Freethought, based on a conversation I had earlier today with Mithradites and which has got me thinking. Anybody interested in abstraction can participate and add their own thoughts. Everyone else should just move on or make fun of me... The military-civilian divide doesnt exist or else its irrelevant and oversimplistic, hardly hinging on what we really wish to communicate when we express ourselves as veterans in its context. We are divided against them, and were not. Were not in that we all struggle, and some are just not so fortunate as to have a neatly assigned name for their struggle apart from the others. Or else weve picked this particular division and when we mention it we forget all the others that are contained within us. I am a veteran. But thats not an identifier of who I am, really. The grammar is off. I am I, the I that has experienced war. But lets explore the divide for what it tries to convey: simply, I have experienced war — they have not. But my experience was different from those with whom I stand on this side of the divide. In this way I am divided from them too. And then there are my own internal divisions, the parts of I that are divided from each other, the one perspective that doesnt take into account the other when it is being considered because it requires all my contemplation in order to be considered at all, at least in its moment of being contemplated. The I who is thrilled with war is divided from the I who is horrified by it. And we contradict each other, even though in such an instance this we is just two identities (so-called) within me, both still I. We—they. I—we. I—him. I—I. So what about this I-I divide? Why am I not saddened by the lack of understanding I have these days regarding myself, or that I dont discuss it as often as how saddened I am by the lack of understanding civilians have these days regarding veterans? We feel pain and we want others to notice. So we utilize words, phrases, and symbols that have been created for that purpose — in order to communicate our pain. But we have to use other peoples words in order to do it. We cant just ramble incoherently, even if that might feel more viscerally appropriate to our feelings. We have to discipline our feelings with socially-prescribed words, ideas, frameworks, that everybody builds together and agrees to, but which never fully impinge upon the thing we originally wanted to communicate. Because we need language. And thats what language is — other peoples words. But how could I ever hope to convey my pain using other peoples words? Isnt that a doomed exercise? And why do I mitigate my own experiences by teaming up with these other veterans to communicate a pain that is mine — not because I am a veteran, but because I am myself? There is a forum for veterans today, in which we subjugate ourselves to veteran identities for the chance to discuss our pain. But where is the forum for all those who have experienced what else Ive gone through? Say it existed. I would be the only member. I would communicate my pain perfectly, but without others there, what would be the point? I need the divide in order to appreciate my pain. But I need to cooperate with languages of prior consent in order to convey the pain, languages which fail to perfectly carry my pain. Must I submit myself to being simplified, by trends, to Karim, a veteran,... in order to communicate with others that this I hurts and longs to be heard? Would such self-subjugation to other peoples words ever afford me the liberation I sought when I began using those words? Can I embrace the diffusiveness of these divisions (between me and others and even me and myself) as so complex and unwieldy as to be completely unmitigated by my participation in any simple identity? Is identity itself, whether veteran or I a way of escaping the fear and despair that comes with ones inevitable failure to comprehend the infinite intersectionality of all experience?
Posted on: Thu, 17 Apr 2014 08:09:24 +0000
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