In the US, today is Memorial Day, when we are to honor warriors who died in our side of wars. In addition we are to honor all our warriors on Veterans’ Day, and our first warriors and politicians on Independence Day. We also have days to honor wartime politicians, one warring explorer, all mothers, all fathers, and "laborers" (i.e., most all of us).
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.
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.
"Far more people have been killed in car accidents than in war. Same for heart attacks."
I guess they miss the reciprocation aspect. You don't owe them anything. As for Eli's comment on why we don't honour fallen police officers with a day...
Ok, that's a more problematic one :-)
Perhaps because their collective deaths are not associated with a single event. Thus the NYFD who died on 9/11 might not have a remembrance day, but they are closer to it than the many more fire fighters who have died in smaller events over the years.
It's a day for Warriors. However, feel free to propose a "People Who Got Wasted Just Hanging Around" Day.
We can honor lots of folks on such a holiday. Take one case I've got right now. Poor guy was driving down the interstate when a wheel, no tire, from a compact came bouncing up and over the Jersey barrier and through his windshield. He never saw it. Sheared off the top of his head just above his nose. He didn't even drop his coffee.
It makes you think.
Maybe, somewhere in one of the Many Thanatoses, he got there a second before or a second later and so he made it home to his family; and they're not now trying to blame a car company for failing to warn the owners of its cars not to tie spare wheels up under it with nylon string 1/16th in. thick, and leave it there for 2 months. But then how would I make a living?
The powerful disincentive arises only after the person volunteers to become a soldier, so if you take away the incentive of Memorial Day, fewer will volunteer.
Sister Y, I would think just the opposite. Rewards and punishments are incentives; hence if there's already a powerful disincentive (punishment) for not performing an action, there is less of a need for an incentive (reward) for performing it; and conversely.
Furthermore, someone who volunteers to become a soldier presumably understands the terms of the arrangement, including the fact that they will be subject to harsh punishments for failing to obey orders, etc.
komponisto, perhaps military occupations are special in that even if someone volunteers to become a soldier, his actions are largely outside his free choice. A firefighter may refuse an assignment or quit his job; a soldier may not.
We are used to focusing on a person's freely chosen actions in according merit; however, there's a neat argument that it's unfair to accord the same honor/reward for an action that's freely chosen as opposed to one that's undertaken by mandatory duty. The person who had a duty to act, and did so, was subject to greater punishment (being court-martialed, jailed in a military prison for desertion, etc.) if he refused than someone who didn't have the duty to act. Shouldn't the greater punishment the duty subjected the person to also come with a proportionally greater reward/honor if the duty is performed? In other words, why should civilians in dangerous jobs have all the same honor and reward as military folks, when they are subject to much less severe punishments if they refuse to act?
(I came into contact with this argument in a paper on the duty to study Torah by David Benatar - "Obligation, Motivation, and Reward: An Analysis of a Talmudic Principle," 2002 in Journal of Law and Religion.)
Why does the US have a national Memorial Day and Veterans Day for soldiers, but not police officers?
Policing is considered a job -- and not necessarily always a particularly noble one (cf. tax collectors). By contrast, the military is for some reason not considered a mere occupation. (Note, for example, the bad connotation of the word "mercenary".)
That's why you get people arguing about the Iraq war as if we still had a draft. The Iraq war may be bad policy, but arguing against it on the grounds that it "puts our soldiers in harm's way" strikes me as inappropriate, since it is literally the job of "our soldiers" is to be in harm's way. Nowadays, with conscription a thing of the past, there is every reason to regard the military as closely analogous to other risky occupations like police or firefighting.
why don't we save money by paying all workers in honor then?
Interesting question. My answer is that honor is a kind of social status, and status is relative so paying everyone with it wouldn't make sense. We pay soldiers with honor because we want to attract into the military people who value honor more than wealth, probably because those people make better soldiers on average.
I notice that we do honor peacemakers, scientists, artists, etc., but only on an individual basis with prizes and the like, rather than en masse. This may have to do with the fact that the military has very strict supervision of its soldiers, so there's comparatively little risk that someone can get honor while doing little work.
One interesting feature of warriors, as opposed to, say, police officers, is that a large percentage of them have been drafted (historically)- that is, called to act without having much choice in the matter. Also, even for volunteers, a huge portion of their choice is removed upon enlistment. I think an interesting question is whether those who do a duty that is required of them should be differently honored than those who voluntarily take on a duty that was not, legally speaking, required of them. Is it different to be a draftee than to be a volunteer? Are your actions different if you are a free civilian than if you "belong" to the Corps?
Warriors are willing to give up their lives for thier country. Do you have any idea how much courage, both physical and moral, that requires? Their only request is that you not forget their sacrifice. Not a bad deal for those at home who benefit from the sacrifice.
The true trump answer to your question doesn't have anything to do with identity politics (as suggested earlier), but with economics. If American soldiers believed their sacrifices would not be remembered or honored, they would stop sacrificing. The world would be a very, very different place.
This is a repeat post by the way. It's just as silly as the first time. Why does Memorial Day offend you so much? Do you have a chip on your shoulder about military guys?
"Yes warriors, dead and otherwise, deserve some honor, but to me this seems all out of proportion. Not only do we overemphasize warriors of dramatic battles we won (e.g., not WWI trench doughboys), but surely many others deserve honor. How about warriors who died on other sides, or in other wars? How about civilians who died or sacrificed in wars? How about those who prevented wars?
And surely war should not be the main source of honor in our world! How about holidays to honor those who died for or sacrificed for or at least benefited the rest of us in other ways? For example, why not a day to honor volunteers? Or a day to honor all explorers, includingintellectual, artistic, and business explorers? Why focus so much on our winning dead warriors?"
I'm pretty confident I know the trump answer to your questions, and I'm a bit smug it hasn't been given yet. Hint: what do veterans organizations have in common with labor unions, christians, and the civil rights movement organizations inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr.? They're among the best discrete and insular minorities (special interest groups). I suspect days of honor correlate well with the best discrete and insular minorities, in part because they're useful points on which to rally and organize their bases, and perhaps because they're ways to signal a level of political power. They also correlate well with national federal holidays:
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.
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.
Why is this so complicated? Think about this: Why is this so complicated?
"Far more people have been killed in car accidents than in war. Same for heart attacks."
I guess they miss the reciprocation aspect. You don't owe them anything. As for Eli's comment on why we don't honour fallen police officers with a day...
Ok, that's a more problematic one :-)
Perhaps because their collective deaths are not associated with a single event. Thus the NYFD who died on 9/11 might not have a remembrance day, but they are closer to it than the many more fire fighters who have died in smaller events over the years.
It's a day for Warriors. However, feel free to propose a "People Who Got Wasted Just Hanging Around" Day.
We can honor lots of folks on such a holiday. Take one case I've got right now. Poor guy was driving down the interstate when a wheel, no tire, from a compact came bouncing up and over the Jersey barrier and through his windshield. He never saw it. Sheared off the top of his head just above his nose. He didn't even drop his coffee.
It makes you think.
Maybe, somewhere in one of the Many Thanatoses, he got there a second before or a second later and so he made it home to his family; and they're not now trying to blame a car company for failing to warn the owners of its cars not to tie spare wheels up under it with nylon string 1/16th in. thick, and leave it there for 2 months. But then how would I make a living?
What a weird sad world.
The powerful disincentive arises only after the person volunteers to become a soldier, so if you take away the incentive of Memorial Day, fewer will volunteer.
Sister Y, I would think just the opposite. Rewards and punishments are incentives; hence if there's already a powerful disincentive (punishment) for not performing an action, there is less of a need for an incentive (reward) for performing it; and conversely.
Furthermore, someone who volunteers to become a soldier presumably understands the terms of the arrangement, including the fact that they will be subject to harsh punishments for failing to obey orders, etc.
Someone complains here that we honor dead police more than civilians, but he's an atypical person.
komponisto, perhaps military occupations are special in that even if someone volunteers to become a soldier, his actions are largely outside his free choice. A firefighter may refuse an assignment or quit his job; a soldier may not.
We are used to focusing on a person's freely chosen actions in according merit; however, there's a neat argument that it's unfair to accord the same honor/reward for an action that's freely chosen as opposed to one that's undertaken by mandatory duty. The person who had a duty to act, and did so, was subject to greater punishment (being court-martialed, jailed in a military prison for desertion, etc.) if he refused than someone who didn't have the duty to act. Shouldn't the greater punishment the duty subjected the person to also come with a proportionally greater reward/honor if the duty is performed? In other words, why should civilians in dangerous jobs have all the same honor and reward as military folks, when they are subject to much less severe punishments if they refuse to act?
(I came into contact with this argument in a paper on the duty to study Torah by David Benatar - "Obligation, Motivation, and Reward: An Analysis of a Talmudic Principle," 2002 in Journal of Law and Religion.)
Why does the US have a national Memorial Day and Veterans Day for soldiers, but not police officers?
Policing is considered a job -- and not necessarily always a particularly noble one (cf. tax collectors). By contrast, the military is for some reason not considered a mere occupation. (Note, for example, the bad connotation of the word "mercenary".)
That's why you get people arguing about the Iraq war as if we still had a draft. The Iraq war may be bad policy, but arguing against it on the grounds that it "puts our soldiers in harm's way" strikes me as inappropriate, since it is literally the job of "our soldiers" is to be in harm's way. Nowadays, with conscription a thing of the past, there is every reason to regard the military as closely analogous to other risky occupations like police or firefighting.
why don't we save money by paying all workers in honor then?
Interesting question. My answer is that honor is a kind of social status, and status is relative so paying everyone with it wouldn't make sense. We pay soldiers with honor because we want to attract into the military people who value honor more than wealth, probably because those people make better soldiers on average.
I notice that we do honor peacemakers, scientists, artists, etc., but only on an individual basis with prizes and the like, rather than en masse. This may have to do with the fact that the military has very strict supervision of its soldiers, so there's comparatively little risk that someone can get honor while doing little work.
Some good questions. I just made an attempt at answering them on my blog. Here is what I wrote:[900 word repost deleted by editor.]
One interesting feature of warriors, as opposed to, say, police officers, is that a large percentage of them have been drafted (historically)- that is, called to act without having much choice in the matter. Also, even for volunteers, a huge portion of their choice is removed upon enlistment. I think an interesting question is whether those who do a duty that is required of them should be differently honored than those who voluntarily take on a duty that was not, legally speaking, required of them. Is it different to be a draftee than to be a volunteer? Are your actions different if you are a free civilian than if you "belong" to the Corps?
Warriors are willing to give up their lives for thier country. Do you have any idea how much courage, both physical and moral, that requires? Their only request is that you not forget their sacrifice. Not a bad deal for those at home who benefit from the sacrifice.
The true trump answer to your question doesn't have anything to do with identity politics (as suggested earlier), but with economics. If American soldiers believed their sacrifices would not be remembered or honored, they would stop sacrificing. The world would be a very, very different place.
This is a repeat post by the way. It's just as silly as the first time. Why does Memorial Day offend you so much? Do you have a chip on your shoulder about military guys?
"Yes warriors, dead and otherwise, deserve some honor, but to me this seems all out of proportion. Not only do we overemphasize warriors of dramatic battles we won (e.g., not WWI trench doughboys), but surely many others deserve honor. How about warriors who died on other sides, or in other wars? How about civilians who died or sacrificed in wars? How about those who prevented wars?
And surely war should not be the main source of honor in our world! How about holidays to honor those who died for or sacrificed for or at least benefited the rest of us in other ways? For example, why not a day to honor volunteers? Or a day to honor all explorers, includingintellectual, artistic, and business explorers? Why focus so much on our winning dead warriors?"
I'm pretty confident I know the trump answer to your questions, and I'm a bit smug it hasn't been given yet. Hint: what do veterans organizations have in common with labor unions, christians, and the civil rights movement organizations inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr.? They're among the best discrete and insular minorities (special interest groups). I suspect days of honor correlate well with the best discrete and insular minorities, in part because they're useful points on which to rally and organize their bases, and perhaps because they're ways to signal a level of political power. They also correlate well with national federal holidays:
http://www.opm.gov/operatin...
Protean and ascending discrete and insular minorities probably have days of honor that they're pushing for that reason (Cesar Chavez Day).
I think the sharpest way possible of putting this question would be:
Why does the US have a national Memorial Day and Veterans Day for soldiers, but not police officers?