Blogtrek

Glory Shortage

In an article "A Pacifist in Wartime", in Style magazine, Jinny Batterson states that "Wars are fought from a perspective of scarcity - be it not enough human labor, not enough land, not enough coal, not enough oil, or not enough glory..." I am aware of most of these shortages, but the one that is new to me is a glory shortage. This is interesting. We all want some piece of the action, some fame, some glory in our lives, and are willing to risk our lives to grab a piece of the glory pie. So even heroic actions are things we desire, so they become just as materialistic as a cellular phone that plays mp3s. And what happens if we can't get a taste of the glory because someone else gets their first? Quite likely, we have a knock-down drag-out fight to get it. And wasn't it Humpty Dumpty (Through the Looking-Glass, by Lewis Carroll) that said that "glory" meant "a knock-down drag-out fight"? As he says, "a word means exactly what I want it to mean, no more, no less". And we certainly have enough of words that mean exactly what the authors want them to mean in our culture already.