Thank Goodness It's Monday #464

 Considering The News of the World

GUIDANCE WORTH HEEDING
FROM VOICES OF EXPERIENCE 

Here we're about Information and Inspiration. At least that's what it indicates in the Catalyst Collection/Thank Goodness It's Monday template that surrounds this blogpost, right?

But at this point in a conflict that should not be happening in the Ukraine, there are obstacles to providing timely and objective content and insight.

What then to do and say here?

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Seek wisdom from some experts. And thus strive to gain understanding. 

Not necessarily experts in today's geopolitical goings on, or advocates of positions pro or con about governance in the 21st Century. Those folk lack the leveling factor of discovered outcomes over historic time.

Rather, let's turn to the voices of experience from eras past and look for the wisdom gained by their interaction with the similar challenges in their day. 

And let's add just one more caveat to the ideas we'll consider. No overt arguing from an unyielding militaristic standard. Otherwise, we'll end up ill-advised by the likes of --

Adolf Hitler -- "Mankind has grown great in eternal struggles, and only in eternal peace does it perish."  (Mein Kampf, 1924) 

Or --

Louis XV -- "Ultima ratio regum." Circa 1735 the French King ordered this phrase engraved on his cannon. It translates as: "The last argument of kings." 

Or --

Catherine II -- "The only way to save our empire from the encroachment of the people is to engage in war, and thus substitute national passions for social aspirations."

TGIM IDEA IN ACTION: Consider instead, both now and in the eventful days ahead, the counsel of such as --

Karl von Clausewitz -- "War ... is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will."

Lenin -- "War is part of a whole. That whole is politics. (This observation was a marginal note in his copy of Clausewitz' On War.)

Alexis de Tocqueville -- "There are two things which will always be very difficult for a democratic nation: to start a war and to end it." (The French social philosopher made that observation in his 1840 masterwork Democracy in America. He added: "All those who seek to destroy the freedom of the democratic nations must know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish this. This is the very first axiom of their science.")

Winston Churchill -- "Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."

Germaine Greer -- "War is the admission of defeat in the face of conflicting interests: by war the issue is left to chance, and the tacit assumption that the best man will win is not at all justified. It might equally be argued that the worst, the most unscrupulous man will win, although history will continue the absurd game by finding him after all the best man."

Douglas MacArthur -- "I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes." (In an address to Congress in 1951.) 

George Washington -- "My first wish is, to see this plague to Mankind banished from the Earth; & the Sons & daughters of this World employed in more pleasing & innocent amusements than in preparing implements, & exercising them for the destruction of the human race. Rather than quarrel [about] territory, let the poor, the needy, & oppressed of the Earth; and those who want Land, resort to the fertile plains of our Western Country, to the second Land of promise, & there dwell in peace, fulfilling the first & great Commandment.” (In a letter to David Humphreys, July of 1785.)

Benjamin Franklin -- "There never was a good war or a bad peace." (In a letter to John Quincy, September 1783.)

Theodore C. Sorensen -- "We have contingency plans for war, but none for peace." (Appearing on The Today Show in November 1989.)

Ruth Benedict -- "If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits." (A US anthropologist, she propounded that view in Chapter 1 of her 1934 book Patterns of Culture.)

Karl Kraus -- "War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost." (The author was an Austrian satirist commenting in 1917.)

Jeannette Rankin -- "You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." (In 1916, four years before the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed the right of women to vote, Rankin became the first woman elected to the US Congress, representing Montana.)

Enough for now. 

Well, nearly enough. Admittedly this list is cherry-picked and biased in my doubtless opinionated attempt to make an unbiased presentation that virtually any reader might ponder and be influenced by. 

That's the way a "catalyst" is supposed to function and that was my sincere intent. And if the attempt has fallen short, I beg to default to the wisdom of two legendary poets of the era of "the war to end all wars" (which, of course, what we now designate as World War One did not).

W. B. Yeats -- "I think it better that in times like these

                        A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth
                        We have no gift to set a statesman right."

The Irish poet and playwright penned those lines under the title On Being Asked for a War Poem.

And in a similar vein --

T. S. Eliot -- "War is not a life: it is a situation.

                    One which may neither be ignore nor accepted."

This was the Anglo-American poet and critics observation in a piece entitled A Note on War Poetry.

Pax.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

Englewood, NJ 07631
tgimguy@gmail.com