You would be forgiven for expecting that the Halls of Dead Warriors would be martial or militant in nature. It is not so; it is dreamlike, soft, warm, light. The texture of reality becomes almost velvety in such a place. And the levels of civility are surprisingly high; there is not much left to prove.
Sinking deep past consciousness to access those who walked a path both martial and civic. Memory blends and distorts, fades, is gone. But there. It would be interesting to see if pure philosophers were admitted to Valhalla, but it is not today’s focus, and the moments here are precious. We seek answers.
“Do we need hatred to bring people together?”
A leader is always wracking his mind. There are those who just see people as pieces on a chessboard; they may accomplish a lot, but at great harm.
And there are those who believe in a strictly humanitarian spirit; that harm resulting from omissions, as their lines are overrun and their precious ideals are violated, negated, cast aside by the harsh steel of a more pragmatic foe.
One gets the impression that this dialog has been going eternally, the ranks being constantly joined by the minds and spirits of those who would fit mankind’s action to higher visions. And then, just the same, death comes, and things go, and the next generation makes their attempts to reshape man and world.
The dialog is mid-stream, many thousands of voices could echo on it; let us tune in to a selection of points.
“Hatred? It is like the doctor’s purgative… perhaps necessary, but it comes at a high price. Poisons are expelled from the stomach, but the patient is perhaps forever weaker. I always tried not to rally and marshal hatred except when necessary. I looked to conciliate, send my enemies away unharmed when captured, not give in to cycles of wrath.”
“And look at the good it did you, Caesar! Assassinated!” boomed Carolus.
Caesar arched his head slightly, slowly, towards the challenge, and sighed. His manner was a dignified condescension, as if explaining to a young child who does not quite understand.
“What is a man’s death? We all die, perhaps ten years later, perhaps ten years earlier. I should have died a multitude of times in battle before I fell on the Senate floor. Look instead at Sulla’s reforms and wrath; none lasted. He had the satisfaction of dying in peace, perhaps if you call his death peaceful, but nothing of his endures except his butchery.”
Carolus smiles and laughs, a sort of half-dignified and half-barbaric laugh, that of a tribal chieftain risen high about his station. “Well said, I suppose! We need humanity, and humanity needs us, but humanity tends to butcher those who are constantly graceful. Beware the animal you train with the whip once you set aside the whip. And, in the absence of governance and theology, is not the entire world a whip? Not the riding crop in a man’s hand turned against his fellow man, but we naturally come from dirt, live in dirt… the dirt itself whips us, diseases and famines come forth. All feel whipped and trodden upon, until the whip is taken — ideally in the hands of a man of peace, but who can wield arms well in war. But then, woe be to him who sets it aside entirely.”
A new voice speaks, quietly: “Your emphasis on piety in times of peace, and wielding arms in war… it would seem to be a good plan, but not a complete plan.”
Belisarius pauses for a moment, and continues: “I suspect hatred and all its variants — envy, jealousy, fear, rivalry and factional strife — I would now suppose that hatred is one of the few things that can dominate self-interest. A man will set aside a life of gains to indulge a vendetta, throw away a kingdom to punish a rival, dispense with loyalty and justice when indulging paranoia and suspicion—“
Belisarius seems weary and doesn’t continue. A new voice picks up in his stead —
“It was Hitler’s doing and undoing. He forged his arms and armies out of raw hatred. He welded a society together where many of those at the top and bottom of society gave up much of what they had, in order to indulge their hatred. And in the end, his petty hatreds and rivalries led his fledgling reich to tumble into the ground.”
Tito moves from philosophical into a deep frown. “But it is like a disease, this hatred. I tried to go to the foundry and to hammer together a nation out of transcending, out of diplomacy, out of balance and moderation. Meanwhile, I see a former resistance movement who should be an ally, begin collaborating with Nazi forces. Why? Rivalry. After our victory, when we resist their Warsaw Pact, assassins are set upon me constantly by the Secretary of the Soviets. Hatred will unmake you, but so will a lack of vigilance!”
There are nods around.
Caesar speaks: “We are among friends, are we not? There is nothing to prove here, no need for politics, no?” More nods of ascent. “It is terribly difficult to balance all of the factors. If you never use hatred to rally your troops, they grow complacent, weak, full of cowardice. If you drive them hard with hate, they turn into beasts, ready to turn upon you and tear you to pieces should you set the whip down, and who can constantly keep the whip in hand without growing weary or utterly corrupt? In the end, we wind up as beasts driving beasts, no security, no safety, no peace. Is this the dividends of command? Is this the destiny of he who build mankind? I reject that, even as I perhaps succumb to it. The question is how many factors must we grapple with, such that one error unmakes a lifetime — or an entire nation?”
“If I might offer a different perspective —“ interjects one politely, “— I do believe all of you had, to some extent or other, a belief in the soul. You are upset that men are beasts, as if men could be… what is your word for it, angels? I believe you all have this belief in the angelic.”
“Perhaps not Tito!” booms Carolus, and the others chuckle. Tito himself laughs.
The polite voice continues —
“But have you seen these angels on this earth? You trace your descent through Socrates. Perhaps your heart wishes, on some level, for angelic deliverance of some sort, or for the blessing of Mars… even he who wouldn’t believe in the soul, but is born of that tradition, would be thinking about the deliverance of mankind. Else, why would it bother you that assassins are sent for you after you’ve won a hard-fought peace and delivered victory for your side? The deliverance of angels, or the gods, or whatever else — this is not my way, has never been my way, and my way worked very well for me.”
The vast room sits still for a moment, taking in a perspective from the other side of the world.
The first one to come to is Caesar: “But Ieyasu, we do not live our lives for the same reason as you. You had your shogunate, your son reigned, his son reigned… but I would not switch lives with you; I doubt any of us would, even those that ended most unfortunately. I had high adventure, high poetry, the highest forms of joy and the deepest of miseries. I’ll keep my death, even! I died as I lived, in dramatic fashion, and I would not trade even a single party or escapade to eliminate the deepest of sorrows and miseries; indeed, I would not dispatch with the sorrows and miseries, for I would have lived less when I lived, had I not been so crushed with despair when the crush came.”
The o-shogun nods. “Indeed, but is the answer not here? I attempted to harden out feelings among my officers, among my generals, among my spies, among my own family and among those I governed. We lived in a world of politics, we live in a world of politics… on stage at the theater deep and subtle emotions are revealed, and those too are tools like the tools Roman soldiers used for battlefield engineering, or like the weapons for slinging and archery against enemy forces. But if the entire casus belli of yours is drama and adventure, a certain love and wish for the divine… does not this filter into your command, and affect your judgment? I had my falcons, and got great joy out of falconry, those noble birds being sent forth to soar and hunt, and then return to me. Do we need hatred to wield our forces together? No. But wish not for salvation or epic drama, for those ignite the passions that give way to hatred. Steady on the path, steadiness in your officer corps, steadiness with your resources, steadiness, steadiness, steadiness. Hatred and factionalism must always occur when battling for salvations and eternal glories; winning battles and consolidating gains is a much simpler matter.”
A certain silence comes among the leaders at the table, until Carolus speaks. “A single error can unmake a nation, it is true. And a love of god and mankind might make us more likely to make those errors. I made a few, perhaps in succession in particular, but we’re often bound and blinded by our customs — our culture and descent, as you put it. And yet, I regret nothing. The beauty of a church hymn, of bells ringing, of sharing epic stories, of leading people to higher purposes and the uplifting of mankind? Love often produces hate, and battling for Heaven means marching against the forces of Hell. It is epic, it is sweeping, at times it is debilitating, and perhaps it leads us to making tactical and political errors. But I would trade — nothing. Not a single moment of it, not the despairs nor glories, and not the final results, howsoever they should come.”