The war in israel/Palestine/Gaza resumed. I was discussing it.
Israel is a very diversed made up of various sects, beliefs, backgrounds and countries of origins. Religious, traditionalists, ultradharedy, sedulars, liberals, immegrants from every country in the world all looking down at each other and nursing complexities, superiority or inferiority conflicts. The only thing in common is fighting for their survival against the arabs who want to throw the Jews in the sea.
Here are extracts from
Francis Fukuyama (1992). The End of History And the Last Man. New York The Free Press
on the need of war as a way for cirtizens and people to unite and nurse experiences of pride, patriotism, being united and recognised
There is a growing issue of socio-economic gap and extremely high cost of living. There are shortages of affordable housing in the desired cities and a better quality of life in the centre of Israel and the large cities than in the rest of the country. This is as the country iis moving from the socialist model of the pat of a state that takes care of all its citizens from conception to burial and provides them with economic security, the highest and free quality of education, healthcare and nursing, as well as heavily subsised transportantion, food and housing. And into a neo-liberal model of a extreme wealth and luxury to the few and people working for the private owned companirs, shares holders and board who are only intersted in making money.
Does the war help?
What will happen when all the wars are over and people will want to equality, dignity and humanity and their security again? Who will they fight once the Arabs are no lnger the enemy?
p. 328
The decline of community life suggests that in the future, we risk becoming secure and self-absorbed last men, devoid of thymotic striving for higher goals in our pursuit of private comforts.
But opposite danger exists too
We will return to being first men engaged in bloody and pointless battles, only this time with modern weapons.
The two related the absent of regular and constructive outlets for megalothymia may simply lead to its later resurgence in an extreme and pathological form
It is reasonable to wonder whether all people will believe that the kinds of struggles and sacrifices possible in a self-satisfied and prosperous liberal democracy are sufficient to call forth what is highest in man.
The horizon of human possibilities that they define will not be ultimately satisfying for the most thymotic natures.
In particular, the virtues and ambitions called forth by war are unlikely to find expression in liberal democracies.
p. 329
How long megatholymia will be satisfied with metaphorical wars and symbolic victories is an open question.
Some risking their lives in a violent battle thereby proving they are free
Deliberately seek discomfort and sacrifice because pain will be the only way they have of proving definitely that they can think well of themselves that they remain human beings
Hegel – as opposed here to his interpreter, Kojeve – understood that the need to feel pride in one’s pride in one’s humanness would not necessarily be satisfied by the “peace and prosperity” of the end of history.
Men would face the constant danger of degenerating from citizens to mere bourgeois, and feeling contempt for themselves in the process.
p. 329
Hegel believed that without the possibility of war and sacrifices demanded by it, men would grow soft and self-absorbed; society would degenerate into a morass of selfish hedonism and community would ultimately dissolve.
Fear of man’s “lord and master, Death” was a force like no other, capable of drawing men outside of themselves and reminding them that they were not isolated atoms, but members of communities built around shared ideals.
A liberal democracy that could fight a short and decisive war every generation or so to defend its own liberty and independence would be far healthier and more satisfied than one that experienced nothing but continuous peace.
p. 330
Hegel says
War is horrific but also experiences of heroism and sacrifice, friendship and valore take on new and more vivid meanings, and life transformed by the memory of having participated in something greater than themselves
Common purpose in the quiet days of peace would be hard
Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause.
of a just cause because
They will struggle for the sake of struggle.
They will struggle…out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by a peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they struggle agaiubst the peace and prosperity, and against democracy.
Paris 1968 example – France one of most free and prosperous societies no struggle and sacrifice in their middle-class lives went to streets
Rejected life in a society in which ideals had somehow become impossible.
p. 331
World War I
European publics simply wanted war because they were fed up with dullness and l;ack of community in civil life.
Public demonstrations for war across Europe
Much of the exuberance of those crowds reflected the feeling that war meant national unity and citizenship at long last, an overcoming of the divisions between capitalist and proletariat, Protestant and Catholic, farmer and worker, that characterized civil society.
Testimony
wanted Sense of togetherness and war
1914 – Europe experienced hundred years of peace since the last major continent-wide conflict settled by the peace of Vienna
This period century saw the flowering of modern technological civilization as Europe industrialized
People became bored and wanted and demonstrated for war. This led to World War I and World War II and about hundred million people dead.
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