“Collapse”
In 1932 the Secretary of State in the Hoover administration, Henry Stimson, responded to the Japanese bombing of Shanghai, an act that killed numerous civilians, by noting that if the targeting of noncombatants became routine, “civilization will collapse.” For those who like to add up the empty weight of time, that was 92 years ago. It would be a challenge to list all the bombings since that date that have resulted in the deaths of noncombatants, though we can point to the Spanish Civil War, World War Two, the war in Vietnam, and the invasions of Iraq and Ukraine as highlights, so to speak, of this evil practice. If we agree with Stimson, we thus are living in post-civilization.
Rightly, many will point out that so-called civilization was nothing to write home about, that it has countenanced as a matter of course horrors such as slavery and torture. Great Britain, which prided itself as a civilizing force on the planet, indulged in numerous noxious practices that could give anyone pause about the achievements of their glorious empire. If a human life has any value as a human life—and it does not in the calculations of nation-states—the creation of that empire where the sun never set was a titanic crime against humanity. Power, of course, calls its own tunes and sings its own praises.
What Stimson was pointing to, however, was an aspiration, as in acting civilized, which meant not killing innocent people—children, for instance—in the cause of war. This attitude literally went up in smoke with the Nazis who killed all the children they could get their hands on. According to the Nazi ideology, those children were subhuman and deserved to die. If in other wars during the 92 years, children died that was unfortunate—or they just didn’t matter in the inhuman scheme of things. Just look at the weapons, look at the so-called goals of the warring nations, look at the sheer destruction, look at the effects on the other creatures with whom we share the planet. Then look for a mere minute at the body of a child. The fragility is something like unbearable. Accordingly, we turn our heads away, though at certain times, as in the current war in Gaza some of us cannot turn away.
Bob Dylan once wrote an excoriating song that never made it into the top-forty called “Masters of War.” In that song Dylan lashed out at those who “build all the guns” and “the death planes.” He went further, however, in the vein that I have raised: “You’ve thrown the worst fear / That can ever be hurled / Fear to bring children / Into the world.” The common response to such a song will be that it is just a song—words can never hurt, although it is words that lead to wars. Certainly in the United States, where the Department of War is called the Department of Defense (a clear instance of Orwellian double-speak), that charge about children goes without notice nor would it be raised in the corridors of commerce and government beyond “How dare he say anything?” As in a schoolyard, fingers are busy being pointed at enemies. If we don’t defend ourselves, we are at risk. Such is the schoolyard and such is the world of nations armed with their “big bombs,” to quote Dylan again. In that world, Dylan’s lyric is simply naive and pointless. Armed force gives nations the right to single out enemies and act accordingly. Humankind invents the weapons and uses them and invents more. Such is knowledge that drives what we are pleased to call “progress.”
Given this situation, which is not a new one, though the weapons become more and more “sophisticated,” to use a word the munitions makers often employ and that the armed forces readily accede to, I would propose that the world-at-large create a day called “Murdered Noncombatants Day.” On this day people would take time off from whatever they are doing and face the grief of innocents who have been murdered in war. There is no shortage of photos of such people, particularly of children, for us to contemplate on such a day. Although the grief may not be directly ours, the grief is ours since—according to the dictates of civilization—human beings are supposed to be each other’s keepers rather than each other’s destroyers. Again, this particularly applies to children who look to adults to take care of them rather than kill them and who have no use for the reasons that adults might offer as to why their deaths serve some purpose.
My proposal is by definition far-fetched, especially in a calendar already littered with days created by the forces of commerce and industry such as National Pickle Day, National Hot Dog Day, etc. I refuse, however, to be labeled an idealist. On the contrary, it is realism that is sadly lacking in the affairs of the nations, as they determinedly make bad situations worse and create nightmares that echo over generations. We have whatever fruits of technology we have and are more than glad to consider those fruits the stuff of civilization. We are, however, wrong. Civilization is an aspiration that has to do with what is inside people, not about devices that they use. The civilization that Stimson evoked may seem a far-fetched aspiration that is bound to fail in the human climate of suspicion, mania, and hostility, to say nothing of workaday hypocrisy. In opposition to that climate, the fruits of civilization are constructive rather than destructive, life-affirming rather than life-denying.
All the busy chatter about how to manage what is wrong to begin with has not gotten us very far as we face various forms of extinction. Alas, it is easy to get used to any sort of collapse you are born into and that becomes merely a way of life—and of death. We might ask what countenances these deaths that stare out at us from our screens and newspapers. Meanwhile, Dylan’s outrage remains, words in a wind that shows no signs of abating. That’s hard to face but one virtue of art is honesty. We are where we are. At the least, we should not pretend to uphold a notion that we have defiled. And we can say the obvious: Wherever they occur, these murders are wrong.
What more to say but AMEN. And thanks for the honesty.
Hallelujah. Say it like it is. Thank you.