Veterans,+Culture,+and+Consumption+11-14-08

11-14-08 =Veterans, Culture, and Consumption =  When I was a boy I served my father breakfast in bed on Veterans Day rather than Fathers Day. I don’t know where I got the idea, since he rarely talked about Vietnam. He served during the [|Tet Offensive]. He was fortunate to serve in a supply depot behind the front lines, but he lost many friends, and some who survived returned very changed.

Years ago I was teaching Freshman Honors English. A student said that the [|Great Depression] occurred because at that time all [|durable goods] produced in the United States were too durable. They didn’t break down soon enough, so American consumers rarely needed new durable goods, and this brought the economy to a halt. Therefore, she concluded, it was important that durable goods be consumable goods; they must last just long enough to satisfy the consumer but not so long that they didn’t need replacement.

Although this was an obvious oversimplification of the causes of the Great Depression, it is true that our economy needs consumable or nondurable goods as much as it needs durable goods and services to keep the economy functioning. I’d be the last to champion our culture of consumption, but I recognize our need to consume things in order to create jobs and income.

However—and perhaps this is anathema to say so short on the heels of [|Veterans Day]—I worry about the amount of money we spend on the military, and about how dependent our economy has become on the business of war. In 2008, the US spent nearly $700 billion on [|the combined budgets of the Department of Defense and the War on Terror]. By contrast, [|the budget for the Department of Education] was $56 billion, and [|the combined budgets for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts] were around $500 million. I am not so naïve as to think we don’t need a military, but I am concerned that our economy is too dependent on military spending. I worry that if we ever won the wars on terror or drugs we would be unable to scale back our investment in military spending.

In the last couple of weeks my family attended a production of //Little Red Riding Hood// at [|Jorgensen Auditorium]. My wife and I then went to see //[|Rockapella]// with two other couples last Saturday evening, and the following day took in the [|Connecticut Children’s Book Fair]. This past Tuesday we went to hear [|Wally Lamb] read from his new book //[|The Hour I First Believed]// at the [|UConn Co-op], and Thursday evening I joined a friend to see //[|My Nose and Me]// at the [|Nafe Katter Theatre]. Wedged in among all these cultural events was Veterans Day.

This fall, UConn constructed a [|Veterans Memorial] on the Great Lawn, just outside the CLAS Building, and last Monday it was dedicated. I watched the ceremony from the steps of the Wilbur Cross Building. Wednesday, I went for a run in the afternoon, and showered in the [|Willis Hawley Armory], which is dedicated to a graduate who died in the [|Spanish American War]. Watching the Veterans Memorial dedication and then walking to Hawley Armory, I thought about my father, as well as his two older brothers, both deceased, who served in [|Korea] and [|Vietnam].

I got to thinking about wars and veterans, about culture and consumption, about the gross disparity between what we spend on war and what we spend on arts and education. Bombs and bullets are, I suppose, consumable goods. But what about tanks and planes, or soldiers themselves? I fear that in war they, too, become consumable goods. And I can’t help but wonder how different the world would be if we spent $700 billion on culture as a consumable good. I know that in parts of the world it is our very culture that is most objected to, and I realize we cannot win over all people with art and music, but I remain hopeful for a world in which our economy can be driven by the consumption of culture and not by the consumption of lives.

I first read [|E. B. White] in a class with [|Sam Pickering], who told me that he liked E. B. White because during the Second World War White didn’t write much about the war. Rather, he wrote about life as it should be so that once war had ended people would remember what life was supposed to be like.

In a 1969 interview for [|The Paris Review], White was asked about a writer’s obligation to write about world affairs. White bemoaned “the needless chaos and cruelty of [the] world,” but said that writers have “no obligation to deal with politics.” However, they do have “a responsibility to society” to use their writing to “reflect and interpret,” “inform and shape life.” A little later, he’s asked about technology, but he’s focused on his earlier response, and continues saying, “A writer must reflect and interpret his society, his world; he must also provide inspiration and guidance and challenge. Much writing today strikes me as deprecating, destructive, and angry. There are good reasons for anger, and I have nothing against anger. But I think some writers have lost their sense of proportion, their sense of humor, and their sense of appreciation. I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad: and I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle, to accept the warming rays of the sun, and to report them, whenever, and if ever, they happen to strike me.”

So this past Tuesday, I honored my father, my uncles, and Willis Hawley by watching the dedication of the Veterans Memorial, but I honored a greater principle by reading stories to my children, listening to music with my wife, watching a play with my friend, and even by running beneath an obscured sun on a cool November afternoon.

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