Notes on Art and War

A couple years ago I started writing an essay on art, civilization and war. In it I started to look very closely at the word "civilization" and its true definition. (I recommend looking at the derivation of the word at the Online Etymology Dictionary.) Most recently the Iraqi National Museum reopened its doors. If you remember, this museum was looted shortly after U.S. occupation of Iraq. To commemorate the reopening I am issuing my essay on art and war. In it I reference key writings that helped shape my ideas:

Redefining Civilization
Notes on Art and War

Notes and ideas after reading “Our Oriental Heritage” Volume I of the History of Civilization by Will Durant.

One could possibly state that by this writing I am trying to redefine the word “civilization” or one could look at it from the other side and say that it has already been redefined. Whichever way, the point is to take a good look at what the word “civilization” means. This is a very learned subject, one that involves more study than a simple dictionary. Historians and anthropologists study ancient cultures and decide where early civilizations first sprang. Many agree that in Sumeria there came the first written words and thereby the first culture, followed quickly by Egypt and the rest of Mesopotamia. These ancient cultures were agricultural, relying heavily upon the rivers that they were formed against. By this fact, they no longer were nomadic hunters, but planned for their future with crops and animals thereby setting forth roots that enabled them to build permanent homes and develop a more sophisticated culture, a culture called a civilization.

However civilizations and its footprints ( art, writings, architecture, etc.) are destroyed by the antithesis of civilization – “war”. Wars wiped out early Indian culture. Wars wiped out early Chinese culture. Mesopotamia went to ruin due to war. One needed to build huge monuments that could stand the test of time to overcome the ravages of war and the elements, namely such monuments as the pyramids and their hidden tombs below.

If civilization is culture elevated to the point where art, letters and language can flourish, it then follows that the eradication of war would be an elemental point of what civilization is. In fact if one were to follow back the etymology of the term one would find that it originated to be the opposite of “barbarity”. Barbarity is cruelty, killing, raping, pillaging and the lot. Barbarians perpetrate barbarity on civilizations destroying them.

In fact the lack of war is a necessary element to be included in the definition of “civilization”. It is this missing element, misunderstood and unpracticed which has brought about a tremendous amount of grief to the planet earth. Possibly earth and its population were not able, up until now, to grasp the meaning of what a high culture is. Possibly it is simply a step in the evolution of higher man. But for whatever reason, we are at a point where civilized man should be able to work out their differences with reason and therefore a “civilization” should have as part of its innate meaning, the lack of war. Or on the positive side, the reconciliation of differences by diplomatic and cordial means.

How it comes about that war is no longer practiced is not for this essay. The strategy for attaining this Utopia is not for this author at this time. Nor is it for any one author at any other time. It is enough to state that civilization is by definition a culture that no longer resorts to war and barbarity, but uses civility to affect its ends.

From section “Dianetics and War” (p. 484 of Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard):

“The social organism which we call states and nations behave and react in every respect as though they were individual organisms. The culture has its analytical mind, the combined sentience of its citizens in general and its artists, scientists and statesmen in particular. The social memory bank is the data accumulated along the generations. And the social organism has as well its reactive mind as represented by the prejudices and irrationalities of the entire group.”

The social memory banks are the accumulated museums, libraries and other institutions which house social memory. The importance of such museums and libraries are vital, and access to them by everyone is vital. Museums such as the Holocaust Museum serve to present terrible moments of history for all to see. By doing so it acts as a means of recognition and eradication of the trauma. One can see the happenings over and over and in this way release any encysted emotion or trauma connected to the event. War and its outcome are the antithesis of museums and libraries. Examples where such houses of social memory were obliterated by war is quite common. There was the war for Egypt fought in Cleopatra’s time when the great Egyptian library at Alexander was set afire losing all of the books and manuscripts of antiquity. Or more recently there was the aftermath of the U.S. occupation in Iraq when all of the museums, holding artifacts and art from the heart of Mesopotamia – the birthplace of civilization itself, were raided and looted. Great architecture acts as a conduit to the past, as these immense edifices stand the test of time to reveal civilization’s great past. Yet again, war has ruined many of these testaments: Great Hindu temples of India were laid waste by Moslem armies, Japanese towns were laid to ruin by U.S. bombardments in World War II.

In “What is Art” by Leo Tolstoy he compares the role of the artist to that of the military. Although his point was different, it leads to a core comparison: The artist and the militarist are two opposing roles in a civilization. One builds the civilization while the other brings it to ruin. Art and War are two extremes. There is a gradient that can be laid down to measure the degree of civilization extant at any time. The more art present, conserved and created compared to the degree of war present means a closer approximation to true civilization.

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque:

A classic novel of the barbarity of war has a section in it where the protagonist, after months at the front, finally returns home for a short spell before returning back to war. While at home he sits in his room and confronts the books that he used to read:

“I want to feel the same powerful, nameless urge that I used to feel when I turned to my books. The breath of desire that then arose from the colored backs of the books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy, dead lump of lead that lies somewhere in me and waken again the impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of thought, it shall bring back again the lost eagerness of my youth. I sit and wait.

“I wait, I wait. Images float through my mind, but they do not grip me, they are mere shadows and memories. Nothing – nothing – My disquietude grows. A terrible feeling of foreignness suddenly rises up in me. I cannot find my way back, I am shut out though I entreat earnestly and put forth all my strength. Nothing stirs; listless and wretched, like a condemned man, I sit there and the past withdraws itself. And at the same time I fear to importune it too much, because I do not know what might happen then. I am a soldier, I must cling to that.”

The above is a terrific and terrifying example of the results of war on a single human being directly involved in it; a perpetrator of the war, yet a victim. The barbarity prohibits the fine distinctions of the mind necessary to imbibe culture. War prevents this soldier from drinking from the well of civilization. Instead he is a soldier.

For information on the reopening of the Iraqi National Museum see Iraq Museum Reopens Six Years After Looting in the New York Times.