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War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
As a veteran war correspondent, Chris Hedges has survived ambushes in Central America, imprisonment in Sudan, and a beating by Saudi military police. He has seen children murdered for sport in Gaza and petty thugs elevated into war heroes in the Balkans. Hedges, who is also a former divinity student, has seen war at its worst and knows too well that to those who pass through it, war can be exhilarating and even addictive: "It gives us purpose, meaning, a reason for living."
Drawing on his own experience and on the literature of combat from Homer to Michael Herr, Hedges shows how war seduces not just those on the front lines but entire societies, corrupting politics, destroying culture, and perverting the most basic human desires. Mixing hard-nosed realism with profound moral and philosophical insight, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is a work of terrible power and redemptive clarity whose truths have never been more necessary.
Listening Length: 6 hours and 27 minutes
Drawing on his own experience and on the literature of combat from Homer to Michael Herr, Hedges shows how war seduces not just those on the front lines but entire societies, corrupting politics, destroying culture, and perverting the most basic human desires. Mixing hard-nosed realism with profound moral and philosophical insight, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is a work of terrible power and redemptive clarity whose truths have never been more necessary.
Listening Length: 6 hours and 27 minutes
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
358 people are currently reading
10241 people want to read
About the author
Chris Hedges
59 books1,923 followersChristopher Lynn Hedges is an American journalist, author, and war correspondent, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies.
Hedges is known as the best-selling author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
Chris Hedges is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City.
Hedges is known as the best-selling author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
Chris Hedges is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 739 reviews
June 9, 2015
My first insight into man's inhumanity to man came to me as a seventeen year old one evening in Amersham, a well off London dormitory suburb. I was standing in queue after pub-closing time, waiting to buy a kebab.
I had joined the queue behind two girls out for the evening. In front of them was a drunk looking hard man and in front of him a guy, let's call him the victim, who was just about to take a bite out of a gently steaming, newly purchased kebab.
Without warning the hard man punched the victim on the side of his face and pushed him to the ground - a completely unprovoked assault right in front of my eyes.
It was one of those moments when instinct told me to act immediately. I stepped forward next to the prettiest of the two girls and started trying to chat her up. “Look at that disgusting brute”, I was about to say, hoping to contrast my sophisticated fine-dining self favorably against this vicious thug.
The look of blissful excitement on her face stopped me from speaking. "Go on, hit him harder" she shouted. The best way to say it is that she was aroused. I cannot pretend that my opinion of women did not drop at that moment, albeit from an unrealistically high level.
I choked back my chat up line and did what any nerdy, middle-class Englishman would do in the situation. While the girl was distracted I stepped around her to the front of the queue and ordered a large kebab.
It was a valuable life lesson. Not everyone shares my high-minded, if rarely acted upon, set of moral values. I have since learnt that there are crimes against humanity far greater than a punch up in front of a kebab van. I have also learnt that humanity's response to them has often not been much better than that of the girl I wanted to chat up.
I have never come close to experiencing a war directly. The Cold War ended when I was old enough to serve in a hot war but now I am too old serve in any war, except as one of those desperate militia that always seem to be called up when the war is about to be lost. I count myself very lucky but also think I owe it to people not so as lucky as I to understand what they have experienced of war
So with that view in mind I am fortunate that Chris Hedges has spent much of his life descending into war’s dark pit and truthfully reporting what he found there. The truth of war is not a pretty sight and he doesn’t spare us the details. Take this report on the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars:
The truth of Hedges basic thesis on the nature of war is self evident: War is a myth, a collective delusion constructed around false narratives which is exploited by criminals, psychopaths and the very worst of us for their own ends:
How different is Dick Cheney, adding up the value of his Halliburton stock options after a hard day's golf, from Arkan, one of the Serbian gangsters promoting the Balkan war, who spends his money on nightclubs and strippers. The difference is down only to scale and preferred leisure time activities.
What is the myth of war constructed on? The “Plague of Nationalism” -the title of one of the book’s chapters - and the exaggeration of ethnic differences and historical wrongs. Nationalist and ethnic conflicts are often myths sustained by absurdities and almost imperceptible nuances within society:
Sadly historians, the media, archaeologists and others that should know better help to sell these myths without caring about the consequences:
And what of those in opposition to the myth of war? The collective failure of the US media to challenge the lies that sustained the second war in Iraq are a fresh example.
The damage done after ethnic hatreds are stirred into a war is not easily undone. Kurdish captives speak after liberating their prison from their Iraqi guards:
My first experience of human cruelty was limited to a dust up in a kebab queue and that was enough for me.
But I think it is the moral duty of every person to understand the evils perpetrated during war. So I owe Chris Hedges an enormous debt for having done the dirty work for me. I am glad and, based on some of the places he went, also a little surprised he survived the trip to report back.
I wonder whether my children are old enough to avoid serving in a war? The odds are looking good for the oldest one but not quite as favorable for the younger.
But if either of them show any hints of believing the war myth I will leave my copy of Chris Hedges book by their bedside table. A few nightmares are worth it for the chance to save their lives.
I had joined the queue behind two girls out for the evening. In front of them was a drunk looking hard man and in front of him a guy, let's call him the victim, who was just about to take a bite out of a gently steaming, newly purchased kebab.
Without warning the hard man punched the victim on the side of his face and pushed him to the ground - a completely unprovoked assault right in front of my eyes.
It was one of those moments when instinct told me to act immediately. I stepped forward next to the prettiest of the two girls and started trying to chat her up. “Look at that disgusting brute”, I was about to say, hoping to contrast my sophisticated fine-dining self favorably against this vicious thug.
The look of blissful excitement on her face stopped me from speaking. "Go on, hit him harder" she shouted. The best way to say it is that she was aroused. I cannot pretend that my opinion of women did not drop at that moment, albeit from an unrealistically high level.
I choked back my chat up line and did what any nerdy, middle-class Englishman would do in the situation. While the girl was distracted I stepped around her to the front of the queue and ordered a large kebab.
It was a valuable life lesson. Not everyone shares my high-minded, if rarely acted upon, set of moral values. I have since learnt that there are crimes against humanity far greater than a punch up in front of a kebab van. I have also learnt that humanity's response to them has often not been much better than that of the girl I wanted to chat up.
I have never come close to experiencing a war directly. The Cold War ended when I was old enough to serve in a hot war but now I am too old serve in any war, except as one of those desperate militia that always seem to be called up when the war is about to be lost. I count myself very lucky but also think I owe it to people not so as lucky as I to understand what they have experienced of war
So with that view in mind I am fortunate that Chris Hedges has spent much of his life descending into war’s dark pit and truthfully reporting what he found there. The truth of war is not a pretty sight and he doesn’t spare us the details. Take this report on the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars:
“...it is estimated that more than a million bushels of human and inhuman bones were imported…[from the battlefields of Europe and used as fertilizer]...They have been shipped to the port of Hull and thence forwarded to Yorkshire bone grinders who have erected steam engines and powerful machinery for the purposes of reducing them to a granulary state…”.
The truth of Hedges basic thesis on the nature of war is self evident: War is a myth, a collective delusion constructed around false narratives which is exploited by criminals, psychopaths and the very worst of us for their own ends:
“...They are manufactured wars, born out of the collapse of civil societies, perpetrated by fear, greed and paranoia, and they are run by gangsters, who rise up from the bottom of their own societies and terrorize all, including those they purport to protect…”
How different is Dick Cheney, adding up the value of his Halliburton stock options after a hard day's golf, from Arkan, one of the Serbian gangsters promoting the Balkan war, who spends his money on nightclubs and strippers. The difference is down only to scale and preferred leisure time activities.
What is the myth of war constructed on? The “Plague of Nationalism” -the title of one of the book’s chapters - and the exaggeration of ethnic differences and historical wrongs. Nationalist and ethnic conflicts are often myths sustained by absurdities and almost imperceptible nuances within society:
“...there were heated debates over the origin of gingerbread hearts...The Croats insisted that the cookies were Croatian. The Serbs angrily countered that the cookies were Serbian . The suggestion to one ethnic group that gingerbread hearts were invented by the other ethnic group could start a fight…”
Sadly historians, the media, archaeologists and others that should know better help to sell these myths without caring about the consequences:
“..Those who seek meaning in patriotism do not want to hear the truth of war, wary of bursting the bubble…”
And what of those in opposition to the myth of war? The collective failure of the US media to challenge the lies that sustained the second war in Iraq are a fresh example.
“...Those voices within the ethnic group or the nation that question the state’s lust and need for war are targeted. These dissidents are the most dangerous. They give us an alternative language...one that recognises the humanity of the enemy…”.
The damage done after ethnic hatreds are stirred into a war is not easily undone. Kurdish captives speak after liberating their prison from their Iraqi guards:
“....We wanted them all to come back to life...so we could kill them again…”
My first experience of human cruelty was limited to a dust up in a kebab queue and that was enough for me.
But I think it is the moral duty of every person to understand the evils perpetrated during war. So I owe Chris Hedges an enormous debt for having done the dirty work for me. I am glad and, based on some of the places he went, also a little surprised he survived the trip to report back.
“The military histories - which tell little of war’s reality- crowd out the wrenching tales by the emotionally maimed. Each generation again responds to war as innocents. Each generation discovers its own disillusionment - often after a terrible price…”
I wonder whether my children are old enough to avoid serving in a war? The odds are looking good for the oldest one but not quite as favorable for the younger.
But if either of them show any hints of believing the war myth I will leave my copy of Chris Hedges book by their bedside table. A few nightmares are worth it for the chance to save their lives.
December 8, 2007
The imagery and polemic of this book are strong. His take on war is brutal and honest enough that I found myself deeply affected at many points. And his prose is wonderful. Ergo, I can't say I didn't like it, but I wanted to like it more than I did.
But the style was off-putting to say the least. Like any good journalist, Hedges does an excellent job relaying experience and retelling stories from others. But each chapter is filled with episodes he recounts, that seem haphazardly thrown together. The thesis of the book (its title, but dripping in bitter irony) is repeated in different forms so often that I found myself wishing someone would just cut every tenth sentence. Each chapter, despite ostensibly having its own independent theme, seems to repeat much that belonged -- and was included -- in other chapters.
Hedges' biggest problem is a failure to decide whether he wants to write a philosophical examination of war or an anecdotal, case study-driven book about it. I am moved by the anecdotes, and I find myself agreeing with his dispositional statements. I think Hedges is correct. The book just didn't build the case well.
But the style was off-putting to say the least. Like any good journalist, Hedges does an excellent job relaying experience and retelling stories from others. But each chapter is filled with episodes he recounts, that seem haphazardly thrown together. The thesis of the book (its title, but dripping in bitter irony) is repeated in different forms so often that I found myself wishing someone would just cut every tenth sentence. Each chapter, despite ostensibly having its own independent theme, seems to repeat much that belonged -- and was included -- in other chapters.
Hedges' biggest problem is a failure to decide whether he wants to write a philosophical examination of war or an anecdotal, case study-driven book about it. I am moved by the anecdotes, and I find myself agreeing with his dispositional statements. I think Hedges is correct. The book just didn't build the case well.
June 20, 2008
Read this book to be disturbed. The author is a seasoned war correspondent who's been in the thick of warfare from El Salvador and Guatemala to Iraq and Bosnia. It is an anti-war treatise by a man who admits being addicted to war.
Hedges describes that he is "hooked" on the narcotic of war, on the rush that it gives. It's a world where power is all that matters. The meek do not inherit the Earth; they are murdered, and then often mutilated. The book is a philosophical inquiry into What War Is. It feels like it gives meaning to the lives of the men fighting it, he says, but it does so by playing to our most animal instincts, and by obscuring and numbing all that make our regular lives joyful. And by destroying individualism, turning people into objects, and life into a myth.
I read the book with a yellow highlighter in one hand, to mark the passages that really stuck with me. One:
"The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. . . . It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble." (page 3)
Another:
"Most of those who are thrust into combat soon find it impossible to maintain the mythic perception of war. . . . Wars that lose their mythic stature for the public, such as Korea or Vietnam, are doomed to failure, for war is exposed for what it is - organized murder." (page 21)
Here is a description of what war does to us: Our minds, our culture, our love of our fellow man. It makes us lie to ourselves and to each other. The book was published in 2002, after the 9/11 attacks, and just on the eve of America's invasion of Iraq. It describes how a culture can censor itself into believing a great cause and squash the speech of any who disagree (e.g., Scott Ritter, or The Dixie Chicks). Another quote:
"By destroying authentic culture - that which allows us to question and examine ourselves and our society - the state erodes the moral fabric. It is replaced with a warped version of reality. The enemy is dehumanized; the universe starkly divided between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. . . . Cultural or national symbols that do not support the crusade are often ruthlessly removed." (page 63)
Genocide, ethnic cleansing, mutilation, the killing of innocents; it is all the side of war unseen to those supporting it. The war is enabled by myth, and the myth is a lie. The lie is captivating and grabs us all. Every nation feels like it is fighting the ultimate evil, and they have no choice but to defeat it. The war will only end when the lie has collapsed under overwhelming evidence - hard-fought, over a long time. All that is left when the lie disappears is guilt, and shame, and the holes in people's lives where loved ones used to be. And the anger of the victims: The seeds of the next war.
Hedges describes that he is "hooked" on the narcotic of war, on the rush that it gives. It's a world where power is all that matters. The meek do not inherit the Earth; they are murdered, and then often mutilated. The book is a philosophical inquiry into What War Is. It feels like it gives meaning to the lives of the men fighting it, he says, but it does so by playing to our most animal instincts, and by obscuring and numbing all that make our regular lives joyful. And by destroying individualism, turning people into objects, and life into a myth.
I read the book with a yellow highlighter in one hand, to mark the passages that really stuck with me. One:
"The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. . . . It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble." (page 3)
Another:
"Most of those who are thrust into combat soon find it impossible to maintain the mythic perception of war. . . . Wars that lose their mythic stature for the public, such as Korea or Vietnam, are doomed to failure, for war is exposed for what it is - organized murder." (page 21)
Here is a description of what war does to us: Our minds, our culture, our love of our fellow man. It makes us lie to ourselves and to each other. The book was published in 2002, after the 9/11 attacks, and just on the eve of America's invasion of Iraq. It describes how a culture can censor itself into believing a great cause and squash the speech of any who disagree (e.g., Scott Ritter, or The Dixie Chicks). Another quote:
"By destroying authentic culture - that which allows us to question and examine ourselves and our society - the state erodes the moral fabric. It is replaced with a warped version of reality. The enemy is dehumanized; the universe starkly divided between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. . . . Cultural or national symbols that do not support the crusade are often ruthlessly removed." (page 63)
Genocide, ethnic cleansing, mutilation, the killing of innocents; it is all the side of war unseen to those supporting it. The war is enabled by myth, and the myth is a lie. The lie is captivating and grabs us all. Every nation feels like it is fighting the ultimate evil, and they have no choice but to defeat it. The war will only end when the lie has collapsed under overwhelming evidence - hard-fought, over a long time. All that is left when the lie disappears is guilt, and shame, and the holes in people's lives where loved ones used to be. And the anger of the victims: The seeds of the next war.
July 27, 2012
I think I'm finally ready to review this book. I've given it a few weeks to settle in my mind.
I'm prepared to say that this book is important enough that everyone should read it. It asks questions of us as a society that need to be considered and answered by each individual before we take measures to begin or escalate any armed conflict.
Hedges does an amazing job of forcing these questions to the table in a concise and direct way respecting both the philosophical dimensions and the actualities in our world. I continually found my own "truths" and opinions being confronted and readers, regardless of their political or moral positions, will find themselves in the same situation.
The only disappointments I ran into with Hedges writing were his predominant use of the Balkan conflicts for examples and that some aspects were mentioned but left rather undeveloped. With the Balkans, I'm not educated enough in the basics. I found it hard at times to keep each group straight and where they fell in the conflict. As far as undeveloped ideas, I was very interested in the tie of war to sexuality. This was mentioned briefly in Junger's book, War, yet I haven't read any extensive discourse exploring how in times of war, the sexuality of soldiers gets morphed or perverted into other expressions of power and affection.
I wish I would have read this book years ago to help frame some of my thoughts on war. Now it will be an invaluable resource for intelligent discussion and formation.
I'm prepared to say that this book is important enough that everyone should read it. It asks questions of us as a society that need to be considered and answered by each individual before we take measures to begin or escalate any armed conflict.
Hedges does an amazing job of forcing these questions to the table in a concise and direct way respecting both the philosophical dimensions and the actualities in our world. I continually found my own "truths" and opinions being confronted and readers, regardless of their political or moral positions, will find themselves in the same situation.
The only disappointments I ran into with Hedges writing were his predominant use of the Balkan conflicts for examples and that some aspects were mentioned but left rather undeveloped. With the Balkans, I'm not educated enough in the basics. I found it hard at times to keep each group straight and where they fell in the conflict. As far as undeveloped ideas, I was very interested in the tie of war to sexuality. This was mentioned briefly in Junger's book, War, yet I haven't read any extensive discourse exploring how in times of war, the sexuality of soldiers gets morphed or perverted into other expressions of power and affection.
I wish I would have read this book years ago to help frame some of my thoughts on war. Now it will be an invaluable resource for intelligent discussion and formation.
April 6, 2018
When you follow a writer through many of their written and spoken thoughts, there is no expectation to fully agree with all their stances; you focus on their principles and thought-processes.
Recently, Hedges as been called out by some on the Left for being an armchair Liberal for his critique of Antifa tactics, which resembles his past critiques of Black Bloc anarchist tactics. Yes, I find his views on these topics debatable and thus worthy of debate, but the irony of smearing Hedges as an armchair critic is too much.
On the topic of foreign policy (where so many are willfully ignorant on), Hedges had been on-the-grounds trying to bring light to the remote carnage of empire for 15 years as foreign correspondent to NYT, before leaving NYT from conflict with his stance against America's war on Iraq. Can we not imagine that Hedges may use different perspectives/frameworks to examine violence and its uses?
Recently, Hedges as been called out by some on the Left for being an armchair Liberal for his critique of Antifa tactics, which resembles his past critiques of Black Bloc anarchist tactics. Yes, I find his views on these topics debatable and thus worthy of debate, but the irony of smearing Hedges as an armchair critic is too much.
On the topic of foreign policy (where so many are willfully ignorant on), Hedges had been on-the-grounds trying to bring light to the remote carnage of empire for 15 years as foreign correspondent to NYT, before leaving NYT from conflict with his stance against America's war on Iraq. Can we not imagine that Hedges may use different perspectives/frameworks to examine violence and its uses?
September 2, 2023
The Exposure of War In Less Than 200 pages
I recently made the decision to start marking certain books that I'm reading in real time. If I find anything important in the pages of the novel I'm reading, I mark it. Something probably not new to many people who enjoy literature, but it's only just been implemented in my reading life.
Unfortunately, I don't think I could have chosen a worse book to start this system with.
I lack the proper indexing tabs at the moment to mark my books, so I'm currently "doing-it-myself" with crudely torn 'sticki-pad' strips rammed in their pages. It's quite depressing to behold. In the case of this book, when I look at it on my shelf (newly finished today) I feel as though I've slightly killed the point of my endeavour. Practically every other page has been marked in some form or another.
I choose to blame Hedges. Mainly due to the fact that War really is his topic of expertise. His forte. So it goes without saying that he has a lot to say about it.
What Hedges proceeds to expose in this short novel is a complete strip down of 'The Myth Of War'. Using some 20 odd years of experience on the front-lines of multiple conflicts as a war corraspondant, he breaks open the multifaceted delusion that Nation States build around every conflict. I must warn you, if you're hoping for something similar to his other work (big criticisms of American society in general / linking many complicated topics under one big "we're f*cked" title) then this won't please you. Hedges sticks to the topic at hand like like glue. This is much more personal than his other books and it shows.
Exposures include: The lies governments tell us to divide people and rile up passive populations to commit heinous acts upon one another, the propaganda jammed into soldiers heads to keep them on the front line and in the conflict (with varied results), The almost theatre / drama-like pantomimes States play out when the conflict is in full swing, with both sides accusing the other of being the aggressor whilst acting out the victim in the process (see "Israeli/Palestinian conflict"), The "Amnesia" populations experience after conflicts end and refusing to acknowledge certain acts done during the war (see: Armenian Genocide) and last but not least, the effect this has on military veterans who struggle to adapt to life after service.
There's far more covered than this in these pages, but it's hard to match the ferocity of what is being exposed by Hedges in this review.
My only criticism is that Hedges pulls punches in places that I feel he shouldn't have. I can certainly see how he's changed some of his opinions since writing this (nearly 20 years ago now), so I was surprised to see some of his views are slightly different to what I've heard him express more recently. I also thought his infused references to Shakespeare and the classics might leave some readers slightly confused at some points. I personally found them poignant when implemented, but they could easily derail someone if they've just been delivered some seriously raw information in the last five pages. Hedges is a journalist after all and his writing style definitely reads that way most of the time.
However, I think I'll let other readers decide on these small nuances themselves. It certainly doesn't detract from the overall punch this book delivers.
Overall, I think this should be required reading for anyone wanting to sign up for the armed services.
Read with a strong drink at hand for your nerves (seriously).
I recently made the decision to start marking certain books that I'm reading in real time. If I find anything important in the pages of the novel I'm reading, I mark it. Something probably not new to many people who enjoy literature, but it's only just been implemented in my reading life.
Unfortunately, I don't think I could have chosen a worse book to start this system with.
I lack the proper indexing tabs at the moment to mark my books, so I'm currently "doing-it-myself" with crudely torn 'sticki-pad' strips rammed in their pages. It's quite depressing to behold. In the case of this book, when I look at it on my shelf (newly finished today) I feel as though I've slightly killed the point of my endeavour. Practically every other page has been marked in some form or another.
I choose to blame Hedges. Mainly due to the fact that War really is his topic of expertise. His forte. So it goes without saying that he has a lot to say about it.
What Hedges proceeds to expose in this short novel is a complete strip down of 'The Myth Of War'. Using some 20 odd years of experience on the front-lines of multiple conflicts as a war corraspondant, he breaks open the multifaceted delusion that Nation States build around every conflict. I must warn you, if you're hoping for something similar to his other work (big criticisms of American society in general / linking many complicated topics under one big "we're f*cked" title) then this won't please you. Hedges sticks to the topic at hand like like glue. This is much more personal than his other books and it shows.
Exposures include: The lies governments tell us to divide people and rile up passive populations to commit heinous acts upon one another, the propaganda jammed into soldiers heads to keep them on the front line and in the conflict (with varied results), The almost theatre / drama-like pantomimes States play out when the conflict is in full swing, with both sides accusing the other of being the aggressor whilst acting out the victim in the process (see "Israeli/Palestinian conflict"), The "Amnesia" populations experience after conflicts end and refusing to acknowledge certain acts done during the war (see: Armenian Genocide) and last but not least, the effect this has on military veterans who struggle to adapt to life after service.
There's far more covered than this in these pages, but it's hard to match the ferocity of what is being exposed by Hedges in this review.
My only criticism is that Hedges pulls punches in places that I feel he shouldn't have. I can certainly see how he's changed some of his opinions since writing this (nearly 20 years ago now), so I was surprised to see some of his views are slightly different to what I've heard him express more recently. I also thought his infused references to Shakespeare and the classics might leave some readers slightly confused at some points. I personally found them poignant when implemented, but they could easily derail someone if they've just been delivered some seriously raw information in the last five pages. Hedges is a journalist after all and his writing style definitely reads that way most of the time.
However, I think I'll let other readers decide on these small nuances themselves. It certainly doesn't detract from the overall punch this book delivers.
Overall, I think this should be required reading for anyone wanting to sign up for the armed services.
Read with a strong drink at hand for your nerves (seriously).
August 8, 2017
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning has been one of the most influential books on war that I have ever read. After reading the Hedges book, to me, the title is somewhat misleading because while war does give meaning, in the process of that meaning, Hedges chronicles why it mostly destroys humanity in more ways than one.
Unfortunately, when Hedges delves into polemical politics, even though it is necessary, his own personal political preferences may turn readers with an opposing political viewpoint away from being able to capture his deeper meanings within the book.
Highly recommended.....
Unfortunately, when Hedges delves into polemical politics, even though it is necessary, his own personal political preferences may turn readers with an opposing political viewpoint away from being able to capture his deeper meanings within the book.
Highly recommended.....
March 2, 2013
I was really excited to read this book when I found out it was assigned for one of my classes. I was disappointed. I found it more annoying than anything else.
1) Structurally, it was a mess. He has chapter titles that ostensibly correlate with the subject of each section, but he'll stick to that topic for about a page and a half before going back to rambling on about whatever the hell he felt like writing about. It's really annoying and the disorganization made the book seem even more self-indulgent.
2) He makes such new, compelling arguments as "war is bad" and "the media's portrayal of battle is not accurate" and "nationalism is more created than it is based on historical reality." What fascinating and original insights! Sigh. He writes as if he's somehow peeling back the curtain to reveal some brand new profound truth, but there's nothing truly new or thought provoking here. It just felt like he was preaching to the choir.
3) His writing style and many of his attitudes seemed rather patronizing and simplistic to me. Particularly with his discussions on nationalism...I just think it's easy for him, from his cushy position as a privileged, educated man from a stable, secure, rich country, to treat nationalism as a foolish, primitive thing. It can be those things. But I think it would be more interesting if he actually made an attempt to understand why these identities have become so important and why nationalism can resonate so strongly with people rather than just dismissing them as stupid and irrational and fanatic and emotional.
4) I disliked his references to Shakespeare and ancient Greek and Roman epics. I appreciate that he was trying to bring a sense of historical context into his discussion of our attitudes towards war, but it just felt kind of random and pretentious.
I just didn't enjoy this book. It wasn't particularly original, the writing was sloppy, and I felt like I was being lectured at rather than feeling engaged and challenged.
1) Structurally, it was a mess. He has chapter titles that ostensibly correlate with the subject of each section, but he'll stick to that topic for about a page and a half before going back to rambling on about whatever the hell he felt like writing about. It's really annoying and the disorganization made the book seem even more self-indulgent.
2) He makes such new, compelling arguments as "war is bad" and "the media's portrayal of battle is not accurate" and "nationalism is more created than it is based on historical reality." What fascinating and original insights! Sigh. He writes as if he's somehow peeling back the curtain to reveal some brand new profound truth, but there's nothing truly new or thought provoking here. It just felt like he was preaching to the choir.
3) His writing style and many of his attitudes seemed rather patronizing and simplistic to me. Particularly with his discussions on nationalism...I just think it's easy for him, from his cushy position as a privileged, educated man from a stable, secure, rich country, to treat nationalism as a foolish, primitive thing. It can be those things. But I think it would be more interesting if he actually made an attempt to understand why these identities have become so important and why nationalism can resonate so strongly with people rather than just dismissing them as stupid and irrational and fanatic and emotional.
4) I disliked his references to Shakespeare and ancient Greek and Roman epics. I appreciate that he was trying to bring a sense of historical context into his discussion of our attitudes towards war, but it just felt kind of random and pretentious.
I just didn't enjoy this book. It wasn't particularly original, the writing was sloppy, and I felt like I was being lectured at rather than feeling engaged and challenged.
August 17, 2016
As a counteragent to the human animal's inner need to glorify war (or at least justify its devastating consequences), Chris Hedges' sobering, often brutal, account of his experiences as a war correspondent serves extremely well.
Shifting between philosophical ruminations on this ancient human enterprise, the various institutions that keep the myth alive (media, government) and anecdotes from Hedges' personal remembrances, this is structurally a rather sloppy book. It's a criticism that's leveled against Hedges often, and it is a valid one.
Nearly all of his books (thus far I've read four of them, including this one) come across as elongated, deeply felt sermons, which shouldn't really be a surprise since he is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. As a result of this background, he is very much rooted in the Christian moralist tradition. I probably would consider him to be an odd mixture of I.F. Stone and Reinhold Niebuhr.
However, despite the structural issues one might have with it, one can't ignore the raw, sledgehammer-like power of this rather slim volume. Hedges shows us the faults in our nature and by extension his own (he makes some rather frank, unflattering confessions in this), but also how we can combat these darker impulses that do crop up in times of major societal upheaval.
Acts of human kindness, decency and yes - however silly it may sound - love, for Hedges are the only pathways to healing, reconciliation and personal salvation. It protects us from becoming monsters ourselves. I tend to agree. Even in the face of personal loss of life, these small, seemingly insignificant acts pay tribute to our potential for goodness while everything around one caught in a conflict disintegrates.
Uncomfortable read, but vital.
Shifting between philosophical ruminations on this ancient human enterprise, the various institutions that keep the myth alive (media, government) and anecdotes from Hedges' personal remembrances, this is structurally a rather sloppy book. It's a criticism that's leveled against Hedges often, and it is a valid one.
Nearly all of his books (thus far I've read four of them, including this one) come across as elongated, deeply felt sermons, which shouldn't really be a surprise since he is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. As a result of this background, he is very much rooted in the Christian moralist tradition. I probably would consider him to be an odd mixture of I.F. Stone and Reinhold Niebuhr.
However, despite the structural issues one might have with it, one can't ignore the raw, sledgehammer-like power of this rather slim volume. Hedges shows us the faults in our nature and by extension his own (he makes some rather frank, unflattering confessions in this), but also how we can combat these darker impulses that do crop up in times of major societal upheaval.
Acts of human kindness, decency and yes - however silly it may sound - love, for Hedges are the only pathways to healing, reconciliation and personal salvation. It protects us from becoming monsters ourselves. I tend to agree. Even in the face of personal loss of life, these small, seemingly insignificant acts pay tribute to our potential for goodness while everything around one caught in a conflict disintegrates.
Uncomfortable read, but vital.
December 31, 2020
I love Hedges and everything he writes, and this book is no different. His experiences as a war correspondent exposed him to the results of genocide, mass killings, and intense civilian suffering, and he takes all of the things he saw during that time to write this assessment of how war corrupts people, politics, and popular culture. I often thought of Smedley Butler's War is a Racket while reading this. The two books compliment each other nicely and could be read together. If you are anti-war, you'll find this book to be powerful and well thought-out. If you've never considered the long-ranging impacts of war, you'll find this book insightful and it will undoubtedly change your perspective on the endless wars being fought around the world.
March 18, 2013
Chis Hedges was a war correspondent for the New York Times in many of the defining warzones of our times: the Balkans, Central America, and the Middle East. He has reported on wars from the inside, surviving ambushes, diving for cover alongside his military escorts, and witnessing the aftermath of every atrocity imaginable. The psychological scars from knowing the face of mass produced death are still with him. In his travels around the world he’s found a recurring dynamic at work, the addiction of soldiers and citizens to the ecstasy of war. Hedges covers this topic exclusively in his book, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning.
This book is journalistic, philosophical, and part social critique. It is effectiveness rests in analyzing the myth of war. He explains how it’s created, who perpetuates it, how it’s disseminated in society, what function it serves, its psychological effects, how it’s maintained, and what happens when it’s finally punctured by the undeniable reality of war. He cites his own experiences and the accounts of soldiers and citizens in war to illustrate where and how these recurring themes unfold in real life. These accounts include graphic accounts of murder, rape, torture, suicide, genocide that deflate the glorious lie which herds generations of men into battle. Yet amongst all this carnage there is a lust for combat and its incomparable rush that fills the emptiness felt by entire nations. No longer is anyone insignificant in the theater of war, we are elevated to the calling of destiny, and to push back against it feels almost impossible. To avoid its intoxicating effects is outright hopeless.
I have often wondered how people I’ve greatly respected for their intelligence and wisdom, people I have personally known, would become incapable of discussing war in any rational way. Their responses on every aspect of the War on Terror would be variations of the empty, clichéd reasons parroted mainstream media; “they hate us for our freedom”, “Muslims are evil”, and “torture is permissible when we do it.” I wouldn’t accept such absurd reasons for going to war, and so I turned away from the news and began reading writers like Noam Chomsky who gave a grimmer picture of what’s going on. When I approached people with this newfound evidence they’d dismiss it all and hold tighter to robotic ways of thinking. I increasingly became an outsider, an intellectual minority. The whole time I’ve been wondering what this hypnotic like way of thinking is. Could it simply be effective propaganda? The answer is that war is a force that gives us meaning. It is a longing for death that is inside us all. We decorate and justify it with patriotic and glorious gestures, but that death drive is always there. This is a work that lays bare our naked desire for death and recognition. Nobody in our generation can afford to miss out on this highly enlightening work.
This book is journalistic, philosophical, and part social critique. It is effectiveness rests in analyzing the myth of war. He explains how it’s created, who perpetuates it, how it’s disseminated in society, what function it serves, its psychological effects, how it’s maintained, and what happens when it’s finally punctured by the undeniable reality of war. He cites his own experiences and the accounts of soldiers and citizens in war to illustrate where and how these recurring themes unfold in real life. These accounts include graphic accounts of murder, rape, torture, suicide, genocide that deflate the glorious lie which herds generations of men into battle. Yet amongst all this carnage there is a lust for combat and its incomparable rush that fills the emptiness felt by entire nations. No longer is anyone insignificant in the theater of war, we are elevated to the calling of destiny, and to push back against it feels almost impossible. To avoid its intoxicating effects is outright hopeless.
I have often wondered how people I’ve greatly respected for their intelligence and wisdom, people I have personally known, would become incapable of discussing war in any rational way. Their responses on every aspect of the War on Terror would be variations of the empty, clichéd reasons parroted mainstream media; “they hate us for our freedom”, “Muslims are evil”, and “torture is permissible when we do it.” I wouldn’t accept such absurd reasons for going to war, and so I turned away from the news and began reading writers like Noam Chomsky who gave a grimmer picture of what’s going on. When I approached people with this newfound evidence they’d dismiss it all and hold tighter to robotic ways of thinking. I increasingly became an outsider, an intellectual minority. The whole time I’ve been wondering what this hypnotic like way of thinking is. Could it simply be effective propaganda? The answer is that war is a force that gives us meaning. It is a longing for death that is inside us all. We decorate and justify it with patriotic and glorious gestures, but that death drive is always there. This is a work that lays bare our naked desire for death and recognition. Nobody in our generation can afford to miss out on this highly enlightening work.
May 11, 2024
Already know I'm going to reread this one.
Extremely prescient for 2002 ... but I guess time is a wheel that keeps on grinding the bones of men.
Extremely prescient for 2002 ... but I guess time is a wheel that keeps on grinding the bones of men.
August 23, 2011
War makes the world understandable, a black and white tableau of them and us. It suspends thought, especially self-critical thought. All bow before the supreme effort. We are one. Most of us accept war as long as we can fold it into a belief system that paints the ensuing suffering as necessary for a higher good, for human beings seek not only happiness but also meaning. And tragically war is sometimes the most powerful way in human society to achieve meaning.
There are two statements in the introduction to War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges that disappoint me. First, he says, “I am not a pacifist” and later he says, “I wrote this book not to dissuade us from war but to understand it.” What that has meant to the world historically as well as today is that war atrocities are ongoing and horror follows horror. And, even worse, from my point of view, Hedges says, “This book is not a call for inaction. It is a call for repentance.” War criminals should experience humility and compassion?
Based on how I learned about Chris Hedges, I mistakenly thought that he was a pacifist. But he has experienced war first hand as a journalist in many trouble spots for many years. He is also an intellectual, quoting Proust and Shakespeare and Homer. His writing is vivid and sometimes horrifying. He talks about the myths of war that make it seem glorious and heroic but he delivers the brutal reality often based on his personal experience. He visited a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and watched a soldier in a jeep on the Israeli side verbally taunt and then shoot Palestinian boys who threw rocks at him across the electric fence that separated the camp from the Jewish settlement abutting it.
I have seen children shot in other conflicts I have covered – death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers and infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo – but I had never watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.
Chris Hedges writes,
The conflicts between the Israelis and the Palestinians has left each side embracing death. They each believe that they are the only real victims. There is a celebration of the suicidal martyrdom and justification of the tit-for-tat killing of noncombatants.
My main problem with War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning is that it intellectualizes and analyzes what for me is predominantly an emotional topic. Hedges does successfully look at the impact bloody war has on the observer and the participant. He considers the views of Freud and the words from classic Greek sources.
Sigmund Freud divided the forces in human nature between the Eros instinct, the impulse within us that propels us to become close to others, to preserve and conserve, and the Thanatos, or death instinct, the impulse that works towards the annihilation of all living things, including ourselves. For Freud these forces are in eternal conflict. He was pessimistic about ever eradicating war. All human history, he argued, is a tug-of-war between these two instincts.
For me, this is a book that is filled with meaningful paragraphs that I would like to quote as worthwhile and important thoughts, but the intellectualization leaves me floundering in a world lacking solutions. The description by the author of his own experiences are powerful and terrifying. They make me wonder about his sanity just as I wondered about Sebastian Junger, the author of War . Read my review of War at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... . Why would a journalist, let alone any person, put himself voluntarily into the horror and danger of war? Where Junger gives us the experience, Hedges gives us the analysis.
The last several lines of the Acknowledgements of War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning only increase my quandary in understanding the author’s motivation and vision.
But my greatest thanks go to Thomas and Noelle, who remind me every day that my chief role, and the one I value most, is as a father. I hope they never do what I did.
Maybe that contradiction between war and life distills the entire book for me. Chris Hedges tries to explain why the same person can be a war criminal and a parent. He helps me understand war and increases my certainty that to save ourselves we must end war. I am not satisfied with “The poor and war will always be with us.”
The only antidote to ward off self-destruction and the indiscriminate use of force is humility and, ultimately, compassion. Reinhold Niebuhr aptly reminded us that we must all act and then ask for forgiveness.
Let me respond to that and end by saying, “Mr. Hedges, your divinity training leads you to conclusions that I do not accept, to places that I do not wish to go.” We will either learn to solve disagreements and problems nonviolently or we will ultimately annihilate ourselves with nuclear weapons or worse.
January 16, 2008
Everyone should read this book. Its amazing & lays bare the lies that surround the glorification and promotion of war. It shows war for what it is - a messy, ugly, evil that brings out the worst in humanity. Hedges, a war correspondent, intersperses his eyewitness accounts of war with ruminations on the nature of war and what it is that attracts humanity and keeps us in a state of war. His conclusions - that the pursuit of truth is necessary to pierce the lies that surround war and that individual human relationships, most of all love, are all that can keep us from falling into the evils that war brings out - are powerful. This book is sobering, especially given that the US has brought war & destruction to so many parts of world (& the Bush Admin. threatens to bring even more). Hedges does not mince words in describing the horrors he has seen and there were a multitude of passages that brought me to tears and provoked much thought. I hope that all those who support war and try to silent dissent end up reading this book. Seriously an amazing book - I highly recommend it.
Read
November 12, 2013To say that war is a hellish horror is one of the great clichés, and it's become something of an international-journalist mainstay to report on one's own experiences with the aforementioned hellish horror. You hear the same stories told again and again, recombined, in various settings: Bosnia, Vietnam, Iraq, Peru, the Congo. It all starts to sound the same.
Hedges to his credit, is an excellent reporter, and while he sometimes falls into that trap-- the "you ain't seen what I've seen, been where I've been" trap-- he also reports on the relational dynamic of war, nationalism, sexuality, and addiction. That makes it rather more interesting. While I'm probably a bigger fan of the Chris Hedges articles I've read, this was still a solid book, and I'm convinced that had I read it as a teenager, I would have been truly awed (maybe that sounds like an insult, but I don't want it to be).
Hedges to his credit, is an excellent reporter, and while he sometimes falls into that trap-- the "you ain't seen what I've seen, been where I've been" trap-- he also reports on the relational dynamic of war, nationalism, sexuality, and addiction. That makes it rather more interesting. While I'm probably a bigger fan of the Chris Hedges articles I've read, this was still a solid book, and I'm convinced that had I read it as a teenager, I would have been truly awed (maybe that sounds like an insult, but I don't want it to be).
December 20, 2015
“There are always people willing to commit unspeakable human atrocity in exchange for a little power and privilege.”
― Chris Hedges, 'War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning'
Chris Hedges, a longtime war reporter and witness to the atrocities of ethnic conflicts around the globe, argues that war, in spite of its utter destruction and inhumanity, gives us what we need: a shared sense of meaning and purpose and identity. Through the ages, the architects of war and conflict have long understood and finely-tuned the emotions of war to suit their purposes. Like many books on war and man's inhumanity to man, this was tough reading. I think it is our tendency to look away, and perhaps this is one of the book's greater points. A timely, eloquent warning to pay attention.
― Chris Hedges, 'War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning'
Chris Hedges, a longtime war reporter and witness to the atrocities of ethnic conflicts around the globe, argues that war, in spite of its utter destruction and inhumanity, gives us what we need: a shared sense of meaning and purpose and identity. Through the ages, the architects of war and conflict have long understood and finely-tuned the emotions of war to suit their purposes. Like many books on war and man's inhumanity to man, this was tough reading. I think it is our tendency to look away, and perhaps this is one of the book's greater points. A timely, eloquent warning to pay attention.
October 26, 2008
Hedges is a particularly effective analyst. This is an outstanding look at the forces behind decisions to go to war, whether public ornot.
Read
April 17, 2013though heartfelt, inspiring and disturbing, i can't say i wholeheartedly loved this book. it deals with some HEAVY topics - genocide, rape, xenophobia - and it's written with an intimate awareness of how such atrocities arise, escalate, disappear and return. many of the observations remind me of george orwell, whose fantastic essay "politics and the english language" seems to have (at least partially) influenced hedges' thoughts on language. actually, these are the most informative sections of the book - when he discusses, for example, the ways that language was manipulated in the former yugoslavian territories to mirror the aspirations of separate nation-states... and the xenophobia that minor decisions about proper speech and official languages helped escalate.
when hedges sticks to specific examples, as well as his own personal experiences, this is top-notch stuff. however, he has a tendency to universalize that occasionally bothered me. the book seems intended to provide a template for warfare in general, and falls back on essentialist language too often. "women and children" are evoked a bit too easily, and classical literature (shakespeare, the illiad) is called upon too regularly to add canonical weight to otherwise-intimate observations. there's something old-school about hedges in spite of his radical politics. he seems to have a clearer sense of proper behavior than i do - the word "perversion" appears a bit too often for my tastes (though many of the issues discussed might merit it) - and he sees the world as something constructed according to a clearer morality than i do, i guess. as a philosophical tome, war is a force that gives us meaning didn't resonate 100% with me. as an act of investigative reporting, it's disturbing, challenging and engrossing.
when hedges sticks to specific examples, as well as his own personal experiences, this is top-notch stuff. however, he has a tendency to universalize that occasionally bothered me. the book seems intended to provide a template for warfare in general, and falls back on essentialist language too often. "women and children" are evoked a bit too easily, and classical literature (shakespeare, the illiad) is called upon too regularly to add canonical weight to otherwise-intimate observations. there's something old-school about hedges in spite of his radical politics. he seems to have a clearer sense of proper behavior than i do - the word "perversion" appears a bit too often for my tastes (though many of the issues discussed might merit it) - and he sees the world as something constructed according to a clearer morality than i do, i guess. as a philosophical tome, war is a force that gives us meaning didn't resonate 100% with me. as an act of investigative reporting, it's disturbing, challenging and engrossing.
June 10, 2008
This is a wonderful and brutal book.
Hedges draws on a number of brilliant thinkers...and he draws on his own experience in order to describe the effects of war on us.
He says, in part, that we humans crave meaning, and war gives us meaning in a more intense fashion than anything else. What else could so quickly and easily delineate who the enemy is? It's the person trying to kill me! What else could shape life so perfectly but the need to save my own skin?
Hedges experienced this directly in many different places. He was a war correspondent who finally woke up to his addiction to war. I guess he decided to write about it like any good recovering addict!
The book might bother some when it draws from other thinkers -- from Ancient Greeks to LeShay -- but I think it helps him validate the nature of his own experience.
Interestingly, he allowed himself to admit something kind of sappy. He said that the only other place he felt intense meaning grow was when he'd find shelter in someone's home when that someone was in a loving relationship with another. So, a warm couple would be evidence that there is one thing that beats addiction, excitement, and war: Love.
A little cliche! But, Hedges makes it true.
Hedges draws on a number of brilliant thinkers...and he draws on his own experience in order to describe the effects of war on us.
He says, in part, that we humans crave meaning, and war gives us meaning in a more intense fashion than anything else. What else could so quickly and easily delineate who the enemy is? It's the person trying to kill me! What else could shape life so perfectly but the need to save my own skin?
Hedges experienced this directly in many different places. He was a war correspondent who finally woke up to his addiction to war. I guess he decided to write about it like any good recovering addict!
The book might bother some when it draws from other thinkers -- from Ancient Greeks to LeShay -- but I think it helps him validate the nature of his own experience.
Interestingly, he allowed himself to admit something kind of sappy. He said that the only other place he felt intense meaning grow was when he'd find shelter in someone's home when that someone was in a loving relationship with another. So, a warm couple would be evidence that there is one thing that beats addiction, excitement, and war: Love.
A little cliche! But, Hedges makes it true.
May 29, 2010
An extraordinary and lucid account of the effect of war on societies. War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is both the title and thesis of this book. Chris Hedges is a long-time war correspondent for national news publications and witnessed conflicts in central America, Sudan, Iraq, Gaza, and the Balkans. He describes with great clarity the incredible excitment of war that can motivate a whole society, as well as the unbearable cruelty of conflict.
Hedges is no pacifist, but he is frank about acknowledging that war without fail does incalcuble human destruction. Some of the stories in this book are nearly impossible to read. Hedges deftly manages this paradox--that war is simultanously appealing and awful. Especially noteworthy are his chapters on nationalism and the erasure of memory by conflict. Concise and direct, this book is a valuable antidote to the jingoism of popular culture. I recommend it.
Hedges is no pacifist, but he is frank about acknowledging that war without fail does incalcuble human destruction. Some of the stories in this book are nearly impossible to read. Hedges deftly manages this paradox--that war is simultanously appealing and awful. Especially noteworthy are his chapters on nationalism and the erasure of memory by conflict. Concise and direct, this book is a valuable antidote to the jingoism of popular culture. I recommend it.
November 14, 2009
Hedges spent two decades as a war correspondent before writing this anti-war book. He doesn't call himself a pacifist, but has found it difficult to find any good in war. He saw the wars in El Salvador, Serbia, Angola, and more. In this book he writes of the common denominators in all of them. War corrupts even the best of people, turning them into bloodthirsty savages. But worse, it unleashes criminals and gives them moral cover for their wickedness. War leaves absolute destruction in its wake, both physical and spiritual.
It is difficult, if not impossible to recognize any benefit in war whatever. Any good that comes of war, is just as likely to have resulted through peaceful means, and untold wickedness is often the result of even the best intentions.
It is difficult, if not impossible to recognize any benefit in war whatever. Any good that comes of war, is just as likely to have resulted through peaceful means, and untold wickedness is often the result of even the best intentions.
October 24, 2013
Constant references to classical literature may have helped the author understand his experiences but they just got on my tits. Eg., "In war we may deform ourselves, our essence, by subverting passion, loyalty, and love to duty. Perhaps one could argue that is why Virgil's Aeneas appears so woefully unhappy in The Aeneid." Such insights make me woefully unhappy. Also had to take a star off for the silly title.
April 27, 2015
I have read many accounts of the horrors of war, including first person narratives of the Holocaust and Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried." As part of my research on the war in Ukraine, I viewed footage of civilian bodies -- dead and dismembered -- including women and children, from artillery shells, bombs, and shrapnel; bloated and blackened bodies of fighters scattered in fields and on the sides of roads.
Yet, I never seem to become inured to it. I still wince and feel my stomach curdle, not knowing whether to weep for or rage at humanity.
The first six chapters of this book provide a detailed account of Hedges' experiences as a war correspondent, from the Balkans to the Middle East to Africa. It is graphic and disturbing in that it's a reminder of just what depths humans are capable of plumbing. I don't know how Hedges functions on a daily basis with the things that he has witnessed. But he seems to recognize his role as a witness in the highest sense of the word and has not only reported his observations and experiences, but has attempted to make sense of them, not only for his own sake but to provide insight and ultimately a warning about the madness of war and the folly of unleashing its dark forces.
It is in the seventh chapter, "Eros and Thanatos," where Hedges puts down his best reflections on the horrors of the previous six chapters worth of gratuitous death, destruction and moral-spiritual degradation.
I certainly agree with Hedges that humans seem to have a tendency toward self-destructiveness, both on a personal and collective level. He cites Freud's concept of thanatos, the death drive, as an approximate description of humans' drive for self-destruction. Hedges asserts that love is its antithesis. Love representing an empathetic and symbiotic connection with another -- typically another human, but I think it's safe to say that it could include animals, God in some iteration or the natural world, anything that is beyond oneself. Love is what is needed to balance out or heal the destructive drive that war brings out.
It was a bit disappointing, however, that Hedges pretty much stopped at Freud in terms of psychological thought on this. Freud's disaffected student, Carl Jung, went much further in this area of exploration. Jung and those influenced by his thought have noted that these thanatos-related destructive behaviors, like addiction -- whether to drugs, acquisitiveness or the intoxication of the power inherent in martial actions -- are warped substitutes for humans' spiritual drive for meaning and purpose that is often repressed in the modern world. Jung observed after decades of listening to patients in both the US and Europe that what they all seemed to have in common was a lack of meaning in their lives for which modern western culture -- with its scientific materialism and social atomization -- appeared deficient in terms of providing. Hedges touches on this deficiency and how war can consequently serve as a source of meaning and purpose that is missing in many people's lives, but considering the title of his book, he doesn't dive as deeply into it as would be expected.
Another area in which I have some trouble with Hedges is the assertion he makes, either implicitly or explicitly, that this destructiveness, which is most acutely reflected in war but also by drug addiction, consumerism, perverted or dehumanizing sexuality (also common in war settings), etc. has always been part of human history. It is a common fallacy repeated by many who write about war and the dark aspects of human nature or human habit. However, there is solid anthropological evidence indicating that organized warfare only cropped up around 10,000 to 13,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with agricultural settlement and its attendant forms of social organization. That is not to say there was no violence but it mostly took the form of individual homicides.
What are the implications that throughout most of human history humans did not engage in war? It is a question that begs to be asked no less than the question that Hedges and so many others ask about why humans do engage in war. During the long period of no war, humans lived in small, relatively egalitarian groups. In other words, human beings did not evolve to live in large, centralized and hierarchical social structures. I would assert that they also did not evolve to believe that existence had no meaning and the universe -- however narrow or broad they may have perceived it -- to be nothing more than a vast machine. Humans during this period tended to be animists, to believe that all living things were infused with spirit or a sense of the sacred. This does not mean there was no killing: humans hunted animals for food and clothing and sometimes even killed other humans, but there were boundaries in place, underpinned by a sense of a connected or spiritual world view, to keep these behaviors from spiraling out of control. Humans were also dependent upon the tribe or band for survival and the threat of being expelled from the community was usually the equivalent of a death sentence. Therefore, there was a powerful incentive not to profoundly or repeatedly offend the social boundaries of that community.
Paradoxically, this may provide a partial explanation as to why humans find it so difficult to go against their group, even when that group has become ethically compromised and destructive.
Another psychologist-philosopher that has some insights on this is Dr. Robert Jay Lifton who has spent his career studying war crimes and those who commit them, from Communist Chinese brainwashing to Nazi doctors to Vietnam veterans. Lifton has described how relatively decent people can become war criminals due to immersion in institutions that socialize such behavior, creating what he calls the "rotten barrel." He also describes the psychological phenomena of "doubling" -- similar to what most would refer to as compartmentalizing but in an extreme manifestation. This was how doctors and others who committed or enabled atrocities at concentration camps during the day could go home and be family men at night, even at times being highly cultured individuals.
Hedges describes many of the symptoms of these phenomena throughout his book and his recognition of the seductive, even addictive aspects of war is important. But he could have drawn on more schools of thought on the subject and come up with an even more comprehensive analysis.
Suggested Further Reading and Viewing:
1. Part III of PBS Special "The Wisdom of the Dream." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HvN0...
2. The Human Potential for Peace: An Anthropological Challenge to Assumptions About War and Violence by Douglas P. Fry
3. Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram.
Yet, I never seem to become inured to it. I still wince and feel my stomach curdle, not knowing whether to weep for or rage at humanity.
The first six chapters of this book provide a detailed account of Hedges' experiences as a war correspondent, from the Balkans to the Middle East to Africa. It is graphic and disturbing in that it's a reminder of just what depths humans are capable of plumbing. I don't know how Hedges functions on a daily basis with the things that he has witnessed. But he seems to recognize his role as a witness in the highest sense of the word and has not only reported his observations and experiences, but has attempted to make sense of them, not only for his own sake but to provide insight and ultimately a warning about the madness of war and the folly of unleashing its dark forces.
It is in the seventh chapter, "Eros and Thanatos," where Hedges puts down his best reflections on the horrors of the previous six chapters worth of gratuitous death, destruction and moral-spiritual degradation.
I certainly agree with Hedges that humans seem to have a tendency toward self-destructiveness, both on a personal and collective level. He cites Freud's concept of thanatos, the death drive, as an approximate description of humans' drive for self-destruction. Hedges asserts that love is its antithesis. Love representing an empathetic and symbiotic connection with another -- typically another human, but I think it's safe to say that it could include animals, God in some iteration or the natural world, anything that is beyond oneself. Love is what is needed to balance out or heal the destructive drive that war brings out.
It was a bit disappointing, however, that Hedges pretty much stopped at Freud in terms of psychological thought on this. Freud's disaffected student, Carl Jung, went much further in this area of exploration. Jung and those influenced by his thought have noted that these thanatos-related destructive behaviors, like addiction -- whether to drugs, acquisitiveness or the intoxication of the power inherent in martial actions -- are warped substitutes for humans' spiritual drive for meaning and purpose that is often repressed in the modern world. Jung observed after decades of listening to patients in both the US and Europe that what they all seemed to have in common was a lack of meaning in their lives for which modern western culture -- with its scientific materialism and social atomization -- appeared deficient in terms of providing. Hedges touches on this deficiency and how war can consequently serve as a source of meaning and purpose that is missing in many people's lives, but considering the title of his book, he doesn't dive as deeply into it as would be expected.
Another area in which I have some trouble with Hedges is the assertion he makes, either implicitly or explicitly, that this destructiveness, which is most acutely reflected in war but also by drug addiction, consumerism, perverted or dehumanizing sexuality (also common in war settings), etc. has always been part of human history. It is a common fallacy repeated by many who write about war and the dark aspects of human nature or human habit. However, there is solid anthropological evidence indicating that organized warfare only cropped up around 10,000 to 13,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with agricultural settlement and its attendant forms of social organization. That is not to say there was no violence but it mostly took the form of individual homicides.
What are the implications that throughout most of human history humans did not engage in war? It is a question that begs to be asked no less than the question that Hedges and so many others ask about why humans do engage in war. During the long period of no war, humans lived in small, relatively egalitarian groups. In other words, human beings did not evolve to live in large, centralized and hierarchical social structures. I would assert that they also did not evolve to believe that existence had no meaning and the universe -- however narrow or broad they may have perceived it -- to be nothing more than a vast machine. Humans during this period tended to be animists, to believe that all living things were infused with spirit or a sense of the sacred. This does not mean there was no killing: humans hunted animals for food and clothing and sometimes even killed other humans, but there were boundaries in place, underpinned by a sense of a connected or spiritual world view, to keep these behaviors from spiraling out of control. Humans were also dependent upon the tribe or band for survival and the threat of being expelled from the community was usually the equivalent of a death sentence. Therefore, there was a powerful incentive not to profoundly or repeatedly offend the social boundaries of that community.
Paradoxically, this may provide a partial explanation as to why humans find it so difficult to go against their group, even when that group has become ethically compromised and destructive.
Another psychologist-philosopher that has some insights on this is Dr. Robert Jay Lifton who has spent his career studying war crimes and those who commit them, from Communist Chinese brainwashing to Nazi doctors to Vietnam veterans. Lifton has described how relatively decent people can become war criminals due to immersion in institutions that socialize such behavior, creating what he calls the "rotten barrel." He also describes the psychological phenomena of "doubling" -- similar to what most would refer to as compartmentalizing but in an extreme manifestation. This was how doctors and others who committed or enabled atrocities at concentration camps during the day could go home and be family men at night, even at times being highly cultured individuals.
Hedges describes many of the symptoms of these phenomena throughout his book and his recognition of the seductive, even addictive aspects of war is important. But he could have drawn on more schools of thought on the subject and come up with an even more comprehensive analysis.
Suggested Further Reading and Viewing:
1. Part III of PBS Special "The Wisdom of the Dream." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HvN0...
2. The Human Potential for Peace: An Anthropological Challenge to Assumptions About War and Violence by Douglas P. Fry
3. Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram.
October 12, 2013
Curious title, isn't it? If war is a force that gives us meaning, how does it give us meaning? The answer lies in the underlying myth that supports it, and has supported it, from the dawn of the human species. This is the Warrior Myth, and it is part of every culture and society. We see it in familiar stories of great warriors, heroes, heroines and gods, all of whom fight great battles to defeat "the enemy". In these tales, it is the warrior that is held up to be emulated by the young, especially young men. In Japan it is the samurai and his code; in America it is the pioneers, the adventurers, the men and women who fight our wars, and the war heroes. Underlying the Warrior Myth are two underlying assumptions that are woven so tightly into it that they reveal the great myth that underlies and defines it. This is the myth that says that our side is goodness incarnate, and their side (the enemy) is evil incarnate and must (and will be) destroyed, since the gods (or God) is on our side (the side of virtue and goodness). If you don't think so, review the history of the past thirty years, or the past sixty years, in which our acts have uniformly been presented as necessary and good, and their acts as unnecessary and evil. Anyone who questions our collective behavior, motives and the Warrior Myth is labeled as foolish or dangerous -- an enemy, an outsider who is, at best, shunned.
A myth is a traditional story that is accepted as history, a story that explains the origins and the world view of a people. In America's national myth, ugliness, brutality and meanness are denied, or are romanticized, explained away and justified. We declare our motives to be pure, we set our heroes on pedestals, and we parade the veterans of our wars up and down streets on national holidays, all in the service of the great, underlying myth that we are paragons of virtue who do not and never have engaged in questionable or wrong behavior. If you doubt this, look back over the past seven years of the Bush Administration's "war on terror", in which every single act, no matter how questionable legally, has been justified as right and good, and all who have questioned it declared to be irrelevant buffoons or traitorous.
Myth, and more particularly the Warrior Myth may make great drama, but it is lousy history. As Chris Hedges powerfully illustrates, it is destroying us and the planet on which we live. The Warrior Myth devours the soul of our humanity, destroys countless lives (including those who return from combat, and those civilians who have survived it), and has morphed into a huge, powerful automated machine that has proven almost impossible to shut down because our society and our culture has become dependent on it. Myth is self-justifying, self-reifying...and in the case of the Warrior Myth, also self-destroying on a massive, impersonal scale.
"War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" is not an easy book to read, because Chris Hedges presents war in all its grisly, ugly and senseless detail. As a veteran war correspondent, he has lived it, and it shows. One of the chapters, and the longest one (Chapter 4: "The Seduction of Battle and the Perversion of War") which shows graphically the lie of "purity" that is embedded in the Warrior Myth, was very difficult for me to read. I recall reading "The Brothers of Gwynedd", three historical novels by British writer Edith Pargeter, and having to stop midway through the second novel because the stupidity and carnage of battle was too overwhelming. Set in medieval Wales at the time of the Plantagents, I read until I literally could not read any more. "Nothing," I told my wife, "has changed in the last five hundred years, nothing except our weapons, which are worse. We must change ourselves before we destroy ourselves, either accidentally or on purpose." But, as Hedges and others show, the march goes on.
What is the solution? "To survive as a human being is possible," Hedges writes, "only through love. And, when Thanatos" (the death instinct) "is ascendant, the instinct must be to reach out to those we love, to see in them all the divinity, pity, and pathos of the human. And to recognize love in the lives of others -- even those with whom we are in conflict -- love that is like our own. It does not mean that we will avoid war or death. It does not mean that we as distinct individuals will survive. But love, in its mystery, has its own power. It alone gives us meaning that endures. It alone allows us to embrace and cherish life. Love has power both to resist in our nature what we know we must resist, and to affirm what we know we musts affirm. And love, as the poets remind us, is eternal" (pages 184, 185).
This is an important book for your future and for mine, and for our grandchildren. Unfortunately it is not a book that those in whom the Warrior Myth is most embedded, most especially our leaders and those dependent upon it for their livelihood, are likely to recommend or read. But it is a must read for anyone who wants a better future for those we love.
A myth is a traditional story that is accepted as history, a story that explains the origins and the world view of a people. In America's national myth, ugliness, brutality and meanness are denied, or are romanticized, explained away and justified. We declare our motives to be pure, we set our heroes on pedestals, and we parade the veterans of our wars up and down streets on national holidays, all in the service of the great, underlying myth that we are paragons of virtue who do not and never have engaged in questionable or wrong behavior. If you doubt this, look back over the past seven years of the Bush Administration's "war on terror", in which every single act, no matter how questionable legally, has been justified as right and good, and all who have questioned it declared to be irrelevant buffoons or traitorous.
Myth, and more particularly the Warrior Myth may make great drama, but it is lousy history. As Chris Hedges powerfully illustrates, it is destroying us and the planet on which we live. The Warrior Myth devours the soul of our humanity, destroys countless lives (including those who return from combat, and those civilians who have survived it), and has morphed into a huge, powerful automated machine that has proven almost impossible to shut down because our society and our culture has become dependent on it. Myth is self-justifying, self-reifying...and in the case of the Warrior Myth, also self-destroying on a massive, impersonal scale.
"War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" is not an easy book to read, because Chris Hedges presents war in all its grisly, ugly and senseless detail. As a veteran war correspondent, he has lived it, and it shows. One of the chapters, and the longest one (Chapter 4: "The Seduction of Battle and the Perversion of War") which shows graphically the lie of "purity" that is embedded in the Warrior Myth, was very difficult for me to read. I recall reading "The Brothers of Gwynedd", three historical novels by British writer Edith Pargeter, and having to stop midway through the second novel because the stupidity and carnage of battle was too overwhelming. Set in medieval Wales at the time of the Plantagents, I read until I literally could not read any more. "Nothing," I told my wife, "has changed in the last five hundred years, nothing except our weapons, which are worse. We must change ourselves before we destroy ourselves, either accidentally or on purpose." But, as Hedges and others show, the march goes on.
What is the solution? "To survive as a human being is possible," Hedges writes, "only through love. And, when Thanatos" (the death instinct) "is ascendant, the instinct must be to reach out to those we love, to see in them all the divinity, pity, and pathos of the human. And to recognize love in the lives of others -- even those with whom we are in conflict -- love that is like our own. It does not mean that we will avoid war or death. It does not mean that we as distinct individuals will survive. But love, in its mystery, has its own power. It alone gives us meaning that endures. It alone allows us to embrace and cherish life. Love has power both to resist in our nature what we know we must resist, and to affirm what we know we musts affirm. And love, as the poets remind us, is eternal" (pages 184, 185).
This is an important book for your future and for mine, and for our grandchildren. Unfortunately it is not a book that those in whom the Warrior Myth is most embedded, most especially our leaders and those dependent upon it for their livelihood, are likely to recommend or read. But it is a must read for anyone who wants a better future for those we love.
December 14, 2024
War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges (1956- ), 2002, 211 pages, Dewey 355.02 H358w, Library-of-Congress U21.2 .H43 2002, ISBN 1586480499
Insightful. Chris Hedges tells us:
What matters is what we ourselves make of what has been done to us. p. 182.
Compassion is the highest virtue. p. 0.
After 60 days of continuous combat, 98% of all surviving soldiers will have become psychiatric casualties. The enduring 2% are predisposed toward aggressive psychopathic personalities. p. 164.
War exposes the capacity for evil that lurks not far below the surface in all of us. p. 3.
Lurking beneath the surface of every society, including ours, is the passionate yearning for a nationalist cause that exalts us, the kind that war alone is able to deliver. p. 45.
The infection of nationalism now (2002) lies unchecked and blindly accepted in the march we make as a nation toward another war, one as ill-conceived as the one we lost in Southeast Asia. p. 61.
In wartime, reality is replaced with a wild and self-serving fiction, a legitimization of the worst prejudices of the masses and paranoia of the outside world. p. 43.
Our dead matter. Theirs do not. p. 14. The dead rule: they speak from beyond the grave urging a nation to revenge. p. 94. Israelis and Palestinians each believe that they are the only real victims. p. 92. The kids see their fathers helpless against the Israelis, out of work, and admire the militants with guns. They want to fight. p. 94.
In most wars women, if not engaged in the fighting, stand on the sidelines to cheer their men onward. Few are immune. p. 91.
The first casualty, when war comes, is truth. --Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917. p. 62.
Soldiers want at least the consolation of knowing that they risk being blown up by land mines for greater glory, for a New World. Dissention is dangerous to such beliefs. p. 14. Any dissent could provoke physical violence. p. 44. [The only thing less popular than the Vietnam War was the antiwar movement. --Craig Werner, /A Change Is Gonna Come/, 2006, p. 105. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ]
Wars that lose their mythic stature for the public, such as Korea or Vietnam, are doomed to failure, for war is exposed for what it is--organized murder. p. 21. The press and the state feed us the mythic lie, omit the truth--/until/ people turn against the war. p. 22.
There is little that angers the disenfranchised more than those who fail to exercise power yet reap powerful rewards. p. 4.
There has never been, nor ever can be, a good or worthwhile war. p. 28. There is nothing redeeming about any war, including the supposed good wars. p. 28.
Sarajevo in 1995 came close to Dante's inner circle of hell. p. 1.
Elsa Morante's /History: A Novel/ focuses on rape, bombing raids, crime, cattle cars filled with human beings being taken to slaughter, soldiers dying of frostbite, and the fear of secret police and the military. In her world, no one had control. p. 89.
War dead, 1990s only: p. 13
Afghanistan 2,000,000
Sudan 1,500,000
Rwanda 800,000
Angola 500,000
Bosnia 250,000
Burundi 250,000
Guatemala 200,000
Liberia 150,000
Algeria 75,000
plus untold tens of thousands more in:
Ethiopia and Eritrea
Colombia
Palestine
Chechnya
Sri Lanka
southeastern Turkey
Sierra Leone
Northern Ireland
Kosovo
[G.H.W. Bush] Persian Gulf War (perhaps 35,000 Iraqi civilians killed)
20th Century wars dead: p. 13
62,000,000 civilians
43,000,000 military
Modern war is directed primarily against civilians. p. 28.
Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croatians, and Muslim Bosnians had been peacefully coexisting for generations. When Yugoslavia collapsed, thugs took advantage of the breakdown of order. Warlords rise to power with gangs who prey on minorities and the weak. When they are done, they turn on those they were fighting to protect. pp. 9, 21, 26-28, 32-34, 46-47, 56, 76, 78, 105, 163-164.
Hedges was in Argentina during the Falklands War (1982), and spent 5 years reporting on war in El Salvador (1982-1988), then Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, the West Bank and Gaza, Sudan (1989) and Yemen, Algeria, Punjab, Romania, the [G.H.W. Bush] Gulf War and Shiite rebellion, the Kurdish rebellion in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq, Bosnia (1995), and Kosovo (1998). pp. 1-2, 5-6, 20, 39, 41, 43, 58, 74.
"I hope my son and daughter never do what I did." p. 199.
It is his hero's heart that Odysseus must learn to curb before he can return to the domestic life he left twenty years earlier. p. 12.
I did not sleep well in war. But I could sleep in the homes of couples in love. p. 161. To survive as a human being is possible only through love. Love has power to resist in our nature what we know we must resist, and to affirm what we know we must affirm. pp. 184-185.
Recommends /The Greek myths I and II/, Robert Graves, 1960. Among many others. pp. 192-195.
Chris Hedges' wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_H...
Insightful. Chris Hedges tells us:
What matters is what we ourselves make of what has been done to us. p. 182.
Compassion is the highest virtue. p. 0.
After 60 days of continuous combat, 98% of all surviving soldiers will have become psychiatric casualties. The enduring 2% are predisposed toward aggressive psychopathic personalities. p. 164.
War exposes the capacity for evil that lurks not far below the surface in all of us. p. 3.
Lurking beneath the surface of every society, including ours, is the passionate yearning for a nationalist cause that exalts us, the kind that war alone is able to deliver. p. 45.
The infection of nationalism now (2002) lies unchecked and blindly accepted in the march we make as a nation toward another war, one as ill-conceived as the one we lost in Southeast Asia. p. 61.
In wartime, reality is replaced with a wild and self-serving fiction, a legitimization of the worst prejudices of the masses and paranoia of the outside world. p. 43.
Our dead matter. Theirs do not. p. 14. The dead rule: they speak from beyond the grave urging a nation to revenge. p. 94. Israelis and Palestinians each believe that they are the only real victims. p. 92. The kids see their fathers helpless against the Israelis, out of work, and admire the militants with guns. They want to fight. p. 94.
In most wars women, if not engaged in the fighting, stand on the sidelines to cheer their men onward. Few are immune. p. 91.
The first casualty, when war comes, is truth. --Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917. p. 62.
Soldiers want at least the consolation of knowing that they risk being blown up by land mines for greater glory, for a New World. Dissention is dangerous to such beliefs. p. 14. Any dissent could provoke physical violence. p. 44. [The only thing less popular than the Vietnam War was the antiwar movement. --Craig Werner, /A Change Is Gonna Come/, 2006, p. 105. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ]
Wars that lose their mythic stature for the public, such as Korea or Vietnam, are doomed to failure, for war is exposed for what it is--organized murder. p. 21. The press and the state feed us the mythic lie, omit the truth--/until/ people turn against the war. p. 22.
There is little that angers the disenfranchised more than those who fail to exercise power yet reap powerful rewards. p. 4.
There has never been, nor ever can be, a good or worthwhile war. p. 28. There is nothing redeeming about any war, including the supposed good wars. p. 28.
Sarajevo in 1995 came close to Dante's inner circle of hell. p. 1.
Elsa Morante's /History: A Novel/ focuses on rape, bombing raids, crime, cattle cars filled with human beings being taken to slaughter, soldiers dying of frostbite, and the fear of secret police and the military. In her world, no one had control. p. 89.
War dead, 1990s only: p. 13
Afghanistan 2,000,000
Sudan 1,500,000
Rwanda 800,000
Angola 500,000
Bosnia 250,000
Burundi 250,000
Guatemala 200,000
Liberia 150,000
Algeria 75,000
plus untold tens of thousands more in:
Ethiopia and Eritrea
Colombia
Palestine
Chechnya
Sri Lanka
southeastern Turkey
Sierra Leone
Northern Ireland
Kosovo
[G.H.W. Bush] Persian Gulf War (perhaps 35,000 Iraqi civilians killed)
20th Century wars dead: p. 13
62,000,000 civilians
43,000,000 military
Modern war is directed primarily against civilians. p. 28.
Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croatians, and Muslim Bosnians had been peacefully coexisting for generations. When Yugoslavia collapsed, thugs took advantage of the breakdown of order. Warlords rise to power with gangs who prey on minorities and the weak. When they are done, they turn on those they were fighting to protect. pp. 9, 21, 26-28, 32-34, 46-47, 56, 76, 78, 105, 163-164.
Hedges was in Argentina during the Falklands War (1982), and spent 5 years reporting on war in El Salvador (1982-1988), then Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, the West Bank and Gaza, Sudan (1989) and Yemen, Algeria, Punjab, Romania, the [G.H.W. Bush] Gulf War and Shiite rebellion, the Kurdish rebellion in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq, Bosnia (1995), and Kosovo (1998). pp. 1-2, 5-6, 20, 39, 41, 43, 58, 74.
"I hope my son and daughter never do what I did." p. 199.
It is his hero's heart that Odysseus must learn to curb before he can return to the domestic life he left twenty years earlier. p. 12.
I did not sleep well in war. But I could sleep in the homes of couples in love. p. 161. To survive as a human being is possible only through love. Love has power to resist in our nature what we know we must resist, and to affirm what we know we must affirm. pp. 184-185.
Recommends /The Greek myths I and II/, Robert Graves, 1960. Among many others. pp. 192-195.
Chris Hedges' wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_H...
October 8, 2012
This is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. It may be one of the finest books about war, and mankind’s addiction to it, ever written. I devoured it in two sittings after being handed it by a friend. Immediately after opening it I wanted to sit down and not stop reading. It is addictive, and addiction, as well as the competing passions of Eros (love) and Thanatos (death), are it's subject.
Hedges is a self-confessed war addict who describes the memories that haunt him from his decades as a war correspondent on every page, using them to illustrate his points. Written only a year after 9/11 Hedges boldly strips back the false glamour and the facades of heroism, bravery, patriotism and false-nobility that drive politically-motivated wars such as the then newly-minted War on Terror. He enunciates through his time as both a hostage and reporter on front lines in Sarajevo, El Salvador, Iraq, Israel, and throughout Africa, that there is no personal or social upside to war but yet, like it's co-joined opposite love, it is crucial to human experience and as addictive as the heroin and other drugs it drives it's participants to partake of. War is a drug that one grows to love, one that drives it's users to suicidal exploits both during and after battle. All sane soldiers are emotionally scarred for life, only true psychopaths (such as Milosevic et al) are not altered.
War correspondents such as himself, along with politicians and historians, are complicit in constantly recreating the myth of war as noble and personally fulfilling. This myth is shattered within the first moments of real warfare. People do not die like actors, but slowly, painfully, crying for their mother's teat. Most of them are civilians, increasingly so. Killing another human being is physically sickening as well as psychologically scarring, soldiers sometimes vomiting and pissing their pants after their first socially-sanctioned butchering of another person. Even those soldiers and correspondents who seem unmoved, who walk casually amongst rows upon rows of dead, eventually erupt in moments of either socialised or internalised violence. Hedges describes his own violent moment of catharsis when he took out his frustrations from Sarajevo upon a hapless airline clerk. Once the myth of war is shattered, a myth we are all unwittingly raised with, the individual can never engage with civilian society the same way again. He has seen past the lie of it.
War to Hedges is also a form of socially-sanctioned necrophilia. Sex and death are immutably entwined in this tome and his writing style is so fluid and forward-driving that you may, like me, find yourself devouring the book in one or two sittings. Hedges' education in Latin, Greek and English allows him to punctuate his work with appropriate musings from Catullus to Philip Larkin, giving those poets renewed relevance and intensity for this reader.
If you are interested in war, sex, love, death, politics, or just human psychology in any sense then you should read this book. The beauty of Hedges' prose and the way he unfolds his story means that it is with both joy and apprehension that I fear his words will be with me forever. It should be noted however that as dark as his story is Hedges, as a Harvard scholar of Divinity amongst other things, knows that some positive message of hope must be found for his own and his readers' sanity amongst his decades knee-deep in death and suffering. Hence his focus by the end becomes increasingly towards Eros, as entwined with Thanatos as she always is.
This is Hedges' first book and he has written eight more since on conflict, class and religion. Hedges in no pacifist, and no atheist. In fact in another book he apparently argues that atheism is a form of fundamentalism. At present I am reticent to read his other books for fear none could live up to "War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning". This fear will probably pass. However War, Hedges argues, will not, at least as long as humanity is existent. Strange then that he never quotes Mathew 24:
"... you shall hear of wars and rumours of wars ... For nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom..."
Perhaps then, even for wet-pacifistic armchair-agnostics such as myself, all the more reason to read this book.
#
Benito Di Fonzo.
Sydney, October, 2012.
Hedges is a self-confessed war addict who describes the memories that haunt him from his decades as a war correspondent on every page, using them to illustrate his points. Written only a year after 9/11 Hedges boldly strips back the false glamour and the facades of heroism, bravery, patriotism and false-nobility that drive politically-motivated wars such as the then newly-minted War on Terror. He enunciates through his time as both a hostage and reporter on front lines in Sarajevo, El Salvador, Iraq, Israel, and throughout Africa, that there is no personal or social upside to war but yet, like it's co-joined opposite love, it is crucial to human experience and as addictive as the heroin and other drugs it drives it's participants to partake of. War is a drug that one grows to love, one that drives it's users to suicidal exploits both during and after battle. All sane soldiers are emotionally scarred for life, only true psychopaths (such as Milosevic et al) are not altered.
War correspondents such as himself, along with politicians and historians, are complicit in constantly recreating the myth of war as noble and personally fulfilling. This myth is shattered within the first moments of real warfare. People do not die like actors, but slowly, painfully, crying for their mother's teat. Most of them are civilians, increasingly so. Killing another human being is physically sickening as well as psychologically scarring, soldiers sometimes vomiting and pissing their pants after their first socially-sanctioned butchering of another person. Even those soldiers and correspondents who seem unmoved, who walk casually amongst rows upon rows of dead, eventually erupt in moments of either socialised or internalised violence. Hedges describes his own violent moment of catharsis when he took out his frustrations from Sarajevo upon a hapless airline clerk. Once the myth of war is shattered, a myth we are all unwittingly raised with, the individual can never engage with civilian society the same way again. He has seen past the lie of it.
War to Hedges is also a form of socially-sanctioned necrophilia. Sex and death are immutably entwined in this tome and his writing style is so fluid and forward-driving that you may, like me, find yourself devouring the book in one or two sittings. Hedges' education in Latin, Greek and English allows him to punctuate his work with appropriate musings from Catullus to Philip Larkin, giving those poets renewed relevance and intensity for this reader.
If you are interested in war, sex, love, death, politics, or just human psychology in any sense then you should read this book. The beauty of Hedges' prose and the way he unfolds his story means that it is with both joy and apprehension that I fear his words will be with me forever. It should be noted however that as dark as his story is Hedges, as a Harvard scholar of Divinity amongst other things, knows that some positive message of hope must be found for his own and his readers' sanity amongst his decades knee-deep in death and suffering. Hence his focus by the end becomes increasingly towards Eros, as entwined with Thanatos as she always is.
This is Hedges' first book and he has written eight more since on conflict, class and religion. Hedges in no pacifist, and no atheist. In fact in another book he apparently argues that atheism is a form of fundamentalism. At present I am reticent to read his other books for fear none could live up to "War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning". This fear will probably pass. However War, Hedges argues, will not, at least as long as humanity is existent. Strange then that he never quotes Mathew 24:
"... you shall hear of wars and rumours of wars ... For nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom..."
Perhaps then, even for wet-pacifistic armchair-agnostics such as myself, all the more reason to read this book.
#
Benito Di Fonzo.
Sydney, October, 2012.
March 22, 2007
one of the most powerful books i have ever read. my review (posted on my blog immediately after reading it):
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, writes Chris Hedges, and upon completion of what The New York Times called his "powerful chronicle of modern war... a potent and eloquent warning," I do not feel guilty or ashamed of being human-- no, instead I am paralyzed with fear. Hedges takes no sides in his painfully poignant work, except perhaps the side of humanity, which as Freud writes and he notes, exists defined by the inescapable dynamic between Eros and Death and is compelled by its very nature to seek out self-destruction. Fascinating and profoundly disturbing, this book explores the dizzyingly narcotic elements of war and the atrocities-- in horrifyingly accounts from personal experience-- of which man is not only capable, but to which he is driven. "And yet, despite all this, I am not a pacifist," Hedges allows; "I wrote this book not to dissuade us from war but to understand it... this book is not a call for inaction. It is a call for repentance."
Reminiscent of Desmond Tutu’s No Future Without Forgiveness, Hedges postulates that “the only antidote to ward off self-destruction is humility and ultimately compassion.” Borrowing from Homer, Shakespeare, Bosnian Nobel laureates, and Holocaust survivor Ka’Tzetnik, his reports draw from his years as a foreign correspondent to conclude that:
"Happiness is elusive and protean. And it is sterile when devoid of meaning. But meaning, when it is set in the vast arena of war with its high stakes, its adrenaline-driven rushes, its bold sweeps and drama, is heartless and self-destructive. The initial selflessness of war mirrors that of love, the chief emotion war destroys. And this is what war often looks and feels like, at its inception: love... We are tempted to reduce life to a simple search for happiness. Happiness, however, withers if there is no meaning. The other temptation is to disavow the search for happiness in order to be faithful to that which provides meaning. But to live only for meaning-- indifferent to all happiness-- makes us fanatic, self-righteous, and cold. It leaves us cut off from our own humanity and the humanity of others. We must hope for grace, for our lives to be sustained by moments of meaning and happiness, both equally worthy of human communion."
I find myself almost wishing as I lounge on my plush carpet under a window filled with sunlit trees and blues on of the most beautiful days of the year thus far, that I hadn’t read this book, or that I could write it off as from another world, another species. But "Aristotle said that only two living entities are capable of complete solitude and complete separateness: God and beast. Because of this... the isolated individual can never be adequately human... if we do not acknowledge such an attraction [to war], which is, in some ways, akin to love, we can never combat it."
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, writes Chris Hedges, and upon completion of what The New York Times called his "powerful chronicle of modern war... a potent and eloquent warning," I do not feel guilty or ashamed of being human-- no, instead I am paralyzed with fear. Hedges takes no sides in his painfully poignant work, except perhaps the side of humanity, which as Freud writes and he notes, exists defined by the inescapable dynamic between Eros and Death and is compelled by its very nature to seek out self-destruction. Fascinating and profoundly disturbing, this book explores the dizzyingly narcotic elements of war and the atrocities-- in horrifyingly accounts from personal experience-- of which man is not only capable, but to which he is driven. "And yet, despite all this, I am not a pacifist," Hedges allows; "I wrote this book not to dissuade us from war but to understand it... this book is not a call for inaction. It is a call for repentance."
Reminiscent of Desmond Tutu’s No Future Without Forgiveness, Hedges postulates that “the only antidote to ward off self-destruction is humility and ultimately compassion.” Borrowing from Homer, Shakespeare, Bosnian Nobel laureates, and Holocaust survivor Ka’Tzetnik, his reports draw from his years as a foreign correspondent to conclude that:
"Happiness is elusive and protean. And it is sterile when devoid of meaning. But meaning, when it is set in the vast arena of war with its high stakes, its adrenaline-driven rushes, its bold sweeps and drama, is heartless and self-destructive. The initial selflessness of war mirrors that of love, the chief emotion war destroys. And this is what war often looks and feels like, at its inception: love... We are tempted to reduce life to a simple search for happiness. Happiness, however, withers if there is no meaning. The other temptation is to disavow the search for happiness in order to be faithful to that which provides meaning. But to live only for meaning-- indifferent to all happiness-- makes us fanatic, self-righteous, and cold. It leaves us cut off from our own humanity and the humanity of others. We must hope for grace, for our lives to be sustained by moments of meaning and happiness, both equally worthy of human communion."
I find myself almost wishing as I lounge on my plush carpet under a window filled with sunlit trees and blues on of the most beautiful days of the year thus far, that I hadn’t read this book, or that I could write it off as from another world, another species. But "Aristotle said that only two living entities are capable of complete solitude and complete separateness: God and beast. Because of this... the isolated individual can never be adequately human... if we do not acknowledge such an attraction [to war], which is, in some ways, akin to love, we can never combat it."
July 8, 2008
So excellent.
Question: Why do you feel so intensely in war? Yet it fades so quick?
"There are few individual relationships- the only possible way to form friendships- in war. ... Comrades seek to lose their identities in the relationship. Friends do not... Friends find themselves in each other and thereby gain greater self-knowledge and self-possession. They discover... unknown potentialities for joy and understanding. The struggle to remain friends, the struggle to explore the often painful recesses of two hearts, to reach the deepest parts of another's being, to integrate our own emotions and desires with th needs of the friend, are challenged by the collective rush of war. There are fewer demands if we join the crowd and give our emotions over to the communal crusade."
Question: Why are survivors so outcast and stigmatized?
There is a spiritual collapse after war. Societies struggle with the wanton destruction not only of property and cities but of those they loved. The erosion of morality and social responsibility becomes painfully evident in war's wake. Many feel used. By then it is too late.... In the wake of the war comes a normalization that levels victims and perpetrators. Victims and survivors are is an awkward reminder of the collective complicity. Their presence inspires discomfort. So too with perpetrators. But it is often the victims who suffer the worst bouts of guilt and remorse. Many victims grasp, in a way the perpetrators do not, the inverted moral hierarchy. They see this inversion in their own struggle to survive. They realize, in a way that the perpetrators again do not, that the difference between the oppressed and the oppressors is not absolute. And they often wonder if they could have done more to save those who were lost around them.
Question: Why do we feel so erotic and alive in a war zone?
"We discover in the communal struggle, the shared sense of meaning and purpose, a cause. War fills our spiritual void. I do not miss war, but I miss what it brought. I can never say I was happy in the midst of fighting but I had a sense of purpose, a calling. And this is a quality war shares with love, for we are, in love.
Question: Why do you feel so intensely in war? Yet it fades so quick?
"There are few individual relationships- the only possible way to form friendships- in war. ... Comrades seek to lose their identities in the relationship. Friends do not... Friends find themselves in each other and thereby gain greater self-knowledge and self-possession. They discover... unknown potentialities for joy and understanding. The struggle to remain friends, the struggle to explore the often painful recesses of two hearts, to reach the deepest parts of another's being, to integrate our own emotions and desires with th needs of the friend, are challenged by the collective rush of war. There are fewer demands if we join the crowd and give our emotions over to the communal crusade."
Question: Why are survivors so outcast and stigmatized?
There is a spiritual collapse after war. Societies struggle with the wanton destruction not only of property and cities but of those they loved. The erosion of morality and social responsibility becomes painfully evident in war's wake. Many feel used. By then it is too late.... In the wake of the war comes a normalization that levels victims and perpetrators. Victims and survivors are is an awkward reminder of the collective complicity. Their presence inspires discomfort. So too with perpetrators. But it is often the victims who suffer the worst bouts of guilt and remorse. Many victims grasp, in a way the perpetrators do not, the inverted moral hierarchy. They see this inversion in their own struggle to survive. They realize, in a way that the perpetrators again do not, that the difference between the oppressed and the oppressors is not absolute. And they often wonder if they could have done more to save those who were lost around them.
Question: Why do we feel so erotic and alive in a war zone?
"We discover in the communal struggle, the shared sense of meaning and purpose, a cause. War fills our spiritual void. I do not miss war, but I miss what it brought. I can never say I was happy in the midst of fighting but I had a sense of purpose, a calling. And this is a quality war shares with love, for we are, in love.
April 6, 2009
This book was an unexpected gut-shot to my moral understanding of war. I was tempted to add a fifth star.
As a war correspondent for 15 years, Hedges covered conflicts from El Salvador and Nicaragua to the West Bank and Gaza; from Sudan and Algeria to the first Gulf War and Kosovo. He bore witness to some revulsive acts of violence and became intimate with the victims and crimes of war. And yet he also became "addicted" to war, to the rush of combat and the sense of purpose that "allows us to be noble," and to the moral clarity and simple perspective it brought.
Hedges has a Master of Divinity from Harvard and is a professor at Princeton. This book is what happens when you combine the relentless introspection of the academic with the grotesque experiences of a warzone journalist. The anecdotes are powerful, the philosophical insights profound, and the conclusions painful but difficult to dispute. War, he argues, poisons everything: it infects people with nationalism, destroys culture, propagates lies, and reveals our depravity. But this is not a simple anti-war polemic, and Hedges is not a pacifist. "There are times when we must take this poison," he says. "This book is not a call for inaction. It is a call for repentance."
Highly recommended.
As a war correspondent for 15 years, Hedges covered conflicts from El Salvador and Nicaragua to the West Bank and Gaza; from Sudan and Algeria to the first Gulf War and Kosovo. He bore witness to some revulsive acts of violence and became intimate with the victims and crimes of war. And yet he also became "addicted" to war, to the rush of combat and the sense of purpose that "allows us to be noble," and to the moral clarity and simple perspective it brought.
Hedges has a Master of Divinity from Harvard and is a professor at Princeton. This book is what happens when you combine the relentless introspection of the academic with the grotesque experiences of a warzone journalist. The anecdotes are powerful, the philosophical insights profound, and the conclusions painful but difficult to dispute. War, he argues, poisons everything: it infects people with nationalism, destroys culture, propagates lies, and reveals our depravity. But this is not a simple anti-war polemic, and Hedges is not a pacifist. "There are times when we must take this poison," he says. "This book is not a call for inaction. It is a call for repentance."
Highly recommended.
January 20, 2008
"the whole truth may finally be too hard to utter, but the process of healing only begins when we are able to at least acknowledge the tragedy and accept our share of the blame."
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