Remembrance Day is less about remembrance and more about performance

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. Erich Maria Remarque — ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’

The ritual of tribute to fallen soldiers is a tradition stretching back to ancient times. From antiquity to the present day the exaltation of those who have died fighting in a tribe’s, city state’s or nation’s wars has played a crucial role in uniting said state or nation around a common narrative of shared purpose and values.

In the UK we have the annual tribute of Remembrance Day, observed each year on the closest Sunday to 11 November, the anniversary of Armistice Day, ending the First World War in 1918.

Regardless of age, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic class, the message embraced on this day is that regardless of our differences we are all joined by a common nationality, heritage and history, and that those who died fighting in the nation’s wars did so in the interests of all of us and as such are worthy nothing less than our unbridled admiration, gratitude and honour.