Dying for something

Post Reply New Topic

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
George S. Patton

The concept of someone dying for a cause has always left me a bit puzzled. No doubt a person should be admired for devoting his or her life to a worthy cause for that is a dynamic effort but a death, insofar as I can figure it, is a defeat – it means the opposition has won.

I would guess that it might derive from the primitive practice of killing an animal or a human being to satisfy the wrath of some god and thereby reverse the bad fortune induced by the god’s anger.

Nevertheless, the previous war’s dead have been honored (in spite of Patton’s proclamation) more than the people who return alive to continue their lives. At least in previous wars. President G.W.Bush, in his demand that the returning dead from the current conflicts be not photographed, a policy that still seems extant, has by that attached a certain shame to their condition more in line with Patton’s concept. That a soldier’s death contains a taint of defeat and should not be honored or even acknowledged.

As has been mentioned in another thread the death of Christ is the classic example of the martyr whose death is justified as a sacrifice to defer the anger of God who was displeased over Adam and Eve’s disobedience. Since Christ is frequently assumed to be God in another guise this totally puzzles me.

Nevertheless the positive aura of dying for a cause seems maintained in a good many societies, Christian and otherwise as witnessed by the respect paid to the suicide bombers in the Middle East by their compatriots and likewise the kamikaze pilots during WWII.

Human body cells are continuously and automatically killed by the necessary extreme conditions in the digestive system and insect colonies also sacrifice individuals as a matter of course to preserve the colony so there might be a strong biological base for the whole business.

Sand, your analysis on defeat is rather weak. After all, dying for a cause is considered good, not because of the consequences necessarily, but rather because dying for a cause is a sign of a level of devotion that people consider moral. To go further though, if the cause isn't harmed or even advanced by that death then the death is a justified loss. For example, a kamikaze is valuable based upon the fact that a life lost isn't as harmful to your side as the destruction of multiple lives and equipment is beneficial to your side. Justified losses are usually considered victories.

The only thing that dying for a cause can be questionable on is the evolutionary grounds. I suppose it is possible that dying for a cause emerged from pre-existing tendencies or something and ended up being beneficial for the group and perhaps for living relatives of the martyr. Or maybe it just emerged from pre-existing tendencies and these tendencies were too common to select against, so it is just a meme that is continually perpetuated by society.

The policy of not allowing photographs of US war dead has nothing to do with honoring or dishonoring them, and everything to do with PR lessons learned from Vietnam, when photos of US troops returning in body bags helped erode political support for the war. You can argue about whether or not that in and of itself is moral or immoral, but it has nothing to do with the the value of sacrifice.

I am going to say...

Funerals aren't for the dead.

To the best of my understanding its not so much glorifying death as to say this - the person involved cares a LOT about the quality of life on this earth, enough to put themselves in harms way - even to the point of their own mortality - to make sure that things go as they believe they should in this world. I can't read your mind but I get the odd hint of 'Yeah, but if a person dies - they're gone - what does it matter?'; its quite safe to say that a great many people, if not most, have more of a sense of debt to society or a sense of literally not wanting to live under certain conditions of malpracticed authority.

TBH I've never quite understood your keen attachment to life regardless of the quality of the conditions of that life, almost as if you'd say you'd rather live a life in captivity, under tyranny, or in a dungeon, than be in a state of oblivion. To understand oblivion is to understand that its dead neutral (no pun intended), no pain, no pleasure, no expended effort but then again no desires to chase in order to crave exertion. This life is pain, mostly pain, much more pain than pleasure - pleasure is more or less a few happy little islands or clouds dotting the horizon, its nothing near the bulk of existence. In that sense, even having a desire to live and especially with no god, is something that comes highly conditional to a lot of - if not most - people, some enough for them to take their own lives if they just aren't happy with the turn out, for a much larger swath - I'd say a majority - rather than suicidal courses they simply guard what they hold as sacred with their lives (ie. for someone who goes into law enforcement that may be protection of the innocent, for firefighters its being the man/woman who pulls the child out of the fire, for the soldier in justified war circumstances its protection of quite literally their country's way of life and them putting themselves on the line as a sense of duty so that the people they love don't have to).

Ultimately though, giving your life for a cause - and having it mean something to you - comes down to whether you believe that your death will either go to further the cause of something that you believe is right (ie. civil disobedience in the face of tyranny) and whether you believe that the world - after you're gone - still matters even after you're gone.
For a person to be willing to give their lives and actually be in a place to exercise that conviction it takes both of those, without the first its just a thought and perhaps a guide to every day conduct, without the later one is basically a nihilist.