Is all fair in love and war?

‘Love and war are exactly alike, it is lawful and fair to use any method to obtain a desired end’- Don Quixote once quoted . But is all fair in love and war?

 That’s a good topic. Let’s pencil it in for this article. Of course pencil is not permanent ,it can be erased, but it's made of carbon atoms that form graphite, which is found naturally in rocks. So technically things written in pencil are written in stone.

In video games, if the bad guys wanted to stop you, why do they attack in such predictable patterns? Wouldn’t their chances be better if they came right at you? There are great names for this logic -'mook chivalry'- it's as if there is an unwritten convention that applies to fictional bad people that respects not reality but the higher purpose of fun and a good story.

But in real life we are not that much different from the mooks. We construct voluntary obstacles even in the ways of honorable goals, like telling a lie instead of the truth and trying to defend ourselves even when we are wrong. But all is not fair in love and war. Torturing your enemies to demoralise them or for fun has been 'might is right' part of war since wars began. But in the second half of the nineteenth century, Henry Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, organised an official code of warfare, now called the Geneva Convention. Today it has agreed to be followed by 196 countries. And since then a lot of the principals have been established, which can even be called the rules of war. Their enforcement is ensured by regional, national and international powers.

And things valued other than immediate victory are also protected. For example, THE ENVIRONMENTAL MODIFICATION CONVENTION prohibits controlling the weather and using it as a weapon. Before this convention that actually happened! During operation POPYE, US air planes ceded clouds over Vietnam, and successfully extended the monsoon season by more than a month, increasing rainfall by 30%, causing floods and landslides on a massive scale.

These rules also protect parties or groups that are just there to help the victims, and culturally important buildings. To attack such targets would be violating the rules of the war. Or to just pretend to be such targets, which is called perfidy. Espionage however, is allowed. These rules depict what we want before the victory at the war zone – that is dignity and respect . Atheletes agree to play fair, to avoid prohibited things. Even avoiding technically safe and otherwise legal things, that would nonetheless give them an unfair advantage. They do this because the spirit of the sport is more important to them than the quickest victory possible. This is called SPORTSMANSHIP.

Likewise a sort of ‘lovesmanship’ exists in US courtrooms. If the most sure fire way to get out the truth is spoiling a bond of love ,SPOUSAL PRIVILEGE says chill! Love is sacred, truth will come second, find another way. This rule is made to honor what we value more than victory.

We can't travel at the speed of light, neither can we cheat on our significant other, but the latter is not a physical limitation of matter. It’s our own judgement.

We did not create the universe, but we did develop judgement, we named ourselves after that ability. HOMOSAPIENS, homo meaning soil, sapien meaning the ability to make wise judgements.

Violating the rules of war is punishable. However, there is no rules of love .We will not be punished with a jail sentence if we do something that will be considered wrong in human judgement, like breaking someone’s heart. It will be a different sort of punishment.

 War, it can be said, is a human invention, so it can more or less be calculated. Love however is a human condition. Broken bones you see are the domains of law, but broken hearts are the domains of awe.