Book Recommendation: "War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning", Chris Hedges

[Craig234]

I've considered for a while threads to recommend some books to people.

One idea I've consdered is if someone is interested but can't afford a book, to buy and ship it to them in exchange for a commitment to read and comment on it here.

I invite feedback about interest in that.

In the meantime, from my post in another thread mentioning this book, this thread is to recommend the book in this title.

Chris Hedges is a great write, with a religious background and broad experience seeing many wars up very close.

He's experience an addicition to war, and writes of the lessons from that.

A few years ago, I posted a video interview of him that got some very positive feedback - we can find that again if there's interest.

In the meantime, this was his first book I read. Its basic points are about societies and war - how they keep powerful myths that allow war to be triggered, how people in societies tend to show great unity in a time of war - leading this to be one of the common causes of war, when a country's leadership faces dissatisfaction from their people, going to war tends to put a stop to that.

I ran across a web page posting a few quotes from the book I'll post here:

“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

“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.”
― Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

“In the beginning war looks and feels like love. But unlike love it gives nothing in return but an ever-deepening dependence, like all narcotics, on the road to self-destruction. It does not affirm but places upon us greater and greater demands. It destroys the outside world until it is hard to live outside war's grip. It takes a higher and higher dose to achieve any thrill. Finally, one ingests war only to remain numb.”
― Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

“As long as we think abstractly, as long as we find in patriotism and the exuberance of War our fulfillment, we will never understand those who do battle against us, or how we are perceived by them, or finally those who do battle for us and how we should respond to it all. We will never discover who we are. We will fail to confront the capacity we all have for violence.”
― Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

“The moral certitude of the state in wartime is a kind of fundamentalism. And this dangerous messianic brand of religion, one where self-doubt is minimal, has come increasingly to color the modern world of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.”
― Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

“The violence of war is random. It does not make sense. And many of those who struggle with loss also struggle with the knowledge that the loss was futile and unnecessary.”
― Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

“Just remember,' a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel told me as he strapped his pistol belt under his arm before we crossed into Kuwait, 'that none of these boys is fighting for home, for the flag, for all that crap the politicians feed the public. They are fighting for each other, just for each other.”
― Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

I've heard the above from pretty much every military figure I've asked about it.

“I learned early on that war forms its own culture. The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I ingested for many years. It is peddled by mythmakers- historians, war correspondents, filmmakers, novelists, and the state- all of whom endow it with qualities it often does possess: excitement, exoticism, power, chances to rise above our small stations in life, and a bizarre and fantastic universe that has a grotesque and dark beauty.”
― Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

“There was in the House only one dissenting vote, from Barbara J. Lee, a Democrat from California, who warned that military action could not guarantee the safety of the country and that 'as we act, let us not become the evil we deplore.”
― Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/14..._m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1VXCASYJXANX0Y5TPJW2