Somehow, being shot at and living in filth and risking your life another persons political/economic ideology doesn't seem all that majestic.

majestic? I think the word is horrible.

>>16115
>>16116
Orwell would agree that war is horrible. I think what he was talking about was how war forced people into dire situations and brought out their true colors. Or something. Catalonia definitely isn't anything close to a pro-war piece.

Also worth keeping in mind that Orwell and some of the other fighters on the socialist/republican side of the Spanish Civil War were volunteers trying to keep the fascists and monarchists from taking over the country. Those who volunteered would have had a different opinion; that they were fighting for their ideology, not for someone's else's. Orwell ended up soured on the whole thing though.

Um... Cool

Maybe he just liked the adrenaline rush he got from shooting and being shot at. Maybe he got off of the thrill of doing something new or because he could kill as much as he pleased.

>>16125
see
>>16119
He was fighting for a better world IMO. Being an international volunteer.

"War is positive ultra-realism. It is war that destroys all the formulas of the old civilizations, singing the victory of the brain on all the nuances of sentimental heart.
It is war that wakes up the spirit of creation and construction, murdering all regressive nostalgia and sentimentality.
It is war that erases all romantic ideals and other forms of literature, teaching the unique joy that is life.
It is war that settles diplomacy and ruins all the proportions of academic value, all conventions of art and society, explaining all the misery that there is underneath.
It is war that makes the brain move out of the household to the design of the World, and therefore of humanity.
Finally: war is the great experience. Contrary to what everyone thinks war is the best of selections because the dead are deleted by destiny, those who luck does not elect, while those who return have the greatness of the winners and contemplation of the fate that is the greatest of forces and the most beautiful of optimisms. Returning from war, even if unsuccessful, is the Great Victory that will save Humanity.
War for the sake of numbers and time, ends all the feeling of nostalgia to the dead in exchange for performing the eulogy of the living and decorating them with Luck.
War serves to show the strong and to save the weak.
In war the strong progress and the weak reach the strong."

Post edited on 1st Aug 2012, 9:34pm

can you really build a better world on a foundation of human bodys?

>>16137
Worked well enough for the great wall of china at least.

>>16136
This is damn good... Is it yours or whose?

--------------------
Nowadays it is the fashion to emphasize the horrors of the last war. I didn't find it so horrible. There are just as horrible things happening all round us today, if only we had eyes to see them.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein

>>16140
It's not mine, hence the quotation marks. It is my (terrible) translation of an excerpt from "Ultimatum futurista às gerações portuguezas do século XX", by Almada Negreiros.

>>16119

>Those who volunteered would have had a different opinion; that they were fighting for their ideology, not for someone's else's.

Not really, no. It wasn't just some random minority taking over the country, Spain was pretty evenly split in terms of opinions on this matter. Before the Civil War broke out the country was already split thanks to how voting turned out. Not to mention socialists were all but taken over by communists early on. Saying that it was a war between Republicans and Nationalists sounds nice but those are just euphemisms for fascists (falangists) and communists. The only nation which was willing to back Nationalists was communist Russia. Nobody wanted to help the commies.

>>16128

>He was fighting for a better world IMO.

That's how all the wars are started. That's also how all the terrorists think. They aren't doing anything bad, they are just trying to fix the world.

>>16143
>Saying that it was a war between Republicans and Nationalists sounds nice but those are just euphemisms for fascists (falangists) and communists. The only nation which was willing to back Nationalists was communist Russia. Nobody wanted to help the commies.

That's missing the point. What I'm talking about is why people from other countries volunteered to fight in Spain. Whether their reasons were valid is a different question. I think Orwell himself questioned the whole deal behind it.

And he was plenty of things, but he definitely wasn't a terrorist. If you read what he wrote, you can tell he wasn't in it for blood or anything, but a feeling of "duty" to "help out" the Spanish people that he ended up souring on because of the political complications of the country, and because he saw that the other side was made of just regular people too (he writes about how unwilling the two sides were to even shoot straight at each other sometimes, out of fear they'd actually kill someone.) But man, this is really not a discussion for TC, is it?

>>16137
Alexander did it, so why not?

>>16146

>to "help out" the Spanish people

Spain wasn't invaded by anyone and they weren't fighting a defensive war, it was Spain's internal matter. If anything the Nationlists were the ones who were 'less Spanish' since lots of people in upper echelons of Nationalists didn't give much of a damn about Spain, they just wanted to spread communism. Of course then again Republicans were backed by Germany and Italy so I guess I might be bending the truth here, too.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Republicans are the good guys here. If you look at the war it's obvious which side was more cruel and inhuman. But even that is partially a result of Nationalists being retarded at times, like that guy who said 'for every Nationalist who'll get killed we will kill 10 Republicans' (too lazy to check what his name was). Nationalists kept giving Republicans valid excuses for staging a coup first and contuining the civil war later on.

All I'm saying is that I'm tired of today's 'the good and brave Nationalists and the bad and cruel Republicans' propaganda. Not to mention it should be 'the good and brave communists and the bad and cruel fascists' if anything.

>But man, this is really not a discussion for TC, is it?

It really isn't but I can't say I started the topic.

>>16148
Again, I'm just talking about what a lot of the expat volunteers themselves were thinking when they went to Spain (that's why I put "help out" in quotes, because you can't say in retrospect they were helping anyone really, least of all the Spanish people.) They may well have been badly misled. I don't know enough about the Spanish war to say I'm an expert on it or anything. I do know Orwell went to Spain and fought, but he wasn't a communist and ended up hating communism later on, hence him writing Animal Farm and all that stuff afterwards.

>It really isn't but I can't say I started the topic.

Yeah, neither of us did. I don't agree with the OP, but that's another matter that doesn't belong here.

>>16149

>Again, I'm just talking about what a lot of the expat volunteers themselves were thinking when they went to Spain

And I'm saying that that's exactly the problem. Some people might be there for the kick they get out of it and for some it's simply a job but most soldiers are there because they believe in the cause they fight for. If they didn't the war wouldn't break out in the first place. Orwell was no hero, he was just a fool who decided to 'save' Spain without understanding what is really going on there.

Also communism =/= totalitarianism. I don't give enough of a damn about Orwell to know what his political views were like but since he supported Nationalists I doubt he hated communism per se (and if he did he's a complete cretin who ended up on the wrong side of the baricade, Hitler and Mussolini suported Franco not because they were so fond of him but because they didn't want too see communists taking over Spain).

>>16151
I think Orwell would have agreed with that assessment of him (maybe, don't want to put words into a dead guy's mouth though.) And if you've read Animal Farm, you should know his feelings about communism. The groups fighting on the anti-Franco side weren't just communists, anyway, though the communists did pretty much co-opt them.

I get the feeling this discussion isn't going anywhere though, so whatever

>>16152

>And if you've read Animal Farm, you should know his feelings about communism.

I did and I don't have much of an idea what his views on communism were either way. If anything I'd be inclined to say he thought it's a good idea since he supported Nationalists.

Anyone know of any writers with a similar style, or similar content (in his non-fiction 'novels') to Orwell?

>>16153
I guess you're mixing up communism and socialism. Orwell was a socialist, but he wasn't too hot on communism, which always had a totalitarian streak. Besides, the side Orwell fought on had all sorts of leftist groups, some of whom didn't like the Communists at all. The rightist side had the same situation going on between monarchists and fascists. Things just weren't that simple, even if the commies on one side and the Falange on the other eventually took over those movements.

Not to say that the leftist side was the correct one. Civil wars never really have "good guys" and "bad guys". Orwell's mistake (which really, I think he recognized) was believing that this is the case. He wasn't a communist puppet, though. At least, he saw the Stalinist system for exactly what it was, and at a time when many European and American leftists were taken in by the USSR's propaganda.

>>16174
Don't know about similar style, but many of the "Lost Generation" writers of the 20s like Hemingway and Fitzgerald also deal with the effects of war and the changing life in Europe and America. Unlike Orwell's work, theirs isn't political at all, but more personal in nature.

>>16238
Hemingway and Fitzgerald are both considered to be "Modernists."

>>16242
That's also true.

>>16238

>I guess you're mixing up communism and socialism. Orwell was a socialist, but he wasn't too hot on communism, which always had a totalitarian streak.

As far as I'm concerned it's you who confuses communism and Stalinism. I see nothing totalitarian about 'workers of the world, unite'.

>Besides, the side Orwell fought on had all sorts of leftist groups, some of whom didn't like the Communists at all.

Sure they did, heck, they even had a large group of anarchists which are hard to describe as lefties.

>Things just weren't that simple, even if the commies on one side and the Falange on the other eventually took over those movements.

Which is precisely my point. Obviously socialists' and communists' ideals were overlapping in various areas but that doesn't change the fact that communists took over in the Nationalists' camp. In the end even the anarchists who absolutely despised communism thought to fruther their agenda.

>He wasn't a communist puppet, though

To me it just looks like he fell for it hard enough to volunteer to help out one side (the communists one) in a civil war. Sure, he woke up later on but he was fooled way harder than an average European (again, nobody wanted to help out the Nationalists as the Republicans were clever enough to give the western media their side of the story first and soon it just looked like Nationalists are trying to turn Spain into Russia's puppet state).



Anyway, this is a rather boring topic and it has been discussed millions of times already, I don't think I have anything new I could contribute so I'll just excuse myself.

Ernst Jünger also wrote about the fascination of war in Storm of Steel. He walked out of the first World War and basically said : "Well, that was worth living".
Bertran de Born wrote a laudatory poem on war, Éloge de la Guerre, which I have a hard time finding in English (though I can read French, I assume you can't).

>>21754

I think you'll find that most soldiers, especially from that era, actually enjoy soldiering and combat. Most weren't exactly the sort of people who go on to write about the philosophical notions behind it. That's why a lot of prominent anti-war writers of the Great War era were also cowards and deserters (Graves) or never really experienced combat (Remarque).

The notion among civilians that "war is hell and no one enjoys it" is really one that was only fabricated during the rise of rebellious counterculture among babyboomers in the early 1960s, also fueled by people who never had anything to do with war.

Jünger's book changed my life. It's probably the most realistic, legitimate, literary account of modern war ever written.

>>16140

Now I should have the chance to be a decent human being, for I'm standing eye to eye with death.

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Wittgenstein.html

>>21758
>The notion among civilians that "war is hell and no one enjoys it" is really one that was only fabricated during the rise of rebellious counterculture among babyboomers in the early 1960s, also fueled by people who never had anything to do with war.

Yeah....Willian Teumesch Sherman suggests otherwise given he originated the "war is hell" statement.

p.s. some of those same boomers you deride were soldiers in vietnam. that's where the origin comes from. Being dropped in a jungle to do stupid shit while getting shot and dealing with all sorts of poisons and shit.

>>21771

You mean that butchered quote taken out of context from a speech he gave to graduating officer candidates? I'll have you know that Sherman loved his job.

Any notions you have of the Vietnam War are probably baseless misconceptions and lies perpetrated by civilian media and prominent anti-war artists and filmmakers caught up in the wave of the (extremely marketable) counterculture movement. That's pretty much all common memory of the Vietnam War is composed of, most people really don't understand how the war was really fought and how the actual soldiers really felt about it.

War is where the young and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing
each other.

>>21773
I used to stereotypically think that way, but I don't know anymore. War provenly catalyzes civilization, as it gives many people a mean to live and develop (from illiterate chimps to brilliant scientists and philosophers) while the big heads of the capital do their business; so it's a bet for the general progress and wealth that goes to the winners (and even sometimes the losers, like Japan). About it costing tons of innocent people's lives: pretty much everything does, there are far too many people in the world already and most of us are individually useless anyway.

Post edited on 10th May 2013, 2:15am

>>21813
That's a rather callous view you have on the benefits of war. What good is there in building an uncompassionate civilization while we discard our humanity in the process?
What you advocate seems to be like a national form of bullying. I wouldn't think someone from here of all places would be for the idea of a civilization being based around the idea of using force to get what you want. Would you really like to live in a world were value is determined by strength and intellect is only as good as the support it provides for said strength? Humanity isn't going to get anywhere if it can't stop destroying itself. Nasa has contributed far more to the humanrace than the US defense department ever will and with a fraction of the budget.

>>21773
Yes, yes, war is a racket, but a really cool one, like the mafia.

War may be majestic and all as an individual experience, but I can't stop looking at the national aspect and then stopping short because I realize my country is not worth dying for, let alone killing for.

>>21814
According with my little knowledge of it, NASA's development was fueled by the space race during Cold War, as a political tool. Also: the entire american support for immigrant scientist running away from nazism (like german/austrian jewish intellectuals, which included the heads to be of the Manhattan Project) was just as well an strategical move rather than a philanthropic one. Anyway, something I have for certain is that no one is free from biased ideology (not even me; not even Carl Sagan with his Pale Blue Dot and his bewitching but totally false epistemological image of science), and that the official tale of so called "universal history" is always conveniently written by the winners of each conflict.

I do not advocate for violence. I do not like it at all. But, rather than heading for conclusions that soothe me and put my own powerless self at ease, what I'd like to grasp is the actual structure of it and to know if the phenomenon can be truly avoidable at all according with our current condition, or if it's really just a case sensitive matter of conventional and "politically correct" cases during the rise and fall of civilizations and their respective moral codes. What I'm trying to do, with my very limited resources, is to pragmatically ponder war in relation with peace time practices (which I can find to be just as cruel or more), and also without all those common but meaningless/outdated figures of speech like "humanity" or convenient pamphleteer terms like "compassion" or (universal) human rights. Such romantic views of men/agencies and societies/systems are untenable at this point, and I certainly do not long at to cling to them. I may be many shameful things but I'm not a humanist; I'd be ashamed of, at this point, being so stubbornly ignorant or naive.

Post edited on 10th May 2013, 5:23am

>>21772
My uncle served in that general area. Not as a front line soldier though

>>21813
those developments would happen ANYWAY. War simply shunts the research focus in different directions, with tech from state sanctioned violence bleeding off (pun lol) into other areas as a side-effect.

>>21814
NASA is a military organization technically - it is not a civilian organization - it is subject to DOD regulations and secrecy and bullshit. I know what you're getting at though

>>21818
Yeah it is a cool racket. You get to blow shit up, destroy your enemies and be lords and masters. Of course your friends die, you can die and killing people causes social disconnect/stresses.......

In general, war is really cool as a racket....when you're winning and NOT having your territory fucked over. When you're losin, fighting desperately and having your shit blown up it sucksss

>>21754
>>21758
I would highly recommend On Combat by Col. Grossman. It goes into great detail about the psychological effects of war on soldiers and deals with a lot of misconceptions too. As for people 'enjoying war' it makes a point about 1 in 100 men having the mentality of a warrior like Jünger.

>>21861
It was more like 2% who were like that. Also: The Book On Killing also has that.

I also like 'War Is a Force which Brings Us Meaning' which goes into the 'good' purposes of war......

>>21861
>>21864
I've been reading 'On killing' and I found it was not written very well. The supporting evidence also seemed very anecdotal to me, not very scientific. Yeah I know there are problems with trying to get objective evidence in the heat of battle, but really it could've been written better.