In his first-hand account of the Civil War, the Rev. Wayland Fuller Dunaway, D.D., wrote of 1860 that “the intensest excitement prevailed, while passion blew the gale and held the rudder too” (Reminiscences of a Rebel, 1913, Project Gutenberg EBook #24341). Those were disruptive times. Dunaway himself became a captain of Company I of the 40th Virginia Regiment, interrupting his youthful dream of studying law at the University of Virginia and becoming a lawyer. The war changed him as it did most mid-nineteenth century Americans. It was the gale that passion blew, and it infused in Dunaway a “martial spirit.” With thousands of other Confederate soldiers he took part in the bloody battle at Gettysburg, but unlike so many in the famous failed advance called Pickett’s Charge, Dunaway survived.
Passion blew the gale of war in every year of the past millennium and in every human millennium before that. And every war changed the lives of its willing and unwilling participants. War is, of course, the strongest of human gales, and passion always controls the rudder in its violent sea.
How is it that passion blows such gales and makes such choppy seas? Oceanographers know that the greater the distance over water that a wind blows and the greater the duration of windy conditions, the greater the waves grow. Tsunamis aside, most ocean waves are wind-driven waves. They start to form with the gentlest of breezes and grow in wavelength and wave height as winds pick up strength. Wars often start that way, something starts to move the air of passion, something like a threat or a perceived threat, possibly an insult to a way of life or a rising economic jeopardy. Passions stir. They steer the rudder and head the ship directly into the increasing winds.
Is that not how even the smallest confrontations also occur? Something seemingly small grows into something of a gale; a little disagreement becomes a big one. An argument becomes a fight. And those involved lose control of the rudder. The ship runs windward. Control is out of the hands of the captain. The once-innocent Dunaways are often done away by the gale over which they have no control.
What is your personal plan when passion blows a gale and takes control of the rudder? Will you be, like Wayland Dunaway, among the first to enlist on board a vessel you can’t control?
Passion blew the gale of war in every year of the past millennium and in every human millennium before that. And every war changed the lives of its willing and unwilling participants. War is, of course, the strongest of human gales, and passion always controls the rudder in its violent sea.
How is it that passion blows such gales and makes such choppy seas? Oceanographers know that the greater the distance over water that a wind blows and the greater the duration of windy conditions, the greater the waves grow. Tsunamis aside, most ocean waves are wind-driven waves. They start to form with the gentlest of breezes and grow in wavelength and wave height as winds pick up strength. Wars often start that way, something starts to move the air of passion, something like a threat or a perceived threat, possibly an insult to a way of life or a rising economic jeopardy. Passions stir. They steer the rudder and head the ship directly into the increasing winds.
Is that not how even the smallest confrontations also occur? Something seemingly small grows into something of a gale; a little disagreement becomes a big one. An argument becomes a fight. And those involved lose control of the rudder. The ship runs windward. Control is out of the hands of the captain. The once-innocent Dunaways are often done away by the gale over which they have no control.
What is your personal plan when passion blows a gale and takes control of the rudder? Will you be, like Wayland Dunaway, among the first to enlist on board a vessel you can’t control?
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