Fresh out of Brains

In Frank Yerby’s novel, The Garfield Honor, story begins just after the war between the states. Roak Garfield is telling his doctor about surgery done on him during the war without the benefit of anesthetia, specifically, opium. Garfield told the doctor that they are “Always fresh out of something you need rightly bad in a war.” Before he could continue, the old doctor adds: “Especially the brains and guts it takes to find some other way to settle disputes besides murder in the first place.”

We don’t believe in violence; we don’t believe in war; we don’t believe in murder. Not until push comes to shove and “we have no choice.”

I’ve never been able to figure where our ability to make choices got lost. Seems to me that is one thing that can never be taken from us, unless we give it up to those who believe that violence is “the final solution.” Maybe we lose our ability to choose because deciding demands more brains and guts than most of us have available, having allowed them to atrophy from disuse.

As long as we hold violence in reserve as an option, we will use it, because it is easier than exercising the brains and guts it takes to call on our “heart and nerve and sinew [and brains and guts] to serve [our] turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in [us] except the Will which says . . . : ‘Hold on!’"

Murder is easier. War is easier. A good beating is easier. But of no long-term value. In the long haul they make no lasting positive contribution to human society.

This is why Gandhi said that it takes more courage to be a pacifist than to be a soldier. It is why M. L. King, Jr. told his followers to go back home unless they could suffer, even to the death, with no thought of violence as a response.

It is often said in many institutions that the only way to solve certain problems is to have a few funerals. That may be true at times. If so, those who are the problem should die of natural causes.