Medievil Wars

[Miss Magic]

Better than fighting the modern way?

so it's not closed too quickly, I'll leave it up to y'all to think what 'better' and 'fighting' is defined by.

[mollytime]

Do you mean that sticking swords in each others chests is better than being drug abused, hit by a car and committing suicide on a bridge?
Hm. Interesting.

[Miss Magic]

um....

actually I was thinking more, is sword combat more honorable than picking your enemies off from afar, with no chance for mercy or whatever...
but yes I suppose that too

[Miss Magic]

btw how is suicide modern warfare? o.o

[Scarlet Lion]

Ah, I can recall attempting some months ago to respond to this topic and getting completely banjaxed. By the looks of it the post didn't make it through. Anyway, Miss Magic, in response to your initial moot, let's agree that 'fighting' stands for 'methods and techniques used for dispatching enemy personnel from this life' and 'better' means 'in a more humane fashion, in terms of physical and mental suffering caused by these methods and techniques'.

On that basis, and understanding that war is never less than unbelievably ugly (to the point where I cannot think of any situation in which is should be undertaken) the modern methods of termination are generally 'better'. Just as importantly, current techniques for trauma reduction are vastly better. In many instances, sure, it simply means that severly wounded soldiers are saved to live an ongoing life of discomfort who in Medieval times would have died, but at least they can be offered some measure of pain relief in the immediate and ongoing aftermath of their injuries.

For some graphic descriptions of the true horror of warfare 1000 years ago, I'd recommend the books by Bernard Cornwell, among them 'The Winter King', 'The l Kingdom', 'The Pale Horseman' and 'Azincourt'.

[delicate_flower]

Well that's one way to get technical about it!
I'm still trying to decide on whether being injured and dying of bullets or swords os worse. Or arrows. Hm.

[Miss Magic]

Well, although what you do say is true Scarlet Lion, is it not more honourable to fight hand on hand, where both sides are truly equals, rather than to pick someone off from afar with a bullet and hope that they died?
And I have to be cruel and point out that back then, they had a stronger, healthier country on the whole. With new medication and health, we're creating softer nations, weaker people. The fact is, death, and injury, keep the realisation that we are human intact. It keeps population down, and it keeps strength up. When people who should, in all honesty be dead, are still alive, we begin to idolise ourselves, even as we are slowed down as a species by the slower, weaker people. In herds, the old and the weak are the ones that die first, and as a whole the herd is stronger because of it. They can run faster, longer and defend more than they could with the weak around. It's the way of life! We are also creating a more emotional race, as the thought of death becomes harder too bear. By keeping more people alive, no matter how miserable their lives are, we are slowing down the herd. We think ourselves God. Our population booms, which causes more waste, more reduction of national resources. I don't mean to be cruel, I do know how painful loss is, but we are interfering with life's true course, which as a whole isn't doing us much good other than emotional security.

[Scarlet Lion]

Hmm, good points, though I'd still recommend reading Bernard Cornwell and similar writers. Gutting somebody with a sword is an extraordinarily messy business, and you can bet that, knowing how ugly it was, the combatants of the Middle Ages would have used every dirty trick they could muster to ensure it wasn't them being skewered. Honourable, knightly combat has only ever existed in the fevered imaginings of 19th Century writers, 700 years on from the events they described.

On the wider question of death as a means of societal strengthening, I grant you we've lost the natural selection that a more brutal existence forced on us, but maybe we're at the cusp of an acceptance that death is not to be feared but embraced as a natural progression. Gain that state of mind, and then life becomes something to be celebrated, indulged in, experienced rambunctiously and gloriously -- and shared with the weakest in the herd. 

[Miss Magic]

a glorious ideal indeed, but in all reality and practicality that is not in all what is happening, rather that death is something to happen to others but not ourselves

[Scarlet Lion]

No reason not to continue aiming for the ideal, though.

I keep thinking of a hedgehog who decides she/he wants to jump over the moon. Imagines it happening, wants to do it so badly, believes with all her/his spirit that it will happen, puts a huge effort into the task. Will the hedgehog be successful? Probably not...but it could well be the first hedgehog in history to clear a medium-sized gorse bush.

Worth thinking about.

Ahhh, I seem to have drifted a little away from the topic there. Please forgive me.

[piersdad]

in a book about the causes of war they quoted a european  small 2 countries that were neighbours and population in the two was geting a bit out of hand so the two leaders/kings got together and had a conference and agree as to who would start a war and get rid of their excess of young men who were causing a population explosion and so cure their overcrowding.

this seems to be the cause of every war  even the tribal fights of apes in the jungle is about teritory and rescources.

today it is about access to oil 

[PSimon23]

I decided to give a hand and sent a post into social bookmarks. I hope the popularity will rise in.