Morbid Romantic

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I was in the bath tonight, soaking because I was cold and tired and it feels nice to be submerged in soapy, hot water, reading a new book called Living With the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age by Mark Selden and Laura Elizabeth Hein when a few things suddenly came into light for me. I found my moment of epiphany immensely significant, too, especially given my choice to one day be a Social Studies teacher. As such, I’ll be required (and licensed) to teach World History, US History, Government, Economics, Art History, Sociology, Psychology, and Geography.

Essentially, the bulk of my duty will consist of creating responsible, well rounded, politically aware, patriotic Americans. All one needs to do is pick up a high school history textbook to notice that there is a very obvious and distinct pro-patriotism and American feel to it. We teach that no matter the victim, America is right and America is good.

I came to this when I was reading the aforementioned book and it pointed out a few things about the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

1.) Americans are never witness to the actual human devastation of the blast. Our government has made a conscious decision to keep from us the images of suffering so that we can maintain our detached stance on the event. Instead, we see a dehumanized mushroom cloud amidst victor music, amongst propaganda that this was in fact the only way to win the war.

2.) Japan and America has both, in their own politics and versions of history, played themselves up to be the victim of this war while announcing the other the side as the aggressor. America stated to its people that it must drop the bomb in order to stop the war and save American lives (because how do you defeat an enemy whose credo is to fight to the end and never surrender), and was an act of revenge for Pearl Harbor. Japan has ignored its previous aggressions against Manchuria and Korea, giving no attention whatsoever to the fact that the Japanese had not given much thought to the people they were conquering and destroying. That is why in America you see the burning ships of Pearl Harbor and the mushroom cloud and in Japan you see the victims (yes, innocent victims) of radiation enmass while hearing the radio broadcast of the Emperor villifying the US and their bomb.

Is either side wrong? Yes. Both. Both America and Japan is guilty of the same thing, though neither side wants to take the proper responsibility for their guilt.

More importantly, on a wider scope, I realized how history is taught. Rather, it’s something I’ve always know– I’m not naive or inexperienced in the field I am entering. But, now I have the perfect examples of the disparity between what happens, what is perceived, and in turn, what is taught. In the end, you can’t blame the children or the citizens that are turned out because people are taught to see the world a certain way.

I remember reading Tim O’Brian’s ‘The Things that They Carried,’ which was a book written about his experiences in the Vietnam War. Except, this book used the external as a means to express the internal. The most powerful chapter, I think, was called ‘How to Tell a True War Story.’

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done.

If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie.

[...]

In a true war story, if there’s a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there’s nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe “Oh.” True war stories do not generalize. They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis.

For example: War is hell. As a moral declaration the old truism seems perfectly true, and yet because it abstracts, because it generalizes, I can’t believe it with my stomach. Nothing turns inside.

It comes down to gut instinct. A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe.

[...]

For the common soldier, at least, war has the feel - the spiritual texture - of a great ghostly fog, thick and permanent. There is no clarity. Everything swirls. The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true. Right spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, hate into love, ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery. The vapors suck you in. You can’t tell where you are, or why you’re there, and the only certainty is absolute ambiguity.

In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story nothing is absolutely true.

- read the entire chapter here

In World History books, everything has a European feel to it. In the matters of conflict and comparison, the European way seems to come across as the ‘right’ way. There’s a tendency, too, to favor certain nations like Britain over others like Spain. There’s no hesitation to ’scold’ Cortez for what he did to the Aztecs, but English Colonialism is explained in justification terms. Why? Because we have more in common with the English than the Spanish, who are culturally different from us despite their location on the European continent. Whether this the fault of society, textbook makers, and teachers is an important question. It is deserving of a ‘maybe’ answer. In part, also, I think it’s the tendency of any culture to want to see its own as supreme. This isn’t isolated to America despite all International perceptions of American arrogance.

Back on track, as soon as America is established in the timeline of documented history, World History textbooks lose their lean towards Europeanism and favor Americanism. The change is obvious, I don’t know how people can miss it. Suddenly, the virtuous (and yes, sometimes admittingly wrong but never horrendously so) Europeans are now the villains of freedom and liberty.

There’s always a right and always a wrong. In a world made of up of variety, such distinctions can’t be as cut and dry and clear as they are made out to be. What is right for some is wrong for others, and vice versa. America feels it has nothing to apologize for to Japan for the atom bomb. Britain is not apologetic for the economic burden they insisted Germany be placed under after WWI. Russia feels no guilt for supporting Communist North Korea prior to the WWII surrender of Japan. France ignores its easy capitulation to Hitler.

So, there lies my juxtaposition.

I can teach children to be good and patriotic Americans by maintaining the status quo and teaching the proscribed and accepted version of history, or I can transcend that and give them more meaningful knowledge. Instead of teaching them to be good Americans, I can instead teach them to be good members of a world community that questions, that values, that doubts, and that respects. Isn’t it a far better thing to become worldly rather than Americanly? Sure, children get a good World History class, but that’s not enough. It’s not enough to teach them cultural acceptance. Beyond acceptance, even, towards respect and understanding. Mutual cooperation inspite of differences.

What to do, what to do.

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