Two aspects of warfare that raise disturbing questions:
In the first video below, made by members of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines in Fallujah, Iraq, the emphasis is on the “Honor”, “Courage”, and “Commitment” of the great American heroes, who, with tanks, machine guns, white phosphorus, and all the modern weaponry of an advanced military power, take on the men, women, and children of Fallujah in what has now become widely recognized as yet another great American massacre* of innocents.
This clip ends with the quote from George S Patton:
“As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I have no fear because I am the meanest motherfucker in the valley.”
The end credits contain what can only be assumed is a sarcastic and distasteful piece of text:
“And a very special thanks to the people of Fallujah for allowing us to film in your city”
I doubt those who remained alive in Fallujah had any choice in the matter.
I suppose when any American soldier prides himself on being “the meanest motherfucker in the valley”, his indoctrination is complete and he is ‘safe’ to be let loose in a foreign country, with no risk of him pausing to consider what exactly he is doing to its people.
The video is doubtless designed to appeal to the young, ultra-macho, would-be warrior champing at his bootlaces to catch a piece of the action while “enemy” still remain to be killed in Iraq. It will no doubt succeed in sending him scurrying to the recruiting center.
Were he to watch this second video, it might just send him scurrying back home to Mommy.
If America truly considers “the meanest motherfuckers in the valley” to be the embodiment of honor, courage, and commitment, then it is indeed, one very sick country.
As sick today as the Great Britain of one hundred years ago, when mental illness was callously labeled “cowardice”.
This subject has created some healthy debate, as I expected it would. Writing as one who has never been competitive, or seen the need for competition other than for purely recreational use – I enjoyed the occasional game of soccer as a lad, and raced sailing dinghies at my local yacht club – but never felt the ‘competitive edge’ to win, win, win……pushed as a vital factor for success, especially in the USA where it has been honed to a fine artform.
The problem with competition: it creates only one winner, but many losers. It is, in that sense, self-defeating as a social tool. Jo, in an excellent essay (see her comment to the previous post) writes of the demise of Sports Day in British schools and mourns the passing.
I don’t.
What purpose does it serve? As a day of fun? Never, as I remember. As a means of physical exercise? There are plenty of other ways to activate kids physically. To teach them ‘someone has to lose the race’? I think they learn that from a very young age without the need to be ostracized for lack of physical prowess.
The desire or need to compete is, I believe, an instinctive remnant from our reptilian brain. Compete to survive – for food, for mates – survival of the fittest. Our reptilian brain is tiny compared to the mass that has evolved around it, yet for much of our social interaction we turn more and more inwards to our basic instincts for survival. The human race still competes for food, leaving the weakest hungry and the most powerful fat-bellied. TV programs entertain by fostering hero worship of individuals prepared to play the dirtiest games to reach the top job or the most powerful position, scattering weaker mortals to the winds in the process.
Is this the way we wish to continue living? It’s unlikely to work for us much longer. Corporate competition between nations is causing such a lack of government action to avert global catastrophe, it is only a matter of time before the planet teaches us a severe lesson in how bad competition really is for the human soul.
Why do we need to be the best; the greatest; the most powerful? Would an individual’s life in America be worse if the US was just another nation among a similar group of nations, working and cooperating with each other to provide the best for everyone. I doubt it. In fact, I believe the quality of life would be much, much better for everyone.
Yes, I know that to some degree I’m preaching idealism, but if we are ever to evolve beyond our present status as self-opinionated apes with a technological bent, we have to define and begin to eliminate the fundamental, inherent instincts of our ancestors that are holding us back. I believe the distorted, competitive, survival instincts we nurture to weave our way through the social structures we’ve created, have a hugely negative effect on those structures, causing them to constantly tear and fall apart.
War is the ultimate example. War is no more than a competition of brute strength, yet it totally destroys whole sections of our societal fabric, both physically and psychologically.
To what end? So the victor can strut about like a farmyard cock, and see the loser humiliated and broken.
The very act of proving oneself better than another, by inference implies the inferiority of the loser. When this occurs on a national scale the trend is to view other nations as inferior. This was the case with Adolf Hitler’s Germany pre-WW2, and has shown itself to be a factor in the invasion of Iraq. The atrocities of Abu Ghraib and the more recent killing of innocent Iraqis by Blackwater employees are just two of many obvious examples.
Children in the US today are taught that being a ‘good’ American means being a winner. Good sportmanship; the pleasure of playing the game for its own sake, is well down the list of priorities. More and more American athletes are using drugs to enhance their performances. So many in fact, that even when the least likely, like Marion Jones, admit to such indiscretions, no-one is really shocked anymore.
Don’t misunderstand; I’m not advocating the banning of all competitive games. Competition, properly harnessed, can be fun and have positive attributes, but when all that matters is winning, the fun vaporizes and the longterm effects can be disastrous.
In most areas of our lives cooperation, rather than competition, between communities and nations at all levels would produce a better world for every one of us.
There’s an obsession in America. It’s the fear of losing. Everyone has to do better than everyone else, and their kids have to be better than everyone else’s kids.
According to a report last night on NBC Nightly News, ambitious US parents are hiring ‘sports tutors’ to give their kids a leg-up on the rest of the field. Their aim: to turn kids into super-athletes who can saturate their parent’s egotistical demands by winning glory, and a place for themselves in college.
“Everyone wants their kid to be competitive,” says the mother of one twelve year old attending rigorous, daily, two-hour sessions five days a week at one of the many private sports facilities opening up throughout the nation, as this lucrative business is aggressively marketed to parents – at $35.00 per 2-hour session.
To an observer of life and culture in this country the comment, spoken with such obvious enthusiasm by this mother, encompasses virtually everything wrong with America today. Everybody in the US is competing with everyone else. There is no togetherness, except within families where all are dedicated to doing better than the folks next door, or further down the street.
Competition, the iron core of educational policies in this country for decades, is driving people apart from their neighbors. It’s the reason for those ridiculous car stickers:
“My Kid’s an Honor’s Student”,
or,
“My Gamer Kid Fragged Your Honor Student.”
We’ve all seen them.
At town boundaries throughout America stand old metal signs proclaiming the athletic achievements of once young townspeople, now either long dead or drawing their retirement pensions.
Who cares? Obviously, America cares; but why?
Why is it so important that your kid jumps higher, runs faster, or throws a ball further than the rest of the kids in the school? Is it so you can brag about it to your friends and make them feel inferior because their kids are just no good at sports?
If so, you should be ashamed, and you deserve to have no friends.
Competition is like religion, it segregates and divides, not just this country, but the world. Once, it wasn’t like that. Fifty years ago there was ‘sportsmanship’. It was the taking part, not the winning, that mattered. Professional athletes were barred from the Olympic Games. It was good to win a medal for one’s country, but it was the being there that really counted.
Now, American parents shell out thousands of dollars and ruin their kids’ childhoods by pushing them to limits of physical endurance no child should have to tolerate. All in the name of “Competition”.
There is another way.
Why not take “Competition” out of life altogether, and replace it with “Co-operation”?
Instead of the Jones’s wearing themselves and their kids out, by pushing them relentlessly towards achieving more than the Adams’ kids next door, wouldn’t it be nice if they all cooperated and helped each other to do well?
We could all sport new bumper stickers:
“Cooperation’s Cool, Competition’s for Clods.”
It’s a lesson that could also be carried into other aspects of life: the boardroom, the shop floor, the office, Capital Hill, the White House, attitudes towards other nations…….the list is almost endless.
One day it might even bring peace to this world, and we could all play our games and enjoy taking part – without that obsessive fear of losing.
NOTE: For those unaware of the meaning of the verb “to frag”: “Frag is a term from the Vietnam War, most commonly meaning to assassinate an unpopular member of one’s own fighting unit by dropping a fragmentation grenade into the victim’s tent at night.”
Better ways