Israel Josheff

English 111

Eric Steineger, Instructor

January 18, 2013

The Love Affair between Humans and War Mankind has the habit of glorifying war. Rather than a bloody, violent field of youth wasted, war is elevated to a divine status where the reason to fight erases the evil deeds man commit to survive. Despite the amazing honors and inspirational films, it is not only unavoidable but imperative that humans remember that “war is hell.” As Robert E. Lee allegedly inferred, if man were to forget the grueling aspects of war and “grow too fond of it” then mankind would partake in non-stop trivial violence. Drew Faust has developed her article based upon Robert E. Lee’s eloquent observation of human nature and expanded the topic to the general population’s increasing interest in war. Although war has not constantly been displayed to be a hobby of mankind, the population’s interest on the subject has never wavered. Publically, war has experienced many ups and downs in popularity such as when war became “back in fashion in Reagan-Bush America.” Privately, people have continually researched the dynamics of war. Civil War based literature grew exponentially and by the end of the twentieth century “more than 60,000 volumes of civil war history had appeared.” The Civil War became so apparent to mankind that it transgressed from factual to experiential interest with Ken Burns’s production of The Civil War in 1993. The debut of this series “attracted an audience of 14 million” and “by the end of the decade more than 40 million Americans had watched one or more episodes.” As war has progressed it has become a “force that gives us meaning.” People “crave meaning as much as life itself” and thus need war almost as much as war needs humanity to unintentionally support the continuation of violence. Only “through irony and [the opening of] ourselves to its contradictions” might people potentially “separate [themselves] from war’s myths” and “diminish its power” over mankind. In “We Should Grow Too Fond of It” Faust takes the common topic of war and analyzes its role in popular culture. While the majority of the article deals with historical evidence supporting Faust’s observation that man’s interest in war has increased, “We Should Grow Too Fond of It” closes with the haunting realization that perhaps even by writing this article she is giving war “meaning.”