A Brief History....

[poliphilo]

We are very new.

I find this a comforting thought.

When I consider the seediness, depravity, cruelty and greed of humankind, I reflect that we are only beginners. We are still practicing; we haven't worked it out yet; we have time to improve. We have been around in our present form for a few million years- nothing in evolutionary terms- and civilization- the attempt to live in a civil society- is a very recent development.

We have only had writing for about three thousand years.

The written history of my own country goes back (and then only patchily) for two thousand years. If we want to know what happened before that we have to get out our spades and trowels and dig.

Two thousand, three thousand, four thousand years- these are ridiculously brief stretches of time. We have emerged from the forests, blinked and looked around a bit. That's all we have had time for. We are still little more than beasts.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My son served a tour of duty in Basra. He came back having seen and done things he didn't want to talk about.

But his duties included barging into people's homes and terrorizing them.

fourthorns works in TV, editing film for the news broadcasts. She talks about how all the carnage is edited out of footage of the war. How she can show a burning vehicle but not the evisarated corpse lying alongside.

I sometimes think we should be made to watch these things.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

How terrible for your son, to carry such a burden.

We spend our lives teaching our children to care gently for others and to first be kind; then somehow, in the army, these young, idealistic people must be trained to unlearn all of it and still must stay sane.

It can't be an easy way back again--childhood has been stripped away, and somehow the sensitive mind must find a way to understand what must surely have felt like psychosis.

It is unfair to dump all this onto our young people without having to in some measure (even if only remotely, through television) experience what they are suffering, for suffering it is.

My own husband, who came out of Vietnam just before the action began, was still deeply hurt by things he saw there, and he would never talk about it. But one day, not that many years after he was back from overseas, we were walking in a Florida tropical park when a lizard startled him; in an instant, he was crouched on the ground, trembling.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My son is a career soldier. It's a while since I last saw him. He's currently in the Falklands I believe.

We're aren't alienated, but neither do we seek out one another's company. He was on leave last week but he didn't contact me.

This is an issue I know I haven't faced properly. The most I do is tiptoe up to it (as here) then run away.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read Pearl Buck's book Dragon Seed? I've never found a book that better illustrated the consequences of war on the human psyche.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

No that's entirely new to me.

The only thing I know of Pearl Buck's is the film of The Good Earth- with all those locust swarms (achieved, I believe, with coffee grounds- and very convincing too!)

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Pearl Buck, who won the Nobel Prize for The Good Earth, was the daughter of missionaries in China. She lived through war there, and her family fled.

Her beautifully written, deceptively simple books were first written in Chinese and then translated into English. Her book, Dragon Seed is one of the most powerful books I have ever read, and I have read it many times.

I've also read The Good Earth many times. She is a wonderful story teller, and her love for the Chinese people, particularly the country people, is clear.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I must add her to the ever mounting list of people I have to read. Didn't she win the Nobel Prize, or am I thinking of someone else?

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

She won the Nobel for The Good Earth.

Her books about the simple country people of China in the early days of this century, particularly The Good Earth (which is actually a trilogy, but the first book of the series won the Prize) and Dragon Seed, are just brilliantly written--and lovingly written, with such a wise understanding of people. And her descriptions are superb, as are her plots, and her books to me are the finest kind of fiction writing, which really is telling wonderful tales.

I am trying very hard to convince you, because I would love to share her books!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You're the second person recently who has tried to convince me to read Buck. I guess I should take this as a sign. Besides, I trust your judgement.

Guess I'll go look for her on Amazon :)