This isn't really about war bumper stickers. Sorry if that's confusing. I just typed
that in the title field and decided to face the consequences later.
It's actually about big huge war signs on the back of pickup trucks.
To be more specific, it's about one truck in particular that I saw during lunch today.
There was a big, hand painted sign sitting in back of the truck. This is what it said:
WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER - EYE FOR AN EYE WILL LEAVE
THE WHOLE WORLD BLIND
I'm not pro-war. I'm totally anti-war, as a matter of fact. However, statements like
this really get my dander up.
For example, how do you know war isn't the answer? Doesn't that depend on
the question?
I agree that "war" is probably not the proper answer to the question "What
kind of ice-cream would you like, Bobby?"
But, what about this one: Space aliens are attacking our country and eating our dogs
- What should we do?
Hello-o-o-o-o. I think "war" is the obvious answer here. Perhaps "space war" would
be more appropriate, but I'll leave the classification as a bone for future historians
to fight over.
Then, what about all this "leaving the whole world blind" stuff? Didn't it occur to
the person that "Eye for an eye" would only leave repeat offenders blind?
That is, you've poked somebody's eye out, right? Fine. So, they poke your eye out,
right? Fine. You're even.
And, between the two of you, there are still two eyes. That's twice as many
as you need in order to see things. Divided between the involved parties, there might
be a lack of depth-perception, but nobody's actually blind.
Now, if these two people meet in the street again, and if one of them decides to poke
the other's eye out, then DUH. The result of the exchange would be that both parties
would be eyeless and, by inference, blind.
So what are they gonna do now? Go around poking other peoples' eyes out? They can't
even bloody-well see - how are they expected to be able to find eyes to remove?
It's ridiculous, and I left out more specific situations for the sake of brevity.
Actually, screw brevity - Here's another:
You've got one of the people from the initial eye-fight, and he meets up with someone
entirely different who still has 100% of his eyes left. The two get in a quarrel,
and we have two possibilities (Note - there would be more outcomes if we counted multiple-eye
removals from each party, but the saying is "Eye for an eye" and not "Eye for some eyes"
or "Eyes for every other eye present"):
-
The guy with one eye loses the fight and goes home eyeless. Because of the "Eye for
an eye" law, the new guy has to give up one of his eyeballs. We now have one eyeball
between two people. It isn't a good situation, but one of them is still going to be
able to see, right? Only 50% blindness here - that is not world blindness.
It isn't even close.
-
It turns out that no eyeballs are removed during the fight, and we have a 75% retention
of eyeballs between the two parties. Again, how is this world blindness?
Am I crazy? Am I the only person who sees that this clearly doesn't lead to 6,000,000,000
pairs of empty eye sockets?
Seriously. I'm down with voicing opinions, but not if they're stupid.