Why War is Beautiful… Commentary from Walter Benjamin in 1936 on war that is relevant during this time of Empire War Fever, and how fascism is so good at seizing new technology to further imperialistic wars. War is just a video game. “War is beautiful because it establishes man’s dominion over the subjugated machinery by means of gas masks, terrifying megaphones, flame throwers, and small tanks. War is beautiful because it initiates the dreamt-of metallization of the human body. War is beautiful because it enriches a flowering meadow with the fiery orchids of machine guns. War is beautiful because it combines the gunfire, the cannonades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench of putrefaction into a symphony. War is beautiful because it creates new architecture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, the smoke spirals from burning villages, and many others. . . . Poets and artists of Futurism! . . . remember these principles of an aesthetics of war so that your struggle for a new literature and a new graphic art... may be illumined by them!” If the natural utilization of productive forces is impeded by the property system, the increase in technical devices, in speed, and in the sources of energy will press for an unnatural utilization, and this is found in war. The destructiveness of war furnishes proof that society has not been mature enough to incorporate technology as its organ… The horrible features of imperialistic warfare are attributable to the discrepancy between the tremendous means of production and their inadequate utilization in the process of production—in other words, to unemployment and the lack of markets. Imperialistic war is a rebellion of technology which collects, in the form of ‘human material,’ the claims to which society has denied its natural material. Instead of draining rivers, society directs a human stream into a bed of trenches; instead of dropping seeds from airplanes, it drops incendiary bombs over cities; and through gas warfare the aura is abolished in a new way.”—The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by Walter Benjamin, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, from the 1935 essay (pdf.).
War is beautiful because it brings about technological advances. We wouldn't have half the technology we do now if it wasn't for war...
Yes, instead of 70 million casualties during WWI we can murder 140 million! That's real technological progress. I don't share your infatuation for war.
"Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves."--Walter Benjamin
Imo the only sense in which war is beautiful is that extremely difficult situations tend to being out the best in people, things they did not even dream themselves capable of. That's about it.
Radar, sonar, nuclear power, medical MRI, and many, many other technologies came about because of necessary advances due to war.
While I do like to walk around my town during the fourth of july because the cacophony of explosions sounds like what war sounds like in movies, I have to think it would be quite a bit less enjoyable if all those explosions were actually maiming and killing people... But I spose if one must be in a war, one might as well find beauty where one can.
