Thursday, February 04, 2010

Social Tip #195 - World Of The Wars


Why are we numbering our World Wars? Was "The Nazi War" too hard to remember? What about "The Hogan's Heroes War"? Will there be so many giant wars that we'll need to number them to keep track? It's like a cynical Dewey Decimal system for a library of barbarism.

There were wars that covered the globe long before there were Germans to start picking fights, and since the first two were so sequenced, they have remained the only two. Two!

That's not even enough to begin a subset in an outline.
(subsets!)
There have been less world wars than there have been Die Hards.
(Die Commie Fascists!)

World War One was originally called The "Great" War. The "Yeah, I know a bunch of people died and lives were ruined, but at least what we did was so great that it will never be topped" War. Kind of optimistic, really.

And it wasn't topped; it was equaled. Worse, it was sequeled. So don't forget to use your Roman numerals. WW with an I. I. Me. It's all about the I.
"I was part the greatest war. I did it. Me."

"Oh yeah? Ever heard of WWII? My war was so big, I am in there twice."
Maybe there haven't been any new World War franchises because they don't want to be forced to include "V" in the equation. It looks too much like a "U." With narcissists at the helm, U will never be included.

11 comments:

BrianAlt said...

World War I was the, "war to end all wars," until it wasn't anymore.

Then we started numbering them.

Myka Fox said...

Good point Brian, I thought about that in an earlier draft, but amended it for brevity. I have re-added it, clearly it was longed for info!

BrianAlt said...

Well, only for a nerd like me, of course.

Really, Really, Old Guy said...

In my time, WW1 was labeled "The Great War".

myq said...

If they got up to "V" in Roman numerals, another problem would be trying to figure out where the W's end and the V began.

WWV
WVW
VWW

It all just looks like Charlie Brown's shirt.
Charlie's brownshirt.
War.

Anonymous said...

Hi.

The war in Congo in Africa in the 1990's took more lives than WW2. Maybe it's time to check the numbering ...

Oh wait: 3rd world, so it doesn't matter. Or does it ?

Regards

Mattes

BrianAlt said...

Wow, this blog is getting political. Well done Ms. Fox!

myq said...

@Anonymous.

Regarding the Congo, how about we call it the "Third World" War?

Though it will get confusing if there are more of them...

Third World War Two.

(Like when the movie Independence Day came out and they abbreviated it ID4, when it was really ID One.)

Qoar Taum Sun said...

Late old English cognates suggest the original sense of war was "to bring into confusion" but this was before there was even a common word for "war" hahaha

Ant-LOX said...

I like it, it brands our wars into a nice package that can be easily slapped on DVD labels.

"WWII in HD" is a perfect example. They didn't even have to try to name that show. You know what it is, it's the IInd WW and it's in HD!!

BrianAlt said...

Hey Myq, how about we just solve the whole, "Charlie Brown shirt thing," and just never get that high?