I suppose that if war, genocide, suicide terror, &c. were distilled down to haiku, if like a pond in summer, or leaves in the wind, our red-splashed bodies in the dirt meant nothing beyond who we are but human consciousness located in nature in a prescribed syllable count
, then, and only then, I suppose what would be left would be the realization that the paths of obedience lead us here.
The first casualty of taking a life isn’t the life taken, but the taker’s former disobedience to the belief that killing isn’t a pure wrong, and that some things are somehow ‘worthy’ of it. This rubbing out of disobedience, whether it be in small groups or large armies, is in essence simply stated as, “Soldiers are trained to kill.” The simply stated is made obvious when “trained” is replaced with its synonyms of “passive” and “obedient.”
The first casualty of a murderer is the murderer’s mind. And this is the problem that the conscientious objector is faced with – how does one re-instill disobedience in the truly obedient? How does one bring back what’s dead? I fear it’s impossible.