|
Warfare as loss: warfare as death: "Gifting" soldiers to the nation-state. Not exactly a "death wish," but yes a wish to die in the name of the omnipotent object that each nation worshipped, the nation-state. Feeding the nation-state with bodies. As each soldier died, so the nation came alive. Profound psychopathology at the core of "civilization." Sickness unto death.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
- In two books published during the First World War, British soldier Coningsby Dawson wrote as follows: “In the noble indignation of a great ideal British soldiers faced a worse hell than even the most ingenious of fanatics ever planned or plotted. Men die scorched like moths in a furnace, blown to atoms, gassed, tortured. And again other men step forward to take their places well-knowing what will be their fate.”
- “Bodies may die therefore the spirit of England grows greater.”
- 880,000 British men died in the First World War, 12.5% of those who served, 6% of the adult male population.
- The First World War for Great Britain and other nations was a gigantic potlatch or episode of ostentatious destruction, a competition to see which nation could give away the most material resources and human beings. Soldiers were "gifts" that each nation gave away. The prestige or "greatness" of a nation was measured in terms of the number of sacrificial victims it produced.
Richard Koenigsberg
|
|
|
|