Before You Ask

I meant to post this for Memorial Day, but didn't get around to it.

As a veteran of two fronts of a war (or of two wars, take your pick), I am often asked a startlingly insensitive question: "Did you ever kill anyone?" In the first place, this betrays a shocking ignorance of the structure of the military: only about 1 in 10 military jobs carry a person into direct combat. So most of us never even fire our rifles. Some didn't even carry one. Yet all of us put ourselves in harm's way, and all of us served in important capacities. Asking this question implies that the only *real* military job is a direct-combat job, which is demeaning to the 90% of us who were not in such roles. So before you even consider asking the question, "Did you kill anyone?" think to ask, "What did you do in the service?"

But the more important issue is this: killing, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how justified it may be, is intensely personal, and intensely distressing. No one *wants* to kill--no one sane, anyway. And doing so is one of the most psychologically damaging things that a person can do. Asking a member of the combat arms if he's ever killed anyone would be something like asking a grieving widow, "What was it like the first time you saw your husband's dead body?" That's a grossly inappropriate question that we would never dare to utter. Yet many, many people have asked me if I've killed. It is only because I have not that I have been able to answer without deep distress. If I had, I imagine it would be a extraordinarily distressing experience--killing ought never, never to be reduced to the level of casual conversation.

I don't know if you will be tempted to ask that question of a veteran. But if you are--or if you know someone who would--you might consider reflecting on the poem "Sadiq," by Iraq war veteran Brian Turner:

It is a condition of wisdom in the archer to be patient

because when the arrow leaves the bow, it returns no more.
~Sa’di

It should make you shake and sweat,
nightmare you, strand you in a desert
of irrevocable desolation, the consequences
seared into the vein, no matter what adrenaline
feeds the muscle its courage, no matter
what god shines down on you, no matter
what crackling pain and anger
you carry in your fists, my friend,
it should break your heart to kill.

On Progress

I recently listened to a TED talk in which the speaker made numerous references to the "progress" that he perceives as being attendant to the advancement of scientific knowledge. Now, I'm as big a fan of science and the products of science as the next guy, but I have to wonder about this idea of progress.
The main idea, when scientists and laymen talk about "progress" is not mereadvancement in understanding (e.g. the shift in understanding to a dynamic view of the universe from the static view) but advancement in the quality of human life that comes as a result of scientific knowledge. An obvious candidate for progress of this sort would be modern medicine, or, perhaps, communication technologies. And again, I am as much in awe of these as anybody else. But the notion of progress also seems to include the idea of not just improving the quality of life, but of solving humanity's basic problems. Medicine serves as a good illustration: it's not just that we are enabled to live longer and healthier, but that that is a solution to a deep and persistent problem (that being, I suppose, short and unhealthy lives).
Furthermore, the idea of progress seems to have a utopian dimension; one might even say an eschatological one. The idea here is that given enough time, science will solveall of humanity's persistent problems. It seems to be the case that people generally think that given enough time, science can explain any phenomenon. And if that's the case, then the improvements to human life via science will ultimately solve all those problems.
I recently listened to a story on NPR about advancements in the science of hearing.Hearing loss occurs when the sensory hair cells in the inner ear die--and in humans, they don't grow back (as they do for some other animals). The experts on this program, though, talked about research being done to try to get human sensory hair cells to regrow. And it occurred to me what that would mean. Just imagine: if human sensory hair cells could be made to regrow, then my 92-year-old grandfather, who suffers from severe hearing loss resulting from military service and years around farm machinery, would be able to hear every bit as well as he could when he was a 18-year-old man! Just think: the problem of hearing loss might be permanently solved!
But as I marveled at that idea, I asked myself, "What will this accomplish?" Certainly, if scientists could accomplish that goal, it would be amazing. We'd have made a real advance in our understanding of human hearing, and would have the ability to solve one of humanity's persistent problems. But the trouble is that our real problems, the ones that are in most desperate need of solving, seem to be those that are completely beyond scientific solution.
Consider, for example, that the 20th century, which saw incredible scientific advances, more perhaps than any other era of human history, was also the bloodiest century in all of human history. Between the first and second world wars alone, 85 million people were killed. Destruction on that scale is only possible with the advances in scientific understanding that also produced, for example, penicillin. 6 million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis, a sum only possible with the implementation of industrial engineering, the same advances that also produced, for example, modern means of transportation.
It seems, then, that we are every bit as prone to deploy the fruit of scientific advancement in the pursuit of destruction as in the quest for the betterment of humanity. As with any tool, the sciences are wielded by human beings. And as with any tool, the sciences can be used both to help and to hurt humankind.
In the end, it seems to me that hatred, jealousy, spite, wrath, discrimination, ambition and all of humanity's other less noble impulses are the real culprits to blame for human suffering (excepting, of course, the vagaries of the natural world). If the darker side of our nature is to blame for the misery of the human condition, I have a hard time seeing how scientific advancements will ultimately liberate us from our tortured condition. For all the wonderful products of science and technology, human suffering persists. If these are mere window dressing to a drama that continues to be played out unabated, then I have to conclude that the ultimate solution to our problems will not be found in "progress," but must be looked for elsewhere.