Week 5 - Yuanxin Zhang

Yuanxin Zhang
Section A01
Week 05

In the Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence, Darrell Y. Hamamoto bring up the correlation between the increasing of militarism and the increasing of murders in the society, including serial murderer, mass murder, snipers, and race murderer. It is hard to imagine how large the influence of a war can be; it not only hurt people in the place where the war happens, but also people from regions elsewhere in the world. Based on my understanding of the article, living in a world with increasing militarism, for some people, maybe especially for people who had military experience, violence becomes somehow legitimate for them. I was shocked. Shouldn’t people cherish more of the peace after experiencing the war? Personally, I did not have any experience with the war, and I considered myself as a lucky one who lives in a comparably peaceful society (when I say peaceful, I mean I do not have much worry about my city being attack and my life being threatened). I was thankful to people who fought for the peace in the history of my country. After reading the article, I realize the reality are much more complicated than I thought. The world is not that peaceful as I thought and people are influenced by the increasing militarism. It is even hard to judge the violence led by a government, people justifying their intentions of a war in a good way. We need to keep being skeptical about what happens in the world and the decisions of the government.

Question:

How the military experience can change a person in his or her perception of death and life?

Reference:

1. [Digital Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved fromhttp://www.peacewomen.org/e-news/article/sexual-violence-conflict-and-milit
2. Hamamoto, Y. Darrell. “Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence.” Masters of War: Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire, by Carl Boggs, Routledge, 2003, pp. 277-292.