Imagine for a moment that we’ve devised a machine capable of replicating ourselves. Let’s also say that once you stepped into that machine and made one-hundred copies of yourself. And as each of those replicas appeared they ran off in a random direction, presumably each to make their own way in this world.
Now imagine that some years later a war comes and you answer the “call to arms.” One day, while on sniper duty you find an enemy soldier in the cross-hairs of your telescopic rifle-sight. But just as your finger starts to twitch on the trigger you suddenly glimpse the enemy soldier’s face. Little wonder, but it now seems that at least one of your replicas has similarly answered the “call to arms”; for the face in your crosshairs is unmistakable yours. Or was yours. Or could have been yours.
And in this moment of hestitation you’ve a fleeting image of him playing on the floor with his son - a boy that bears an uncanny resemblance to your own son. And you wonder that given your own hesitation, it’s quite possible that if the tables were turned that he might be wondering much the same things; that is, should your face suddenly appear in his rifle-sight. He’d be conjuring an image of you rolling around on the floor with your own young son - one so much like his own.
But I want to take a step back and ask if all soldiers aren’t put in a similar position? In reference to my little fiction above, in fact there is a replication machine at work in this world, and each one of us is the product of that machine. We have the same mother, all of us. Some call her “Lucy,” but even if she had no name this indeed was our mother and we are her offspring. We’ve replicated from her biology. Generally speaking, we all have her face.
There’s a line from a beautiful English folksong that’s based on a famous incident that occured one Christmas in the trenches of WW1. Near the end of the song it asks, “Whose family do I have between my sights?” My answer is that whomsoever we place between our rifle-sights, it is our own family.
George Orwell volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War. He mentioned in his later writings that he’d shot and killed quite a few people in that war. He got past his early jitters and eventually he conditioned himself to kill people as all part of a day’s work. One day, he tells us, he and his comrades surprised a group of enemy soldiers. One of them ran right past Orwell. But this poor guy was running whilst trying to hold up his pants. After having killed so many, Orwell tells how he couldn’t bring himself to kill this guy. Orwell could see himself in that fellow. It bespoke a common humanity.
Some years ago I read philosopher, Jonathan Glover’s, A Moral History of the 20th Century. Of all his tales of killing fields and mass graves I remember the story Glover passed on about an Afrikaner policeman who’d waded into a crowd of black protesters with his nightstick. As he was dutifully beating a woman he happened to notice that she’d just lost her shoe. Having been brought up to be a gentleman he stopped, picked up her shoe and handed it to her. She thanked him. I don’t remember if he resumed beating her. What I do remember is thinking that the Afrikaner had the same Orwellian revelation. My guess is that he suddenly remembered his common bonds with a shared humanity.
“Being human is an accomplishment like playing an instrument. It takes practice. The keys must be mastered. The old scores must be committed to memory. It is a skill we can forget. A little noise can make us forget the notes. The best of us is historical; the best of us is fragile. Being human is a second nature which history taught us, and which terror and deprivation can batter us into forgetting.” Michael Ignatieff, The Needs of Strangers
To Ignatieff’s “terror and deprivation” I’d add, “a developed sense of duty” among other things. Heinrich Himmler, for example, had an inordinately refined sense of duty. Duty is a virtue of the lowest order, whereas compassion stands at the apex of our virtues.
“Exploiters and oppressors, war-makers, executioners and destroyers of forests do not usually wear distinctive black hats, nor horns and hooves. The positive motives which move them may not be bad at all; they are often quite decent ones like prudence, loyalty, self-fulfillment and professional conscientiousness. The appalling element lies in the lack of other motives which ought to balance these - in particular, of a proper regard for other people and of a proper priority system which would enforce it.” Mary Midgley, “The Elusiveness of Responsibility,” taken from her book, Wickedness
She speaks of “proper regard of other people” where I would have spoken of compassion. But her point is well-said nonetheless.
Does anyone here remember Montaigne’s, “Soldier of Piso”?
"(A soldier of Piso) returning from a forage could give no account where he had left a companion. Piso took it for granted that the soldier had killed his companion and ordered him to be hung. But the condemned man had no sooner stepped upon the gibbet, but behold his companion arrives, at which all the army were glad. And after many embraces of the two comrades, the hangman brought both men to Piso, all those present believing Piso would be greatly relieved to see that things had worked out well.
But it proved quite contrary; for…he made all three criminal for having found one innocent, and caused them all to be hung: the first soldier because the sentance had been passed upon him; the second, because he had caused the death of his companion; and the hangman, for not having obeyed his orders." Essays II XXXI
Wherever compassion conflicts with duty or law, compassion must have priority. If ever your god or your country instructs you to kill, then you and your compassion need to have a chat. If ever I should find myself looking at you through a rifle-sight, I make this promise; I would never pull the trigger from a raw sense of duty or some nebulous sense of patriotism. Neither would I kill you out of rage or even justified anger. But I would kill you, my brother, out of my sense of compassion. Doubtless, this voice of compassion is far from infallible. Nor does it provide me with a solution to every possible moral quandry. But if I’m going to do wrong in this life, of all else I’d rather have been led astray from my own sense of compassion. This is the voice I most trust. For this I will be responsible.
Michael