Actually made it into the office today to find the normal collection of bafflement and wonder. Got far more work done from home over the last couple of days than I did in the office over the previous week. Even got time for a sushi lunch with friend Caroline and baby Jack. Going to try to get people to let me work from home at least one day a week. I need the break. Only been back today and already ulcers hurt. They never bloody hurt at home.
Watched Black Hawk Down the other night. Incredible film. Very realistic and not at all as jingoistic as I though it would be. It made it very clear that these guys fought for their buddies not their country and it’s politics. It makes a mockery of the nonsense politicians spout about nationalism. These guys don’t go to war for some political ideology. Indeed more importantly they don’t want to die for one. They go to war so as to not let their mates down. They die for honour and to protect the man next to them.
Perhaps the most incredible part of the film only takes about five minutes to unfold. Two Delta Force Sergeants, snipers in a orbiting helicopter, volunteer to land next to one of the crashed Black Hawks and protect the crew until ground forces can be sent to the site of the crash. They are only armed with their sniper rifles and know there is a good chance that no friendly forces will get to them before the Somalis killed them. But they volunteered – knowing it was almost certainly going to cost them their lives. They landed and held off the Somalis until they ran out of ammunition and then they were overwhelmed and killed. The pilot of the helicopter was captured. They were the first US troops awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour posthumously since the Vietnam War. But they didn’t do it for the any potential medal or glory. They did it because it was the right thing to do for their perspective – to protect their mates from harm even if it is at the cost of their own lives.
Though not at all a religious man, indeed probably I am closest in creed to a secular humanist, I have often pondered over a phrase in the Bible – John 15:13: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” I think it’s one of the great truths of the world. Such love for your fellow human that you’d die for them. I firmly believe that there is no glory in dealing death and the killing of others. Nor any honour inherent in being a soldier. The honour is in how we live and in how we die. Living with honour means living honestly, with love, with passion, with loyalty, with respect and with kindness. Dying with honour means dying with dignity and courage and if required offering your life with love for the protection of of others. Perhaps though the sentiment is expressed above within the trappings of religion it is a sentiment that exists to a degree within secular humanist values.
These secular humanist sentiments and values make this story one that makes me both despair and hope for humanity. These men, in order to protect their mates, killed others who would harm them. I see no glory or honour in shedding the blood of other humans. Killing and the use of violence for political ends is abhorrent. But the courage displayed by these men in sacrificing their lives for the sake of others is a powerful display of courage – thinking of others before themselves – to die to protect their friends. If we could harness that courage for non-violent ends – in service of humanity and not in service of bloodshed and violence then we would turn the world on end. A dream I think and one I fear that is not likely to come to pass.
Listening to: Tom Waits.
Reading: About to start Finder by Greg Rucka.
