Honoring The Pack
It seems it always comes down to words and meaning with Luky. No matter what we're discussing - time travel, the meaning of life, religion and God, politics and war, concepts like honor, freedom, love - it doesn't matter . . . the first thing he wants to know is how I define the term. I hate it when we don't even get into a heated discussion just because we carefully define our terms and then discover the disagreement we thought was there simply isn't! Where's the fun in that!?!?
On the other hand, that doesn't mean the argument goes away - it's just that the argument we THOUGHT we were going to have goes away. Defining terms usually reveals that the initial debate is non-existent . . . it's like starting with an energetic difference of opinion regarding directions to Portland only to learn that one party is talking about Portland, Oregon and the other is talking about Portland, Maine. Luky may be adamant about determining the meaning of "Portland" (in this example), but once we do we still often disagree on how to go about getting there!
I suppose I've come around to his basic strategy, though. As much as the careful defining of terms will often divert the anticipated heated fun of battle, that heated fun is rarely omitted completely. I have to applaud him for getting us focused on a debate the outcome of which might actually mean something.
For the past couple of weeks he's been arguing with me about the word "honor." To be more specific, he was poking me about the term, "honor the troops."
Luky says that we use that phrase to mean several different things, and that our use of the phrase is confused even more by our abusive use of the word.
"Honor," says Luky, "is one of those strange human terms that has come to imply something the word never meant. What you've done is to take a word that originally meant something like, 'the state of meriting esteem and respect' and turned it into something like, 'representative of my (the speaker's) specific views'."
"What do you mean?" I asked him. "Are you suggesting that when I say something like, 'honor the troops' that I'm saying, rather, 'you should feel about the troops exactly the way I feel about the troops'?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying! You can easily prove this for yourself by considering all the different things that humans actually THINK the phrase means. Some even seem to think it means 'every creature in a uniform is infallible'."
"Creature?" I asked him. "Am I missing something?"
"Well, you certainly don't think that the honor of troops belongs solely to highly intelligent, uniformed homo sapiens, do you?"
To be honest, he caught me off guard. What the heck - I started thinking - half the kids we send to war are too young, inexperienced and undereducated to have a deep sense of geopolitical history . . . not to criticize them for their lack of thorough understanding . . . after all, if they really knew everything about where they're going, and why, many of them might refuse to go in the first place. So, I quickly concluded that understanding could not be a requirement of a soldier's meriting honor. I didn't say it out loud to Luky, but he could tell he had me thinking - and my mind ran through the logic (or illogic) of the knowledge as a requirement for honor. It simply occurred to me that a young kid with a IQ of 75 (that is, among the lowest 5% of the population), and who can barely comprehend the manual for his automatic weapon, let alone the rationale for his mission assignments or the overall cause and strategy for the global conflict to which he has been deployed ought to be considered just as honorable for his service as someone with an IQ of 140, who had thoroughly read and understood every historical and geopolitical expert account pertaining to the current relevant circumstances.
"Okay," I looked at Luky, probably sounding as if I had finally reached the conclusion at which he expected to arrive eventually. "So, I get it! A soldier's honor cannot be discriminatively applied based on his relative intelligence or ignorance."
"Yeah," Luky responded, "that, too! But I was hoping you'd think that everyone keeps talking about honoring the troops and no one stops to remember that the troops include some of my good friends!"
"Oh," I said, recognizing that in my sweating over an analysis of his intention I had missed the basic truth - we all want to honor our OWN KIND first.
Out of genuine respect for Luky's point - and the significant truth of it - I decided to include a couple of links: (http://www.militaryworkingdog.com/), (http://www.defendamerica.mil/articles/mar2003/a031803a.html).
I noted, by the way, that several of Luky's "friends" are stationed at Miramar!
On the other hand, that doesn't mean the argument goes away - it's just that the argument we THOUGHT we were going to have goes away. Defining terms usually reveals that the initial debate is non-existent . . . it's like starting with an energetic difference of opinion regarding directions to Portland only to learn that one party is talking about Portland, Oregon and the other is talking about Portland, Maine. Luky may be adamant about determining the meaning of "Portland" (in this example), but once we do we still often disagree on how to go about getting there!
I suppose I've come around to his basic strategy, though. As much as the careful defining of terms will often divert the anticipated heated fun of battle, that heated fun is rarely omitted completely. I have to applaud him for getting us focused on a debate the outcome of which might actually mean something.
For the past couple of weeks he's been arguing with me about the word "honor." To be more specific, he was poking me about the term, "honor the troops."
Luky says that we use that phrase to mean several different things, and that our use of the phrase is confused even more by our abusive use of the word.
"Honor," says Luky, "is one of those strange human terms that has come to imply something the word never meant. What you've done is to take a word that originally meant something like, 'the state of meriting esteem and respect' and turned it into something like, 'representative of my (the speaker's) specific views'."
"What do you mean?" I asked him. "Are you suggesting that when I say something like, 'honor the troops' that I'm saying, rather, 'you should feel about the troops exactly the way I feel about the troops'?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying! You can easily prove this for yourself by considering all the different things that humans actually THINK the phrase means. Some even seem to think it means 'every creature in a uniform is infallible'."
"Creature?" I asked him. "Am I missing something?"
"Well, you certainly don't think that the honor of troops belongs solely to highly intelligent, uniformed homo sapiens, do you?"
To be honest, he caught me off guard. What the heck - I started thinking - half the kids we send to war are too young, inexperienced and undereducated to have a deep sense of geopolitical history . . . not to criticize them for their lack of thorough understanding . . . after all, if they really knew everything about where they're going, and why, many of them might refuse to go in the first place. So, I quickly concluded that understanding could not be a requirement of a soldier's meriting honor. I didn't say it out loud to Luky, but he could tell he had me thinking - and my mind ran through the logic (or illogic) of the knowledge as a requirement for honor. It simply occurred to me that a young kid with a IQ of 75 (that is, among the lowest 5% of the population), and who can barely comprehend the manual for his automatic weapon, let alone the rationale for his mission assignments or the overall cause and strategy for the global conflict to which he has been deployed ought to be considered just as honorable for his service as someone with an IQ of 140, who had thoroughly read and understood every historical and geopolitical expert account pertaining to the current relevant circumstances.
"Okay," I looked at Luky, probably sounding as if I had finally reached the conclusion at which he expected to arrive eventually. "So, I get it! A soldier's honor cannot be discriminatively applied based on his relative intelligence or ignorance."
"Yeah," Luky responded, "that, too! But I was hoping you'd think that everyone keeps talking about honoring the troops and no one stops to remember that the troops include some of my good friends!"
"Oh," I said, recognizing that in my sweating over an analysis of his intention I had missed the basic truth - we all want to honor our OWN KIND first.
Out of genuine respect for Luky's point - and the significant truth of it - I decided to include a couple of links: (http://www.militaryworkingdog.com/), (http://www.defendamerica.mil/articles/mar2003/a031803a.html).
I noted, by the way, that several of Luky's "friends" are stationed at Miramar!
posted by RAM at 8:49 AM
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