I am tremendously backed up on writing for this blog. But I do have a laundry list of topics about which to write. I thought I would break my hiatus by posting a story that CNN publicized back in March about a German fighter pilot who chose not to blow an American bomber out of the sky.
It's not dissimilar from the stories you read about troops leaving the trenches during Christmas of 1914, singing carols and playing football with one another before returning to their respective bunkers and continuing the attempt to annihilate the other side. The author of this particular article chalks up the reason for this type of behavior to the warrior code: "What is this bond that surfaces between enemies during and after battle? It's called the warrior's code, say soldiers and military scholars."
No, actually, it's not a warrior code at all. It's just plain old humanity; conscience; morality. It's the realization that the other guy doesn't want to kill you, nor do you want to kill him. You're both there fighting someone else's war under pain of imprisonment or death. Try as the military did, it couldn't eradicate every shred of decency from its soldiers, and thank God for that. Sometimes basic human decency triumphed over the best-laid plans of butchers.
It's amazing that behavior as basic as not killing other people is lauded so highly. I don't recall hearing stories exclaiming how amazing it is that policemen who pull over attractive women for speeding end up not raping them. Or how hundreds of people enter banks every day without robbing them.
Perhaps it is because the nature of warfare has changed that we find such stories remarkable. World War II was fought among large masses of conscripted adult men, forced against their will to serve dictatorial regimes and fight other armies to the death. Nowadays militaries are nominally volunteer armies, and the wars they fight are wars of naked aggression in which Western powers engage in fights against guerilla armies and men keen on defending their homelands against foreign invaders. It would be hard to imagine an American sniper not pulling the trigger to blow out the brains of a 14-year old Pashtun boy, just as it would be hard to imagine a Taliban fighter looking into the eyes of an American soldier and not detonating his suicide vest.
Or is it perhaps an indication of how far our society has fallen over the past few decades from its long-established cultural and moral mores that we find these stories remarkable? I have to imagine that this is perhaps the primary reason. Just as common sense is no longer so common, so too the values that shaped middle class society are no longer held in esteem. Thrift, hard work, and academic accomplishment are denigrated. Selfishness, rudeness, envy, slovenliness, are no longer just tolerated but in some quarters even promoted. Attempting to criticize someone for being lazy, boorish, or uncouth will result in denunciatory epithets regarding judgementalism, etc. Everyone is a princess and must be affirmed in his behavior, no matter how bizarre, abhorrent, or downright evil. It really is as though society has degenerated into a post-human morass in which nothing separates humans beings from beasts.
Yet despite the breakdown of society, the fact that stories such as the above are highlighted as some sort of ideal do give one hope that not all is lost. After all, if our society were past the point of no return then the fighter pilot would be castigated for being a p***y. I'm sure there were some comments of that nature made to that article. But by and large I think that the majority of people do see the pilot's behavior as an ideal to be held in high regard.
I've always believed that the overwhelming majority of people are inherently good. Even if it is just out of pure self-interest rather than fidelity to moral teachings or conscience, most people do not want to murder, rape, and steal. They realize that cooperation with others will lead to better societal outcomes than the use of force. Those of us who understand this need to do a better job of pointing this out to our comrades and urging them to live this way in every facet of their daily lives, while we ourselves must not fail to set a good example for others to follow.
