We are Warriors
One circumstance that helped our character development: we were needed. I often think today of what an impact could be made if children believed they were contributing to a family’s essential survival and happiness. In the transformation from a rural to an urban society, children are — though they might not agree — robbed of the opportunity to do genuinely responsible work.
— Dwight Eisenhower, At Ease, 1967
President and General Dwight Eisenhower stated that by depriving children of work that is critical to their family's survival, we deprive children of a sense of self-worth. In relation to this statement, a resident of a retirement home told me that "children in my day had more advantages," despite the wealth of food, clothing, health care and material things possessed by modern children in the United States. Lou, a woman one hundred years old, said that her family had ten children and every one did chores that were necessary on their Iowa farm. Every client of the care facility, at that meeting, agreed that materialism is a distraction from more important things in life — meaningful work and family.
Material things have become totems to children — statements of their family's power, wealth, values. Our adult possessions are no different. In departing from the farm and adopting a city lifestyle, we have returned to a hunter/gatherer culture, despite living in a civilization where others do our farming for us and we depend upon them for survival. Their work, however, leaves us free to hunt and gather. We wear horns, furs, claws and fangs through our clothes, jewelry, phones and gadgets. We tame beasts with our cars, motorcycles and recreational vehicles. We are like ancient kings, commanding others to bear and present these things to us through our buying prowess, our ability to acquire the tokens of wealth. A simple citizen in an industrialized country has finer knives, clothes, machines and gadgets than the greatest of the ancient city/state rulers; items created in sweatshops and factories by Third World labor, slaves by proxy. Every dollar spent on items crafted without fairness is a share in their poverty and subjection. At Wal-Mart and Target, K-Mart and Costco, we benefit from a network just as domineering as the East India Company at its height. Nations, peoples, families are enslaved for our wants and needs.
In this warrior culture, children serve no vital role to the family beyond its preservation through reproduction. The tasks we give them have little meaning in relation to survival, so children prove themselves and derive a sense of self-worth through competition, be it athletic or academic. Those who cannot compete in these arenas or develop worth through other valued or appreciated skills (art, entertainment — competitive ventures also) suffer low self-esteem. We cultivate the warrior mentality.
Finally, our society has developed the technology to allow children to realize the violent part of this culture through video games, television and movies. We transition them into a technological army which now distances itself from the actual killing with Predator drones and long-distance warfare, saving minds, egos and emotions by separating the destruction even further from the operator's view, causing life to mirror games. There is no physical consequence to the life of the Predator pilot, yet grave consequences to those within its sights. We are sanitized warriors — free from stains, spotted by blood.
Editor's Note: For a real-life example of this issue which I learned of after writing this editorial, see the art of Wafaa Bilal, featured recently on National Public Radio. In protest against the detachment in modern war, Bilal spent one month in a small room with an Internet operated paintball gun that users could fire at will, 24/7.