With so much discussion going on about wars, I always keep thinking of what the wars mean for human civilization. At first, it seems such a beautiful dream to imagine this world without war. The traditional argument against war, each country has so many internal problems to solve: poverty, hunger, lack of nutrition, education, infrastructure and in-spite of all these problems, a country with limited resources spends most of the available budget in obtaining and developing sophisticated weapons and warfare machinery, theoretically seems to be the winning against all.
But, let us spare a thought of what wars mean for human civilization and indirectly, what has been their contribution? I think, war and war heroes have given true meaning to much celebrated human traits like valor, courage and sacrifice. Apart from the establishment of these feelings, wars have resulted into various tangible gains. Things like internet, email were results of advancements carried out to strengthen the military capabilities of the nation.
The problem lies in excessive glorification of wars. Various movies have resulted into sensationalization of wars and they have failed to establish the gory and horrifying image of wars. For example, at the start of American movie Top Gun, such a great image is portrayed of the airplane pilots that anyone in teens would just want to be one of them. I remember one of my friends telling me that after this movie was released, the enrollment in military services in
Such portrayals of wars and military have succeeded in creating a feeling of nationalism and patriotism, respect towards the sacrifice made by war heroes but also some tacit excitement about wars deep inside all of us. It can’t be denied that these portrayals don’t present the complete picture. I just watched the movie “All quite on western front” and it does not entail any romantic heroism about wars. According to me, it does the complete justice in bringing forward the brutal reality of wars
With so much unrest in the world today, restraining from arms is certainly not a practical solution and I said before, wars have always co-existed with human civilization so it might be too naïve to imagine the perfect world without wars. But nonetheless, war movies and war memorials need to have a common aim of establishing wars as the most avoidable human act. The peace establishing music usually shown at the end of movie should be the main theme even though it might curb our excitement towards wars.
