It is only fair to measure civilizations on the basis of their attitude towards the most enigmatic phenomena of human existence, or “death”. The hobbesian life was indeed short and brutish. But at no time of history did human possess the power to destroy as it does today. Modern science and technology has not just given us power to produce wealth at unprecedented rate but also the capability to destroy at levels that makes earlier wars look like child’s play. And we have been only too generous to use that power.
The world wars fundamentally changed the way we used to think about deaths in war. First of all it magnified the scale of destruction and death. 15 million perished in First World War while Second World War engulfed 55 million people. Inter alia world saw major conflicts in Russia, China and elsewhere which took a toll in excess of 50 million. In matter of 30 years, more than a billion people, size of today’s India, were eliminated. Hobbes must be turning in his grave. When we are talking of deaths on such scales numbers itself become irrelevant. Secondly, the wars produced a qualitative change in the way we view casualty in war. People were just targets in military lexicons. The fighter pilots need not even see the devastation he is causing. One could kill people from a distance that he never realizes the pain of it. It is just so easy to kill. Of course today one can kill people in hundreds just by a click of button. It requires more than just technology to destroy on such scales. It requires change of mind and heart.
“Modernity” has its own meaning to different people. But if one thing that differentiates modern societies from previous ones, it’s in the casual way it treats deaths in war. For the “rational calculating modern” beings, death of non-combatants in war is just a collateral damage, a necessary price to be paid to secure one’s self interest. So what if our planes raze entire cities to the grounds.
Moreover war is today a bureaucratic affair just like anything in modern world. The “war machine” is devoid of emotions. It executes the orders for its master with obedience. That is what we call discipline (unfortunately people think that military training instills discipline, when all it does is to teach unquestioning obedience). The Oscar winning movie “The Reader” very aptly describes this. The protagonist of movie Hannah Schmitz (Kate Winslet) was a guard of German concentration camp during Second World War. She did not open the gates of room in which hundreds of Jews were kept, during a firebreak that led to their deaths. When on trial she defends herself by saying it was her duty to guard the prisoners and opening the gates would have led to chaos. Wasn’t she like anyone of us who did what one is told to?
In such a scenario, where killing is just one of those rational tasks which is routinely performed by the “machine”, who cares for the dead? And why bother about the numbers when we are comfortably numb.
