War is murder. And the military preparations now being made for a potential major confrontation are aimed at collective murder. In a nuclear age the victims would be numbered by the millions. This naked truth must be faced.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the brutality of war and warns about the catastrophic consequences of military conflict in the nuclear age.
Alva Myrdal's quote confronts the grim reality of war, equating it to murder on a massive scale. She argues that military preparations not only threaten lives but could lead to unimaginable casualties, particularly in an age where nuclear weapons exist. By calling for acknowledgment of this truth, Myrdal seeks to provoke deeper consideration of the moral implications of war and the potential for widespread destruction.
In practice
During a peace rally, this quote could highlight the moral implications of military conflict.
Because war and preparations for war have acquired legitimacy, and because of the tremendous proliferation of arms through production and export, so that they are now available more or less to all and sundry, right down to handguns and stilettos, the cult of violence has by now so permeated relations between people that we are compelled to witness as well an increase in everyday violence.
There is a cultural factor promoting violence which nowadays undoubtedly is highly effective is the mass media. And particularly everything that enters our minds through pictorial media.
The longing for peace is rooted in the hearts of all men. But the striving, which at present has become so insistent, cannot lay claim to such an ambition as leading the way to eternal peace, or solving all disputes among nations.
If we wish to know about a man, we ask 'what is his story--his real, inmost story?'--for each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us--through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives--we are each of us unique.
Men are most powerfully affected by those evils which themselves feel, or which appear before their own eyes.
You must be a lotus, unfolding its petals when the sun rises in the sky, unaffected by the slush where it is born or even the water which sustains it!
My belief is that "recluse" is a code word generated by journalists... meaning, "doesn't like to talk to reporters."
My youth passed at the time of the country's reconstruction from the ruins and ashes of the war in which my nation never bowed to the enemy paying the highest price in the struggle.
He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor.
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