When men were men

When friend refuses to leave
host pours tequila on him
and sets him on fire.

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth.
Rudyard Kipling

I guess it could be argued that back in “the good old days” when men were men and engaged in combat one with another, or even when two armies were engaged against each other, there might have been an element of romance, or at least some premium placed on personal bravery and skill in battle. But of course technology changed all that a long time ago. It was obviously largely due to superior technology that Europeans so successfully overran the world and established their despicable empires in all parts of the globe. Bows and arrows and spears were just no match for guns and cannons, nitroglycerin and dynamite, and then planes and tanks and huge warships and rockets, etc. Now we are witnessing another chapter in this evolution of technology and warfare. As a simple example let me just mention our unmanned drones that we are now flying over Pakistan and Afghanistan. Operated from a far distance away these planes, equipped with guns and bombs, can fly over and attack targets everywhere with no danger to humans at all. We are, similarly, at this very moment perfecting robots that can patrol streets and whatever and fire machine guns at the rate of 750 rounds per minute. This says nothing of nuclear bombs, biological agents, and other methods of mass destruction that do not risk any loss of our lives. One of the things I find most interesting about this is that it does not require “strong men.” Indeed, the famous 97 pound weakling could operate these things. People trained and smart enough to use the controls are all that is required,computer people and such, nerds, if you will.

Basically, this means that whatever country has the best technology would ultimately win in any contest over time (the Israelis are apparently surreptitiously killing Iranian scientists). As the West, in general, has had the best (we are rapidly falling behind at the moment), we could have imposed our will upon most everyone else (and, in sense, we have tried). What I wonder about, is why we haven’t just killed everyone we don’t like? We could, in principle, wipe a country off the map, so to speak. What keeps us from doing so? Is there some understood ceiling on how many can permissibly be killed? If so, why? I can’t see how or why morality enters into this. I mean, is it moral to kill say 100,000, or a million, or even several million, but not everyone? More down to earth, is it moral to use machines, like drones or robots, to do our killing for us, when our “enemies” cannot reciprocate? How can it be that it is often a crime to kill one person (although not in war) but acceptable, even “noble,” and not a crime to kill hundreds in a different context? Genocide, we say, is impermissible, but how about slow genocide over a long period of time (Palestinians). Morality would seem to tell us that it is wrong to kill, and even in war we claim to have certain rules that must be followed. But it is more than clear by now that the rules no longer apply in “wars” of the past few decades, and certainly do not seem to apply at the moment. What is moral about the use of cluster bombs, or phosphorus bombs, or bombing innocent civilians, which has become commonplace? Similarly, I ask myself, what is moral about using drones and robots to kill people, including innocents? It seems to me that when technology takes over, morality is simply forgotten. It’s as if we cannot resist playing with our new “toys” no matter how deadly or immoral it might become. It’s as if, when technology rises morality rests, and the more impersonal war becomes the more destructive it is. Guernica, I believe, changed us from being warriors into mass killers, and we seem to become worse rather than better. The question at the moment seems to be, will we blow ourselves up first, or just slowly smother in our own filthy nests. I know what we need… more tax breaks.

LKBIQ:
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
Mahatma Gandhi

TILT:
There are some 350,000 species of beetles.