The darkened poker machines stood like tombstones in a
cemetery.
The players stood silently in the eerie dusk-like light of
the auditorium as the haunting sounds of the Last Post echoed around the room.
Screens dotted about told of the drama and alluded to the
obvious cost of war and cast the minds of those silent poker players back to
the chaos in which thousands were injured or died for Australia, freedom or
whatever it was that ignited their passions.
The ninety second emotive package accompanied by a sombre,
but authoritative voice designed to elicit understanding and sympathy for war,
encouraged we recall conflicts past “lest we forget”.
Echoing around this momentary poker machine graveyard in an
environment even the most adventurous thinkers among those who died could never
have imagined was a story of war that elicited an emotionally shallow response that
overlooked the real societal debt.
The obvious and blatant costs of war are easy to identify,
for it is measured in the death and injury to thousands of military people,
millions of civilians and immense damage to the infrastructure upon which we all
depend.
However there is a cost we can’t see or measure; a cost that
is embedded deep within societies; a cost that emerges generations later and
although mistakenly believing we are inured to repeating earlier errors, we do
exactly that and with renewed vigour set about to kill each other.
Ghosts past march across the screens as a sentinel to alert us
of previous ills and quieten our primeval need to confront the other, but
nationalistic hubris erupts from such displays and has the reverse effect
enhancing our belief in militaristic solutions.
This year is the centenary of what was originally known as
“The Great War”, but became known as the “First World War” when in 1939 the
world was at war again in “World War Two” when humanity stooped to new
depravities as we busied ourselves slaughtering each other.
Considered in geologic terms, humanity is still in the crib
and although we need to understand our history, it borders on obscene to devote
so much of our time, ingenuity, commitment and money to pinpoint a fleeting
moment from a century ago.
Our flirtation with this twinkling in history only distorts
and delays the growth of humanity to further understand that progress is a
product of collaboration, cooperation and communication rather than conflict
and violence that arises from the preservation of baseless, and therefore
unimportant cultural beliefs.
The world’s annual military budget creeps towards $2000
billion (Australia’s was an indecent $26.2b last year) and rather than seek comfort
through bigger military expenditure, we need to look elsewhere and it is not to
be found in the preservation of memories from our modern past.
