They also serve...

 The other day, a friend and I were playing a video game in co-op mode and were having the hardest time clearing one of the stages. The game was in part a conventional platformer, and the stage that was giving us such trouble required leaping up a series of narrow ledges that kept rotating back into the wall.  

One of the quirks of the game's cooperative mode is that, so long as one of us was alive, the other could fall off the ledge to their presumed death and still be allowed to regenerate where the other was still standing. But for the first five tries or so, this fact did us little good, because we both kept charging toward the ledge at the same time and trying to leap the narrow gap. We failed, and each time we were kicked back to the earlier checkpoint several minutes earlier in the game.

Finally, it occurred to me to say, "okay, I'm going to try not being a hero." I remained stationary on the first, non-rotating platform, while my friend attempted to execute the series of jumps. He messed up once or twice more, but this time, instead of us both being sent back to the earlier checkpoint and adding several more minutes to our gameplay, he was able to warp back after missing the jump to the place where I was still standing on the platform. He then tried a third time, and was finally able to clear the stage. 

It was in that moment that Milton's line came back to me: They also serve who only stand and wait. What better illustration of the principle could there be? A poetic sentiment that had struck me before as a frustrating excuse for quietism and mute acceptance turned out after all to have—like most firmly-held beliefs—some element of truth behind it. Milton's sonnet was, in that moment, the voice reminding us that in some situations, the best contribution a person can make is to simply stay motionless on the non-rotating platform, and let one's fellow player attempt the jump. 

It's hard not to think by extension in this moment of the war in Ukraine. Watching something horrible unfold far away and feeling powerless to stop it, many of us have wondered what contribution we could make. Not a small number of people have even secretly (or publicly!) fantasized about sneaking off to join the Ukrainian resistance. A different friend and I were exchanging texts a few days into the war asking (an easy question to entertain in the abstract, with nothing at stake!)—"If you were in Ukraine, would you leave, or would you stay and fight?"

Part of this is a simple desire to help, born of human solidarity. Part of it too, however, is a dangerous nostalgia for the "just war"—after decades and decades of the U.S. fighting neocolonial wars against far weaker foes, in which Americans have all too often been cast in morally compromised roles at best, we now feel liberated to indulge the old myths. We picture ourselves mentally in swashbuckling Hemingway-esque poses, going off to join the Lincoln Brigades, say, to fight Franco's fascists. 

But this nostalgia is dangerous, I say, because in reality, no war is just. Some wars may be necessary. People may be forced into war by the imperative of self-defense, and have a right to fight back. But even such purely defensive wars can scarcely be described as "just" in their consequences. 

After all, do conscripted Russian soldiers "deserve" to be killed, just because their president chose to fight an illegal war of aggression without their consent? No, of course not. Do Russian civilians, many of whom oppose the war—and brave enormous risks to speak out against it—"deserve" to face the devastating impact of global sanctions, simply because their autocratic leader violated international red lines and knowingly brought these consequences upon them? No, of course not. 

So no one should be going around fantasizing about a "just war." There is no such thing. And no one should want to fight in such a defensive war, or in any war, unless they truly must do so. Moreover, to want to fight in such a war risks turning it into something other than a purely defensive war. It risks making it into a war that people voluntarily perpetuate, through refusing to take the diplomatic off-ramps and exits, out of misguided stubbornness and dedication to total victory at any cost. 

When my friend and I were talking hypothetically about the risks we each would supposedly run if the war had been at our own doorstep, my friend shared his boyfriend's considerably more down-to-earth response to the question. When asked whether he would stay or leave in the event of a war, he was quick to say he'd go, because "fighting is not the contribution I have to make to the world." I couldn't help but admire that answer. With a Svejk-like, Yossarian-like inverted courage, his preference for concrete life over abstract martyrdom had a bravery of its own. 

Indeed, fighting shouldn't be the contribution anyone wants to make to the world. For those of us who are not absolute pacifists, we may feel that there are situations—and the Ukrainian people have found themselves in one right now, against their will—in which fighting is necessary. But presumably it is necessary in order to preserve the possibility of lives that are not spent fighting; it is fighting waged in order to make it possible for other people not to fight...

Whereas if everyone were to go charging into wars when they don't have to, they would be violating the sacrifice that those other, justified fighters made, because then no one would survive—the peaceful human existence that a "just war" ostensibly defends would no longer be possible, their sacrifice would be forfeit, and peace would no longer exist anywhere under the sun. 

Someone needs to be like my friend's boyfriend, therefore, willing to recognize that fighting is not their contribution to make. Someone needs to be willing to choose life over heroism. Someone needs to be willing to stay behind on the non-rotating platform, so that if their friend misses the jump, at least they can know that life itself is somewhere continuing. They also serve, who only stand and wait.