American Ignorance of War essays

American Ignorance of War essays Creslaw Milosz's American Ignorance of War is a critique of America's obliviousness to the fact that there could exist differences in social orders and values, which could be as natural as the American way of thinking and life. It is important to note here that Milosz goes to great length to prove that different states, such as war, can grow to become as natural a condition as times of peace, since both become part of man's experience. To illustrate this point, he points out that human nature is so geared to survival that it quickly learns to adapt to new living conditions. Therefore, he says, that one can even conceive "of the day when a thoroughly self-respecting citizen will crawl on all fours, sporting a tail of brightly colored feathers as a sign of conformity to the order he Milosz supports his argument in three ways. One, he explains that America's obliviousness is an outcome of Americans never having experienced the trauma of a war or social order that teaches men just how relative their judgments and thinking habits are. Two, he conjectures that the relatively long period of prosperity that Americans have enjoyed has led to the belief that the social order in which they were born and the American value system is the only one that is natural and compatible with human nature. Three, the end result of such American concepts, Milosz feels, is an appalling lack of imagination of what it really means to live with hunger, disease, bombed cities, or the terror of a despotic government. Milosz provides several examples to prove that the American belief in its social order is based on a false and shaky foundation, which could crumble at any time. Using his World War II experiences in Poland, he points out that the ordinary citizen in Eastern Europe, much like Americans today, took for granted the normalcy of his house, work, clothes, and ...