World War II warped our worldview in a number of ways. One of the chief ways it did this was to create a bottomless demand for Pearl Harbors. That is, one big thing that monopolizes everyone's attention and makes them feel like part of something larger than themselves. Ignored is the possibility that we might be better off tending to smaller interests.
About twenty-four years ago, 9/11 became the big thing. Suddenly everybody had to do their bit to fight off terrorism. The biggest and most immediate effect was that the American government got to do a big raid on Iraq, based on lies and cooked evidence, and everybody had to follow them.
More recently there was COVID, a disease so big and monstrous that it upended all of the established protocol for dealing with pandemics, as well as most of culture. Of course staying at home and avoiding everyone isn't what I'd consider being something larger than yourself. But that's me.
1 comment:
You're absolutely correct about ww2 warping our world view and 9/11 definitely caught a lot of people's attention. With covid the danger was touted as equally huge but the enemy was invisible and difficult to fight with the usual weapons of war. Propaganda has been a major motivator in the modern world.
I could go on and find many other examples but for a man who explained the reason behind so much of what continues to motivate the wars and threats of war we continue to see today. I don't know if you're familiar with the name Major General Smedley Butler or his lengthy essay War Is A Racket but it's still a very worthwhile read for a thoughtful person. Although he discusses the Spanish American War and the First World War he saw the Second World War on the horizon. He died in 1940 shortly before Pearl Harbor.
https://www.ratical.org/ratville//CAH/warisaracket.html
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