{"id":247741,"date":"2023-11-06T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2023-11-06T12:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=247741"},"modified":"2023-11-06T05:59:04","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T05:59:04","slug":"lets-stop-dehumanizing-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/11\/lets-stop-dehumanizing-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s Stop Dehumanizing the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>1 Nov 2023<\/em> – We \u2014 by which I mean most of humanity \u2014 are still playing with the so-called \u201cjust war theory,\u201d the intellectual justification for war dating back to St. Augustine and the early centuries of the Common Era.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You know, violence is morally neutral \u2014 and thus, when the cause is just and sacred, go for it! Kill the non-believers. Make the world a better place.<\/p>\n

Just war theory makes the world numb to human slaughter. Dead children, and all other innocent victims, become abstractions, collateral damage. It\u2019s almost as though the role of lone-nut mass murderers \u2014 killers who clearly have no moral justification to walk into a shopping mall or school classroom or bowling alley and start shooting \u2014 is to remind the world that lives are precious and murders equal hell. Thus the recent mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine (apparently the 565th mass shooting in the U.S. this year) generated painful eulogies<\/a> of the victims in the media, cutting open the national soul. Yes, their deaths are unspeakable tragedies!<\/p>\n

But the thousands of dead in Gaza and every other war don\u2019t get such public eulogies \u2014because, of course, there are far too many of them to write about, but also . . . well, because the war may be just (and the U.S. is either waging it or supplying the weapons) and humanizing the collateral damage could make the good guys look bad.<\/p>\n

So war is neutral. Killing children (and\/or their parents) is neutral and sometimes necessary, for self-defense and other God-sanctioned reasons that make the world a better place. I can see St. Augustine\u2019s point. The defense of what we value is necessary, and defense means fighting back.<\/p>\n

But as I wrote<\/a> a year ago: A serious, unaddressed problem comes along with this. \u201cWhat if we value . . . oh, let\u2019s say, whiteness? And along comes a nonwhite teenager who (allegedly) looks inappropriately at a white lady. Shouldn\u2019t we lynch him? What\u2019s to stop us? Violence is morally neutral.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, the neutrality of violence can be used by anyone in a position of power. Is the winner of a violent conflict, ipso facto, the one who\u2019s right? Humanity is stuck with an enormous paradox. If war is morally neutral, anyone, including those whose values are morally questionable (or simply wrong), can resort to it. Thus we must never stop preparing for it. War is both just and unjust simultaneously, and it will never end.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the thing. War is not just. Indeed, it\u2019s humanity\u2019s cancer. It can\u2019t happen without first obliterating our primary value: the sanctity of life. As Kelly Denton-Borhaug<\/a> points out, citing the research of John Dower: \u201cDehumanization always precedes and paves the way for the horrors of war. Human beings won\u2019t kill other humans if they truly believe their lives are as worthy as their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant<\/a> declared last month, as Israel\u2019s \u201cjust war\u201d got underway: \u201cWe are fighting human animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that makes any and every action possible. Denton-Borhaug goes on to note that \u201cdehumanization does more than just enable war. It also generates an annihilating energy all its own through which the atrocity-laden destruction of war multiplies exponentially.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, during the course of war, the violence keeps intensifying. Why shouldn\u2019t it? War\u2019s entire point is winning, and when the enemy refuses to give up, the violence must increase. But her point transcends mere strategic necessity. The limitless expansion of violence takes on a life of its own. As she points out, during World War II, when the Japanese turned to kamikaze fighting, \u201cthe Americans abandoned precision bombing and initiated the full-scale firebombing of Japanese cities. The firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 burned to death more than 100,000 civilians in a single night. More than 60 cities were similarly targeted, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese in a final paroxysm of violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then, of course, came Hiroshima and Nagasaki.<\/p>\n

And this is where the human race now finds itself. Just war theory, after several millennia of justified dehumanization, has led us to the brink of Armageddon. And we\u2019re geopolitically fine with that! Powerful nations not only possess nukes, they \u2014 at least some of them, such as the U.S. \u2014 continue to modernize them, as though . . . my God, I can\u2019t even complete this sentence. We\u2019re living on a planet with two possibilities: no future without nuclear weapons, or no future at all.<\/p>\n

Believing in the just-war theory means believing in \u2014 valuing \u2014 dehumanization. Not of all of us, as the defenders say. Only some of us. But to dehumanize part of the human race, part of who we are \u2014 so much so that we are prepared to turn them into ashes and dust \u2014 has consequences far beyond the simplistic mindset of winning or losing. This is poison. War will always come home, whether as loners with AK-47s or as nuclear winter.<\/p>\n

Indeed, war doesn\u2019t simply \u201ccome home,\u201d a metaphor that implies a separated humanity \u2014 separated by invisible lines called national borders. Yes, conflict is part of who we are; we are a complex entity. But war drives a spike into our collective soul. We are one. When we prepare for and ultimately wage war, rather than reach for understanding, we are killing ourselves: our precious children, our fragile planet.<\/p>\n

And we know this \u2014 every time we look into a child\u2019s eyes. This is where our future pulsates.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Robert C. Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, <\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is still available. Contact him at <\/em>koehlercw@gmail.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 commonwonders.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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