Fitzgibbon
Master Sergeant
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2012
- Messages
- 1,210
With a sense of Dejavu and at the risk of... I have liked these three posts because together, for me, they sum up where the thread has gone and why it does not 'come together'.
First, none here can 'remember' the events to be commemorated due to the temporal limitations of human life, and for that reason, it is even more difficult to arrive at the consensus implied by the word commemorate, which would be literally remembering together...difficult enough even for those who had survived the events and who have since passed on. In general, humans do not agree on what it is they all witnessed supposedly together - how many accounts are there of Waterloo? And if we all here shared a common approach to the hobby of TS collecting, the Forum would be brief and dull.
Similar to a line of thinking that appears in this thread and elsewhere, I have deep misgivings about the annual posturing that accompanies the marketable phrase 'Lest We Forget' - Having seen it firsthand, the daily ritual at the Menin Gate is far more meaningful, and the lack of physical remains to match the multutude of names of the fallen poses a question that is unavoidable - it is a simple question asked by all of us ad nauseum as two-year-olds, and tragically forgotten as part of the culture of 'growing up'. I realised through the experience at the Menin Gate that I had never asked that question and therefore could not know what it was that I wasn't supposed to forget. The question, to great effect, is posed rhetorically in the movies Waterloo and Zulu...Why??
Is it such a bad thing if we all disagree or differ in our approach to multicultural societies that increasingly provide allegiance to market forces? There is a little 'truth' in all commentary, or at least something for everyone to think about.
To change another's point-of-view, one must first understand that point-of-view. Such understanding is a lifetime's work - unless you have an army to back the ideology you are pushing...and that is the recipe for every war that was ever fought.
As much as we might try to tell that story, there were no winners of WWI and none of WWII. I visit hospital to see my veteran friend of the Vietnam conflict and I am sure that it was/is a great tragedy. Korea is an ongoing nightmare. Had WWII gone the other way, we in Oz would be regarded as terrorists by a foreign administration. There were only ever losers, and the goal of any so-called modern civilisation ought to be to change that status quo.
Life and its meaning is a matter for the individual but the word 'true' is most useful when applied to the rules of knowledge. It's a matter of matching method to goal and affecting a replicable outcome. If the same method cannot reproduce the outcome then it just is not true. I'm not sure about flowers and manhood but armed conflict does result in a lot of dead folk; the fact that we keep testing this theory suggests a weakness in the human ability to accept what is proven true.
All this aside then, the market is a strange governor. We all collect figurines that relate to and represent various conflicts throughout history. One would think that evidence of a particular common and voluble interest would drive production; but even with the Forum, this is problematic. Chocolate is one of my passions (I could live in Belgium but would probably not live long according to my GP), which is shared by many, but the relationship between consumption and anniversaries is so prescribed that one imagines the stream of anniversary events to be the driver of sales/consumption. My observation of this however, leads me to believe that retailers are misled to an extent as much as consumers. It is easy to imagine that people consume when the market tells them to do so. As the various events approach, shelves are stocked to overflowing in anticipation, and prices are premium. And then, just for a brief time (such is the frequency of available events), there is a clearance at greatly reduced prices. For those of us on physical (or economic) diets, the brevity and intensity of these 'between times' is a useful regulator of consumption. The main point though is that chocolate is consumed year round, and commemorative events produce only variations in the rate, and these are not as predictable as may be imagined.
As an analogy to the driven production of figurines, I see that anniversary events shift the focus of consumption to various related subjects. I don't see that purchasing related products actively commemorates the event any more than eating chocolate at Easter and St Valentine's Day would suggest that these two events are somehow related or even that chocolate making is the subject commemorated.
I, like Wayne, am intrigued by WWI, and probably for a host of different reasons; and if an anniversary drives the release of some new figures, bring it on. Man does not live by chocolate alone.
I'm up for a return to Belgium if there is a combined trip in the offing. I'm back to France in June this year so it will be another two years before the next trip - to coincide with Bi Centennial of Waterloo. The Menin Gate ceremony at Ypres (now Ieper) is the only event that ever made my spine shiver - at my age it's usually arthritis that causes a reaction
- and if mass wonder is your thing, I suggest Verdun - I've got to take a full week next visit.Thanks for you patience.
