A part of me will always regret that I was never a soldier when I had the chance. Likewise, this same part of me will always silently hope that someday I will have another chance.

The reason I never enlisted before I was too old is complicated. I’ve always had moral objections to war, I never believed that those who fought and died so far from home did so to protect my freedom, though I’m sure they believed they did. I never understood how people on the other side of the world could be a threat to my freedom, when it was the government of my own country who seemed so desperate to control me. How could I ever trust an entity which preached “freedom” while at the same time supporting something like the draft. My first notion of war was when my mom told me that if I was ever to be drafted when would break both my legs to keep me from going to war. Even before I had any clear idea of what a war was, I knew that it was worse than having both my legs broken. People, and groups of people, can only be trusted as far as your desires align.

Our behavior emerges from our ideas, and our ideas are fed by attention. The nutritional value of the attention we feed our ideas is determined by the associations that come attached to our attention. The precise nature of the associations is not very important, what is important is if it is positive or negative. An idea fed by attention associated with positivity will lead to behavior which brings the body closer to that idea. Negative attention, fed to an idea, will cause behavior which reflects a repulsion from that idea. Inertia plays a role as well. When you are first exposed to an idea, and first exposed to an association with it, whether it is positive or negative, your brain will strive to confirm the initial value of it. It is easier for your brain to do this (it burns less calories, produces less entropy) than to scrap the old value and start fresh with new information, it involves an acceptance that you are wrong, the pain of this directly correlates to the waste of energy your brain must accept, or deny.

This last Memorial Day I found myself in Cherokee, Kansas in a cemetery, taking pictures with my cell phone of the trees, the sky, patches of clovers, and a ceremony taking place which involved my dad, and another young man named Derek. When the ceremony was over the oldest man in attendance spoke to the crowd of relatives. He said, among other things, “the soldiers currently fighting overseas deserve our support, they are fighting for a good reason” it was not my place to raise a hand and offer a counter point, and anyway, it would have been a pointless point to point out, he continued, “though some may not think so, they are fighting for a good reason.” This addition told me that this old soldier had already had the soldier in his mind, so much healthier and well fed than mine, force fed attention of a negative association. Even if I had the audacity to argue with this man, my position would be riddled with weaknesses, because what makes a ‘good reason’? I can only say that if their aim is to fight and die for my freedom then they are going about it in such a wrong way that they are closer to endangering my freedom than preserving it. And if they truly wished to fight for freedom, then the fight will not take place in Afghanistan, and the stakes will not be oil and opium. This vast divide between their intentions and the outcome of their actions can only seem sane to someone totally immersed an illusion.

On the ride home Derek mentioned that he could not wait until he was old enough to enlist. The difference between he and I were could not be made more clear, I felt only pity for him and a profound hopelessness knowing that there was no way I could ever save him from his fate. The harder I would have pushed, the harder he would have defended his already well developed values. Instead, I relayed a story I read right here on our In Search of Lost Time wordpress site, about one of our fellow student’s time in Afghanistan. A negative association powerful enough for our friend to overcome whatever led him there in the first place. I hope this bit of counter spin was not totally disregarded in the mind of Derek, I can only hope.

For the one who’s turning point I referenced, I’m sorry your friends did not come home, but I’m happy that you did. It is good for us all that you did. It is better than if you had never gone. At least, that’s my value statement.

An idea is fed by attention, be it positive or negative. It grows either way, because it doesn’t know the difference. Value is our invention, and we are not our ideas.