Picture from: http://www.oscarpistorius.com/Oscar Pistorius, the soft-spoken double amputee with a subtle sense of humor, a hard to match discipline, and inspiring determination made history during this latest London Olympics by advancing from his 400 m preliminary heat and running in his country’s 4x400 m relay. His better time of 45.44 sec in London, although a bit short of his 45.07 personal best, is more than a respectable performance. For comparison, 44.98 brought the 7th place for Demetrius Pindel of the Bahamas in the Olympic final!
I give my heartfelt congratulation to this likeable humble Olympicon; a sportsman in the purest sense.
With due respect for Oscar however, I must bring up the story of the first amputee in Olympic history: Oliver Halassy. He was a Hungarian water polo player and champion swimmer. I didn’t know about him until a few Facebook friends of mine, likely inspired by Pistorius’s story, called my attention to the picture below.
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The picture shows the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic champion Hungarian water polo team. On the far right, at the end of the line, stands a somewhat plum young man with a hard to notice peculiarity: if one pays close attention, a missing left shin will become evident. Oliver Halassy (born Oliver Haltmayer) lost his left leg below the knee at the age of 8 due to a street car accident. He went on to win a silver and two gold Olympic medals as part of the Hungarian water polo teams in Amsterdam (1928), Los Angeles (1932), and Berlin (1936) respectively. He also won several European championships with the water polo team and in 1931 was the the European champion in the 1500 m free style swimming.
He did all this with the left leg missing below the knee!
His sports career is certainly a testimony of the willpower and determination over physical limitations. Although, together with Oscar Pistorius, he’s certainly an extreme example of human possibilities, these two great sportsmen proved how much can be achieved by human tenacity. Their hard work and determination sends a message to the everyday people that, perhaps less spectacular tough not less important achievements are within reach for everyone, even for those without the special gifts of these two.
I did find however another part of Oliver Halassy’s life worth contemplating on. His death. During a robbery attempt a Russian soldier killed him in 1946. The news have been suppressed in the reports of the days but unavoidably resurfaced later, generating plenty of resentful sentiment against the Russian soldiers in Hungary. Every life lost in a war is precious, but the loss of Mr. Halassy’s triumphant life to wanton violence by a soldier of a conquering army hit the Hungarian public particularly hard.
But, then I thought further. Isn’t every war a wanton violence against large segments of human population? Didn’t the German soldiers commit atrocities against the Russians inside the Russian Motherland? Didn’t the Russians do the same inside Germany? The Austro-Hungarian army mass-executed Serbian civilians in WWI; UstaĊĦe (Croatian), Albanian, German, and Hungarian troupes did the same in 1941-1942 in Vojvodina and other parts of Serbia. Vietnamese villages were raided by US (remember My Lai?) and South Vietnamese army units and the Vietcong had its share of brutality. US soldiers committed bestial actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, as did Israeli soldiers in Palestine and Palestine terrorists inside Israel, the Hutus in Rwanda, or the Serbian soldiers in Dubrovnik as recently as in the mid 1990s. As a result of Muslim terrorism, the war casualties recently extended to locations not directly connected to war zones.
Can’t we see the trend here? War brings up the worst from humanity. Wars serve as the outlets of the dirtiest, most despicable human emotions when one can, without punishment, live out the hate, frustration, and all the other sick traits that have been dormant inside his/her soul or body during peace times. When we see the horrors of wars we get upset and angry and forget that horror is the nature of wars that tends to be present on the other side too.
There is only one way to end the dreadfulness of wars. End wars themselves! End our permissive view of killing human beings or else, don’t be surprised to see the end-result, like the untimely death of Oliver Halassy.
For those who follow an organized form of spirituality, here is the Christian God’s 6th Commandment:
Thou shalt not kill.
I don’t know enough about other religions to quote appropriate sections here but for those whose spirituality is not bound to the Christian religion, here is Isaac Asimov’s first of the three robotic rules:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
If a robot is expected to abide by this rule, why we, humans, are not?
So, I see Oliver Halassy’s life as an inspiration to reach our human potentials, and his death as a giant exclamation sign against War. Am I an oddball?
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The argument for “just war”, although persuasive, is untenable in today’s world with its advanced technology.
ReplyDeleteCaveman mentality doesn’t go well with nuclear power.
In the atomic age, no matter how significant military advantage a group of people (or a country) has, another group of people will soon have enough military tools to cause substantial damage to the superior military power.
I don’t know if there is a good qualitative philosophical argument against war, or it needs to be treated as a quantitative variable, i.e. certain amount of war is allowable but beyond that, it becomes prohibitive due to unpredictable outcome.
If the former is true, there should be no further argument against war, we would simply need to listen to reason.
In the latter case however, one could argue that a measured frequency and intensity of war is allowable. Below, I dispute this position.
The quantitative changes in military means since WWII reached a level where almost any war can result in unpredictable outcome. Therefore, responsible societies should shy away from war unless they accept the mentality of gamblers. Even then, responsible gamblers, if there is such thing, usually have enough reserve to survive their losses. Since we don’t have a reserve habitat to survive in case we lose our current one (country?, continent?, planet?), the gambling will become irresponsible and senseless.
WWII was fought with far less destructive weaponry than is available today. Perhaps the concept of “just war” was justifiable at that time since irreparable damage to civilization seemed unlikely. The same argument can’t be applied today. Those who fool themselves that they can outsmart the enemy, will have a rude awakening when they find out that the other side developed (purchased? stole?) enough technology to make the war mutually devastating.
On the side, even the old wars could have been avoided with careful maneuvering. The roots of Germany’s WWII plans went back to an unwise, some would say unfair, Versailles peace conference whereas the Pacific branch of WWII originated from the wrangling of Japan and the Western countries, including the USA, over China. Versailles and the fight over China, in turn had their seeds in still earlier injustice, e. g. the Opium Wars of the 1800s in case of China, and the centuries of colonization in case of Europe. The injustices that harbored the dormant seeds of wars were the result of the old mentality and probably could be traced back to the dawn of civilization.
The point is that over the history war has become a self-perpetuating phenomenon that can be stopped only by dramatically changing human mentality. Hostilities in their old forms became qualitatively more self-destructive than before. Only by cooperation and a constructive form of opposition can the world avoid the collapse of modern civilization. Albert Einstein said it right:
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
Finally, "Thou Shalt Not Murder" and "Thou Shalt Not Kill" are 2 accepted translations of the Hebro text although I don't know which one is more accurate. It does show however the problem when one tries to take the messages of the Bible literally: we have a story told by people well after the alleged events took place (in case of the NT, at least 60 years after the death of Jesus) that was translated to another language - Hebrew and Greek, I believe - that, in turn, was translated again to yet another language, in this case to Old English.
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ReplyDeleteBetween my reading the comment and replying, it disappeared. I may have done something or who knows what happened in virtual space? At any rate, my apologies to the poster!
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