[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] Bloodlust in History

I spent a good chunk of Sunday afternoon reading the Sunday Star over since nice beers on the sunny deck of Caffè Volo. As I did so, I began to notice that that day's newspaper seemed to be exploring a single theme, that of young men who felt compelled to kill others and (if need be) themselves for a greater good.

In the Ideas section, for instance, Newfoundland-based writer Tony Fabijancic contributed an interesting travelogue from Bosnia and Herzegovina, tracking down the last traces of Gavrilo Princip and seeing what post-war Bosnians thought of those shots of his 91 years ago that killed the Archduke and his wife. In the main section (page A10), Martin Regg Cohn contributed an article examining the unsettling popularity of the Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots.

It's not just aging war veterans and aspiring samurais who visit the museum in search of past glories. Many ordinary Japanese who had lmost no exposure to wartime history during their years of sanitized education make the pilgrimage to Chiran out of curiosity.

Many visit more than once, stocking up on souvenirs bearing the museum logo.

"I don't know if you can understand this, coming from Canada, but if you read the letters you will cry," says Shinichiro Kamio, a 61-year-old businessman making a return visit with his wife.

Sales manager Koichi Inoue came once before, on a company-organized vacation trip. Marvelling at the kamikazes' steely resolve, he has brought his adult son here to expose him to the discipline of previous generations.

"My son is 22, about the same age as the Special Attack Forces," Inoue explains, using the Japanese term for suicide pilots. "These people died for their families and country, and if we learn about this, it could change our lives in future."

Inoue's father served in Japan's imperial expeditions--"somewhere in China," but he knows not where, because "Dad never talked about the war." Now, he wants to inculcate the kamikaze spirit of self-sacrifice in his own offspring but fears Japan's affluence has spawned "individualism and an egocentric way of thinking that wasn't there before."

In the editorial section, Gwynne Dyer argues fairly lucidly that "[t]here is a connection between Washington's Mideast policies [. . .] and the fact that Americans have become the preferred targets for Islamist terrorist attacks" and that pointing out the connection is neither obscene not morally flawed. More calmly, in a piece imported from the Boston Globe Christopher Shea examines the research of Robert A. Pape on the motivations of suicide bombers, noting that they tend to be more educated than the average member of their demographic and that they tend to take place in inter-religious conflicts involving the occupation of their homeland (ETA hasn't allowed its members to blow thenmselves up for Euskadi, and FARC couldn't pay people enough to pilot a plane into Columbia's Presidential Palace).

I finished reading the paper by going back to Fabijancic's piece on Princip. He noted that Princip came from a very poor region of Bosnia, a place where Serb peasants were held as serfs by their Muslim landlords, and that this poverty contributed to the tuberculosis that he contracted at some point in his life. Princip, however, was also well-educated by the region's standards, and he was certainly strongly motivated. It was sweet to kill for his nation, and if need be to die for his nation. It was sweet to kill and if need be die for many men for many nation in Princip's lifetime, and before, and after.

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,---
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

We need another Wilfrid Owen.

[REVIEW] Robert J. Sawyer's Mindscan

Canadian science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer's latest novel, Mindscan, examines the question of consciousness. The mid-21st century is a time when Canadian Jake Sullivan, suffering from a physical condition that places him at high risk of a debilitating stroke, can fly into space to have his mind electronically copied and downloaded into an immortal android body. It's also a time when the question of what constitutes consciousness has not been settled, either legally or metaphysically. Hijinks ensue.

Unfortunately, and despite its interesting premise, Mindscan is a book that shouldn't have been written. Perhaps more than other genres of literature, science fiction seeks to instruct and delight its readers, in that order. Sawyer fails so short of achieving the second goal that he misses his first. His style is leaden, his characters are one-dimensional, and his plot becomes an exercise in wish-fulfillment. Most critically, Sawyer just can't resist the temptation to make the people who are putting forward the arguments that he doesn't like ridiculous caricatures. The people who support copy-Sullivan's claims are genial and sympathetic people who truly want to help. The people who oppose him are self-righteous idiots too caught up in their own personal and ideological traumas to do anything. Most annoying of all for me is Sawyer's eager indulgence in self-righteously liberal anti-American Canadian nationalism, the sort of sneering-down-one's-nose condemnation that almost makes me long for the day when the United States brutally annexes Canada and purges my homeland of its idiotically bigoted nationalists.

I wish that I hadn't read this book--I would have done much better to have read the papers on consciousness theory cited in Sawyer's bibliography. Consider yourselves warned.

[LINK] Japan and South Korea, Not Friends

Manga are telling.

[NON BLOG] Crosswords

I go to and from work on the TTC five days out of the week's seven, more often than not during the commute working on Metro Toronto's crosswords. I never was a crossword person before, but now? I'm just embarrassed that Metro's easy crosswords stump me.

[LINK] Lunagrad?

Taking up where I left off with my posting last week about Soviet O'Neill colonies, at soc.history.what-if schizmatic asks about the odds that the Soviet Union would have built a lunar base.

[REVIEW] Jodi Picoult

I've read three books by Jodi Picoult: Mercy, The Pact: A Love Story, My Sister's Keeper. These three novels all share the same plotline: A seemingly idyllic nuclear family's existence is interrupted by a terribly surprising break from routine, a third party with am ambiguous relationship (to the idea of family, to this family) is inserted into the ensuing legal drama, which heads towards a seemingly predictable conclusion but is interrupted by a surprise revelation that nonetheless manages to heal the family, with only hairline cracks visible if one knows where to look.

Eh. If it works for her financially, who cares about originality?

[BRIEF NOTE] A New Livejournal Forum

I encourage you to check out my Island friend Erin's new LJ, erins_pub. I know that it is set to become an interesting forum indeed. Don't you want to get in it on the ground floor?