Rememberance Sunday, has anything actually been

[brenda]

learned from this annual event, by those in a position to start, and support wars.?

Or is it a token gesture by governments of which ever country , to try to salve their conciences by putting on a public display for the populace.

The brave men and women who gave their lives in conflict will always be remembered in the hearts and minds of their families , friends and neighbourhoods, and a public event can never replace that, nor should it ,so what is being learned and by whom ?

[ethandron]

i don't believe the purpose of it is for us to learn anything by it, it's purely an act of rememberance. nor do i think it's a token gesture by anyone to salve their concience. of course all the brave men and women who gave their lives will be rememberd by their own families, etc., but i feel setting a day apart for all of us to remember all of them is very necessary. we've been talking this morning of an uncle who died in the first world war. he was a young man of 19, unmarried and with no children, and of course we never met him. if we didn't have rememberance sunday then i'm pretty sure no-one would ever give him a second thought. personally, i also remember my parents and other family members who've died from illness. it focuses the mind i think and long may this act of rememberance continue.
so to answer your question, nothing is being learned by anyone...but that's not the point of it.

[brenda]

ethandron --thank you for your reply , I couldn't agree more with what you say .The question I asked was not do we learn , but what is learned by those who have the power to start wars, direct others to fight in those warsand so on .What do they learn?

[ethandron]

i don't believe they learn anything from it either. one days act of rememberance is never going to stop conflict.
maybe we learn something about ourselves - perhaps that we're more patriotic than we think we are? certainly from watching the tv programme last night, i learned something about the casualties and the medics who look after them.
and i don't believe it has any political relevance. if by some miracle all conflict stopped, we'd still have rememberance sunday.