"If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?"
About this Quote
Baez slips a stiletto into a word people use to excuse brutality: "natural". The line is structured like a folk lyric - simple, rhythmic, built for repeat - but it works like a cross-examination. If killing were truly instinctive, why do modern states spend months stripping recruits of hesitation, teaching them to override empathy, training them to obey? The question doesn't plead for peace; it impeaches the logic of those who sell war as human inevitability.
The subtext is about manufacture. Violence here isn't a spontaneous eruption of "human nature" but an institutional product: drilled, normalized, bureaucratized. "Training" is doing a lot of quiet work. It implies an apparatus - boot camp, propaganda, discipline, punishment - that converts ordinary people into efficient instruments. Baez isn't just criticizing soldiers; she's pointing upward at the machinery that needs them.
Context matters: Baez emerged as a defining voice of 1960s protest music, singing against Vietnam at a time when dissent was treated as disloyalty. Framed as a question, the line dodges sermonizing and invites the listener to supply the indictment themselves, which is partly why it lands. It's also a musician's move: turn an argument into a hook you can carry home.
Most damning is the implication that "natural" is a convenient alibi. Calling war inevitable shrinks moral responsibility. Baez blows that up in nine words, reminding us that if killing must be taught, it can also be untaught.
The subtext is about manufacture. Violence here isn't a spontaneous eruption of "human nature" but an institutional product: drilled, normalized, bureaucratized. "Training" is doing a lot of quiet work. It implies an apparatus - boot camp, propaganda, discipline, punishment - that converts ordinary people into efficient instruments. Baez isn't just criticizing soldiers; she's pointing upward at the machinery that needs them.
Context matters: Baez emerged as a defining voice of 1960s protest music, singing against Vietnam at a time when dissent was treated as disloyalty. Framed as a question, the line dodges sermonizing and invites the listener to supply the indictment themselves, which is partly why it lands. It's also a musician's move: turn an argument into a hook you can carry home.
Most damning is the implication that "natural" is a convenient alibi. Calling war inevitable shrinks moral responsibility. Baez blows that up in nine words, reminding us that if killing must be taught, it can also be untaught.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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