Ebook War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges
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War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges
Ebook War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges
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About the Author
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist. He spent nearly two decades as a correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, with fifteen years at the New York Times. A former fellow at The Nation Institute, he is the author of numerous bestselling books, including Empire of Illusion; Death of the Liberal Class; War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning; and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with Joe Sacco. He writes a weekly column for the online magazine Truthdig. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
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Product details
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: PublicAffairs; Reprint edition (April 8, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9781610393591
ISBN-13: 978-1610393591
ASIN: 1610393597
Product Dimensions:
5.5 x 0.5 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.3 out of 5 stars
190 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#148,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The intro began as sort of a rant about war, which was excellently written. Then I expected him to somehow organize his thoughts into the next chapters. But the stream of consciousness continued. If that were the only problem with the book, I would not give it one star because Chris Hedges is quite a good writer. The larger problem with a war correspondent writing an in-depth piece about war while picking up bits and pieces of what he learned around the world is that much of it is inaccurate. Then is becomes more infuriating because if you are more knowledgable about the subject or region, he provides virtually no sourcing even when there are quotes. His understanding of the Middle East, like many other correspondents, is shallow and sparse. Because I know the Middle East well and have lived there and studied the region for all of my adult life, this of course made me question much of the rest of the book. One cannot tell if he acquires his knowledge through anecdotal encounters or if he has credible sources because, again, he doesn't source. He cites dubious information about Arab country curriculum, with quotes, and then doesn't provide a source. Better editing, fact checking, and help with structuring the book would have helped this book a lot since the overall theme is important.
Judging by the title, you might think that this books speaks in favor of war. Absolutely not! In fact, it is a very powerful condemnation of war.The author had led an eventful life. He was a war correspondent who covered many conflicts in many parts of the world. He had seen his share of death, had many close calls and suffered human cruelty. This book is his attempt to understand the appeal of war. Despite universal condemnation of war (at least in principle), war has always been and still is a presence in human affairs. It continues to fascinate us and even attracts us. Why? If war is so wicked, why does it persist?Sure, there are some psychopaths out there who like war because it gives them a chance to indulge their darkest desires and achieve power, but the blame cannot be solely laid at the feet of few madmen. The sad fact is that war really does have its attractive qualities."Truth is the first casualty of war," as the saying goes.That is true. The rulers need to first sell war to their people. Even the most totalitarian regimes do not start war out of the blue. Elaborate propaganda operation is first mounted to convince us that the enemy is evil, or at least in some way worse than us. People with whom we had no quarrel before suddenly become our enemy. They are portrayed as wicked and inferior. Differences, no matter how small and irrelevant, are brought up time after time as evidence of their otherness. Whatever bad things a few of them did, they are used to condemn all of them as evil. Some of these differences and bad deeds are no doubt true, but propaganda exaggerates them and even manufactures more if what is out there is not enough.At the same time, propaganda tries to convince us that we are the good guys and superior to the enemy. In other words, we are on the side of angels and they fight for Satan. In case of religious wars, this might literally be the official position.Quite often it is not enough to say that the other side is evil and inferior. They must also pose a grave threat. After all, if they were evil and inferior, but meant us no harm, then most people would not care enough to travel over there and fight them. But if they pose a threat to us, then not only we have a right to fight them, we even have a duty to. A man has to protect his country and loved us after all.Strangely, while individuals might resist propaganda, the masses often fall for it. There is powerful allure in accepting the propaganda. If we believe the lies, then suddenly we become heroes fighting the good fight against forces of darkness. We protect our loved ones from a wicked enemy. We see friends and neighbors support a cause and we feel the pull to join them to gain a sense of belonging. The psychological need to fit with a group and to be accepted is a powerful human desire.For those who are directly exposed to combat, aside for the horror and fear there is also excitement. The fight or flight response kicks in and our bodies are flooded with adrenaline. Even fear has its exciting properties. How else do you explain people enjoying horror movies?Soldiers experience intense comradeship and are often and are held as heroes. It is hard to be exposed to this kind of adoration and not have your ego flattered. Civilians feel a bond with their fellow civilians if their side is winning. If their side is losing and they are exposed to violence, this bond grows even stronger as they must together endure hardship and death.War has its dark attractiveness, but it is also a lie. It is like heroin. It makes you feel fantastic when you are under its influence, but at the same time it is destroying you. Eventually it will leave you a pathetic, sad shadow of what you were, and then it will kill you.War inverts values. What was once good is now bad and vice versa. Showing kindness and protecting human lives is generally speaking considered as a virtue. But in war showing kindness and protecting the lives of the people on the other side is almost a crime. War dissenters (who are essentially people who say that you should not hurt fellow human beings and look for peaceful solutions) are vilified and called traitors. They might be charged with crimes, imprisoned and even killed. On the other hand, people who kill, maim and hurt the enemy and destroy their property are made to look heroic. What before was rightfully called mass murder and criminality, now is the desired behavior.When the war is over, when the lies are exposed, silence and fantasy reign supreme. As people realize the evil and foolishness in which they indulged, they become ashamed and prefer to keep quiet about it. Not only people don't want to talk about it, they prefer not to hear about it. When some few brave individuals speak out, they are ignored. When there is no way to hide the truth, the evil is excused. Atrocities committed by our own side are written off as ugly necessities of war or laid at the feet of few "bad apples". And it is quickly pointed out that the enemy committed atrocities too. Apparently, their evil justifies our evil.But the silence is not enough. The society is faced with a problem. The old lies don't work anymore, but the truth is too painful to face. So new lies are invented. People replace old fantasy with new fantasy. Generals might say that they lost the war because politicians stabbed them in the back. Politicians might say that it was the country's allies who stabbed them in the back. Or the other side had won because they "cheated". (As if war was a sport with set rules.)This new fantasy prevents healing on both sides, thus sowing the seeds for the next conflict. While the current generation might have learned its lessons, those lessons are not passed down to the new generation. New generations grow up believing the fantasies, and one day they will march to war.This is, grossly, the author's thesis, although sometimes he does not lay it out as clearly. The book is written purely from heart and emotion. The impression from the text I got is that this is an emotional outburst and purging of a troubled soul. This is fine by me. It makes the book only more powerful. I have read some anti-war books in the past, but never anything so powerful.I have only one complaint. The author grimly states that in his opinion there will always be war (I agree) and that sometimes wars are necessary. But he does not elaborate on what he would consider a justifiable war. Taking into account how strongly anti-war his book is, it would be interesting to know in what circumstances he would approve of war.
One of the great books on War and what it produces. The first Chris Hedges book I have read and I been reading his subsequent books ever since. Advise you watch his weekly show On Contact on Youtube - one of the few meaningful news programs left on TV.
In the history of human civilization, there have been an estimated 29 known years in which the world was not at war. In this emotional and deeply personal book, part philosophy, part memoir, part jeremiad, Chris Hedges, a former war news correspondent who has spent much of his adult life documenting war, seeks to explore why humanity has become so deeply engrossed in war. I think Hedges convincingly shows that waging war is something of our human condition, which is driven by a sense of longing for meaning and purpose in our lives. A purpose that is often tied to love, but ironically, war waged in the name of love often ends up destroying the very love that moved so many men to act. Yet the same love is the only hope we have that can save us from such war.Hedges' book is a very vivid account of war. It's definitely not for the faint of heart. Hedges definitely wants you to truly think about war, and to see it for all its ugliness. He wants us to see through the thin and superficial rhetoric, slogans, and news coverage often used to rally a nation to war, and to see it for the hell it truly is. And Hedges does so by invoking a lot of very personal stories that he has collected in all of the years he spent embedded on the front lines of war-- everything from stories surrounding the mass murder of innocent women and children, to a story in which he was captured and tortured by soldiers in Iraq-- stories that often don't make it in the typical news story because such a news story does not feed the narrative of a nation at war, and often goes against what we claim: We are good, the other nation is personification of evil, therefore, we must do everything we can to remove the evil threat against us.While this book might be viewed largely as an anti-war diatribe, and the arguments employed will definitely help further a pacifist position, Hedges concedes a couple brief times in the book that war may be at times necessary evil... although he never really says why it might be necessary. Indeed, being deeply embedded in the human condition, war isn't merely a necessary evil that must be used to confront those who are unjust and a threat, but it is an almost inescapable part of our fallen humanity. It is in our nature to make war, and war is something we will ultimately do. But in conceding such, I think Hedges hope in this book is not so much to bring an end to war, but to shine a light on the actual realities of war, the real awful destructive costs of it, and to ultimately weaken the effect of this powerful narcotic has on humanity.
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