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A review by ben_sch
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges
4.0
Especially in the introduction this has some emotionally insightful points about why war is enticing:
"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.... resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. .... the comradeship allowed them to love men and women they hardly knew, indeed, whom they may not have liked before the war."
Interesting how the author got addicted to war, in the same way people might get addicted to a drug like heroin, in that it gave him a space to love and have meaning. And in a similar way it poisoned him.
While a lot of the beats of this book are pretty standard pictures of war sucking and how bad it is, the author does not lose his stance entirely to pacifism, and maintains that in some circumstances it's a necessary poison pill.
"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.... resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. .... the comradeship allowed them to love men and women they hardly knew, indeed, whom they may not have liked before the war."
Interesting how the author got addicted to war, in the same way people might get addicted to a drug like heroin, in that it gave him a space to love and have meaning. And in a similar way it poisoned him.
While a lot of the beats of this book are pretty standard pictures of war sucking and how bad it is, the author does not lose his stance entirely to pacifism, and maintains that in some circumstances it's a necessary poison pill.