The worst thing about war was the sitting around and wondering what you were doing morally.
Paul FussellRead
If truth is the main casualty in war, ambiguity is another.
Interpretation
In war, the truth often suffers, but uncertainty also plays a significant role.
Paul Fussell's quote highlights the dual impact of war on reality and perception. While the chaos and violence can obliterate objective truths, they also breed ambiguity, complicating our understanding of events and decisions. This reflects the moral and psychological complexities faced by individuals in wartime, suggesting that clarity is often sacrificed in the fog of battle.
In practice
During a discussion on the ethical implications of war in a seminar.
The worst thing about war was the sitting around and wondering what you were doing morally.
What is the sound of one hand?
Do you suppose you will look the same when you are an old woman as you do now? Most folk have three faces—the face they get when they’re children, the face they own when they’re grown, and the face they’ve earned when they’re old. But when you live as long as I have, you get many more. I look nothing like I did when I was a wee thing of thirteen. You get the face you build your whole life, with work and loving and grieving and laughing and frowning.
Women becoming, consequently, weakerthan they ought to behave not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affectioneither destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.
Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.
A government is an institution that holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
Resistances do not derive from a few heterogeneous principles; but neither are they a lure or a promise that is of necessity betrayed. They are the odd term in relations of power; they are inscribed in the latter as an irreducible opposite.
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