Abstract
In the US Civil War the battle of Shiloh, remarkable for its raw violence, the ignorance of its generals, and the age of its soldiers, turned the Tennessee River east of Memphis red with young blood. One general, leading a ten thousand strong Union division, took two days to find the road leading to the main battlefield, though the sound of distant gunfire was always present. Thick underbrush and the gentle roll of the terrain meant that thousands of men, many teenagers, lost their lives, dying without ever seeing their enemy. Most soldiers perished from lack of water or inadequate treatment of relatively minor wounds in desperate camps a few dozen miles removed from the battlefield while their generals dithered about what to do next. Others lived to fight again, but hundreds simply chose to walk away and keep walking, refusing to be party to such deadly meaninglessness.
Life is what it is about
I want no truck with death.
Pablo Neruda
I have set before you life and death, blessings and cursings;
therefore, choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.
Deuteronomy 30:19
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Notes
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Gunderson, G.R., Cochrane, J.R. (2012). Leading Causes of Life: Pathology in Its Place. In: Religion and the Health of the Public. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137015259_4
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