I’m someone who don’t like to be questioned, especially when I did something wrong. I don’tknow whether it’s a human nature that we try to avoid to think about our mistakes, but I’ve got this idea from American attitude towards the Vietnam War from the documentary<Heart and mind>, directed by Peter Davis.
Actually I’ve watched several documentaries about war before. This one specially focused on the American so-called genuine and object propaganda on the war. When I saw people in the USA dancing and drinking while another human being in Vietnam suffering from continual bomb and fire; when I saw an American mother crying for her lovely and brave son who died on the battle field as a national hero while many many Vietnamese mothers were heart-broken for their died innocent little children; when I saw a successful American military officer talking about the patriotism and personal value to primary students while an American soldier put a little Vietnamese girl on fire, it’s really an impossible job for me to link this well-developed but centralized of state power country with “human right” and “freedom”. Maybe it’s somehow democratic and free, but just inside the USA group, not for the whole human being.
Peter Davis exposed many reason for the Vietnam War, directly or indirectly. I picked up several of them and concluded as follows:
1. Artificed propaganda
Controlling the high-tech eletronic media such as broadcasting, moive and TV program, five presidents from 1950’s to 1970’s portrayed an image of righteous war to the Americans. Also the media concealed the true and horrible condition that the Vietnamese were going through. So Americans just cared about the result of the war and their injured and died.
As for the soldiers, the government integrated patriotism into the ideology as a powerful weapon, by face-to-face and concentrated propaganda. And it worked, for most of the soldiers set the triumph as their final goals but wasn’t concerned about whether the war was right or wrong. The ones who questioned the righteousness of the war were dismissed from the army and dispelled from the nation as a loser.
2. psychological ingredient:
Floyd discribed two basic human feelings: the feeling of survival and the feeling of death. We tend to keep the former one and avoid the latter one. Soldiers in the war, got some satisfaction from challenging death, which transferred their fear of death to killing other people. That’s the psychological system of people in battle.
And for American,which is an aggressive nation(we can deduce it from theire national sport----the American football, full of violence and danger.), they tend to damage something. So the war broke out and out and continued.
3.personal need
As showed in the domentary, quite a number of soldiers took the was as their career ambition and laboratory for the high-tech weapon, and the field to show their ability to handle the technology. They were far from the awareness of the pain they created to the innocent Vietnamese, and they didn’t want to know. That’s the industrial life in western countries: they believe in the technology but not in the human nature and conscience.
An American officer said:” The oriental religion is that life is not important.” It would be reasonable that they killed and hurt so many “unimportant” oriental civilians and soldiers. But do they really understand oriental religion? Or they just created a perfect excuse for what they did. And I don’t understand their religion: how can they believe in the God while doing the job for devil. I definitely don’t understand. And don’t tell me that oriental are more ignorant than the westeners. When the American soldiers involved themselves in the horrible war, aimless, it seems that ignorance is human nature that can’t be distinguished from nations. Even if the westerners have probed so deeply in the science, they still are, ignorant. Look at the pain they brought and are still bringing to the world, isn’t it ridiculous that it’s the so-called most democratic country with most advanced civilization in the world?
And now, in Iraq, war is still going on. I am quite sure people in western countries and in our county get quite different information from TV, newspaper, broadcasting. Maybe we are closer to the truth, but many westerners are still blindfolded from the truth. And maybe it’s totally opposite in the western ideology. What we all human being need in the world today, the chaos, polluted and imbalance world, is a unificated philosophy, which cares about the whole human being no matter who they are and where they are. What we don’t need is the hegemonic ideology from the advanced countries. Though it’s tough job for contemporary philosopher, some of they try hard. What we as someone are studying the masss media, should do is keeping awake from the mass media controlled by the power, and try our best to keep others awake.
