The New York Times documents “the costs of war” with its award-winning team At War, using digitized collections of recorded violence - close-up stories of tragedy, personal recollections of pain, and hyper fixations on fear-mongering - as an empathetic political device. Although effective in rallying public support for humanitarian aid, ‘At War’ raises an important philosophical question about our direction:
War has been humanity’s oldest friend and youngest enemy. As we dig into the recesses of our collective mind, we have yet to unearth a record of time unmarred by conflict and strife.
Yet, however familiar we have become with "War" as a global phenomenon - as opposed to "war" in its local instances - we continue to be startled by its ever-changing persona. We have hung thousands of its portraits in our hallways attempting to define its identity so that - once we have learned of its character- we may search for its sibling, Peace. Although we remain far from painting War’s complete picture, we have found one feature of War across culture: death. Death has been represented by personified form, by dramatic reenactment, and by symbolic motif in historical galleries and exhibitions around the world. With so many cultures capsized by conflict-driven death, we would be ignorant to bypass death when addressing War. However, we should take care to avoid mistaking death for War in our efforts to find Peace.
The soft problem of War should be recreated into a hard problem since identifying the issue correctly is the first step towards a viable solution. What exactly is War? What is not War? Methodologies developed for policy-making during international warfare are helpful for this brief analysis of War. Contemporary theories on foreign policy emphasize that successful procedures rely on the accurate identification of the adversarial Other1. Thus, our question of the Other sets up the framework wherein a counter-strategy can be appropriately formed.
In the history of traditional visual art, death is often conceptualized as the corporeal Other - the common enemy - clothed under the guise of War and Disease. Up until the 20th century, visualizations of death in War typically revolved around icons and depictions of violence steeped in psychological and historical connotations. Death in War as a physical symbol, as in the memento mori of The Apotheosis of War (Vasily Vereshchagin, 1871), began manifesting into stylistic and structural choices, as in the morphology of Guernica (Pablo Picasso, 1937). Its chrysalis into a metaphysical enemy is exemplified by the complete avoidance of recognizable organization and form, as hallmarked by the freedom of expression in Convergence (Jackson Pollock, 1952). As warfare shifted away from other nation-states to warfare against generalized concepts - e.g. the War on Communism, the War on Terrorism, and the War on Drugs - an overarching trend towards abstractionism developed as a response to the corporeal Other becoming ethereal.
For example, the War on Viruses occurred during the timespan of the three aforementioned works. Enemies are no longer men but organisms invisible to the naked eye - the H1N1 flu, the spread of HIV/AIDs, the Ebola outbreak, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Sword-and-shield battles with monarchs gave way to vaccine-and-mask battles with viral strains. Death now comes from our neighbors, our family, and our lovers. During havoc, the familiar is forced to recede once again as death remains both our old friend and ever-changing enemy. As previous comforts of touch and conversation become villainized, uncertainty becomes constant and death erupts from the rise of chaos. We rely on the structure of government, of information, and of research to be the equal and opposing force capable of halting the rising count of unmarked graveyards. But when our two crutches of federal policy and scientific progress begin crumbling under our own weight, we are left with no choice but to embrace the uneven terrain with our bare hands and knees.
Creative production spurred on by perpetual destruction has transformed our perception of death from an explicit interpretation - symbols and actions - to an implicit interpretation - abstracted tension suspended between order and chaos. Over the history of visual art, abstractionism had transformed from a mere feature of communication into a language in and of itself. Incorporation of the abstract transformed from iconographic tool to philosophical process. The divorce between the concrete and the abstract evolved from our experience of death becoming ethereal. When the Other is corporeal and approachable, then we intrinsically categorize and classify death with a reasonable sense of cognitive associative order (definitive representation, e.g. a black raven). When the Other is ethereal and aloof, then we abandon our naturally structured habits and gravitate towards the unresolvable push-and-pull between chaos and order in the attempt to understand the unrecognizable (subjective portrayal, e.g. the randomized splatter of paint). Death’s crystallization as a metaphysical and conceptual enemy (abstracted tension) has labeled the introduction of chaos as the underlying source of death.
Assuming that Dualism remains a common-place understanding of reality in our societies, humanity’s universally-experienced Chaos should then be resolved by a universally-applied solution of Order. As Yin is balanced by Yang and as Good is at odds with Evil, Chaos is offset by Order … or is it? In our current era, the reception of chaos is accepted as a highly personal experience due to contemporary ideologies enforcing relativism over absolutism. Chaos is no longer a universal experience, rather, it is localized and unique to each individual. For example, a room with clumps of clothing and paper strewn about may appear messy to a visitor but is organized to its resident. This relativistic approach to chaos fundamentally nullifies the universality of dualistic approaches. The disagreements stimulated by nuance substantially contribute towards the lack of a universal consensus, making it near impossible to locate a universal solution. If the solution to War is relativistic, then why are we looking for an absolutist solution? Why is there a search for an absolutist solution or truth if we do not believe in its existence? Effective progress demands clarity in both approach and outcome.
Tracing back on our trail, we find that a categorical error has been made from a cognitive bias commonly activated during times of crisis. The availability heuristic explains our tendency to recollect memories quickly based on how recently and how emotionally charged they were when they were made2 . As we often do with the people we meet, we have made snap judgments about War based on its most frontal impact. When we encountered War time and time again, we persistently felt the loss, pain, and grief that accompany death. Death, the signet of War, has sealed the fates of individuals with the weight of tragedy and agony; its impressions run deep and clear in flowing red. While we acutely focus on War’s initial impressions, we have subconsciously substituted one of its parts - death - for its whole. Rather than remaining a component of a greater schema, death has become “Death”; we have overblown the classification of the nose to the magnitude of a whole face. We have erroneously assigned our trials with death to our efforts with War. Although death, the corporeal and ethereal Other, is commonly shared between War and Disease, humanity’s ongoing conflicts are not with Death. The deep emotional and spiritual earthquakes caused by death is significant and should be duly addressed. However, we should not disproportionately hyperfocusing on death’s role in the pursuit of Peace. Categorical solutions require categorical consistency. Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace, not Death and Peace.
References:
- Naṣr, Vali (2013). The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat. New York, NY: Anchor Books.
- Tversky, Amos; Kahneman, Daniel (1973). "Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability". Cognitive Psychology. 5 (2): 207–232. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(73)90033-9.