The meaning of sacrifice, and how we can be heroes in a modern war

Do we really understand sacrifice nowadays? We can talk the talk, but do we have the courage to fight the wars upon us today?

At this time of year we all remember the soldiers who died. This year has special poignance because the war ended 100 years ago today. As we remember, we are asked to consider the sacrifices made for us. Some have broadened remembrance to include the non-soldiers; the women and animals who worked, or were sacrificed, to win the war.

I heard one such speech today. We must remember those who fought and died, or gave their prospects and youth, if not their full lives, for the freedom and prosperity of the future. Different wars have different meanings, and different soldiers fight for different cocktails of ideals. But as we are asked to, we remember them for their deeds. How else can they be remembered? It is our actions that reverberate into the future, safeguarding the next generations from the evils that beset us.

Nowadays we have wars on many things. We have wars on drugs, on terror, a half-hearted war on cancer that we gave up on. The word is used to invoke the solidarity of a struggle and the determination of combat, but it demeans it a bit to use it of such dull things.

War is a terrible thing. It corrupts the lives of all it touches, ruining their memories, taking limbs, friends, loved ones and, of course, money. We pour our wealth and efforts into war because war is a struggle for survival. Without the sacrifice of a nation’s wealth and effort, there is no war, merely a redirection of purpose.

We shouldn’t talk of wars on drugs, and even though we launched genuine wars in foreign countries as part of the war on terror, it didn’t cost us more of our taxes than we were already paying for ‘defence’. It cost us some soldiers’ lives, but no-one was conscripted, and we didn’t have to recruit heavily for it. The families of the dead soldiers will never forget, but as a nation even the war on terror hasn’t touched us (except perhaps culturally).

So when we remember those who died in the great wars, we should remember what sacrifice truly is. And we should remember that sometimes it is worthwhile. We remember people for their actions. Chamberlain and Mosley might have been nice men, but we remember the appeasers and sympathisers as fly specks compared to the towering majesty of Churchill, who for all his faults took a stand against evil. That’s why Churchill, a bigot who made many mistakes in his life, is on our currency. We judge him by the actions that mattered most.

And in all this remembering, a thoughtful person might wonder how we will be judged. What actions will we be known for? What challenges do we face? Are we tackling them, or hiding from them?

We do indeed face an implacable foe, ready to destroy the world as we know it. And so we come to climate change. We face existential threats of our own: antibiotic resistance, climate change, ageing…. These are enemies that will kill us.

Are we appeasers, playing along in the hope that everything will be alright? Hoping that we can carry on with our prosperous lives, not sacrificing anything and ignoring the threat? Or will we be heroes? We won’t be sacrificing our lives for climate change; not directly anyway. Some of us will die early deaths from heat; some of us will die from the shifting diseases; some of us will die from antibiotic resistance; all of the remainder will eventually age, wither and die.

These enemies can’t be defeated by a prayer and feigned ignorance. Wishful thinking won’t make them go away. Wars can only be won with sacrifice, and we are privileged not to be called to sacrifice our lives. All we need to do is work against them. We must redirect our efforts, pay our taxes and our national wealth to fighting the enemies of today.

Remembering the heroes of yesterday doesn’t make us heroes. We will be remembered for the actions we take, not the actions of our forebears. And so far we have taken precious few actions. We should be fighting wars still, about what really matters. A war on climate change might sound odd, but the threat is even greater than in any war humanity has fought before. We should be redirecting the whole economy to deal with the problems we can see today, just as we do with war. Market forces didn’t defeat the Nazis, and they won’t today. It was the might of a nation, every thought bent on victory, that won the war. If we learn anything from remembrance, let it be the meaning of sacrifice. Some things are more important than a bit more GDP or higher stock indices. We must face them, even when defeat seems certain, because it is the right thing to do. That is the courage our predecessors had. We can sing praises to them, but when we finally go to whatever heaven there may be, we must answer only for what we have done

‘For none may reach by hired speech of neighbour, priest, and kin

Through borrowed deed to God's good meed that lies so fair within.’