Benjamin Berry
Life Journey
McNamara and Dewey Comparison
For Dewey, war is the result of social customs and institutions. He writes that “History does not prove the inevitability of war, but it does prove that customs and institutions which organize native powers into certain patterns in politics and economics will also generate the war-pattern” (Dewey 115). In other words, Dewey feels that the way people develop through institutions and the norms of society will dictate the way war is viewed. McNamara’s lessons from “The Fog of War” develop this thought by delineating some of the principles he has lived by and the lessons he has learned. McNamara defines what some of the crucial considerations should be before entering a war or during a war. In essence, the lessons McNamara refers to and the institutions and norms Dewey refers to go to the heart of the cause for war; namely, that the policies a nation adopts concerning foreign affairs are directly related to the norms society establishes and the power of institutions upon those norms.
McNamara presents some great lessons to consider. While all of the lessons he shared in the video are profound, there are two specifically that caught my attention. The first is that “believing and seeing are both often wrong” (McNamara Lesson 7). There are few people I have met that regard seeing as an act of believing. This is essentially what I think he is getting at since what one sees is often just as untrustworthy as what one believes. I have never underestimated that the value of believing and guarding ones beliefs with careful consideration are fundamental aspects of life. The second lesson that captured my attention was that “In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil” (McNamara Lesson 9). This lesson was hard for me to swallow. I wonder to what extent this is true and what implications it has on society if this form of reasoning is accepted. My intuition leads me to believe that this lesson should be more focused on developing wisdom rather than engaging in evil. If we have a greater knowledge of how to respond to specific circumstances we might find that doing good to those who harm us might be a more effective alternative.
Dewey, John. Human Nature And Conduct. Henry Holt And Company. New York, New
York 1922.
