War is a Force That Give Us Meaning
(A Chris Hedges Presentation)
August 28, 2004
Summary by Marjorie Burns
Chris Hedges, veteran war correspondent and author of the book “War is a Force That Gives us Meaning,” , spoke to a large, appreciative audience in Reidy Friendship Hall on August 28. The insights into the psychology of war that Hedges offers in his book recently led New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to call it “the best book I’ve read about America after 9/11. . . . It explains why President Bush, despite policy failures at home and abroad, is ahead in the polls.”
The explanation lies in what Hedges calls the myth of war. This myth, which we are willing to believe because it fills a psychological need, supports our cherished fantasies about our own goodness and might. It tells us that we are purely good and our enemies are purely evil, that we are powerful because we are good, and that our power gives us the right to impose our will on others.
Those who actually experience the destruction and killing of war discover that the myth is a lie. Killing is always a sordid affair, and those who are killed die messy, disturbing deaths that later haunt the killers. The killers’ participation in the carnage undermines their belief in their own goodness and the worthiness of their cause.
The cost of war is usually measured in blasted buildings and dead bodies, but war is just as damaging to souls. Even those who fight on the “right” side in a “just” war, are contaminated by the rot and corruption. A study of soldiers in World War II found that 98 percent of those who went through sixty days of continuous combat came out as psychiatric casualties.
To most in Hedges’ audience, these ideas were probably familiar. Many other speakers and writers have debunked the myth of war, though few as eloquently as Hedges does. What is different about his message is his emphasis on the seductiveness of war: “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.” Add to the gift of meaning the sensory component of war – the rush of battle, the cathartic ferocity, the thrill of flaring out in one intense overpowering moment – and you have the most potent narcotic invented by mankind. Once a person is addicted to the drug of war, it is very hard to break free.
Hedges told of a photographer with whom he worked in El Salvador who, after having many close calls, quit and moved to Miami. There he made a living by taking photos of bland domestic stories for a newsweekly. But he could not adjust to this flat, uninteresting life. In a short time he was back, and it was clear that he had returned to die. A few months later he did die, shot through the back in a firefight.
Hedges himself felt the insidious seduction of war. At certain moments during his five years of covering the war in El Salvador, a part of him thought, “I would rather die like this than go back to the dull routine.”
One of war’s seductive rewards lies in the sense of belonging it gives, both to combatants and to affected civilians. The horrific experiences that members of a group endure together form a bond between them that feels like love. But the relationship is not love or even friendship; it is comradeship, which is a very different thing. Comradeship suppresses individuality and self-awareness. It requires members to adopt a group identity. It evokes mass feelings of the most primitive kind. And it does not last. When the war is over, the members are alone again, no longer bound by that common sense of struggle. If they meet again, they are strangers.
The only antidote to the myth and the drug of war is humility and, ultimately, compassion. We were humbled in Vietnam, and for a time we became a better nation. We understood ourselves better. We acknowledged our own capacity for evil. But over time, those who stand to gain from war always work to revive the myth that war is heroic. If we accept the myth now, it can lead to our annihilation.
The ancient Greeks had a word for the drive to self-destruction: ekpyrosis. It means “to be consumed by a ball of fire.” They used the word to describe heroes.
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