Just as humans have
inevitably turned against each other time and time again across history,
usually in order to further their own tribe at the cost of others, recent
history also have a few examples of humanity, or at least a diverse
cross-sections of different ideologies and cultures, uniting over a common goal
which in turn furthered the entire species as a unity. The two world wars of
the 20th century, by some historians considered as one great
conflict, serve as one example. After World War I, international leaders came together
in an effort to form a League of Nations to ensure that the intricate
diplomatic alliances that had caused so many different nations to get dragged
in to the war in the first place, could never again cause a conflict on that
scale. As everyone knows, they failed and the grudges planted by the Versailles
treaty spurred on Adolf Hitler to rally the German people and create a
dictatorship that spiraled out of control due to his and his lieutenants’ own
personal racism and hatred of certain people groups. Alongside the
imperialistic ambitions of Japan and Italy who also felt overlooked after World War I,
these superpowers united managed to pose such a threat to the world order that
it rallied the entire rest of the world against them. This is an example of the
Necessity of Crises that I mentioned earlier. Humanity needs a threat on this
scale in order to unite in greater numbers. Only when the shit really hits the
fan do we get things done. And World War II certainly got some things done. So
many modern inventions were spurred on by this conflict, jet engines, rockets, computer
systems to name a few, and of course the whopper, the nuclear bomb which
irrevocably changed our species’ history perpetually.
Sometimes it is hard
to understand just how big this conflict was when you have only read about it
in history books or watched Steven Spielberg movies about it. But having now
travelled to and visited World War II memorials all over the world, I am slowly
starting to realize the scope. One epiphany particularly stand out that made me
realize just how big this conflict was. Growing up in Denmark my first
encounter with World War II was naturally in our own history books and tales
from grandparents as we were occupied from 1940 to 1945. As a result, our
Western coastline and the forests around my hometown are littered with German
bunkers, which used to form great backdrops for childhood exploration. But in
my hometown there are also streets named after a man called Kaj Munk, who was a
minister and a poet. His claim to fame however comes from the fact that he was
executed by Gestapo on the roadside not far from my hometown. This was one of
my first encounters with the conflict as a child. 20+ years later I was in the
Sabah Museum in Kota Kinabalu in Borneo reading about that city during the war
when Borneo was occupied by the Japanese. And sure enough, KK had a Kaj Munk of
their own. Dr. Cho Huan Lai, executed by the Japanese for whatever bullshit
reason they used. That was when it dawned on me just how big this conflict
really was. The accumulated sense of awe and respect I had gathered during
childhood trips to the beaches of Denmark and Normandy, all my travels to
Washington D.C., Hiroshima, Tokyo, London, Berlin, Darwin, to the jungles of
Borneo and everywhere else that has World War II stories to tell across the
whole globe, finally sunk in to acknowledge how there has never been any
conflict of that magnitude in our entire history, and hopefully there never
will be again. But the legacy of it cannot be denied. For whatever horrors it
caused, it also propelled us into action and in turn raised us higher in our
evolution. This is the Necessity of Crises, unfortunately the only way so far for
our species to combat the Danger of Contentment and get off our collective asses.
Hopefully in the future it will no longer be necessary. At least, this should
be the lesson to draw out of all that chaos.
