Text by Bronze Age Pervert available here: https://theamericansun.com/2022/07/29/bap-on-the-abuse-of-war/
I’ve read Bronze Age Mindset. I’ve read Sun and Steel. I’ve read Storm of Steel. I’ve watched the movie Gladiator. I like to play Rome: Total War. I understand why young men love war and old men love it in them. I understand what a heroic death is.
I just finished “BAP on the Abuse of War”. I want to respond to this piece of writing. His points I want to address are:
War without a greater purpose is not going to "revive" a nation.
War in a restricted meat grinder is not an “ennobling venture”.
The second point is what I take more contention with.
I want to look at these points in the abstract. The context he wrote this in, the Ukraine War, is not relevant to what I want to say. Neither is his point about the Spanish Blue Legion. Also, regardless of what I have said in previous posts or am going to say in this post: Please do not volunteer to join this war.
To 1: War without a greater purpose is not going to "revive" a nation.
If I remember correctly, it’s Aristotle who says the family is the base of a state. The structure of the state is also that of a family. A multitude of families make up a society, something like that. Look, it’s been a while since I read Aristotle.
The big thing resembles the small things it’s made out of but better. The state is greater than the sum of its parts. There’s a micro/macro level vibe to this thinking, which I like. Being an economicscel, I like to think in micro/macro levels.
Let’s examine Point 1 on the macro level (this is the big, overarching layer). If we see the nation as an entity then we can definitely agree with BAP. War, which is inherently destructive to both sides, is always going to demand a price from the parties involved. So, if there is no greater “purpose”, obviously it isn’t going to be worth to incur a cost, no matter how small. And cost incurred in war is rarely negligible.
“Reviving the nation” is understood as revitalizing the people. I doubt this has ever been the explicitly state goal of any war ever. It’s the implicit goal, the side objective, it’s not going to be achieved in some conflict that is 99% unrelated to your country (the ideologically committed leaders of your country forcing economic consequences of an unrelated war on you, doesn’t make it relevant to your nation).
On the micro level (the one where we look at the smaller parts) however, I have to disagree with BAP. Now, I think "battle for the sake of battle" is not good. In fact, wanton violence is bad.* You shouldn’t be psychomaxxing. But when you’re living today, not having a power process, job is boring, you’ve seen all the movies, love life not going so well, you’re just kind of spinning in place. There can be an infinite amount of reasons for this feeling. This lack of general satisfaction. Maybe it’s related to a quarter- or mid-life crisis, maybe something bad happened. I think you understand what I’m talking about here. Modern live seems to be designed to make you depressed. You need to revitalize yourself.
What better way to revive your spirit than going to war. You’ll risk it all for an experience that nothing else can ever come close to. You’ll learn to really appreciate life and death. Since modern war makes the actions of the individual players at the lower levels fairly unimportant to the greater picture, you won’t be changing things for either side anyway. You must, of course, always conduct yourself honorably. Least you become a beast and go to hell.
I’m not saying it’s fun to be in a battle. We’ve all seen footage from the Ukraine War. I wouldn’t want to be there on either side. Whatever some Ernst-Jünger-LARPer, Addicted-to-the-Trenches-posting guy says, it’s not fun. You and I are not that special breed of man that Jünger was. That’s what made him exceptional and us admire him.
All I’m saying is that if you find yourself in a bad spot in life, and I mean really bad, you can go on an adventure, to fix yourself. And if you die, so what? You’ve been in a slump anyway and it’s not like you’ll ever do something better than dying in battle.
I can’t be the only officecel stuck in the 4HL thinking like this, can I?
And if we go back to Aristotle, if you’ve “revived” yourself, you can be a better person for your surroundings, friends and family. Not changing the nation but a new man with a renewed outlook on life. Obviously, there is more to war than just the combat anyway. Just getting the training is fun. I look back at my time as a conscript fondly.
*This is something I want to dedicate a separate post to and will link it here once I have finished writing it.
To 2: War in a restricted meat grinder is not an “ennobling venture”.
BAP's second point I’ve already addressed in a previous post. I don’t think the way you die in a war is going to be the defining factor of the associated nobility with death in battle. There are better and worse ways to go but that’s more of a personal experience, like how long are you going to suffer or is it over in a second and you don’t even know it happened. It’s not like there’s ever been a convenient way to die in war. Back in the day when you had a spear shoved through your chest, it wasn’t a great experience either.
Just because the guns are bigger and the death tolls are higher, doesn’t make it any different than in the past. Not on the micro level though, where the individual soldier is experiencing it. So much has changed with the advancement of technology but not that. Being vaporized by an artillery shell is not more or less “ennobling” than dying of an infection from a sword wound.
War’s always been a “meat grinder” anyway. The Battle of Crécy was a slaughter. There were heroes on the battlefields of World War 1 and 2. Just think of any real battle, it’s never not a bloodbath for at least the losing side. I think this notion of modern war being uniquely brutal is wrong. If war wasn’t brutal, there wouldn’t be any heroes.
Thank you for reading my second post this year. As stated in my last post, I’m trying to post every Sunday for a while now. It’s not easy coming up with topics and I am busier with work than expected but I’ll keep trying. Have a nice start into the next week!