What have we lost because of this war in Ukraine? I thought of this question on Defenders Of Ukraine Day, as Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, stood solemnly before the Memory Wall. Obviously, we have lost all those young people who died defending their country; but the magnitude of that loss is not apparent in simply counting the fatalities. Although this particular Memory Wall is made much more meaningful by including a photo of each lost person.
What does it mean to lose a person, to have a life cut short? Each human being is a unique treasure. People from the same culture have similarities that identify them as a member of that culture, yet each is a one-of-a-kind collection of abilities, characteristics, and personality. Therefore, any death is the loss of an irreplaceable treasure. When a life is cut short, however, there is the loss of so much more.
In looking at the faces on the Memory Wall, I was struck by the thought that there is no way to count the loss in full, because so much of it is a loss of potential. Many of the faces on that wall were not those of professional soldiers, of people who had chosen the military for a career.
Instead, they were the faces of young people who had joined the Armed Forces Of Ukraine to defend their country; the faces of those who were engaged in some other pursuit when suddenly their priorities changed in an instant, and they signed up to fight for the existence of Ukraine. Along with the precious treasure of all those unique people, we lost all the wonders that they would have achieved.
As for those who planned to make the military their career, they, too are lost. We can, perhaps, count the cost of that loss a bit more precisely, because probably it is military in some form. Even so, the unique characteristics of each individual mean that we will never really know what each might have achieved.
Who knows if one of those lost soldiers might have been critical to the outcome in a future conflict? Then there is the factor of what these people might have done after retirement, or after changing course and leaving the military. We cannot know for certain; we only know that each loss is great.
But what we have lost doesn’t stop there, by any measure. Losses include all the children those lost persons would have had, and the unique people those children would have grown to be, and all their achievements. And the children’s children, and so on into a future missing them all. There also are the impacts, economic and emotional, upon each family affected by the loss of the valiant defenders memorialized upon that wall.
Of course, some of the things lost because of this war are not things you can photograph. The peace we have enjoyed in the formerly war-torn heart of Europe since the end of World War II is now shattered. On February 24, the day that russian armies rolled across the Ukraine border, a war crime was committed, since aggression by one nation toward another is so defined.
Since then, a grievous wound has been dealt to international law as citizens were tortured and executed and civilian infrastructure, even entire cities, targeted and destroyed. The stability necessary for such activities as business, safe travel, and international study is gone.
All these losses ultimately reverberate and affect people and nations far beyond Ukraine’s borders, even as I write. In our modern, highly interconnected world, the distance from the location where you are reading this to the war in Ukraine is functionally zero.
One example: one of my favorite musical compositions is a piece now enjoyed as Christmas music, Carol Of The Bells. Not originally a Christmas carol, the music was written by a Ukrainian composer named Mykola Leontovich who, luckily, did not die prematurely in a war. What pieces of music, what recipes, paintings, scientific discoveries, poems, books, inventions, plays, sports records, works of architecture, and myriad other things were lost when all those defenders of Ukraine perished?
And war breeds more war. We had better find ways to ensure Ukraine’s victory; else other ambitious would-be tyrants will employ the same tactics in other locations. That would be very bad news, because this war tops all others in sheer destructiveness to cities as well as citizens, on top of the terrible sacrifice in lives of soldiers.
Look around at the ordinary surroundings you encounter daily. All that mundane scenery may look stable and permanent, essentially the natural state of everything. Despite appearances, that comforting notion couldn’t be farther from the truth. Chaos is the natural state of things, and the losses and destruction of war certainly are chaos.
The fourth law of thermodynamics defines entropy, the state of disorder that is the true default condition of the universe. One must actively work to counteract entropy, just as one must promptly and vigorously work to counteract situations that lead to war, else disorder will always ultimately prevail. We cannot afford to turn a blind eye to wars, or the inherent tendency toward chaos will make our losses ever greater.
Instead, all of us on this planet must share resources and information so that the losses on the Memory Wall, and all the further losses linked to them, have not been wasted.
Photo CreditsPhoto credits are listed in the order that the photos appear in the post.
6bd2460197d6ae48e125eabf8e91dc61_1665733478_extra_large.jpeg by PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY Official website (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Int.) 10-14-22 President Zelenskyy standing before the Memory Wall on the Day of Defenders of Ukraine. Via President of Ukraine Official Website, https://www.president.gov.ua/en/ .
c8c7aaaaa358079d2488f9743fcd8cf7_1665733474_extra_large.jpeg by PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY Official website (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Int.) 10-14-22 Troops guard the Memory Wall on the Day of Defenders of Ukraine. Via President of Ukraine Official Website, https://www.president.gov.ua/en/ .
198aae776e5142e7ea8735f6c095afe0_1665733476_extra_large.jpeg by PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY Official website (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Int.) 10-14-22 President Zelenskyy passes in front of the thousands of faces on the Memory Wall, on the Day of Defenders of Ukraine. Via President of Ukraine Official Website, https://www.president.gov.ua/en/ .
68652ed57ca57f1559c88ae0f42b350b_1665733476_extra_large.jpeg by PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY Official website (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Int.) 10-14-22 President Zelenskyy leaves the Memory Wall on the Day of Defenders of Ukraine. Via President of Ukraine Official Website, https://www.president.gov.ua/en/ .