A few weeks after my 18th birthday, I was in the Army. My dogtags were stamped 'NR' for No Religion. Training in those days was especially rough. Guys were killed and maimed. After all of that I ended up in non-combat duty. It got to me. That is, the killed and wounded guys that were transited past me got to me. I couldn't take it anymore. So I volunteered for combat. That's the way it was then. Everyone served. No one shirked. My orders came through. A few days before I was to head on I was called into a rickety wood shack in which a Major sat behind a rickety wood desk on a rickety chair. "At ease, Corporal," he said as we pointed to a rickety wood chair in front of his 'desk.' "What I have to do is better done in person than by a piece of paper. I'm informing you that your combat orders have been cancelled." I was livid with fury. He expected that, and explained.
"We've learned that you were in a lot of fights back in Fort Sill [Oklahoma]. We feel that you may be unstably hot-headed, may decide to open fire or charge on your own, and give away positions and an imminent action, thus jeopardizing the action and the lives of many men. We cannot risk that."
I was furious, and raged, "I never started a single fight. I simply defended a small Jewish soldier in our unit against the repeated harassments by Rucki, Wasnieski and Rocky Roth, two tough Brooklyn Polacks and a punk from Little Rock Arkansas. This busted thumb is from Rocky wrenching it out of its socket during one of those fights. And furthermore, millions of guys in combat and civilians back home would be furious to learn that a soldier had been blocked from combat because he had a record of fighting!"
He had hit a real nerve. I grew quiet. Thoughtful. He explained further, I guess to encourage me. The brass were offering a pact: They would save my life now in exchange for my committing to devote the rest of my life to my special work, this mission. Combined with the threats, it was an offer I couldn't refuse. I accepted.
"Your commanding officer knows that your orders have been cancelled, but not why. You are not to tell him. You are not to discuss this meeting with anyone. Do you understand?" "Yes, sir." "Dismissed." I stood up; he stood up, too, and held out his hand. I shook it. "Good luck, soldier." "Thank you, sir." I saluted smartly, aboot-faced, and left.
That commitment has threaded throughout my life since then, sometimes involving devastating personal and career decisions and consequences, and has led inexorably to this essay on this day. Allow me a bit of fantasy to say that It almost seems as if a Great Architect has chosen me for this Mission. But if so, why choose such an ordinary mortal, whose inadequacies have delayed its progress. Nevertheless, readers, this essay and its companion essay, noted below, will hopefully enlighten and enlist you.
Early in 1992 there was an extraordinary television series produced by Maryland Public Television and written and presented by British historian Michael Wood, called LEGACY. During the course of each evening it presented two different civilizations. The last presented was called THE BARBARIAN WEST. At the beginning it showed a film of an annual ceremony in memory of the most savage and slaughterous battle in history, the Battle of Verdun during the Great War. It was supposed to have been a quick and decisive attack, but instead it raged from February to December 1916, and cost over a million men killed, wounded and missiing. Wood's voice over the ceremony commented:
"It's a freezing February midnight in northern France. Former enemies, French and German, meet to commemorate the bloodiest battle in history which began on this night seventy-five years ago. Verdun.
"But in history only the West waged war all over the globe, from the conquests of the fifteenth century to the world wars of our own time.
...Under the flags of past battles the old familiar rituals of Christian sacrifice take place. Only a lifetime ago, three quarters of a million people died here for a couple of square miles of ground, where the heirs to the culture of Voltaire were bled white by the heirs of Goethe and Beethoven. The pointlessness of it all passes belief today, but the history of the West more than any other has swung between savagery and idealism. A contradiction apparently deeply rooted in our character and history."
Earlier Wood had summarized the problem as follows:
"We Westerners of the late 20th century -- for all our modernity -- are still a Bronze Age people."
In 1997, during the course of the six years of researching and writing Principia Ideologica: A Treatise on Combatting Human Malignance, I spoke with Dr Bruce Manning Metzger, Professor Emeritus of Princeton Theological Seminary. Professor Metzger had been Chairman of the Standard Bible Translation Committee, which is affiliated with the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and which developed the New Revised Standard Version. During our conversation I remarked that in developing Principia Ideologica I had found it necessary to assume the burden of attacking the savagery of Western Civilization at what I perceived to be its roots in the savage Bronze Age literature of Judaeo-Christian mythology and ethos as expressed in the Bible, and asked if that would offend him. "Oh, no"no"not at all," he replied.
Which brings us to the companion essay War, Peace and Arms Control in the Bronze Age:
http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/2005/10/war-peace-and-arms-control-in-bronze.html
Stephen Edward Seadler is a member of:American Physical Society, New York Academy of Sciences, Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers, Foreign Policy Association, Academy of Political Science, West Point Society of New Jersey, Union of Concerned Scientists, American Physical Society Forum On Physics & Society, Naval Intelligence Professionals, Wisdom Hall of Fame.and is listed in: Marquis Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America, Who's Who in Science & Engineering, Who's Who in Finance & Business Who's Who in American Education. Others in the UK, Europe & Asia.
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