Value Judgments

What is a moment worth anyhow, to anyone? If you watch films of war (documentaries and fiction) or read combat memoirs you feel a weird scale of time. That there is a duality of sorts in the fact your life is threatened (thus of value) but that of your "enemy" lacks that same value. It does not register to people dropping bombs from planes that there is a life below...in smashed huts, in gutted buildings, in fields, running. There is a life there and even if you have a "mission" to fulfill, and even if you don't see that life exploding/imploding/collapsing/dissolving/disappear/end, you are contributing to that end.
That end of a life. What amazes me is the rush to protect the unborn, the fear of disconnected life support and the parallel reality (duality) that feels perfectly justified in putting a man to death or bombing homes and hospitals. I don't understand that. I don't get it. At the same time, I admit that I have not HAD to get it. I don't have to. I can sit and bitch about it BECAUSE I am removed from that situation. I am not in combat nor have I had to be. So I really don't get it. Still I search for answers to it. Like a weird riddle in my head that desperately wants to assign meaning and relevancy to things that seem so unreasonable, illogical, and unnerving to me.
For example, I watched the documentary "Hearts and Minds" recently and there are several scenes in it where pilots explain that they never really connected faces and lives with the "targets" below them. This was just a job. You did your job and you did it well. These interviews are carefully juxtaposed with interviews of Vietnamese survivors, war footage as well as interviews with U.S. leaders/orchestrators/administrators of the war. It makes me angry to watch films like this because I want to know why it is that we can march on with the "lessons of WWII" ringing in our ears like a mantra: "We cannot appease a dictator" "We cannot appease a dictator" "We will not back down" "We must bring the enemy to its knees" etc etc. Yet what I see when I look at the Vietnam war (which the Vietnamese call, the American war) is that we as a nation rarely considers the long term "cost" of war, to the soldiers and survivors on both sides.
Do these people in America who are SO afraid of the idea of choice really care about the children born in a world devastated by war and toxic chemicals, devoured by exported and heavy handed capitalism helped even more by extreme poverty? Here or Abroad?

That is the weakness in value judgments. They are so easy to assign but so difficult to truly comprehend. When wrestled with, they don't hold up so well. Perhaps this is why grade school education (and some colleges) do not truly want people to think critically. To think is to question and to question everything even if it (and when) that becomes maddeningly futile.
I think it's funny too that people have such disdain for intellectuals as if they are bad/distant/divorced from the "working classes." I think short of being a billionaire or a millionaire with a healthy trust fund, we're all working classes. Think about what you've done with your life. In my short time on this earth, I've done everything from factory work to military service and health care. I love the opportunities the University offers and yet I also love the idea of understanding how machines work , how they're held together, how to take them apart. Is that intellectualism? Doubtful. I'm a rather boring insomniatic book addict, disinclined to try and "master" any one thing because everything has value. Everything can be interesting.
So too, every life has value and meaning. Does that make me "pro-life" or "pro-choice?" "Pro or anti-war?"
If anything I dislike categories that box people in to set ways of thinking. I called myself Buddhist today, by which I mean, I try to practice Buddhism to the best of my ability. But I have a hard time thinking about war and the justifications of torture, abuse, sexual humiliation and degradation and the general "othering" of the enemy that is a "norm" of war without being outraged. Hell, I have difficulty planning an event that so few people show up to without being disappointed. So much for letting go of attachments. I haven't mastered anything. I don't know anything. I don't know that I want to know anything. I like the idea of being an open book, a tabula rasa but I don't think we CAN be that. Even children have ideas about right and wrong before parents can truly shape that and sometimes despite a parent's best effort to do so.
I like to think that if we could truly sit and communicate with one another in a respectful and open manner, that so much suffering and misunderstanding could be alleviated. We know now that Vietnam "was a mistake" (according to the leaders from that time). We know now that presidents have lied to justify war before. We know now that words such as liberty, democracy and equality can mean different things for different people and that this definition is often not even theirs to define. We know now that attempting to place "our" values on other people is often met with resistance and resentment. So why can we not get past the "I'm right you're wrong" mentality or as I like to call it, kindergarten diplomacy. That though, is incorrect because even children in kindergarten are quite quick to forgive injury rather than carry a grudge for decades on end. So perhaps you are wrong. Perhaps though, you are also right. Maybe we need to learn to look at each other and listen without the outdated habit of trying to assign value to everything. I'm quite guilty of this, so it's an aspiration of mine really. So I keep trying and will keep trying to overcome this damn complex in myself first, because otherwise I will always be talking and never truly listening. I wonder too, when we are able to finally stop paying people to listen to us (counselors/psychotherapists/ "relationship experts" etc) and begin to listen to each other, to our children, to others and their children or loved ones, will the duality of value and valueless shift into true equality? Borderlessness? So many people I know value the fight and believe in "fighting the good fight" but to me, I see that people I disagree deeply with, also sincerely believe that their fight is the good fight. So either we're all wrong or we're all right or no one is entirely wrong or right. All I do know is that I am tired of the walls, the pretentious, comfortable walls that foster division and strip each one of the assumption that we are all capable of wisdom and compassion, dignity and community. I know that if I talk to you I will learn from you, whether or not I agree with you. All of this, I'm told, sounds quite "liberal" and "utopian" or that dreaded kill-word "idealistic" but what I want to know is why those words are bad, when did they become bad, who officially declared them as such? When I look at my son,
I am deeply aware of how lucky I am to live in a place that is not being bombed, made toxic by war chemicals or threatened moment by moment to end. I am also very aware of those who do live that way and amazed at human resourcefulness both in our ability to survive as well as to create more and more technologically advanced methods of destruction. What world will we leave our children if the current state of affairs is any indicator of what the future will hold?
As Thich Nhat Hahn says, all we have is this moment and to protect the future, we must take care of today. That is all we have. I really do think we all want to believe that what we do and who we are has value and meaning. The difficulty comes from the desire to convince others that our understanding is simply better than theirs. Does all war really boil down to the idea of right and wrong or is it more complicated than that because right and wrong is far from the simplistic meanings we assign and trade at will? I just wonder if we learned to trade in dialogue rather than guns and bombs, would we even HAVE to consider appeasement? We've written centuries of war, genocide and destruction, don't you wonder what the future would look like if we tried writing it as one of peace and diplomacy? Silly liberal hope conspirator, that's me. May your moments be blessedly deep.


"i always wanted to be commander in chief
of my own one woman army
but i can envision the mediocrity
of my finest hour"--Ani DiFranco, "Not So Soft"

peace!