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4 Mar 2022

Is Anything Really Worth Fighting For?

"I know that for me, the war is wrong. 
I know that, if the [Russians] wanted my little house, 
I would rather give it them than fight for it: 
because my little house is not important enough to me." [1]
 
I. 
 
I said in a recent post with reference to the current situation in Ukraine, that it might have been a wiser diplomatic move on Zelenskyy's part to have attempted to appease Putin - making whatever concessions were needed in order to avoid war - rather than have flirted with the West and indicated his desire to not only join the EU, but NATO.  

Still, it's a bit late for such a policy now that Russia has invaded and major Ukranian cities, including the captal, are being bombarded even as I write. And I'm aware also that appeasement is a dirty word in the political lexicon these days - not least here in the UK, following our experiences in the 1930s with Hitler (give him an inch ...)
 
However, there's really no need for the Ukranians to martyr themselves and I would advise that they capitulate and seek terms with Russia as soon as possible. For there's no shame in surrendering to a massively superior force and, again as I said in the post prior to this one, discretion is the greater part of valour.
 
I don't think this makes me a coward; for it often takes much greater courage to live and refuse to die. 
 
And neither does it make me a pacifist in the conventional sense: I don't have a moral objection to war and certainly don't subscribe to an ideal of peace, love, and the brotherhood of man. I am simply of the view that, in this case, non-violent resistance and civil disobedience makes better strategic sense than armed conflict and self-sacrifice.  
 
 
II. 
 
My thinking in this matter has not, then, been shaped by the likes of white worms such as Bertrand Russell and Mahatma Gandhi. 
 
Rather, it's been influenced by D. H. Lawrence, who, whilst writing in favour of combat in the old sense - "fierce, unrelenting, honorable contest" [2] - abhors the thought of war in the modern machine age; "a ghastly and blasphemous translation of ideas into engines, and men into cannon fodder" [3]

It's a beautiful thing, says Lawrence, for a man to die "in a flame of passionate conflict [...] for death is to him a passional consummation" [4] and his soul can rest in peace. But to be blown to smithereens while you are eating a kanapki is something obscene and monstrous. 
 
Thus, the Ukranians should refuse to die in such a manner and refuse to fight an abstract invisible enemy whom they will never meet face-to-face on the battlefield. If the Russians are that desperate to occupy territories in the East of Ukraine, then let them ...   
 
Ultimately, it might be the case that the only thing really worth fighting for, tooth and nail, is not your spouse, your children, your country, your fellow citizens, your money, your property, or even your life, but that bit of inward peace, that allows you to reflect with a certain insouciance ... [5] 
 
 
Notes
 
[1] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Catherine Carswell (9 July 1916), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp.625-628. Lines quoted are on p. 626. 
      I have slightly modified what Lawrence writes, replacing the word 'Germans' with 'Russians'. In this crucial statement of Lawrence's views on what is and is not worth fighting for, he continues:
 
"If another man must fight for his house, the more's the pity. But it is his affair. To fight for possessions, goods, is what my soul will not do. Therefore it will not fight for the neighbour who fights for his own goods.
      All this war, this talk of nationality, to me is false. I feel no nationality, not fundamentally. I feel no passion for my own land, nor my own house, nor my own furniture, nor my own money. Therefore I won't pretend any. Neither will I take part in the scrimmage, to help my neighbour. It is his affair to go in or stay out, as he wishes." [626]
 
      See note 5 below for a reference to a later poem in which Lawrence returns to this theme. 
      And cf. with what Birkin says in chapter two of Women in Love when asked whether he would fight for his hat should someone wish to steal it off his head; "'it is open to me to decide, which is a greater loss to me, my hat, or my liberty as a free and indifferent man'". See the Cambridge edition (1987), ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, p. 29.         
 
[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 158-59. 
 
[3] Ibid., p. 159.
 
[4] Ibid.
 
[5] I am paraphrasing here from Lawrence's verse 'What would you fight for?' in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 431.


4 comments:

  1. Unfortunately, the Russians are attacking and murdering literally everything and everyone in Ukraine right now with the monumental madness of their psychotic war-machine - from the very young and very old, from fleeing families to defiant fathers, to hospitals, kindergartens and even nuclear power plants. That's nihilism for you. They're a bit like Daleks in their unconscionable attrition, or, as I've characterised by means of Jung's highly useful metapsychology here, archetypally possessed by their Russian Mother (or Mother Russia) complexes, which would appear to be as stupidly multitudinous as Russian dolls.

    No idea why missiles blasting into apartment blocks (or Ukrainians bravely lobbing Molotov cocktails or surrounding Russian vehicles) is some kind of 'abstract' or 'invisible' encounter, but I suspect it feels rather real to the victims of invasion.

    As for DHL, it seems peculiarly uncritical to assume that writers - and especially imaginative poets and novelists - necessarily tell the truth about themselves all the time, rather than projecting an image of themselves that promotes whatever provocative purpose they may be caught up in. Lawrence apparently cared so little for his childhood Eastwood home The Breach House, for example, that he partly set 'Sons and Lovers' there - which might have been a bit difficult (or felt to him a tiny bit symbolically befouled) if it had been taken over by pig-thick soldiers thrusting bayonets, cadging cigarettes or raping the ladyfolk in the way soldiers apparently can't help doing.

    Quite how 'inward peace' is even remotely possible when there's no outward peace - and indeed only outward terror and violence - is anybody's guess! Telling a nation how to behave here, let alone they're wrong to care about and contest their families, lands and futures, strikes me as so preposterously lofty the blogger might as well be living in the clouds.

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    1. I respond to this last accusation here:

      http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2022/03/nephophilia.html?m=1

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  2. Not sure it's possible to have 'inward peace' in an environment of deceit, oppression, and totalitarianism. I think if I'd seen civilians bombed in a humanitarian corridor or my family wiped out I wouldn't care for something as indulgent as 'inward peace' - hence survivor guilt. Hence why Primo Levi chucked himself down the stairs. And this is exactly the problem here. What is going on is incomprehensible to those of us afforded the luxury of commenting from our laptops.

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    1. I don’t think it is incomprehensible at all, particularly not for a writer if they’re any good. Surely you underestimate the power of imagination and the ability to empathise or experience compassion.

      As for inward peace … One wonders when, in your view, it might be possible (and allowable as something other than an indulgence)? If you plan on waiting for all the external circumstances to come good first, you’re going to wait indefinitely.

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