I would be a fitting tribute to remind ourselves for the enormous gratitude we owe our fellow man, commemorated 100 years ago today. I would argue that those lives were lost to protect our British unwritten constitution, and that sure the world has changed and modernized itself.
There is a metaphorical form of no man’s land in 1914-18 war, which was fought supposedly because of imperial jealousies and its fall-out leading to a bloodbath that could have been avoided – this is often cited as the provocation that led to the 2nd WW. But I believe that Nazi Germany and Stalinistic USSR weren’t created from humiliation and grievance from WW1 which led to WW2, but that Fascism was inevitable. Therefore, I believe that the world had to ‘out’ an inevitable fascism in Europe in order to defeat it. Whilst millions lost their lives, billions were saved and fascism was put to the sword for good. Some may feel I am denigrating the millions of lives lost in WW1 as a starter for the ‘real’ fight against Fascism, but nevertheless it won many countries the right to sustain our hard won rights for constitutional monarchy, and in effect the right to democracy.
But this interpretation of history is no consolation for the badly injured let alone the relatives of the dead. It’s not popular to render sacrifice seemingly a military statistic. Academicising’ can mean having to keep ones head down from the crossfire of angry anti-intellectual ‘resenters’, a metaphorical no man’s land for the thinker of society, who isn’t denying or desecrating the ground of the more traditional types of orthodoxy, but is offering a different viewpoint only.
My own way of tangently referring to a “No Man’s Land” in my thinking, relates to my project that investigates further the significance of drawing on envelopes. Here I have decided to select addressed envelopes found inside charity letter. For me, these disposable chunk in the bin envelopes have a unique narrative- tossed in the bin, rejected as junk mail made back into pulp and completely recycled into paper, they best present the idea of disposability. but here’s the paradoxical absurdity in order to recycle these specifically non used envelopes, they can’t be used for their original purposes. therefore is recycling ever counter-productive? A “No Man’s Land” without purpose?
You decide!