Just Curious

The Banality of Evil somewhat revisited

I just finished watching the movie "The Last Samurai" (2003). It is a very interesting movie, since it reminds me of a class I took, "Technology and Society," taught by Dr. Nathan Ensmenger, a history of science professor.

In the class we talked about the "romantic" "ideals" people held regarding wars since the antiquity. Apparently wars were considered to be "romantic" by most ever since Pharaoh Menes united Upper & Lower Egypt. Just look at all the "chivalric" takes in Medieval Western Europe as well as historical novels about the crusades and one could get a good sense about it.

Then suddenly someone invented the machine gun in 1870s. In the "Last Samurai," the butchering of armoured samurais by machine guns was portrayed not so much a tragic scene as it was a mundane one. The music suddenly stopped and all we hear is the sound of a killing machine spewing out rounds of bullets. It is almost like an industrial process-the samurais falling one after another, killed almost in an industrial way, as if they were objects in line to be "processed" in a factory.

Interesting, no one has ever thought of war as "romantic" since the invention of the machine gun. All we think of war today are the "no-man's zone" in between the trenches in France during WWI, the dark & smelly trenches themselves, the barbed wires, and mindless endless massive killings. The name "no man's zone" is almost literal, since no one could actually climb out of the trenches and actually stare at his enemies without instantly being shot. Add to this grim picture mustard gases and all kinds of bio-chemical weapons, landmines under your feet, B-52 bombers in the skies and submarines under the waters that fire missiles against any moving obects on the high seas, and you have your typical modern war.

Indeed the whole process is very industrial, and very mundane, very boring; very banal, so to speak. The massive killing of our fellow human beings is no longer wreathed with the "glory" of chivalry, etc., in fact, it's not even that "interesting" anymore: it is now nakedly brutal and senseless. The banality of evil, ah, the banality of evil.

P.S. The good general I mentioned in my last post, The Most Honourable the Marquess Tso, Senior Guardian to the Imperial Crown Prince, Archchancellor of the Imperial Cabinet & Lord General of the Imperial Forces in Xinjiang, won most of his battles by setting up ten Gatling guns in the middle of deserts, gunning down 5000-6000 Turkish horsemen in periods of 30 minutes. My question then is, "Were these really battles?" Together with Henry Ford's assembly lines, the industrialization of war has really made wars more like the dissembly processes in a typical Detroit slaughterhouse.

Thank God I am a Christian and a pacifist. "They who live with the sword shall perish with the sword." What about they who live "with machine guns, mustard gases, landmines, submarines & nuclear warheads?"

posted by James Chang @ 3:42 PM