To the Editor,
Re: Canada needs flag-waving, Letters, July 9.
Surely it’s rhetorical when the letter writer asks, “Do we Canadians need a war to show our love for our country?” – Canadians being but one of the instinctively tribal cultures populating the globe; culture, once beyond the superstition, being naught but an inherent fostering of tribal differences; a delight in distinguishing between ‘us’ and ‘them.’
Would the creators infesting our many cultural superstitions have imbued our species with an instinctive tendency to get stupid in the presence of cultural symbols if the intention was not to reinforce the most base of tribal instincts?
Us and them: the most basic prerequisite of war; of its attendant (as symptom) flag-waving. The species is easily governed by the law of ‘the lowest common denominator;’ that intellectual density wherein Homo sapiens is unable to think, unable to question dictates and pronouncements; unable to better discern events than does his chimpanzee cousin. Yes, indeed, imagine the horrors of a world without war. One positively shudders at the thought.
Notwithstanding W.T. Sherman’s timelessly, prescient observation that “war is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.” So, yes, let the divisions be made that the merriment of flag-waving may commence.
David S. DunawaySouth Wellington