The Unoriginal Muse

It’s one of those conclusion times again. Oh yes, ignore my previous post about commenting, I realised that my oh so valuable opinion was much needed.

Yeah.

Seriously though I realised withdrawing myself from the conversations was actually arrogance, assuming I was better than people simply because I didn’t agree with them. Then I spotted my quite up top and remembered myself again. So that’s that out of the way.

Recently I have noticed attempts to frame the current conflict in terms that make it “pro”. The naming of things is an important step in a man’s attempt to deal with those things. We name diseases because we want to know what we’re facing. We name foes. We find out the name of our enemies whenever possible. We even name the weather. Hurricane. Storm. We anthropomorphise it too, with gods and spirits and the like. Loki and Thor, Hurricane (again), Jove. The angel of death. We humans desire concrete enemies with names because a named enemy is easier to fight.

I’ve found, generally, that man stands a far better chance of fighting against something than for something. A minority will have the noble ideal of fighting for freedom, for justice but the vast majority couldn’t give a flying fig. They fight for money, and they fight against the bad guys. The current attempt to frame our fight in terms of “for civilisation” or “fir the west” might work for the noble few, but the majority want a baddie they can take pot-shots at. Why else would Bush Derangement Syndrome be so prevalent on the left if not for the fact that people need a bogey-man to blame their ills on? What did Bush do to them? Not much… but he’s symbolic.

Likewise we really need something to fight against. The ates of Vienna post I linked above contains an attempt (derailed, sadly) to discuss what we should collectively call ourselves. The most popular term up to now has been counterjihad. Against Jihad. We fight to counter it. It works, it creates a unifying common purpose. Unfortunately there are always people who try and frame the fight in terms of what are we fighting for? High ideals, of freedom, of western civilisation and the like are wheeled out. People start to argue over what, exactly, these things mean. What is freedom? What ios freedom in the United States, vs freedom in France, or England? What is western civilisation? Is it McDonalds? Is it Ikea, or Barcelona, or the louvre? Is it the highlands of Scotland or the walls of Byzantium?

Deciding what we’re fighting for is perhaps something best left for when we’ve beaten what we’re fighting against.