RE: Aztec Warfare, Western Warfare

I disagree - war is not an occasion. Rather there is a continuum between
war and peace; the situation at any one time is somewhere along that
continuum.
>War seems to be an occasion in which one group of people "attacks" another
>group in the name of conquering that group, plundering it, or defending
>one's own group from a real or imagined threat. Relying on what one
>perceives, we say that warfare revolves around "aggression."
Warfare tends to occurs towards one end of the continuum and tends not to
occur at the other end of the continuum.

If you doubt this, consider the evolution of the past. War evolves into
Peace. Peace evolves into War. Hostility evolves from diplomatic jousting
to rattling of sabres to clash of steel against flesh. Humanity.

Lionel Boxer CD PhD MBA - 0411267256 - lboxer@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sustainability and leadership - see http://intergon.net
Victorian Scottish Regiment
NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT (none may attack me with impunity)
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Melbourne Volunteer Rifle Regiment 150th Anniversary --
http://intergon.net/rifles
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>From: "Orion Anderson" <libraryofsocialscience@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>To: "Foucault" <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Aztec Warfare, Western Warfare
>Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 12:17:16 -0500
>
>AZTEC WARFARE, WESTERN WARFARE
>
>Human beings once believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Based on
>what one perceives, it did and does appear that this is the case. It turns
>out, however, that our perception does not reflect reality. The sun only
>appears to be revolving around the earth.
>
>War seems to be an occasion in which one group of people "attacks" another
>group in the name of conquering that group, plundering it, or defending
>one's own group from a real or imagined threat. Relying on what one
>perceives, we say that warfare revolves around "aggression."
>
>The fundamental purpose of Aztec warfare was to capture warriors in order
>to
>bring them to the sacrificial block--where their hearts were extracted by
>priests. According to Lopez Austin, "As long as men could offer blood and
>the hearts of captives taken in combat, the power of the sun god would not
>decline, and he would continue on his course above the earth." To keep the
>sun moving in its course so that "darkness should not overwhelm the world
>forever," Jacques Soustelle says, it was necessary to "feed it every day
>with its food, 'the precious water'-that is, with human blood."
>
>
> _____
>
>
>The complete paper by Richard A. Koenigsberg is now available on-line.
>
>
>To read: AZTEC WARFARE, WESTERN WARFARE: The Soldier as Sacrificial Victim,
>
>
>PLEASE <http://home.earthlink.net/~libraryofsocialscience/> CLICK HERE or
>visit:
>
>http://home.earthlink.net/~libraryofsocialscience/
>
>
>
> _____
>
>Unlike the Aztecs, we in the West do not conceive the purpose of warfare to
>be sacrificial. Rather, we imagine that wars are fought for "real" reasons
>or purposes. We understand the death or maiming of soldiers in battle as
>by-products or "collateral damage" occurring as human beings attempt to
>achieve practical or political objectives. We do not say that wars are
>initiated in order to produce sacrificial victims, although the result of
>every war is dead soldiers.
>
>Based on analysis of the First World War, I suggest that it is worthwhile
>to
>entertain the hypothesis that Western warfare--like its Aztec
>counterpart--represents a form of sacrifice. During the four years that
>this
>war was waged-1914-1918-- men were asked to get out of trenches and to
>advance toward the enemy line where they were met with machine-gun fire and
>artillery shells. The result was perpetual slaughter. It is estimated that
>nine- million men were killed in the First World War, nearly twenty-two
>million wounded and eight million captured or missing.
>
>The death toll for one five month period in 1916-- during which the Battle
>of the Somme and Battle of Verdun took place--was almost a million men.
>This
>represented more than 6,600 men killed every day, 277 every hour, and
>nearly
>five each minute. To this day, historians find it difficult to comprehend
>or
>explain the bloodbath.
>
>Writing in the midst of the First World War, writer Maurice Barres praised
>the French soldiers for dying on a daily basis:
>
>
>Oh you young men whose value is so much greater than ours! They love life,
>but even were they dead, France will be rebuilt from their souls. The
>sublime sun of youth sinks into the sea and becomes the dawn which will
>hereafter rise again.
>
>Soustell notes that the Aztecs believed that the warrior who died in battle
>or upon the stone of sacrifice "brought the sun to life" and became a
>"companion of the sun." The conquering sun was the "reincarnation of a dead
>warrior."
>
>Barres speaks about the French nation in terms nearly identical to Aztec
>descriptions of the life of the sun. He declares that French soldiers-- the
>"sublime sun of youth"--will sink into the sea to become the "dawn which
>will rise again." Like the rising of the Aztec sun, France would be
>resurrected from the bodies and souls of dead warriors.
>
>P. H. Pearse, founder of the Irish Revolutionary movement, claimed that
>nations were invigorated when "warmed with the red wine of the
>battlefield."
>An enthralled Pearse observed the outbreak of the First World War:
>
>
>The last sixteen months have been the most glorious in the history of
>Europe. Heroism has come back to the earth. Such august homage was never
>before offered to God as this, the homage of millions of lives given gladly
>for love of country.
>
>If Pearse's representation of this war as a form of "august homage" offered
>to God and country is accurate--then the primary difference between Aztec
>warfare and the First World War lies in the magnitude of the carnage.
>
>Many people claim to be astonished by terrorists who blow themselves up in
>the process of attempting to kill their enemies. Many would also find the
>Aztec ritual of heart extraction shocking and painful to contemplate. Yet
>we
>barely reflect upon our own suicidal political rituals, for example the
>First World War in which nine million people were killed and twenty-two
>million wounded. The vast casualties were the result of millions of men
>acting precisely like contemporary terrorists: allowing their bodies to be
>blown to bits as they attempted to blow up the bodies of their enemies.
>
>In our conventional way of thinking, we say that a soldier has been killed
>by the enemy. When French or British soldiers got out of trenches during
>the
>First World War, ran toward enemy lines and were massacred, we say that
>Germans killed them. When Germans got out of trenches and ran toward the
>enemy line, we say that they were killed by the English or French.
>
>Wouldn't it be more parsimonious to say that the French soldiers were
>killed
>by the French nation and its leaders-who asked them to get out of trenches
>and run into artillery shells and machine gun fire? Wouldn't it be more
>accurate to state that German soldiers were killed by the German nation and
>its leaders-who also asked their soldiers to get out of trenches and run
>into artillery shells and machine gun fire? In the West, we disguise the
>sacrificial meaning of warfare by pretending that the other nation is
>responsible for killing soldiers.
>
>Joanna Bourke, in her book Dismembering the Male, observes that the most
>important point to be made about the male body during the First World War
>was that it was "intended to be mutilated." We view war as a drive for
>conquest and outlet for energetic activity even as its fundamental purpose
>and inevitable consequence is injury and death. We encourage the soldier's
>delusion of masculine virility and call him a hero-in order to lure him
>into
>becoming a sacrificial victim.
>
>
>
>
> _____
>
>E-mail: libraryofsocialscience@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Phone: 718-393-1081
>Web: http://home.earthlink.net/~libraryofsocialscience/
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