In honor of the 10^thAnniversary of 9/11 and in lasting solidarity with all the victims of both the original tragedy and its costly and controversial aftermath, we thought we’d rebroadcast our episode on War, Sacrifice, and the Media this week. We don’t seem to have blogged for the original episode – somehow that got sacrificed. But here is a fresh one for your consideration.

每当美国卷入一场遥远土地上的战争时，我们往往也卷入了一场离家不远的战争。这第二次战争不是用坦克、炸弹或导弹，而是用思想、文字和图像。我在思考关于战争叙述和表现的斗争——它的意义、它的成本和收益、它的胜利者和被征服者、它的战斗人员和非战斗人员。谁控制了战争的叙述和表现，谁就控制了公众对战争的看法。

Now if you are the cynical sort, you might well think that ’s pretty obvious who determines what gets represented and how it gets represented? Elites - moneyed elites, political elites, media elites. War comes at us through a top-down system of politically, economically and culturally condition representations designed to make us feel sympathy for our side and antipathy or indifference for the other side.

这似乎是事实，但事实上，所谓的精英阶层——顺便说一下，约翰和我都是持卡会员——并不总是用统一的声音说话。自上而下的努力通过大众代表的方式来控制思想和操纵同情几乎从未成功过，在我们这样一个暴躁而喧闹的民主国家，至少从长远来看是这样的。值得庆幸的是，在互联网时代，人们确实可以获得其他信息来源，提供不同的看法。即使是最压制和最控制的政权也无法将竞争叙事完全排除在公众视野之外。还记得那些勇敢的伊朗学生在路障上发推特吗?最近，埃及的民众起义似乎得以持续，至少部分原因是通过互联网进行动员、告知和组织的能力。

Still, it would be a serious mistake to underestimate the power of top-down narration. In the early days of the Afghanistan and then the Iraq war, the so-called mainstream media bent over backwards to tell the story of the war in terms pretty much dictated by the administration. There were dissenting voices – but they were pushed pretty far off center stage.

但这里还有一个更深层次的问题。不同的叙述是不同的还是有可能一个是真的一个是假的?我们如何判断哪个是对的，哪个是错的?由谁来决定代表什么以及如何代表?

The realist in me wants to say that of course there can be narratives that are more true to the facts and narratives that are less true the facts. A narrative of the Iraq war that focuses on the casualties on our side and leaves out the death and displacement we imposed on the innocent citizens of that country is incomplete and less true to the facts. Is there any question about that?

但在我看来，我们的叙述注定是不完整的，因为它们总是从特定和党派的角度构建。这只是一个事实，在战争中，敌人战斗人员的生命比自己士兵的生命更重要。我们对战争的叙述必然会对我们自己的生命和损失给予特权，而对遥远的另一方的生命和损失不予重视。

You could say that that’s not a good thing. It’s a bad thing that blinds us to the common humanity w share with our adversaries. But on the other hand, It’s a human thing. We are sort of biologically programmed to care more about those near and dear than about the distant other.

Of course, biology is not destiny. Whatever we’re biologically programmed to do, we morally ought to care about all human beings equally.

But now ask yourself where would such “oughts” come from? If humans are simply hard-wired to care more about the near and dear than the distant other, would it really be possible anyway for us to treat all lives as equally worthy of our sympathy?

To be sure, the reach of human sympathy isn’t just a product of unaided biology. It’s also shaped by culture, society and politics. In the right sort of political, social and cultural context, we could have equal regard for the lives of innocent victims of war everywhere. Problem is, it is a little hard to imagine how to get from here to where it seems we ought to be.

幸运的是，我们的嘉宾朱迪思·巴特勒(Judith Butler)有很多话要说，也有很多话在这些话题上引发了很多思考。虽然她有时被认为是一个令人生畏的、难以理解的思想家，但当涉及到她更学术的工作时，她在这个话题上是清晰的、清晰的、有力的。听一听，我相信你的想法会在这个国家纪念的时刻被激发出来。

Photo byNeil ThomasonUnsplash