I was listening to On The Media about the new movie, Civil War. If you don’t know the movie, it’s about an alternative present/near future America.
On The Media did a great segment on the movie that you can find here (the segment begins at 35:27). (Confession, I have seen the movie). As Zack Beauchamp, the guest on OTM, describes it, the movie doesn’t care about why there’s civil war. Instead it focuses on the chaos, the total loss of civilization in a civil war, “what happens when social trust breaks down completely. … Even the rules that soldiers are supposed to follow have broken down entirely. Even massacres are a thing that just happens. That’s what life is like in the context of social collapse.” It goes on to discuss how violence becomes not motivated by ideology but “by perceptions of who has control.”
There’s a quote from Thucydides that is often cited as you must know history to avoid it repeating. I always read the Greek as you need to know history to recognize what’s happening when it repeats (ὅσοι δὲ βουλήσονται τῶν τε γενομένων τὸ σαφὲς σκοπεῖν καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ποτὲ αὖθις κατὰ τὸἀνθρώπινον τοιούτων καὶ παραπλησίων ἔσεσθαι, ὠφέλιμα κρίνειν αὐτὰ ἀρκούντως ἕξει. Thus. 1.22.4). And thus it seems natural that listening to this segment, I immediately thought of Thucydides’ description of the civil war in Corcyra, which had broken out admist the larger Peloponnesian War, with different factions supported by different external powers (J.M. Dent’s 1910 translation):
[3.81.2]Corcyraeans, made aware of the approach of the Athenian fleet and of the departure of the enemy, brought the Messenians from outside the walls into the town, and ordered the fleet which they had manned to sail round into the Hyllaic harbor; and while it was so doing, slew such of their enemies as they laid hands on, dispatching afterwards as they landed them, those whom they had persuaded to go on board the ships. Next they went to the sanctuary of Hera and persuaded about fifty men to take their trial, and condemned them all to death. [3.81.3] The mass of the suppliants who had refused to do so, on seeing what was taking place, slew each other there in the consecrated ground; while some hanged themselves upon the trees, and others destroyed themselves as they were severally able. [3.81.4] During seven days that Eurymedon stayed with his sixty ships, the Corcyraeans were engaged in butchering those of their fellow-citizens whom they regarded as their enemies: and although the crime imputed was that of attempting to put down the democracy, some were slain also for private hatred, others by their debtors because of the monies owed to them. [3.81.5] Death thus raged in every shape; and, as usually happens at such times, there was no length to which violence did not go; sons were killed by their fathers, and suppliants dragged from the altar or slain upon it; while some were even walled up in the temple of Dionysus and died there.
Herodotus had set forth his history as an assertion of justice in the world; Thucydides chronicled the complete break down of justice in light of the wars he chronicled (his Melian Dialogue being perhaps the earliest articulation of might makes right, done as a philosophical dialogue). Beauchamp on OTM tackles Just War Theory as underlying the message of the movie: that war is inherently bad (due to killing) and thus “the presumption is that you should not go to war. You need to have a compelling reason to think that the world will be better after you fight.” I’m not sure I have another message here, but as wars and violence seem on the rise around the world, this seemed worth sharing.
Ramblings 