Darkened poker machines promote epiphany of how it should be

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.