Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

SPECIES ETHIC
Our animal nature, our biological nature is to live in relation to other people. The natural enviornment of humans is primaily culture, not the "natural world," narrowly defined as other species, climate, etc. The sudden and startling growth of The human brain around one million years ago was not in response to saber-tooth tigers, retreating glaciers, nor the intellectual challenge of getting nutmeat out of is shell, but in response to the emergence of culture itself. The brain mechanisms of self-defense, of predation, of territoriality, of sexual and family group affiliation, and of defending offspring have not been supplanted by culture, but raher speak through it in ways that we poorly understand. Culture is not illusory, movie-theater projection of bodily "drives' or "instincts." nor is the body a metaphor; wholly constructed by culture. Culture is as biologically real for humans as the body. Unless in a coma, we are always both culture bearers and bodies at ever moment.

"Support on the home front for the soldier, regardless of ethical and politcal disagreements over the war itself, is essential. This is never easy in the emotionally polarized climate of a war. However, when facing individual soldiers, we must remember that all modern soldiers serve under constraint. "The justice of overall war aims and operational theories—"strategic" bombing of civilians to weaken the industrial capacity to wage war is an example of such a theory—is not within the individual soldier's scope of moral choice, unless he or she is willing to face imprisonment or death by refusing to fight. I cannot hold soldiers to an ethical standardthat requires martyrdom in order simply to be blameless. I am not arguing against the Nurenberg principles which say that no person is absolved of reponsibility for horrible acts by the fact he or she was legally ordered to do them. I am speaking from the pain that I feel when I witness in our veterans the ruin of moral life by the overwhelming coercive social power of military institutionsand of war itself. If wr goals, operational methods and military culture were so unjust that the Nuremerg principles loomed over every Vietnam combat soldier we must recognize that the blood is on our hands too.. If we had exercised Sun azu's virtures of "intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and sterness" towrd our representitives in Washing, from the presidents down, our soldiers in vietnam would not have been in that position. War itself always creates situationsin which physical surival contradicts moral survival."

stilltrucking wrote:A lot of comparisons between Vietnam and Afghanistan. But for me there is one big difference. We are not fighting this war with draftees. There is a choice for a volunteer. Just don't sign up.