Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Human societies run on a combination of violence (or the threat of violence), and bullshit (or mass belief in untrue things). Without people willing to believe in the bullshit enough to back it up with violence, our current civilization would come to an end. Hence the need to honor the warrior ethic.

Expand full comment
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Here's one possibility: they ran out of other excuses for a holiday.

In England quite a lot of people believe we should have another public holiday in the year, particularly as we have none between the last Monday of August and Christmas. One of the problems is that no-one has any idea what to name it after. The only two serious possibilities - apart from national patron saint days, which are in the wrong time of the year - are "Britishness Day" and "Veterans' Day". Despite being the frontrunners both are anathema to British culture, which views flag-waving and military-worship with suspicion. (You can come up with various reasons for this, from post-Empire angst to being brought up watching films of swastika-waving Nazis and being told "That is bad, we fought so we didn't have to do that".)

The fact that we can't think of any universally appealing excuses for a public holiday suggests there aren't very many available, once you've used up the religious festivals that don't offend non-believers, days of historical significance, etc. So perhaps the thought process is not "We need to honour soldiers, let's have a holiday" but "We need a holiday, let's... uh... honour soldiers". The question "so why soldiers" remains but is less significant.

Expand full comment
36 more comments...

No posts