Unlawful Combatants Are in the Dark - Group 2/ Week 2

by Anthony, Elio, Raed and Sabine

In “The Republic” Plato develops this idea of the perfect warrior and what is needed for educating “him”. It is quite understandable that in the time that “The Republic” was written, the search for the perfect warrior was fundamental. It was a period where the Greeks fashioned super-human pseudo-gods and encouraged many principles such as Apollonian and Dionysian notions. The first represents light and the other darkness, these notions that describe the duality needed for “men” to think and determine their actions and were also praised in Nietzsche’s Ubermensch. The play of light and darkness was evoked many times to describe the ascent and descent of the prisoner from reality to darkness and vice-versa. This idol (perfect warrior) should be able to exit the cave and embrace reality (the light) and become a higher person. However to maintain his true status, he should be able as well to descend back to the darkness and share his ideas with other without imposing them onto them. Once that is done, he can return back to light and restart this routine. This educated person also will learn to rationalize using all his senses, for an object can be distinguished as it is, but has more to it than its image.

We believe this text translates to how a society should be in Plato’s mind. It is what every society should be, but is impossible to achieve. The “Republic” tends to reflect our modern society and its values which is quite amusing when noticing when it was written. Additionally, it is also depressing to see how little our minds have evolved. We grow up with idealistic fantasies which are thrown upon us and question what kind of relationship a person should have with society: how should one balance “himself” in it. The more you confide to not doing, the more you are being controlled and ignorantly pushed to accept a postmodern environment where “everything” esteemed by society is “cool”.

Susan Sontag describes in her text “Regarding the Torture of Others” this effect as “culture of shamelessness”. It is a society that thinks of itself as elite and that others should emulate its ways of life to become the perfect being / warrior/ “American”. Conversely, all those that do not follow are lesser people or can be described as “unlawful combatants” in Sontag’s text. She also talks about how Americans are reaching a level of self glory so extreme that they are becoming oblivious with the rest of humanity. A U.S citizen can firmly say that he is not a “human” but an American. Consequently, when scandals such as the Abu Ghraib pictures came out, they refused to acknowledge the action, and were more appalled by the presence of the pictures then what they truly portrayed. They have created turmoil, and in the now, red face Americans, who believe that any action made on their part can be exempt.

Have the Americans forgotten to come back in the cave? They truly believe that they are separate from others, and even dare to evoke different words so that their meanings are the purest. People cannot run away from their true nature. They are not perfect, and if put to the test, flaws will appear. Our access to media (digital cameras in the case of American soldiers) has made it quite easy for these humanistic flaws to appear. People are trying to stay in their selective realities where all is good and ignore the rest, but like trash that’s pilling up around the earth, at some point they will smell the stench and realize they’re realities are not that pretty.

* http://www.stanford.edu/~pj97/Nietzsche.htm