Nick Read » war

How you make me feel; projection and its identification.

Nick Read — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:06:44 +0000

Why do we trust some people and not others? Why do we admire some people? Why do some people make us uncomfortable? Is it because they remind us of significant figures in our lives; our mother, our father, a brother or sister, a lover, a husband, wife, a teacher? Are they suitable objects for our projections?

Projection is a ubiquitous feature of human nature. It is the cornerstone of evolution; what makes us human; the effect of an opposable thumb. As soon as we could throw, we could make things happen; we could control the future (see Projection, the missile of evolution. December 24^th, 2010), but this required us to perform the mental trick of imagination; to think the way things might be, to make believe.

Psychological projection performs that same mental trick, it transfers what we feel onto somebody else, to imagine it is they who have those some feelings and attitudes. So we protect ourselves from psychic damage by projecting the bad stuff onto those we recognise already possess some of the characteristics we want to get rid of. ‘She’s just so selfish.’ ‘I can’t trust him’. He’s so lazy, careless, unreliable, fussy, messy. This happens all the time. Just listen to how ‘a gossip of girls’ on the train criticise absent ‘friends’. Look at how politicians try to achieve a semblance of dominance and control by rubbishing their competitors; how newspapers take hold of that and amplify it. But it’s not just bad stuff. Idealisation is a kind of projection. When we admire somebody, respect somebody, fall in love with somebody, we transfer our wishes for how would like to be onto that person. They become a mentor, a role model, an object of desire.

Projection starts, like everything else, in childhood. Children deal with uncomfortable feelings like fear and anger by externalising them. First identify your enemy, locate all the bad stuff into them and then you can justify an attack. Or identify the one you admire, locate all your wishes in that person and make them your best friend. Projection is a mental trick. There are goodies and baddies; in my childhood these were cowboys and Indians; the English and the Germans. How differently you see things as you grow up. Maturity is a state of recognising the bad feelings, taking them back and containing them, realising that what we criticise in other people is also part of us, accepting our essential humanity.

Groups, organisations, institutions, governments, states, do it all the time. They are pathologically split; they operate at a very childlike manner and project all their own concealed characteristics, especially the bad ones like unreliability, inadequacy, lack of sophistication, to say nothing of selfishness and ruthlessness onto their competitors. Colonel Gadaffi is currently the embodiment of all evil though only a few years ago, he was our special friend. But the only thing that’s changed is our own projections. Members of an exclusive culture, music critics, art enthusiasts, historians, theatre buffs, vintage car collectors, can tend to puff themselves up by broadcasting their lacunae of esoterica to an audience they assume knows nothing and can be diminished by their ignorance.

But projection can only really work in society if others identify with it. This is what the psycholanalysts (another in- group) call projective identification or to put it in everyday speak, ‘how others make us feel’. In voodoo, pointing the bone can cause others to feel so guilty by inference whether they are or not, that they slink away and die. They have been ostracised from the tribe; they are not worthy to belong anymore and they cannot therefore survive. Social exclusion is a powerful force; guilt and shame, powerful identifications. People who have done something shameful to attract the projections of others, who use it as a shield for their own shame. And it’s always the ones with most to be ashamed of that seek out those they can offload on to. Those who feel unhappy make those who are close to them unhappy too

Projective identification operates in so many aspects of human behaviour. Bullies can’t contain their own fear, so they make others frightened of them. Suspicious people are secretive and engender mistrust and lies. Needy people cannot give and induce need in others. Those who are envious put on airs and graces to try to make others envy them. Lovers who feel insecure may do something to make their partners feel jealous. Unhappy and lonely people make those who are close to them unhappy too because at least they are toegether in their misery. Teachers, who are not confident, can make their students feel stupid, but equally the over-confident student can make a teacher defensive. ‘You make me feel sick, you make me so angry, you just make me depressed.’ These are all common identifications within relationships.

Those who carry a grudge are attracted to political groups, but can be very dangerous because they can cause others to feel bad and act out. So did Ian Brady make Myra Hindley do it. Projective identification is never a justification in law but it happens.

War is mutual projection as each side used propaganda to unsettle the other. Sport is the same. Winning the mental battle wins the war or the tennis match. Do not flinch; maintain the upper hand. And we the observers so want the underdog, the good guy to win, we will do all we can to inspire him with our enthusiasm. It almost worked with Tim and we’re trying our best with Andy, the nearly men of British tennis.

Some doctors are so anxious they can make their patients terrified. Michael Balint, the author of ‘The Doctor, the Patient and the Illness’ recognised this. Patients pass the anxiety of not knowing what’s wrong with them on to the doctor, so that he orders more tests in order not to appear a failure. Or their attitude may make their doctors feel angry, depressed, tired. Emotional transference is such a powerful phenomenon. As a therapist, I had always marvelled at how one client could make me feel so wound up and energetic; the next so tired I could fall asleep and have actually done so, but they were lying on the couch and I was sitting behind them and they never noticed.

Actors are masters of projection. They tune into their audience and can make us all identify with the emotions they project. I have had two actors in therapy. One made me feel so angry, I actually had chest pain and needed to ask him to leave. The other made me feel such surges of desire and compassion, it was all I could do not to take her in my arms and love her right there and then.

But it’s not all negative. We can also use projection to bring out the best in people. Look at the way babies project their hunger onto their mother, who identifies with it and feeds them. Falling in love feeds upon itself. We project our beliefs and feelings into those whom we love and if they love us too and are a suitable object for our projection, they identify our desire and act in a way that intensifies it.

Lovers give each other those feelings of security, excitement, togetherness, they’ve been looking for all their life, but what then happens to the bad feelings? Well, if they can never let this love become as imperfect as the rest of life, then these feelings are projected out onto others, and the exclusive couple clings together united against the world, unable to trust anybody else. But most marriages are not like that. They are states of mutual projection and identification, and partners try to look after their own well being by making their partners shoulder the blame and feel bad. You never think! You’re totally selfish! I just can’t rely on you. In a way they need the other to get rid of the bad feelings. When it works well, it’s a trade off. One may make the other feel alive while the other projects a feeling of safety. It works. The problems come when one of them changes the dynamic; meets somebody else, suffers a setback that destroys their confidence, accepts a job that satisfies their needs.

Projective identification requires us to think. When somebody behaves angrily or badly to us, we need to reflect on our own attitude and behaviour and the reason for it. How did it all start? What was the trigger, the fear? We all have responsibility in our functioning society to bring out the best in people, the most constructive response, but in a narcissistic, self seeking society, people all too often have to have their own way, because ‘we’re worth it’. It may be unfashionable to say, but I do believe that we have the friends, the colleagues, the children and the relationships we deserve because we help to make them the way they are for us

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Love and Glory; the wondrous madness of it all.

Nick Read — Sat, 01 May 2010 17:39:52 +0000

‘It’s still the same old story; a fight for love and glory; a case of do or die.’

It is 1885 and there’s trouble in the Balkans – as usual! Sergius, so ambitious for glory, leads a foolhardy cavalry charge against the Serbian machine guns. He’s not to know that the Serbians had been issued the wrong ammunition and could not retaliate. So his glorious charge scatters the enemy, who disperse into the countryside. The population are advised to keep their doors and windows bolted, but Bluntschli, a Swiss mercenary , shins up a drainpipe into stumbles into the bedroom of Raina, who is not only the daughter of the Bulgarian commander , Colonel Petkoff, but is also betrothed to the heroic Sergius.

Raina is moved by Bluntschli’s fear. She gives him chocolate creams to eat and hides him. He falls asleep on her bed. Raina and her mother, Catherine, then help him escape by disguising his uniform under their father’s old coat.

A few months later, peace breaks out and Petkoff and Sergius return from the war. Bluntschli, who has been promoted captain, calls to return the coat. It’s the stuff of farce. Petkoff and Sergius must not know their wife and fiancée concealed a deserter, but how can the return of the missing coat with Raina’s signed photograph,’ to my chocolate cream soldier’, in the pocket. But Petkoff and Sergius are more bluster than brain. They welcome Bluntschi as an honourable foe and use his practical abilities to help them organise the demobilisation of their troops and horses.

Bluntschli is a professional. For him, war is a job of work. He keeps his head down, does his duty and waits for the peace. By comparison, his erstwhile opponents appear ridiculously pompous. Petkoff is actually scared of his troops and wants nothing more than to retire to his country house. Sergius is a liability. He would sacrifice the safety of his troops in his desperate quest for personal glory. So much for honour!

But what of love? Sergius is not in love with Raina; he does not know or understand her. Besides, he can’t keep his hands off Louka, Raina’s wily, cynical maid, who sees the little boy inside and is more of a challenge. Raina, meanwhile, has developed a soft spot for her chocolate cream soldier; he understands her and makes her laugh. Even her parents are won over when they learn of his inheritance.

In ‘Arms and the Man’, George Bernard Shaw points a satirical Irish finger at the ridiculous hypocrisy of honour and romance. As Bluntschli explains, sensible people are frightened, they lie, they deceive, they pretend. They may like to think themselves honourable but faced with mortal danger, they will do all they can to stay alive. Only the mad will sacrifice everything for love and glory.

What Shaw is writing about, in cold psychoanalytical language, is narcissism. Sergius doesn’t love Raina; he is merely in love with the reflection of his own image in her eyes. The beautiful and spirited Raina makes him feel much more of a man than he knows he really is. He lacks confidence and can only gain self esteem by exciting the admiration of others. He lives in the regard of others. It is his life blood. Without it he dies. His need is so desperate, he will risk everything, even the lives of his men, the future of his country.

He even feels compelled to seek regard in the cynical arms of Louka, though he knows that she will be the one to destroy him. An overweening desire for fame and celebrity is always accompanied by a tendency to self destruct. Think of George Best, Gary Glitter, Paul Gasgoine, Jade Goody.

And for Raina, the commanders daughter who cannot go to war herself, Sergius is the embodiment of her own inbred projections of bravery and honour, the only man worthy of her love; it’s glory by proxy. The narcissistic love object has to be impressive; it doesn’t work otherwise. Raina is in love with how the attentions of so brave a man can make her feel adorable, admirable, desirable, loveable; all a self centred woman could even want.

So are we to believe that romance and glory are but the delusions of a fragile psyche, make believe; the stories we tell ourselves in order to conceal a reality we can’t accept. Bluntschli explains that humanity is never that wonderful or glorious, but he’s an administrator, the son of a hotel owner. But do we always want to be that sensible? There’s no meaning in that and life without meaning is not worth living. Don’t we need make believe too? If not, what would be the point of literature, music, the visual arts? The moments of madness, falling in love, crazy projects, bring us life and permit change. Banish them and we become depressed and die a little more. But contain them, allow our healthy narcissism, our self confidence and esteem to receive nourishment of novelty from friends and family and who knows, we could even be happy.

‘The world will always welcome lovers. As time goes by.’

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In search of meaning

Nick Read — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:53:05 +0000

‘To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. If there is any purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is. Each must find out for himself, and must accept the answer that his solution prescribes. If he succeeds, he will continue to grow despite all the indignities.’

So writes one time Harvard Professor of Psychology, Gordon Allport in his preface to Viktor Frankl’s abiding monument, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’. He claims it as the central theme of existentialism. We might, however question whether it is always necessary to suffer in order to grow. There is something Calvinist in that notion. But what Frankl shows us through his narrative is how it is possible to withstand the most dreadful pain, torture and privation by finding and retaining an essential meaning in life.

Viktor Frankl was a jewish psychiatrist, living in Vienna in 1939. He could have escaped to America; he had a visa, but he could not bring himself to abandon his parents to their fate. He was arrested by the Nazis and taken to Auschwitz, but he survived. He wasn’t a Capo, a privileged collaborator; he found the meaning in his suffering to survive.

‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ focuses on everyday indignities and privations, the cruelty, the lack of food, sleep and adequate clothing, the lice, dysentery, work, and endurance.

After the initial shock of becoming a number instead of a human being, a prisoner enters into phase of apathy and indifference. He tries not to be noticed, merges in with the crowd, gives an impression of smartness and fitness for work; does anything that would stop him being singled out and sent to the gas chambers. Many gave up, refused to work and accepted their fate, but those who survived discovered and nurtured an essential purpose in life that was worth clinging on to.

Frankl describes how the memory and love for his wife kept him alive. In the midst of the most dreadful degradation, he focussed on thoughts that uplifted the soul; an image of mountains, the coming of spring, music, snatches of poetry, the book he wanted to write.

There is nobility in suffering, Frankl claims, opportunities to find a moral compass and retain human dignity. Suffering can bring out the best in a person if he sees meaning in it.

Fyodor Dostoevsky said that the only thing he dreaded was not to be worthy of his sufferings. Those who let their inner hold on their own dignity and meaning, eventually fell victim to the camp’s degrading influence. They gave way to introspection and retrospection, lost purpose and hope, and just lay on their bed of stinking straw and were taken away to die.

Frankl described a strange timelessness in the camp. Hours or days of degradation and pain, passed slowly, but months and years passed quickly, punctuated by suffering. Survivors saw it as a provisional existence, something to be endured for as long as it took; they retained the hope they would be free.

Prisoners were supported by the companionship of mutual privation. They tried to help each other. They kept each other warm at night, they remove the lice from their hair, they shared their food, they told grim jokes. They were a kind of community; they trusted each other. Religion was a potent bonding force; prisoners often gained solace by praying together every night.

Unfortunately, their suffering did not always end when the guards left and the camp gates were opened . Release was all too often associated with bitterness and disillusion. Life had moved on. Their family had died. There was no work and they had lost the companionship of shared suffering. Others could not understand

For Frankl, his experience in Auschwitz became the mainspring of his life. From it he developed a philosophy of hope and a psychotherapy for those in despair, based on the discovery of the meaning of their suffering. It was Niezsche who said, ‘He who has a why (a purpose) to live can bear almost any how.’ Frankl explains that the ‘why’ of existence is was not so much what we expect from life, more what life expected from us in terms of work and family. Life ultimately means taking responsibility. Sometimes action is needed, sometimes contemplation, sometimes it’s just necessary to accept fate. When a man realises that suffering is his destiny, he will accept it as a challenge. Such thoughts can keep a prisoner from despair. Again, Nietzsche, ‘That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.’

Few of us in the west have ever been tested in the way Frankl was. But meaning can be threatened in other ways, such as the death of a spouse, the devastation of divorce, the collapse of love, the loss of purpose in retirement or unemployment, the estrangement from one’s children, the disillusion with a cause or faith. When people lose meaning and purpose, then they succumb to an inner emptiness, an existential vacuum, the boredom and loneliness, which lies at the base of much of the unhappiness of modern life.

Empty people try to fill their lives with thrills and diversions; the sexual libido becomes rampant in existential vacuum, so does the pursuit of power, the addiction to shopping, alcohol, drugs, the accumulation of money. It is pure escapism into immediate gratification, a frantic search for meaning in sensation. ‘We had such a wicked time, I got smashed, the sex was fantastic!’

Such diversions rarely lead to meaning. Quite the reverse; often the will, the hope, the purpose and the self respect dies a little more. Frankl states that people can transcend the thrill-seeking self and discover a meaning in their lives by creating a work or a deed, by experiencing something or encountering someone (such as falling in love), and most of all, by the attitude we take towards unavoidable suffering.

He claims that we can be ennobled by taking on the suffering another would have to bear, like giving up a relationship that would devastate them, an ambition that would cause them pain. This might give suffering a meaning, but it is avoidable. And is martyrdom and self sacrifice ever a valid route to redemption and happiness? Only if the sacrifice has a deeper meaning to the integrity of the ‘soul’, outside of the act itself.

Survival of identity and meaning (what I tend to regard as the soul) is more important than mere corporeal integrity. The anorexic starves their body so that their basic identity and meaning can thrive. And for many other sick people, illness endures the meaning of what has happened, until a person can bear to bring it to mind. If the meaning and purpose are devastated by life’s vicissitudes, then the body will easily become vulnerable to disease. Mind, body and soul (meaning) are a continuum, which contains health and happiness.

‘Man’s search for meaning’ was first published in 1946 in German under the title of ‘Ein psycholog erlebt das konzentrationslager’. Frankl developed the existential concept of logotherapy from his experience. Unlike psychoanalysis, logotherapy does not dwell on the past, but focuses on the development of a meaning in a person’s suffering that can break the cycle of loneliness and unhappiness.

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Hey,hey, LBJ! How many kids have you killed today?

Nick Read — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 04:08:16 +0000

Mao Tse Tung said “first the mountains, then the countryside, then the cities.” But he left out the fourth: the home front. If you can attack the enemy at their soft under-belly, their home front, using behavioural psychology, stirring up feelings against the immorality of war, then this is a very powerful weapon. The Vietnamese War was the first war that was waged in the lounge, on television.

The Vietcong were very good at exploiting contradictions in the enemy camp. They launched their devastating Tet Offensive at the time of the American election, escalating the human costs of the war. Too many soldiers were being killed, too many were taking drugs, there were too many atrocities, too many massacres. This was no longer an honourable war. The politicians, the commanders and even the soldiers were not highly regarded. The draft of 300,000 young man to fight in Vietnam was already deeply unpopular. There were student revolutions. “Hell no, won’t go!” Even the leaders became disenchanted. Robert McNamara, the Minister of Defence, was one of these. Johnson could not bring himself to run for re-election; he pulled out. This was seen by the Vietcong as a great victory.

The Americans didn’t really understand this war. They were using military solutions to fight a political war; a war of ideologies. They didn’t understand communism. They saw the world as divided, with themselves as the leader of the free world and the Russians as the leader of the enslaved world. Theirs was a mythical conflict, the stuff of romance; the American Crusaders against the Evil Empire; Uncle Sam against the wicked Uncle Ho. Communism was an informed conspiracy of hungry revolutionaries that threatened to engulf all of Asia. There was no question they wouldn’t win it. There had not been a war that the Americans had not actually won with honour. Weren’t they always the good guys, who rode out in the sunset and defeated the evil enemy? Remember the Alamo! Remember their victorious intervention in both European conflicts! And God was on their side in this conflict.

The Americans never tried to expose their enemy’s flaws. The North Vietnamese were committing terrorist acts against their own people all the time but the Americans never really exploited this. And they also created divisions in their own rank, at first supporting Ngo Dinh Diem then they turning against him when he persecuted the monks and sacked the monasteries, so in the end he was assassinated by his own troops. They just failed to understand that that was the way things were done there. Politics never has been a branch of morality, but in the Camelot Court of JF Kennedy, people came to believe it was.

They were shocked to discover that they were seen as the unwanted imperialist invader. When they weren’t trying to destroy the country with bombs they were taking over its infrastructure, its water, its power supplies, its transport. They should have showed more political wisdom, less naivety, less arrogance. They should have never have gone there in the first place. Do these arguments have a familiar ring to them? They should! The war in Iraq, the unwinnable war against terror – had all the same elements.

The Americans were in Vietnam very early. It was Eisenhower, who committed resources to support Diem and the French colonial war that propped him up, picking up 70% of the bill in 1954. But the French were defeated; they committed more and more troops, suffered unacceptable casualties, the war became unpopular in Paris, and they could not win. Why did the Americans not read the runes? Arrogance? Hubris? Paranoia?

So Kennedy pledged to prop the dominos up. Johnson escalated the commitment, claiming this was a war on poverty, a war on ignorance, a war on discrimination, Nixon began to withdraw troops but sent in the bombers. It was left up to Gerald Ford to disengage. But even he tried to get Congress to agree more military aid for Southeast Asia. They refused; one suspects he was relieved.

The Americans realised early on that the war was unwinnable, but they wanted peace with honour. After so much bloodshed, the electorate would not accept the humiliation of defeat and it was political suicide for a president to suggest it. That’s why it went on so long.

The war in Vietnam was the longest in America’s history, and second only to World War II in terms of blood and money. So the American leaders went to war because of paranoia and they failed to end the war because of their political suicide of humiliation.

The Vietnam War was started without a formal declaration and ended with a false peace. It had no clear objective, no obvious moral imperative, no identifiable enemy. America underestimated the task, they never issued a formal declaration of war and mobilisation took place by stealth. Air strikes would never win hearts and minds. The draft was deeply unpopular at home. There were too many gadgets that did not function in the jungle. But there were lessons: helicopters add mobility to jungle warfare; atrocities happen when conditions are wretched and the priority is survival. Amid booby traps, chaos and confusion, conventional moral standards are eclipsed; any Vietnamese, even children, can be seen as the enemy. It’s them or us.

But the war on the home front was being waged between the soldiers, who were just doing their duty and an ever growing corps of politically informed student peace demonstrators (the brutes and the draft dodgers). Besides, Uncle Ho was more of an iconic leader than LBJ, and successive American presidents failed to hang on to the hearts and minds of their own citizens. There were no heroes in this war, no victories, no spoils, just amputees and body bags. .

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Dulce et decorum est …..

Nick Read — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:36:47 +0000

Have you read ‘All quiet on the western front?’ I hadn’t until this week. It is a remarkable work, shocking, poignant but at the same time uplifting and hopeful. It’s a story of survival, but all war stories are of survival. Remarque’s novel tells it you feel it really was; fear, squalor and an animal instinct for survival

Eric Remarque writes in the first person and present tense. We are there with him, crouching in shell holes, deafened by explosions, but still acutely aware of the pop of mortar shells, the hoot of gas shells or the little whirring ones that release enough shrapnel to cut a man to pieces. We smell and see death everywhere, the sickly sweet scent of corruption, bits of body hanging on splintered trees. We hear the screams. We see boys broken down, weeping for their mothers . We are there clearing an enemy trench with grenades, running, lunging, stabbing, not thinking, limbs working like a robot. The enemy is a machine to be put out of action, a dangerous animal; kill it or be killed. Don’t think! We spend the night lost in a shell hole in no man’s land, crouching up to our necks in mud and water as bullets whistle overhead. We suffocate in our masks as the greenish gas settles in our craters. We see those who have torn them off coughing up the pink froth of their lungs. There is only so much gore and death that a person can take! We become immune to the horror of it all. It is the inevitable backdrop of war. Just keep your head down, run like the devil and if one comes for you, throw yourself in a hole. Stay alive! Don’t think!

As a common foot-soldier, you can’t see the bigger picture, you are not fighting for your country, you are fighting for yourself and your mates; you just have to get through it, to last out until it ends. Remarque is German, but that is irrelevant. There are no sides in this war; the only enemies are pain, fear and death. Glory, bravery, honour, have no part of this. Pleasures are much more mundane; a full belly, a night’s sleep, an regular bowel, getting a good billet, going on leave, the memory of the touch of a woman, and comradeship; the companionship of communal latrines, crude jokes, a shared cigarette, a snaffled meal, revenge on a sadistic NCO. In war, it’s your mates that get you through.

If the function of historical literature is to bring events alive, All Quiet on the Western Front succeeds like no other novel in conveying the essence of war for those who fight in it. It’s up there on a par with Wilfred Owen’s poem.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Erich Maria Remarque was born Eric Paul Remark in Osnabruck and was just 16 when war was declared. He went to the front in 1917, was wounded at Passchendaele and evacuated to hospital. He never returned to the front. His novel was condemned by the Nazis as unpatriotic but he escaped to America on the last sailing of the Queen Mary with the help of his friend, Marlene Dietrich. He lived in Hollywood, got to know Greta Garbo and was part of the émigré celebrity circuit. His sister,Elfreda, remained in Germany and was executed by the Nazis for defeatist sentiments. Remarque, himself, was inaccessible. Somehow, I wish I didn’t know all that, but it doesn’t detract from the reality that he and the few like him achieved more hope in a few lines than a whole dead generation of young man. .

My grandfather, William Scriven, chief clerk at the Bristol and West Building Society, went to war with millions of others, even though he had a rheumatic heart. He was killed in the last battle in 1918. We might say, my mother, only 2 at the time, never got over it.

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When honour is betrayed

Nick Read — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:03:27 +0000

It is 1918, the Bolsheviks have taken over in Russia and sued for peace, Germany has annexed Ukraine and installed a pro-tsarist puppet government under Skoropadsky, the Hetman, but Tsa Nikolai II and his family have been murdered in Ekaterinberg. The remnants of the old White Guard have migrated to Kiev and mobilised to defend the old regime. But when Germany sign the armistice with the western allies, they abandon the Ukraine, leaving a power vacuum, to be fought over by The White Guard, the Nationalists under their commander in chief Petalyura and the Bolsheviks.

Alexei is an officer in the White Guard, so is his brother Nikolei. Their sister Elena is married to Tolberg, who is The Hetman’s Minister of War. So far the war and the revolution have hardly touched them. They and their brother officers continue to live in the style they did under the Tsar.

But things are about to change. The Nationalists bombard the city. The Hetman flees to Berlin, abandoning the White Guard. It’s a case of every man (and every woman) for himself. Tolberg escapes with the Hetman to Berlin, abandoning Elena. ‘Of course I don’t want to go, my darling, but it is my duty. Besides I am too well known. If I stay I will be captured, tortured and executed by the Nationalists.’ Elena is bitter but not devastated. Within days she has encouraged the attentions of Leonid, who is rich and well established.

Encircled by the Nationalists, Alexei explains to his brother officers the futility of resistance. They must throw away their insignia, put on peasant clothes and escape into the city. His brother officers resist, threaten to seize command, to fight on, but Alexei’s voice of reason prevails, though he is killed by a shell as he burns the roster of The White Guard.

The family survive under the Nationalist government, but then the fighting stats all over again; the Bolsheviks attack the city. Tolberg returns only to depart immediately; he has an important post with the Bolsheviks in Moscow. The previous officers of the White Guard resolve to call themselves comrade and learn to become good Bolsheviks. Ukraine becomes a founder member of the USSR.

Only Larion, a student and the Turbin’s cousin, remains loyal to his principles, but that is because he is not fighting for anybody else, he is a poet, just out for himself.

Bulgakov’s is more than a historical drama; it is an investigation of the meaning of honour. The White Guard had a proud tradition as the pre-eminent corps in the Russian army. Their honour is based on their loyalty; they would fight to the death to preserve the motherland and the Tsar. But the Tsar and his whole dynasty are dead (though some officers refuse to believe it) and his representative in The Ukraine has collaborated with the Germans and fled to Berlin. For soldiers, honour must have a focus. It is futile to sacrifice your life for nothing. But, as Alexei explains, ‘We can still preserve our honour as men, by surviving and caring for our families. No doubt, Elena too, feels that her honour as a wife means nothing in the face of her husband’s betrayal. But others; Tolberg, The Hetman, perhaps Leonid too, are opportunists, politicians for whom honour means little. Larion just avoids the issue.

So what is honour? Why is it important? Well I think the nearest we can get to a definition is ‘being true to oneself’. This means living life according to the principles we would want to be acknowedged for. For some this might encompass a belief in God, loyalty to one’s country , adherence to a particular set of ideas and beliefs, but for most it is the normal social values like truth, consistency, reliability, and loyalty to family and friends. These values are inculcated in us from childhood, modified and reinforced by experience. They represent who we are. If we betray those then we betray ourselves and we are shamed. So we try to live our lives with honour so that we preserve the essential meaning of our lives. It is a truly terrible thing to lose one’s soul, not because of any religious mythology, but because we can no longer live with ourselves. And then life becomes meaningless.

But honour is constantly under threat ; by ambition, greed, desire and fear. Politicians, for all their bombast, are masters of expediency and deception. They may not mean to be, but the political environment makes it necessary. How can they promise so much to so many different groups without compromise and deception? It’s quite impossible, but I wish they could come clean about it. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I’m trying my best to deal with an impossible situation.’ A hundred years ago, the only honourable way for the European powers through the web of promises and alliances was to embark on the war to end all wars. No wonder we are cynical, but it’s all part of the game. Only when there is a clearly identified enemy can a politician show true conviction and honour. Churchill’s speeches stiffened the backbone of a whole nation and made people proud to be British. At that time, he was truly a man of honour. It was what he was born for.

And how many of us can act with honour when our life is threatened or when they stand to lose everything they hold most dear, the whole meaning of their lives? We like to think we would act honourably, we might even condemn those who don’t, but how many of us have been tested? Simon Yates cut the rope linking him to his climbing buddy, Joe Simpson, in order to save his own life. Even twenty years on, I wonder how easy it is for him to live with himself within the comradeship of climbers. To err is human; the best thing we can do is to acknowledge our sin, to let go and resolve to be stronger next time. To forgive, divine. Redemption needs external reinforcement and is won only with pain.

Honour, desire and fear are the forces of personality, each pulling against each other as they attempt a precarious balance. But if honour is based on wisdom and understanding instead of blind dogma, it can contain the forces of desire and fear and provide the stability to consider the risk of change. But it all depends on the quality of our upbringing. Those brought up with principles that are too rigid, cannot face change with impunity and remain stuck. Those brought up without clear notions of right and wrong risk chaos and shame. Those brought up with an overblown sense of entitlement will all too ready sacrifice any principles they might have for power and excitement. Power corrupts, desire corrupts, fear corrupts because they infect and soften principles of honour.

The White Guard, based on a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, is currently showing at The National Theatre in a new version by Andrew Upton. I didn’t think it was a good play and some of the casting was impossible. Who ever thought of casting the deliciously camp, Conleth Hill as Leonid, the great seducer and aide de camp to The Hetman? He would have been much better in The Producers. Mind you, there was more than a touch of the Hermann Goering in his performance.

Stalin apparently loved the play; he saw it 15 times. Once was enough for me.

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The trainspotter’s guide to survival and forgiveness

Nick Read — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:24:43 +0000

What was it about Eric Lomax that enabled him to survive the most extreme imprisonment and torture when so many of his colleagues died? What strength of character allowed him to return to normal job in Edinburgh after such devastating trauma? And how could he actually bring himself to forgive his Japanese interrogator and actually become his friend?

The Railway Man is a remarkable story of courage and forgiveness. John McCarthy, who was himself kept hostage in Lebanon under dreadful conditions, describes it as ‘an extraordinary story of torture and reconciliation. I turned the last page weeping tears of sorrow, pride and gratitude.

As a boy, Lomax was fascinated by engines. He would travel miles across country just to see one of his beloved machines. Later he espoused religion with the same dedication. He was quiet boy; he got on well enough with other boys, but was never happier than following his obsessions. In 1939, he joined the British Army as a signaller, and was trapped by the Japanese with tens of thousands of other soldiers in Singapore in 1942 and assigned to work on the Burma Siam railway that would carry Japanese territorial ambitions to India. Despite the lack of food, filthy conditions, exhausting physical work in full tropical sun and casual brutality of some guards, the men alleviate their plight by growing or stealing food, dreaming up escape plans and constructing makeshift radios, by which to learn the progress of the war. Lomax continues to derive solace from his contact with the railway and his beloved engines.
But after a tip off, the Japanese discover their radio and the map Lomax has drawn. In the book, he dispassionately describes the beatings with pick-axe handles, during which both arms are broken and his hips and back damaged. He is then handed over to the Kempitai, the Japanese Gestapo, who imprison him in a small ant-infested cage in full sun with only heavily salted rice to eat and subject him to prolonged interrogation interspersed by spells of torture and near drowning by waterboarding. He learns how to raise his pulse to dangerous levels and persuaded his captors to move him to hospital in Changhi where he survives, a living skeleton, until the Japanese surrender.

Lomax was psychologically damaged for years after the war. As his physical condition improved, people ignored the effect of their trauma. In India on his way back, one mem’sahb commented that after a rest, he must be longing to do his bit and get back to active duty. His young wife was more concerned by the privations of rationing than his experience in the far east. Without validation and acknowledgement, it was like it never happened and he withdrew into himself. After another thirty years, the marriage failed.

With the help of Patti, his second wife and Helen Bamber of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, Eric Lomax finally managed to talk about his experiences. Patti is given a copy of Crosses and Tigers by Nagase Takashi, in which he describes the bravery of a young signals officer he interrogated. It is Lomax. Also traumatised by his experience, Nagase has become a dedicated anti-war campaigner. The two meet. Nagase is overcome with emotion and Lomax finds it in himself to forgive him and even accept him as a close friend.

The Railway Man is indeed a remarkable book. Lomax is remarkable, not for his courage. Courage is inconsequential when the outcome is inevitable. It’s when you choose to do the right thing even though you know you will suffer and even die for it that real courage is needed. No, it’s not courage that Lomax shows but endurance and will to survive. That takes amazing qualities or hope and faith. People have written of how love for their wives or their God maintained their hope. I wonder if Lomax’s obsession with railway engines also provided that focus of imagination that transported him out of the real hopelessness of his circumstances, distracting him and providing the certainty that sustains him through the most dreadful pain and privation. It’s the doubtful, the needy and the insecure that succumb. You can put up with anything as long you have faith in something, because by transference you can then believe in yourself and gain distance from a grievance that allows real forgiveness. To err is human, but to forgive is divine. When people are desperate and fearful of their lives, they are capable of anything. The environment of war breeds inhumanity. Nagase hated what he was doing but was terrified of the reprisals if he refused. Nagase has atoned for his guilt. It was easier for Lomax to forgive him, but few would have done that.

As the Buddhists teach, forgiveness sets you free.

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War without end; Amen.

Nick Read — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:32:40 +0000

Armies pursued each other around Europe; soldiers, little better than animals laid waste the countryside, taking what they wanted, burning, raping, killing, no longer knowing, if they ever did, the reason why. It had been a good war for Mother Courage, for a time. She became a camp follower, trailing the armies, selling food, blankets, clothing, brandy and even ammunition, changing allegiances when it was expedient to do so, always keeping one step ahead of the game. Her sons were killed; one was too crafty, another too honest. Her daughter saw it all but couldn’t speak. She was cut and raped. But she beat the drum and paid the price. And Courage survived for want of anything better.

The talk over the long breakfast table at 22 York Street was about other wars; Iraq, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe; brutal, unwinnable, neverending wars. There have been 250 major wars since the end of the second world war and over 23 million people have been killed. But why? Who really understands why we are fighting in Afghanistan or why we really went to war in Iraq? Bush’s war against terrorism is a tautology. War against terrorism is like war against war! It doesn’t make any sense. And there are no winners in this war. It’s war for the sake of war; completely futile. Nobody gains the moral high ground. We were shocked by the atrocities committed by our boys (and girls) at Abu Graib prison, but why? Of course our troops would commit atrocities as much as the enemy. It has always been so. Frightened people do the most awful things. And war degrades humanity; murder, theft, rape and destruction becomes a way of life. Soldiers become inured to feeling. It’s dog eat dog. When the Duke of Wellington inspected his troops in the Peninsular War, he was heard to comment, ‘I don’t know what they do to the enemy, but by God, they terrify me. But it’s not only the enemy that is injured, mutilated and killed, it’s innocent civilians as well. And there are always people like Mother Courage, ready to make a quick buck out of it all.

The attendant at Anish Kapoor’s exhibition, a young man from Bosnia, said that many people had been offended. Every twenty seconds, a cannot shoots a pellet of soft red wax across the room through an archway to splatter against the war of the next room. Kapoor claims not to have any preconception of the meaning of his work, but you really don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to understand how it uses sexual metaphor to explore he brutality of war. The large erect penis shooting its bloody ejaculate through the doorway, stains the virgin-pure white walls of the Royal Academy, leaving a large crimson mark, that resembles brutalized female genitalia. Blood stained labia enclose the gaping wound like a scream, and the matter that slithers from that gruesome gash forms a mound, which winds like a crimson glacier, from the dead, white, empty womb. It is a shocking, yet compelling image. The twenty minute beat of the cannon will continue until January. By that time the Academy will be awash with blood.

Fiona Shaw is brilliant as the feisty, calculating, yet indomitable Mother Courage; a woman with balls! The play, like war itself, is unrelenting in its dark brutality, the music by Duke Special and his band, a thumping accompaniment. It is wonderful performance that shocks and disturbs. Anish Kapoor’s exhibition is at The Royal Academy until January. It is art on a big scale, shocking and impressive. 22 York Street is in Alastair Sawday’s book. It provides an interesting and enjoyable stay just off Baker Street and within easy access to the west end. The long curved breakfast table with abundant coffee and a variety of fruits, cereals, croissants, pastries and preserves, is conducive to conversation. By yourself in London? What a good way to start the day, even if all the talk is about war!

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