LOSS = GAIN: THE VALUE OF SACRIFICIAL DEATH

In "SACRIFICE: BAD MATH, BAD GRAMMAR" (see directly below), Ivan Strenski observes that sacrifice  means “giving up, destruction and death.” But talk about sacrifice, Strenski says, carries on "as if loss or subtraction actually achieves addition.” Soldiers sacrifice in battle, but this doesn’t count as diminishment. Rather, death is glorified as a positive contribution.

Strenski poses the question: “How can sacrifice add to the social whole when—in the face of destruction and death—it subtracts from the social whole by removing one of its members from the body politic?”

I've been posing this question for the last decade: How is it that sacrifice (death or loss in war) is conceived by nations in a positive way? As a virtue. Why do nation-states assign profound value to the deaths of soldiers in battle: glorifying their sacrifice; erecting memorials and monuments?

If "loss = gain," perhaps we'd do well--when studying warfare--to focus less on issues of "victory" or "defeat," and more on the question of the value attributed to sacrificial death. One may suggest that "casualties" in battle are valued intrinsically, apart from the outcome of a war or political conflict.

Casualties constitute a testimonial to the virtue or honor of the soldiers who fought, and thus confer virtue or honor to the nation that has been willing to suffer great loss by sacrificing young men--in the name of defending or valorizing a sacred ideal. 

Strenki's proposition that "loss = gain" is exemplified in the words of a British soldier, Coningsby Dawson, whose book, Carry On: Letters in War Time (1917), was published during the First World War.  Dawson writes about the fatalities suffered by his comrades:

These men, in the noble indignation of a great ideal, face a worse hell than the most ingenious of fanatics ever planned or plotted. Men die scorched like moths in a furnace, blown to atoms, gassed, tortured. And again other men step forward to take their places well knowing what will be their fate. Bodies may die, but the spirit of England grows greater as each new soul speeds upon its way.

What an extraordinary statement! That England "grows greater" to the extent that men "die scorched like moths in a furnace, blown to atoms, gassed, tortured." Seemingly extraordinary, but not extraordinary in light of Strenski's hypothesis that loss equals gain.

Dawson confirms this hypothesis unequivocably when he states that "the spirit of England grows greater as each new soul speeds along its way."

The First World War was a massive sacrificial ritual, with each nation-state--like a blood-thirsty god--feeding on human bodies. In the end, of course, there had to be "victorious" nations and "defeated" nations (Germany ran out of men).

However, the essence of the First World War was the willingness of nations to suffer monumental loss. We remember and honor soldiers who "gave their lives" for their nations. Indeed, Australia became a nation by virtue of the number of men who were slaughtered. 

LOSS = GAIN. 

“Sacrifice: Bad Math, Bad Grammar”

Ivan Strenski is the Holstein Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Book by Ivan Strenski   Why Politics Can't Be Freed From Religion   For information on ordering, please click here.

Soldiers sacrifice themselves in battle, but this doesn’t count as diminishment. It actually adds to whatever social body of reference is in play. So, the question is why and how can sacrifice add to the social whole, when, in the fact of destruction and death, it subtracts from the social whole by removing one of its members from the body of the living?

This bizarre and self-conflicted state of public values eventuates in what I call the ‘bad math’ of sacrifice. Sacrifice means loss, giving up or at least giving ‘of:’ destruction and, in many cases, death. But, characteristically, most talk promoting sacrifice acts as if these losses are in reality gains—a paradigm case of ‘addition by subtraction.’ Proponents of civic sacrifice in war, for example, routinely argue how the loss of lives in heroic combat actually counts as gain.

The question is how and why Civic sacrifice is about a kind giving to the community—that in turn produces moral obligation to give further and more broadly. This thesis can be tested empirically in the instances of so-called ‘suicide bombing.’

These deaths are regarded, both by the actors and their communities of reference, as ‘gifts’ to the community, requiring meaningful action in response. They are not meaningless suicides or mere acts of warfare.

Soldiers on the battlefield are seen as being led like ‘lambs to the slaughter’—a clear suggestion of analogies with ritual sacrificial killing. Or, soldiers may be seen as offering their lives on the analogy of Jesus winning salvation for the nation. Similarly, sacrificial death for Israel has as well always been held in high regard and likened to temple ritual.

What I find remarkable is how close to ritual senses of sacrifice the civic ones can become. If the sacrificial ritual ‘syndrome’ involves killing or destruction, giving gifts, cooking/transforming and eating/consuming communally, and finally consecration, do we find their analogies in civic sacrifice? I think so. For example, even when civic sacrifices are only partial —a ‘giving of rather than a total ‘giving up’ of a life, career etc., the ritual model seems to brood over the civic realm.

In terms of the civic sacrifice—a dying for country, or even paying one’s taxes—gift discourse seems prominent. Soldiers give up their lives for/to their country; good citizens give of themselves in paying their taxes or supporting the United Fund, for example. Similarly, in dying for country, the soldier, or at least their memory, becomes ‘sacred.’ A consecration occurs. They become heroes to us all, have their names inscribed in immortal stone, lend their names to public places and institutions, and so on.