Thought Picnic: Beyond conscientious objection to fighting needless wars

The summary of my views

I was asked what my position was about the Russia and Ukraine crisis by a mentor of mine, and it allowed me to find the opportunity to transcribe from the notes I took down in anger on Friday night but was unsure of how to convey in a blog.

My answer was “We need to get to a point in human civilisation when young men can refuse to battle for recalcitrant old men who cannot settle their scores with some maturity. I hope Ukraine survives the onslaught.”

Before my viewpoint was taken as uncommitted to apparent indifference, I went on to say, “In fact, my stand is it is an unnecessary war for which Vladimir Putin who has a warped idea of national sovereignty and areas of influence should be taught an unforgettable lesson.” Obviously, it goes without saying that, If Ukraine has no self-determination on what alliances it can have, is it a sovereign state or a satellite of Russia?”

Between sacrifice and slaughter

Having spent 4 years in secondary boarding school, the prospect of a regimented life has never since appealed to me. There is indeed a high calling to serve and the discipline that it entails along with the purpose that defines it, but where do you draw the line between being ready to take the sacrifice and being sent to the slaughter?

In January 1983, in a conversation with my father, he said these words, “There was a time Nigeria was worth dying for, that time has passed.” It so happens my parents were in the UK during the Nigerian Civil War and once it was over, they could not wait to get back to Nigeria to contribute to rebuilding the nation.

To my mind, all war is at its heart totally unreasonable, the inability of leaders and / or older and apparently mature men to have a meeting of minds that they are ready to send the sons of others to battlefields whilst they play war games in genteel surroundings totally oblivious of the depth of suffering on the populace is an atrocity at best.

Keeping our men from bad men

The result of this is we are called upon to honour the war dead as some greater cause of humanity has been achieved and unstoppable progress has been bequeathed to civilisation never to go to war again. It is a lie, for lives are needlessly wasted as cannon fodder with war ending at exhaustion of will, men, or ammunition. We are in terms the most uncivilised in war, like animals you have only found more sophisticated ways to kill each other to a standstill.

I would hope we would reach a point where the men who disagree should sort it amongst themselves and the young men whose blood, they are ready to exsanguinate in the remote battlefields, should say no. This is not conscientious objection but a call to common sense or order, exhaust diplomacy and continue to talk to any agreement that you can reach without having to shed blood.

Beyond conscientious objection

For I desire a time when they, the valiant and strong would say, no, we are not going to fight your dirty, senseless, needless, and unnecessary wars. Our lives matter more than to become sacrificial lambs on the altars of your maniacal devilish egos.

Keep your medals, we do not need the glory, stuff your patriotic rhetoric, your folded national flags, and grand memorials to soldiers unknown. With no men going to war, what would men do given no other option than to talk and resolve things?

Too many men have with the power to send others to their deaths not exhausted the possibilities that the maturation of human civilisation and discourse can offer. Maybe something of the idealist and pacifist in me has taken a long trek from realism, it is however not to be wished away as impossible.

October is full of life stories

A month of aspects

For decades, October was a month of many celebrations in my family, one of many births and the blessings that have been bestowed on us. We counted the days from the first week to the last of the month the most commemorative days ensconced in the 20s.

The patriarch, sisters, a brother, an aunt, a brother-in law, a niece, a nephew, a marriage, many friends makes October a rather crowded month of best wishes and congratulations that is until 5 years ago when plunked in the middle of the third week our baby sister passed on, then 10 days after the fourth anniversary of her passing, my stepmother passed on suddenly just 4 days after her 55^th birthday.

Life is the story of everything

The shock of these events sometimes makes October seem a stranger than comfortable month, yet births and deaths can happen at any time of the year. That October gave dates to these aspects of sorrow is just part of the story of life and it has lent dates to births and the beginnings of new life.

Rather than make October a month of sorrow, we reflect sombrely on our experiences cherishing with fondness the memory of those we loved who have become of the dearly departed, living to ensure that the lives they lived will not be forgotten. Finding perspective in it all is to know that they were consequential and impactful, without them we would be less fulfilled than we are.

God rest them well and we receive the grace to always do them proud for their absence does not make them any less significant and maybe we be able to build on the legacies they bequeathed us by their giving us some of their humanity when they tarried.

Young men dying for a conspiracy of disbelief

Wise men in their conceits

Lately, I have been reading of people dying from CoVID-19 who from the reports associated with their deaths suggest they need not have died.

A search for Caleb Wallace, 30, of Texas reveals unfortunate notoriety of Coronavirus conspiracy theories and trenchant activism against pandemic safety measures the possible flouting of which might have led to his contracting the virus, his hospitalisation, and consequent unnecessary death. [Insider]

Here in the UK, we read of Marcus Birks, 40, of Leek, Staffordshire, who did not get vaccinated because he was sceptical about the Coronavirus. When he contracted the virus, he fell so ill, was hospitalised and he died, on Friday. [BBC News]

Sift acquired knowledge

In none of these cases do I read that these young men who have young families, the latter is survived by a pregnant wife; are public health experts, epidemiologists, virologists, or have qualifications in any medical field. At best, they were dilettantes who seemed to be convinced of whatever informal knowledge they had acquired and staked their lives on it.

Obviously, we must allow everyone the courage of their convictions even if out of folly. To the individual, whatever decisions they make are purely ones of personal responsibility. However, if you are a family man, whatever personal convictions you have must be taken in the context of the broader consequence of acting on that determination.

Choose the avoidable given the choice

I do not believe a man of 30 or 40, for that matter, planned to die and leave behind a family on the principle of disbelieving the science and the evidence that can keep them alive. Even where that matter of principle exists, accounting for the risk of possible death, there must be some reconsideration of the options to err on the side of caution rather than reckless bravado.

You have to wonder if taking the vaccines might have saved the lives of these young men, if wearing masks and social distancing might have given them a chance to live. If curbing the enthusiasm for notoriety out of purveying conspiracy theories, withdrawing to reassess the situation and recant ones stand before it is too late might have resulted in a different story.

It gives one no comfort to learn of these evidently avoidable deaths out of reckless self-endangerment informed by conspiracy against the facts that suggest the slightest chance of survival in the time of a pandemic. We must avoid the tendency to Schadenfreude as we sadly grief what to all intents could have been a different story. If options present the avoidable where responsibility extends beyond us, then the avoidable must be the choice against the regrettable.

You can't just walk away

Their lives matter too

I might have come across as uncompromising and harsh in my last blog regarding the man who finally accepted the truth of his sexuality conflict, however, to the detriment of other lives, the lives of his wife and two daughters sacrificed to his perfidy.

Blog: On men I cannot respect

I am implacable on the matter; you cannot just walk away as if you have extracted valuables from detritus and so keep the spoils like a rogue miner who panned a nugget of gold and left the mine to completely forget the life before the find.

Looking for an outlet

By coincidence, I came upon a story on the response of an agony aunt to a man similarly married for 25 years who had been cheating on his wife and had previously formed 2 gay relationship unbeknownst to her. He ruefully admits he might have messed up his wife, then attempts an exculpatory angle of suggesting he had always provided for her and they had 2 children together. Bunkum! [Oregon Live: Dear Abby: Gay man’s first step out of the closet should be to tell his wife of 25+ years] [The Advocate: Dear Abby's Vicious Reply to Closeted Man Cheating on Wife of 25 Years]

Reading it, I was left wondering if it was not the one and the same man, between the story I wrote about and the pretensions to residing the United States, writing to the agony aunt. Who knows? The similarities are uncanny, the publication in the magazine probably lagging the reality of events but let us not dwell on speculations.

Face up to the consequences

To the agony aunt, he wondered if it was worth coming out at this time of his life, the corollary being he wanted to continue living a double life and cheating on his wife. A convenient situation for him where he did not have to face the truth. It is a depth of cowardice that it breath-taking in its audacity though writing to the agony aunt might suggest there was a pang of conscience somewhere in his being.

In my view, Abby’s response was not vicious at all, it was straight talking truth, she saw through his chicanery; he was looking for a new gay relationship and once he had it, he would move on unperturbed. Not so fast, she interjected. Tell your wife and once she knows, her life would have to take on a trajectory after you that can be quite consequential in the realisation of the betrayal to which she had lost 25 years of her life. The gravity of that alone might well require professional help.

And again, I cannot excuse the fact that a person knowing their sexuality would then take marital vows of deception to cover for their internal conflict, hoping that satisfying the demands of society might just be curative of an innate state of being. Much I am supposed to have some affinity with the man, my humanity is endeared to those lie to, betrayed, left behind, and hurt.

It is quite consequential

Whether the marriage continues or ends amicably or in acrimony, nothing can fully compensate for the fact that when the spouse to the vows that included, ‘Till death do us part’, and indeed, not all marriages work out, to think what would put it asunder is the heretofore unrevealed sexuality of the person they married might be a shock very few hearts can endure without lasting damage. In the last story, the wife and daughters were nasty to ex-husband and father, I do not blame them.

Without equivocation, I say again, if you have sexuality conflict, regardless of societal pressures and whatever else might inspire you to live a lie, by deceptively involving someone else to cover for your apparent inability to face up to your personal truth. Just don’t do it.

I have written a few blogs on these issues before and they are referenced below:

Blog: To perceptive and accepting parents

Blog: Kenny Badmus: Thank you for coming out wonderfully

Blog: Opinion: Now, a thought for Kenny Badmus' wife

Blog: Opinion: Regardless of our sexuality, our past and future is our whole story

Blog: Thought Picnic: On the price of a marriage contracted to make you straight

On men I cannot respect

He came out

He had a story, in the words that read, “I got divorced last week, after a 25-year marriage to a woman and came out. Huge cloud lifted.” To which I would always have more than a consideration for other parties involved. There is quite a chunk of life in 25 years, I could only hope that the finality of that union was understanding and amicable.

Sadly, in his response, it was not, his ex-wife and two adult daughters had been nasty to him. Who can blame them? Now, I have some sympathy for people who struggle with their sexuality in constructs of community and society where they might suffer rejection, ostracism, persecution, embarrassment, or shame.

He conned her

On the issues where external factors can make one’s life unbearable, there might be some concern for the life and wellbeing of that person. However, when you know your situation is complicated you do not use the life of another to make adjustments without acquainting them fully with the dilemma you are in. In my view, consent is material, understanding must be there, and agreement must be secured for a mutually beneficial arrangement, especially when marriage is involved.

To secret your sexuality and rob your spouse of the truth of your identity, then along with your offspring deign to live a lie is at best reprehensible. And, eventually, you might come to live in the truth of who you are with a huge cloud of self-denial lifted off your life, but you will have betrayed and damaged other lives in the process.

He did wrong

Now, everyone has to live their own lives and maybe the passage of event and time will allow other parties to gain the benefit of a huge cloud lifted off their own lives, but to except acquiescence and acceptance just because you now feel good even after they have been left in palpable shock is naïve, selfish and nigh on unforgivable. Whether any healing will come to them, one cannot say.

My thoughts cannot be too respectful of the man where the woman and the children have been poorly regarded and the man is out there living his wildest dreams. If you have sexuality conflict in your life, do not under any circumstances without consent and full agreement contract a marriage of deception to ameliorate or hopefully convert your sexual attraction because, it will not go away, the burden will continue to stress you until you break and break many lives too. Just don’t do it!

Rise with your hopes or fall with your fears

Guard your ears, till your heart

Our fears can so limit our ability to thrive, some fears fed by a passing comment in our past that takes root and grows into a humongous impediment to progress and success. The caution we must exercise in who we lend our ears to is one of eternal vigilance, for the grounds in which seeds can grow in our lives, are more fertile than we ever realise.

Words from the mouths of our parents triggering involuntary responses that determine the course of our lives and can make a difference in a lifetime, you wonder, how do you escape the clutches of what you have taken to heart? There are damaging consequences, from people of considerable influence that you can still hear their voices decades long after you have forgotten who or what they look like.

We can be different

We should not however concentrate on the negative, there are other inputs that engender the amazingly productive, that word of kindness, of encouragement, of hope, of prayer, of beauty, of praise and the good of our humanity, lighting up a path for us to travel, rescuing us from danger, infirmity, or calamity, bringing a sense of determination that girds us and strengthens us that we have no choice but to win. Those voices are begging to be heard but we are too attuned to the contrary.

As individuals, we fight our uniquely arranged battles, but when we enter into partnerships where our fortunes are pooled, we can rise with our partners or sink with them because of the baggage that burdens our inability to either live beyond our fears or the grip of the impending defeat sowed by experiences or words we have heard before.

Imagine where you can be

The greater disaster is not to see the newness in life that gives you hope against all situations to write a better story and create a worthy narrative of your life beyond the fears and low expectations of others who stole our power to thrive with their selfish perspective of what your life might be if it turned out different and successful.

If I am saddened, it is with those who never tried to dream of the extraordinary and when given the opportunity take off from the ground, rise to have the wind beneath their wings to soar with the eagles. It is possible, only if we uproot the forests of fruitless trees that took hold clouding the warmth of the sun with the fear of a future we do not know. Fears based on broad stereotypes when they should have based on the uniqueness of the individual.

Even more, the pity is you and your partner are left down in the dumps in an unproductive life just because fear robbed you of the spirit of hope and the experience of better things that you could ever have imagined in your wildest dreams.