Why has the human imagination always been captivated by heroism and the horrors of war?

Answer 1

It gives people a little psychological thrill to read and hear about life's mysteries, like love and death, because they are such unknowns. As humans, we all crave knowledge, and are unsatisfied with not knowing things -- so knowing just a little about them gives us a certain amount of satisfaction.

Answer 2

Because they are stretch goals. Could I do it. Could I survive that? I am an erratic hero. Even I never know how I'll react in a situation that calls for heroism. Sometimes I do it just right and I'm pleased and proud. Sometimes I goof up completely or don't move when I should. That s**ks and I have to figure out what happened and keep trying.

Answer 3

Throughout life it is near impossible to get a group to work together,respect you,put your wellbeing above theirs,in the heat of battle everyone is one force, a unit, an army of one.Never again in life will you feel the same closeness with another human.Or even get an agreeable response from someone with out them downing others or embellishing themselves.War affects different people different ways and remembering the strengths of your friends offsets the bad. That is prob why you read of the heroism,it offsets the horrors that most want to forget.,some cant...

Answer 4

I think I just viewed a movie called "Unbreakable" that kinda deals with exactly these issues. I think it has to do with us having the mindstate at least some of the time that we are imperfect and in the struggle to become perfect. Once your in this mind set that you are not perfect you start to think up things beyound you in both good and bad ways. Then you try to explain to others what you think and thats where it all gets messed up like the telephone game alto it can be messed up in a cool way where ur ideas go into the right head the right way and they make a movie/comic book about it.

Answer 5

Much like baseball, the details get lost, when compared to the big picture.

War, in it's details, is a horror, but war in all it's grandeur has freed slaves, overthrown tyrants, preserved freedom.

It doesn't hurt that the winners write the History. After all that horror, I suspect the winner doesn't mind burying the terrible memories, and replacing them with 'pretty thoughts'.

Answer 6

Very few of us who have actually -been- there (and have the scars and medals to prove it) actually see it that way. McArthur said it best, "War is Hell." And there is nothing (no talk shows or news footage) that will ever put the smell of cordite, napalm, blood, charred and/or rotting flesh, and death in your nose. Or the sound of bullets snapping past your head and the screams of the wounded and dying in your ears. Or get them out of mine.

But, as was said, there -have- been a few good things that resulted from wars.

Doug

Answer 7

Like a car wreck you need to see it b/c you know you could be like it if you were thrown into those circumstances. It truthfully shows your own mortality.

It also shows the strength, horror and resilience of the human spirit and how beautiful and horrible it can be at the same time.

Answer 8

Because it is a lot more exciting then a story about a man who goes to his cube everyday doing the 9 to 5 thing and working on spreadsheets.

Answer 9

Hi!

Good question.

My Mother's cousin, Todger, was not a violent man, yet he and his best friend from schooldays found themselves fighting on the Western Front in the trenches of WWI. He survived, his friend did not. He was awarded the V.C. for single handedly taking prisoner 280 German soldiers while under fire. It was a mystery he would never in life explain and, yes, I was fascinated by that mystery.

Over time, I pieced together what happenned from reading history books, taking to family members and through my role as a Veterans Padre in adult life that led me to encounter members of his regiment.

It seems the two young men had seen many good friends die. They were war weary, but there was no escape from the madness for any young man in those dark days. But there were rules that soldiers on both sides honoured. There had even been moments of sanity as on one famous Christmas Eve when, instead of killing each other, soldiers from both sides sang carols, exchanged rations and played football together.

One day, the two friends were looking out across no-man's land when a group of German soldiers appeared carrying a flag of truce. His friend rose to parly, and as he did so one of the bogus truce party shot him dead. Seeing his best pal, who he had been through so much with die in such a trecherous way, a fuge came upon Todger. He rose from his position and ran towards the enemy line. In his rage, he shot and killed members of the false truce party. A bullet pierced his shoulder and another holed his headgear, but on he went.

The rest is just my conjecture:

Perhaps many of the German soldiers who saw Todger's charge were ashamed of what their comrades had done in breaking the soldiers rule. Maybe they found it impossible to shoot dead a man who had risen up in righteous anger. They too were war weary. I imagine that he stood there in his fury looking down on them in their trenches, perhaps no longer caring whether he lived or died in a world that had gone so crazy. They threw down their arms and threw up their hands, not in cowardice; not surrendering to greater might - but surrendering to what they saw in his face: that this was madness; that this was wrong. And so, he returned through the mist to his lines with all those prisoners.

My work with veterans has shown me that nobody knows the futility of war like those who have seen it.

I am proud of those who stopped the killing machine that was destroying men, women and children because they did not fit an inhuman madman's criteria of what it is to be human in WWII. War is terrible,; war is mad - but sometimes war is inevitable.

Not an answer to your question - but I hope an insight. Perhaps there isn't a definitive answer.

Good wishes.

Answer 10

That's profound.

I think it is a deepseated thing in our minds.

It could be like moths circling around a light, or something like that.