Why the military should study poetry
Posted By Marc on June 22, 2009
Last week, after the OBC tour, I was at the Cultures in Conflict symposium at Cranfield University. On the whole, it was an excellent get together, so kudos to Charles Kirke for organizing it (and Lynn Anderson for all of the nitty-gritty work!). As with most conferences in the area, it was a mixture of truly great and truly boring: after all, one can only hear so many times that the military needs to understand “Culture” 
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Perhaps it was because my mind was still in a performance space – a Zen like, pseudo-trance as it were – but I felt that many of the people I was talking with just did not grok the importance of the Arts. Oh, they understood it well enough for their own organizations, but when it came to applying it to the “Other”, there was an almost blank look. Poetry, music, storytelling and performance were not seen as having any impact on the performance of the “mission”; especially by many of the US military folks (NB: one German officer I talked with about the issue got it with no problems whatsoever, as did many of the British officers). Occasionally, I found myself mumbling “haven’t these people read Walter Ong
Oral cultures use poetry as a means of storing knowledge of the world; knowledge that is presented in the form of stories, regardless of the type of knowledge. Consider, by way of a few examples, the picture of a general culture given between, say Beowulf, the Mahabarata and the Illiad; or the effects of Shakespear on the English speaking world in terms of both tropes and plots. And while poetry may be old hat to many, how about popular culture music, which uses poetry in its lyrics? To my mind, the recent rise in popularity of Heavy Metal in the Middle East
But poetry, including lyrics, does more than act as an “object” to gain insight into the mind of a people – it reveals the ‘soul” of a people simply because poetry 9and lyrics and music) bypass most of our conscious thought processes – they are a “right brain” activity that meld words and emotions into coherent wholes that can change perceptions.
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By coincidence, some of the references that you wrote about came up in something else that I read today. I was just reading the author’s introduction to The Iliad (Lattimore translation) today and something popped out at me. In describing Achilleus’ character, he writes, “He is not only a great fighter but a great gentleman, and if he lacks the chivalry of Roland, Lancelot, or Beowulf, that is because theirs is a chivalry coloured with Christian humility which has no certain place in the gallery of Homeric virtues.”
That stuck out because yesterday I was listening to a lecture on the development of Christian Theology. The professor was speaking about the creation of tradition, in general, and how it provides context (or, I would also add, some barriers) for us to think. In another part of the intro to The Iliad, the translator illustrates this…
Of Hektor, he writes, “Some hidden weakness, not cowardice but perhaps the fear of being called a coward, prevents him from liquidating a war which he knows perfectly well is unjust.” In a footnote, he points out that Shakespeare had a theory, as well: “Shakespeare sees the difficult question: ‘Why do not the Trojans return Helen, in spite of Paris?’, and has his own answer. His Hektor, as intelligent as brave, demolishes the arguments of Paris and Troilus, then gives way in a spirit of chivalry.” The Bard, apparently not realizing the different value systems and traditions (illustrated by the comparison, above, of Achilleus and Roland et al) ascribes his own values to Hektor and then tries to make sense of the story from that start point.
Kind of reminds of some negotiations that I’ve had with Iraqi leaders. It took all year just to understand what made them tick. At first, we inadvertently ascribe some of our own values to them, without even realizing it. Eventually, we figure it out, but by then it’s time to redeploy and some new unit takes our place and we get about 48 hours to pass on everything that learned over the prior year.
Hi Schmedlap,
I’ve wondered why the change-over process hasn’t been better co-ordinated just to avoid things like this < wry grin>. The thing of it is that we are quite capable of comprehending whoever we are working with, but we have to be able to shift our mindset to allow us to do so, and that shift often means going outside of the almost mechanistic “training” used in many militaries (and universities!).