I know you do :). I do understand and respect that other people feel very differently about it. I wouldn't like you to think that I'm having a crack at the way most people in the country observe it, or about the sentiments behind it, or what it means to veterans and members of the armed forces. I do respect that, even if I can't help reacting in a different way.
People get strange about Remembrance Day; I feel it enjoys a very high level of respect in comparison to, well, pretty much any other public event. It's odd. Like you say, different people's reactions are very interesting. I think Cephas' reaction is very telling; that sort of instinctive respect, even from a very very smart person, and then a sort of pause and a double-take when they think about it more. It's so instilled. I guess to people from the outside it looks the same as big patriotic-type festivals always do to people from outside the culture. And I guess observers always have the same kind of reaction: trying to be courteous and culturally sensitive and whatnot, but privately... very relieved not to be stuck with that particular weird, warped, emotional prism of worldview. I dunno. I bang my head against things a bit
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I think some of it is some people using the who idea of remembrance to distract us from the actual point. The whole "lest we forget" thing...the thing we are not supposed to forget is that people died. They died for their countries and their families - on both sides, and that WWI was called the Great War because it was so terrible and it was unimaginable that something like that could happen again.
Only now, of course, it is the First World War and that implies in its name that World Wars came after.
I dunno. I think we should not get so caught up in the omg we must remember and actually do something. Like...try to work towards peace and freedom for all. Like comforting and giving assistance to victims of war, families who have lost people through war, injured soldiers
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Yeah, exactly. I don't have any problem with the basic idea itself, I wouldn't mind if there was a Work Towards Peace And Freedom day which was equally respected and observed, but there isn't, and I think it's intrinsic in the nature of the whole thing that there won't be. I can't help feeling that misdirection is fundamental to the nature of RD as it stands now. The whole Lest We Forget thing... from the very start, it was so devoid of political context; I can't possibly believe it wasn't cynical. The government put up the cenotaph the year after WWI ended; the same government that started the war. And people came and mourned and it was all set up to focus on grief and sacrifice and the personal things, and no-one questioned what it was all about in the first place. The government barely had to defend itself; the whole thing was pased over as inevitable
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Only now, of course, it is the First World War and that implies in its name that World Wars came after.
I dunno. I think we should not get so caught up in the omg we must remember and actually do something. Like...try to work towards peace and freedom for all. Like comforting and giving assistance to victims of war, families who have lost people through war, injured soldiers ( ... )
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