Why Should I Care?

Cpl. Mason G. Kemp
Pvt. Earl C. Chadwick
Pvt. Carl W. Perkins
Pvt. Godon K. Stykes

Who are these names and why should you care about them? These are just a small sampling of the men of Vermont who died in World War One.  My team's game does not intend to hide from the pointlessness of the First World War but do we need to include a litany of the dead as a preface to our game? No we don't, but a list of names isn't necessarily a litany of the dead of a pointless war. It is an accusation, a reminder that you do not know these men, you cannot know these men. It is a condemnation of the human habit of creating the categories of Like and Other.

I do not have the courage or ability to join the military, I don't know if I would even if I did have the courage or physical ability, but the people who make up our military are human being just like you or me. The military often gets demonized for the current war, it becomes a polarizing subject. Either you are For the War! or you don't support the troops, this polarization dehumanizes and segregates the men and women in the military. After all, you aren't part of "the troops", it's those guys over there, away from you. We often forget or avoid thinking about how "the troops" are just people like us, with hopes and dreams and hates and fears.

The Great War, The War to End All Wars, The First World War, The Great Conflagration, The Forgotten War, it started just over one hundred and one years ago on July 28 1914. The American Civil War Ended just over one hundred and fifty years ago. There are still a couple of Great War veterans alive, the war ended within the vaunted now standard human lifespan of a hundred year. And yet, somehow in American schools, The War to End All Wars is a footnote, especially compared to The Civil War which is no longer within the realm of a human lifespan. American schools can't be bothered to explore one of the most fascinating, human, alien, repeatable, regrettable, relate-able  experiences that war can share.

History is the why, the when, the how, but most importantly, history is the who of humanity. And yet, you ask, why should I care? after all, this war killed millions over a hundred years ago, it doesn't matter to me. And you shouldn't, you don't have room in your primate brain to genuinely care about the millions of fathers, sons, daughters and mothers that died or gave their lives for a cause or a reason that you don't know, or even on occasion for no reason at all. We are tribal people, we can conceptualize a few people, up to the low hundreds, but any further than that and we have to start cutting people from our memory banks. Human beings simply don't have the mental storage space to care about the soldiers of The Great War as more than numbers. So how do you honor the millions who died? and they do deserve honor or at the very least, remembrance.  I don't know, but it certainly isn't by ignoring the monuments we erect in our town squares and halls to remind us of the losses.

In Syria today, along the Northern border lies the Kurdish Semi-Autonomous region of Rojava, though it is a state in all but name just as Syria is a State in name only. When the people of Rojava take up arms, do they think about the pointlessness of war? do they worry about their own death? do they want to protect their family, people and country? I don't know and assuming that they can only pick one or even that they have to reason beyond wanting to fight for fighting's sake strikes me as self-absorbed and self-justifying.

So there we are, I don't know why you should care, but I do  know that not caring at the very least about the history of the world is lazy, disgusting and useless. A person is enriched and the world made more beautiful and rewarding when they begin to explore their history, the history of the world.