i have just finished watching another war movie: americans vs japanese around manila. i enjoy war movies but i think, the older i am, the more of an anti-war “freak” i become.

sure, there is political need for war. not the obvious one – protecting the interests of the nation. war is very good in one thing: once you send a bunch of workers and peasants to some hell on earth place, once they are back they are so happy and content with anything that for sure you can keep on doing stupid stuff for a while longer (if you are a king or president or whatever).

however this is not so obvious as presidents and parties and kingds change. this again is a game, as th real major change occures. once lower ranks of people are sent to war, preferably for few years, whole generations of these people are drained emotionally and their interest and sharpness for change back home is much weaker. this system has sustained all major powers for a long time and has almost reached perfection with modern warfare and strategy.

in essence war is a great political distraction, always was and always will be. it keeps the masses quiet, more or less, and allows greater stability of a system. if you think that a certain political system was not stable before the war, i am sure that i would be even more stable if there was no war. keep in mind this is all relative to the point of view of the political system which engages in war.

anyway… now that basics of political purpose of war are explained we can move on to more crucial elements.

war is usually based on a conflict of nations. if there are no nations than they can easily be invented with some advertising and pr (american, spanish or most civil wars). basically political powers divide people into groups and nations are easiest because its kind of hard to organize a war between bookkeepers and bakers or similarly uncentralized groups (messing around with these unefficient groupations is left to union wars, football team wars etc which are always much small than national wars).

since people start looking at other people as same but as different than it is easy to get them to do anything. if i do not see some x nation guy as a human but as only as x nation guy than i can kill him. he is not like me, so he is an enemy, and it makes it ok to kill him. but it is a crime to kill someone who is like me, who is part of my group.

my idea of war, since i spent some time in my life close to it, is always that if i am made to kill someone i might as well kill whoever i making me ge close to war. i am unable to make a difference between my group and x group. i just do not feel that. i figured out that ability not to see these groups but just recognize whole military as an enemy, which is trying to put you in a dangerous situation, is crucial for worldwride war diminishing process.

also this kind of thinking can be indoctrinated as it is just as natural as fighting for your own group.

both feelings: extreme individualism (fuck you all) and extreme nationalism (i will die for my nation) are natural to people. it is just a matter which one of these will be fed.

also these feelings, or instincts, can not be generalize so much, as each of them consists of millions of variations, and for any manipulation to work, it has to be super personal and individual, but that is not so hard. just as military staff has always been very skilled in manipulating their men and women into masohistic and suicidal behaviour so it is possible, probably easier, to do the same to create a total oposite behaviour.

maybe with some good candy. :)

anyway, i will continue thinking about this…

maybe one day i will just be an anti-war activist. sounds like a cool job.

i got carried away writing emails: i had two important long emails to write and i had no idea how long i stayed. i am guessing i was on for about 25 mins. could not have been longer. 5 mins extra.

this guy next to me started talking to me in a very loud and aggressive manner that i should move and that people are waiting for me to finish. i did not respond, but i finished as quick as i could. i could not just jump u because i had to cut the email short and log out. the guy next to me was getting extremely upset with me. he was banging his keyboard and making strange body movements.

once i got up and went to him and i said that this was not a way to talk to anyone. i said i found it too aggressive. he started yelling again and cutting my sentences, not allowing me to explain my point of view, and than turning his back on me. than all the people that waited started acting the same. pretty soon the words “you are not from here, you are not well mannered” started repeating and i was not able to say anything as three people kept yelling at me over 5 mins extra they had to wait.

all they could think about is those few minutes they had to wait and how bad i was to make them wait.

my motivation to stay and explain was that i knew i broke the rule but it happened, its not the end of the world, and that it was no reason to be so disrespectful. unfortunately i did not explain this well as i am not really good at competing in yelling and i just got more and more disrespect coming at me. i was failing to generate compassion. these people seamed to have a lot of bottled anger.

i analyzed the situation over and over later. these kind of situations are very useful as they reveal a lot of communication problems people can have.

i was thinking about my stereotype of white cape town folk who live in this area and who seam to be a very aggressive demographic, always ready to yell instead of listen. although there is something particular about them – they are mostly very rich and, i guess, they made good money from apartheid so they are used to enforcing rules through direct aggression – i would not jump into such prejudicial conclusions.

i think the bottom line is that this is common behaviour everywhere and i am just too sensitive to aggression. i have a radar for it and i always have this eagerness to explain to people how they should be more polite while they yell at me.

i think its something i should either get better at or stop doing it.