…The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
- William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming
…There will be killing until the score is paid.
― Homer, The Odyssey
I consider myself fortunate that I have never witnessed or experienced a drawn gun, or had to take cover other than the "Duck and Cover" drills in elementary school in the event of a nuclear bombing of New York City, ultimate folly. I consider myself fortunate that I do not live in an active war zone, though some in the USA may debate that right now. I have acquaintances and friends who are Marines and police officers, one or two undercover, all trained in advanced weaponry. I have witnessed and experienced through them what exploding weapons have wrought on their psyches, the necessity of recovery protocols beyond R & R from the battlefield, and then the exacerbation of psychic damage with each return to the battlefield. I have participated in "war games," at the International Committee for the Red Cross in Geneva where I studied the Geneva Conventions and sat in the passenger seat of an ambulance as a medic learned how to help a victim of a roadside bomb. But I have rarely heard the actual sound of gunshot except during hunting season in upstate New York where I live, and have always been startled and frightened by the force and reverberation of the sound. The unarmed body recoils intuitively in the face of lethal force, or takes cover, or has to be taught to take cover as in the lockdown drills American children are obliged to endure in school, and the recent scampering for cover at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. What is happening to our psyches? And how is it possible that we now have a "Secretary of War," instead of a "Secretary of Defense?"
The armed body at war raises a weapon in revenge, or retaliation, or for protection. The heavily armed warrior, if s/he has conscience and compassion, will suffer to the end of his or her days.
Sometimes a retired warrior finds a way into life-affirming humanitarian work. Will that ever happen to our Secretary of War? It seems unlikely that the Hubris of his actions will be tempered by Nemesis.
And where am I going with this rumination? I have always had a theory about the particular PTSD affliction warriors suffer. They are taught to kill and killing is antithetical to the human psyche and spirit. Though painfully unrelenting, PTSD signals resistance to killing, and the resilience of the human spirit. But this is my personal theory, based on limited personal observation.
We are all descended, said Sigmund Freud, from a long history of murder and generations of murderers. He posited that murder and war, which is mass murder, is in our blood, but I do not believe this. I do not believe that children are born to murder. I believe they learn to hate and to murder, if that is what damaged and desperate adults teach them, and that peace making can be taught and practiced also, if we are willing.