I grew up hearing it, "Let the leaders get in a ring and fight it out!" From my mother as well as my father, his brothers, all the old men in the neighborhood. A perfect solution to war and international conflict. Yeah, that'll stop war, change the reflex to violence. More personal violence. Perfect example to the rest of us. Go back to the principles of personal vendetta and fists.
I have on my email sig files this quotation,
"Problems that remain persistently insolvable should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way."
- Alan Watts
And I think this is a prime example. War, especially modern, mechanized, total war is not the answer. But neither is peace at all costs, not without a fundamental change in humans as a species. Conflict and chaos stir up the stagnant and complacent. Stupid and wasteful as it is, much as families grieve the deaths of their soldiers, expensive as the rehabilitation that follows, it does serve a function. And until we find another way to make drastic societal revolutions in the face of national injustices and ingrained corruption some other way, I suspect it will keep erupting. And not just for good reasons, but as an option that is always on the table.
Would we really want a president who would punch out a prime minister, then let both still govern? Could arrest both on assault and battery charges. The kind of behaviour disciplined in grade school. How many bullied children would choose rule by athletes? We hope more for politics from heads of state, when they fail, making them get in a ring with boxing gloves is hardly addressing the problem. It's as useful as imagining the stimulus package as a stack of $100 bills stacked in a pile. Money is as much a creation of mutual fiction as the glory of battle, approaching it with simplistic logic is applying the wrong set of rules.
Arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
5 comments:
Just imagine what the primaries and the presidential elections would look like if boxing skills were the primary criterion for getting elected. In the case of Reagan America would have run the risk of having a punch-drunk president given all the bouts he would have fought. Come to think of it, when Bush stepped up to the podium wasn't there something in his rolling gait that recalled Brando in "On the waterfront"... Ah, we should let sleeping dogs lie.
BB,
Agreed, my point precisely.
But it is an appealing notion, to make our leaders put their own physical wellbeing on the line, rather than that of patriotic youngsters.
P,
Oh, the idea is appealing, leaving the idiots who screwed it all up with broken noses. It just doesn't work, and it's ultimately a bad example that wouldn't stop the young from slaughter, just adds to the bloodshed. When lords dueled over their honor, their minions died no less.
One of those glib and specious things I don't really pay much attention to; it comes I suppose from a sense of injustice, that ultimately those who lead who should be prepared to pay in kind. But since the beginning it's never really worked like that.
When a leader hoves into view who displays intelligence and dignity, it doesn't seem a remotely appealing solution.
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