If you take a gun to culture, you kill the human spirit

A woman in a town near Kyiv photographs Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko’s statue, which was damaged in the early days of the war with Russia

Art and culture are both among the first casualties of war. Conflict not only makes people more parochial, it also breeds myths and misconceptions. It damages the soul and impedes evolution of the human spirit and mind. Artists and their works are victims of this destructive process. But so too are ordinary people, cities, places and shared cultural history.Ukraine: A Deeply Cultural WarMany believe that the ongoing war in Ukraine is not just about territory but also about culture. That Russia is trying to erase Ukraine’s identity. There’s some evidence to show that Moscow has been targeting Ukrainian cultural elements. More than 1,000 Ukrainian heritage sites have been damaged and destroyed during the war. But this destruction is also a self-inflicted wound for Russian society itself.Before the war began in 2014 — the fullscale war commenced in 2022 — there was much intermingling between Ukrainian and Russian cultures. Russian language was spoken by many Ukrainian families due to the legacy of the Soviet Union, and joint cultural collaborations and projects were routine.In fact, Zelensky, who was formerly an actor and comedian, used to regularly perform in Russia, in Russian. In his early years as a comedian, he would take part in the biggest comedy competition in the Russian-speaking world called the KVN championships. It was the most influential cultural product coming out of Russia, connecting all the former Soviet republics. But war has severed all those connections today. And Zelensky, like many of his countrymen, no longer speaks Russian.The OtheringWar weaponises differences while deliberately ignoring shared experiences and enriched intermingling. Moses Maimonides was a 12th century Jewish philosopher, considered one of the greatest Jewish intellectuals of all time. He even rose to be the court physician of Sultan Saladin. His seminal work, Mishneh Torah, a 14-volume text on Jewish law, would not have been possible without Arab-Muslim interpretations of Aristotle and Plato. For logic, he relied on Arab scholar Al-Farabi.Yet, today this shared history between Jews and Muslims is largely forgotten in the din of conflict. Narratives have gained ground that sees Jews and Arab-Muslims as separate people, without any shared constructive history.Even sectarian conflicts within a religion can lead to extreme othering. During the civil war in Iraq in the last decade, a common myth among Sunnis, incredibly, was that Shias have ‘tails’. This othering completely ignores the fact that Shias and Sunnis have lived together for centuries, contributing to each other’s cultural and material life. The same is true for North and South Korea, where years of conflict and separation are witnessing the common Korean language diverge.Some Hope?But thanks to the internet, during recent conflicts, people from warring countries like Israel and Iran have been connecting via online platforms to engage outside govt communications. This raises hope that online connectivity can mitigate cultural schisms wrought by conflict. But with govts acquiring tools to ‘guide’ online discourse, this window can also be shut, locking societies into reductive silos.