Si vis pacem

A phone call yesterday asked me to donate to the Legion for the production of tribute books honouring veterans, the books to be placed in school libraries and other places. My donation would also support Leadership Training Camps, she said. I declined and told the woman on the phone that I'm a pacifist and not keen on supporting camps that promote military thinking and habits. She said something about defending freedom, etc. and then hung up on me as one does when one feels offended.

I thought I was being at my civil best.

I've read the guidelines for participants in these Leadership Training Camps. In effect, they're boot camps for kids: uniforms must be worn at all times, neatness and cleanliness of quarters will be enforced, punctuality mandatory, alcohol strictly forbidden, etc. Put in its best light, it's self-discipline training. Another point of view would characterize it as obedience training.

Military “leadership” is not the same as civilian leadership. A military leader most needs to conform to the rules, and be able to cause his/her juniors likewise to conform. Wars can't be fought if the combatants take initiatives or fall prey to the temptation to be creative.

In effect, military training has as its first objective the automatization of people, to undo the liberal arts education so central to our schools and colleges. Put anatomically, to erase brain pathways that facilitate critical thinking and replace them with brain pathways that make obedience and conformity behaviours habitual.

Proper education includes both training for citizen conformity and for the exercise of logic, individual initiative and creativity. It's a balanced curriculum that's part boot camp and part personal development, sort of. The contributing citizen obeys traffic laws but does his/her own thinking about the myriad of issues that surviving throws up. When the balance is understood and embraced, you have a contributing citizen; when obedience and conformity dominate, you have a soldier.

Si vis pacem, para bellum, is a Roman/Latin adage that translates, “If you want peace, prepare for war.” Another saying—Dulce et decorum est pro patria more—is likewise a bit of insidious, ancient propaganda aimed at putting a shine on the senseless, bloody, evil thing we call war. It's not a sweet and honourable thing to die for your country as the second aphorism claims. More accurately, it is the bitterest, most disgusting thing to die as cannon fodder for power-hungry, arrogant, greedy leaders who stand to benefit from virtually every aspect of armed conflict. The glorifying of the military life is, at the very least, synonymous with “putting lipstick on a pig.”

I have to wonder, sometimes, whether or not the holy book of Christian faith—the Bible—has something specific as it's central theme and aim. If on a test I was asked to enunciate that theme and aim in a single sentence, what would I write? Dulce et decorum est pro patria more is probably not it, although whole swaths of the Old Testament seem to support battle valour as a high virtue. Asked to do such a summary, and after thinking for an hour or two with my pencil poised and ready, I suspect I would write something like, “Human life is a precious gift, but tenuous and easily lost to carelessness and ignorance, so to make the best of the life we're given, only cooperation, kindness, just practices and merciful interaction will serve.” Then, I'd probably go at it with the other end of my pencil . . . and return to scratching my head.

For many evangelicals and fundamentalists, a transaction called “being born again” lies at the core of the meaning of Christian faith. Unfortunately, that formula can quite literally serve to write off human life on earth as a time of waiting for a better life promised. It can minimize the commitment to the earth and its people, including the wars that plague humanity. Analogous would be the living in a run-down house but doing little to repair it because a benefactor has promised a mansion in the indeterminate future.

But why these thoughts in a polemic against war, against the honouring of warriors, against the preparation and training for military conflict? Much as we would wish it not to be so, people and cultures claiming to honour “the book” are heavily implicated in the great conflicts: the world wars of the last century, the crusades and the usurping of land and the destruction of cultures through colonial conquest, for instance.

Militarism, seems to me, is to cultures what opium is to individuals, a tantalizing but false promise. If Jesus were alive today, he'd see the crusade to rescue the world from both to be of the essence of his mission, I think.

So, don't expect me to contribute to boot camps for kids anytime soon.

Peace camps? Of course.