actually ever engaged in combat. This one man had deflated the entire lecture.

Another man stood at the microphone. His name is Dr. Ed Tick. His turned out to be the final word. As time came to a close he said “moral trauma is at the heart of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.” His words were true in a way that I had hoped to hear this entire time.

PTSD is not a mental illness. It is a defensive reaction to participating in amoral behavior, in committing to actions which run contrary to one’s understanding of what is and what is not truly good.

This is the true moral judgement of war in it’s simplicity. There is something in us which knows that at its heart, no matter whether you look at it through the lens of Kantianism, Utilitarianism, or Divine Command Morality, is wrong. The justifications and the “buts” are like putting a dirty country boy in a fancy city suit. Its all a disguise.