Sansha said:
It's not honoring humanity's mistakes, it's remembering them and learning from them so we don't repeat them.
... and yet we continue to do so...
surg3n said:
I don't agree with war, but in terms of the advancement of mankind we need it - it's like the only time we can reach our full potential is when our lives are on the line.
Prepare to be villified, my friend, despite the fact that I wholeheartedly agree...
Xhu said:
Love the warrior, hate the war.
S'bout time someone posted that. As they say 'in war, old men send young men to die'. Who is more responsible for the death of those you love?
OT: I'm rather ambivalent of it... when it was still fresh in the minds of those who fought, you can bet your fucking life, they remembered it for the right reasons: a thousand bullets passing by your head at any given moment, the deafening sound of artillery fire, seeing your squadmates get killed, dysentery, malnutrition (or close enough to it), cholera, and perhaps the raging knowledge that your commanding officer is sitting in a five star hotel at least ten miles behind you sipping tea and eating biscuits. The point being: war as a concept and an event is so reprehensible upon the individual that anyone who's been through it even once should ask 'who wants to go through that again?!'
To be absolutely pedantic, the idea of 'Remembrance Day' became kind of pointless within fifteen years of the end of the First World War. The politicians had consigned it to the history books, new governments were in power and looking for the next fight to have. Now, to explain my position of the core reason for 'Remembrance Day' being both somewhat contemptible and necessary is the whole basis of WWI. This war was one of the most unnecessary and inordinately bloody conflicts the world has ever seen (true that may be said of many wars, but considering the scale and the level of lack of necessity for this war, I think WWI qualifies for the superlative). The causes are many and mostly found in nationalistic sentiment that had been fomenting across Europe and it was not so much a struggle of militaries as a struggle of political systems that had long since outlived their usefulness, if only Nicholas had kept his fucking trap shut. And consequently, more Russians die due to the weather than German bullets/shells and any given engagement on the Western front eventually makes the Battle of Leipzig look like a damned reenactment get together.
In central/western Europe, there were no freedoms to be fought for... at all. Let me ask you a question: how many people give a moment to think about the Alsatians?! No-one, the French killed them off as surely as the Germans did. The Christmas Football Match should've been enough of a demonstration that what each side fought for was so damned meaningless.
So yes, I believe that all the dead should be remembered, not as individuals as that would be soul destroying, but as a concept to help us learn that war as an act is something to be reviled for its cost to not only those that die, but those that survive. And I believe it to be a pity that it has turned into such a political and media circus, to the extent that, mulling over it now, I think that should there be a remembrance service, political institutions should appear but be prevented from doing anything (leave that to 'relative nobodies'... since that's all the dead soldiers are to a lot of people: 'relative nobodies', and only those with who have an emotional link to them will actually genuinely give a damn).
Perhaps WWI is the perfect source conflict for Remembrance Day in this respect, for never was there a war so mindless and violent, and is an illustration of how low we as a species can plumb and yet those individuals that do the dying still display some shred of humanity where those that sat on their laurels either could not, or would not.
...
Insult me where you will...
