The Myth of War, The Plague of Nationalism

The following passages are from chapters 1 and 2 of War is the Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

Chapter 1: The Myth of War

“The ethnic conflicts and insurgencies of our time, whether between Serbs and Muslims or Hutus and Tutsis, are not relgious wars. They are not clashes between cultures or civilizations, nor are they the result of ancient ethnic hatreds. They are manufactured wars, born out of the collapse of civil societies, perpetrated by fear, greed and paranoia, and the are run by gangsters, who rise up from the bottomw of their own societies and terrorize all, including those they purport to protect.

Often , none of this is apparent form the outside. We are quick to accept the facile and mendacious ideological veneer that is wrapped like a mantle around the shoulders of those who prosecute the war. In part we do this to avoid intervention, to give this kind of slaughter an historical inevitabilty it does not have, but also bbecausethe media and most of the politicians often lack the perspective and analysis to debunk the myths served up by the opposing sides. (p. 20)

Points to differences between “mythic reality” and “sensory reality” (crediting Lawrence Le Shan’s The Psychology of War (p. 21)

Wars that lose their mythic stature for the public, such as Korea and Vietmnam, are doomed to failure, for war is exposed for what it is—organized murder.” (p. 21)

“Nationalist and ethnic conflicts are fratricides that turn on absurdities. They can only be sustained by myth. The arguments and bloody disputes take place over tiny, almost imperceptiblenuances within the society—what Sigmund Freud calls the “narcissism of minor differences.” (p. 32)



“We are humiliated in combat. The lofty words that inspire people to war—duty, honor, glory—swiftly become repugnant and hollow. They are replaced bythe hard, specific images of war, by prosaic names of villages and roads. The abstract rhetoric of patriotism is obliterated, exposed as the empty handmaiden of myth. Fear brings us all back down to earth.” (p. 40)

Chapter 2: The Plague of Nationalism

“Lurking beneath the suface of every society, including ours, is the passionate yearning for a nationalist cause that exalts us, the kind that war alone is ale to deliver. It reduces and at times erases the anxiety of individual consciousness. We abandon individual responsibility for a shared, unquestioned communal enterprise, however morally dubious.’ (p. 45)

“Nationalist myths are largely benign in times of peace. They are stoked by the entertainment industry, in school lessons, stories, and quasi-historical ballads, preached in mosques, or championed in absurd historical dramas that are always wildly popular during the war. They do not pose a major challenge to real historical study or a studied tolerance of others in peacetime. But nationalist myths ignite a collective amnesia in war. They give past generations a nobility and greatness they never possessed. Almost every group, and especially every nation, has such myths. These myths are the kindling nationalists use to light a conflict.” (p. 46)

“Many of those who defy the collective psychosis of the nation are solitary figures once the wars end. Yet these acts of compassion were usually the best antidotes to the myths peddled by nationalists. Those who reached across lines to assist the “enemy” freed themselves from nationalist abstractions that dehumanized others. They were vaccinated against the cult of death that dominates societies in wartime. They reduced their moral universe to caring for another human being. And in this they were able to reject the messianic pretensions that come with the nationalist agenda. By accepting that they could only affct a few lives they also accepted their smalll place in the universe. This daily lesson in humility protected them.” (p. 49)

“The small acts of decency…in wartime ripple outwards like concentric circles. These acts, unrecognized at the time, make it impossible to condemn, legally and morally, an entire people. They serve as reminders that we all have a will of our own, a will that is independent of the state, or the nationalist cause. Most important, once the war is over, these people make it hard to brand an entire nation or an entire people as guilty…
“But these acts also remind us that in wartime most people are unwilling to risk discomfort, censure, or violence to help neighbors. There is a frightening indifference and willful blindness,..[that] turns many into silent accomplices.” (pp. 53-54)

“The nationalist myth often implodes with a startling ferocity. It does so after the lies and absurdities that surround it become too hard to sustain. They collapse under their own weight. The contradictions and torturous refusal to acknowledge the obvious becomes more than a society is able to bear. The collapse is usually followed by a blanket refusal, caused by shame and discomfort, to examine or acknowledge the crimes carried out in the name of nationalist cause.” (pp. 58-59)

“This blanket amnesia is often part of the aftermath of war…While the excesses carried ot in the name of the nationalist cause are forgotten or ignored, the myth of the nation has a disturbing longevity. It lies dormant, festering in the society, nurtured by boy’s adventure stories of heroism in service to the nation, the monuments we erect to the fallen, and carefully scripted remembrances until it slowly slouches back into respectability.” (pp. 60-61)

Excerpts from the Introduction of War is the Force That Gives Us Meaning

Here's a book that should be required reading for everyone, universally. A few years back, I heard several NPR interviews with author, Chris Hedges, and finally got around to reading most of his War is the Force That Gives Us Meaning (New York: Anchor Books, 2003)this summer.

From the introduction:

“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 purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble…” (p. 3)

"Many of us, restless and unfulfilled, see no supreme worth in our lives. We want more out of life. And war, at least, gives a sense that we can rise above our smallness and divisiveness…"(p. 7)

"…the eruption of conflict instantly reduces the headache and trivia of daily life. The communal march against an enemy generates a warm, unfamiliar bond with our neighbors, our community, our nation, wiping out unsettling undercurrents of alienation and dislocation.” (p. 9)

“War makes the world understandable, a black and white tableau of them ans us. It suspends thought, especially self-critical thought. All bow before the supreme effort. We are one. Most of us are willing to accept war as long as we can fold it into a higher good, for human beings seek not only happiness but alos meaning. And tragically war is sometimes the most powerful way in human society to achieve meaning.” (p.10)

The ironies of being a soldier, and shadows of Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est”

““The soldier, neglected and even shunned during peacetime, is suddenly held up as the exemplar of our highest ideals, the savior of the state. The soldier is often whom we want to become, although secretly many of us, including most soldiers, know that we can never match the ideal held out before us. And we all become like Nestor in The Illiad, reciting the litany of fallen heroes that went before to spur on a new generation. That the myths are lies, that those who went before us were no more able to match the ideal than we are, is carefully hidden from public view. The tension between those who know combat, and thus know the public lie, and those who propagate the myth, usually ends with the mythmakers working to silence the witnesses of war.” (p. 11)

“In the wars of the twentieth century not less than 62 million have perished, nearly 20 million more than the 43 million military personnel killed.”(p. 13)

“Before conflicts begin, the first people silenced—often with violence—are not the nationalist leaders of the opposing ethnic or religious group, who are useful in that they serve to dump gasoline on the evolving conflict. 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 refuses to define the other as “barbarian” or “evil,” one that recognizes the humanity of the enemy, one that does not condone violence as a form of communication. Such voices are rarely heeded. And until we learn once again to speak in our own voice and reject that handed to us by the state in times of war, we flirt with our own destruction.”(pp. 15-16)

An argument that justifies the use of force

“Even as I detest the pestilence that is war that has left millions of dead and maimed across the planet, I, like most reporters in Sarajevo and Kosova, desperately hoped for armed intervention. The poison that is war does not free us from the ethics of responsibility. There are times when we must take this poison—just as a person with cnacer accepts chemotherapy to live. We can not succumb to despair. Force is and I suspect always will be a part of the human condition. There are times when the force wielded by one immoral faction must be countered by a faction that, while never moral, is perhaps less immoral.” (p. 16)

“We must guard against the myth of war and the drug of war that can together, render us as blind and callous as some of those we battle.” (p. 17)

From Max Barry's Company, A Good Comical Read

A couple of weeks ago I picked up Company by Max Barry (New York: Doubleday, 2006) It was good comic relief, frequently leaving me in tears of laughter. Here are a few excerpts:

On the changing relationship between employer and employees:

“There are stories—legends, really—of the “steady job.” Old-timers gather graduates around the flickering light of a computer monitor and tell stories of how the company used to be, back when a job was for life, not just the business cycle. In those days, there were dinners for employees who racked up twenty-five years—don’t laugh, you, yes, twenty-five years!—of service. In those days, a man didn’t change jobs every five minutes. When you walked down the corridors, you recognized everyone you met; hell, you the names of their kids.

The graduates snicker. A steady job! They’ve never heard of such a thing. What they know is the flexible job. It’s what they were raised on in business school; it’s what they experienced, too, as they drove a cash register or stacked shelves between classes. Flexibility is where it’s at, not dull, rigid, monotonous steadiness. Flexible jobs allow employees to share in the company’s ups and downs; well, not so much the ups. But when times get tough, it’s the flexible company that thrives. By comparison, a company with steady jobs hobbles along with a ball and chain. The graduates have read the management textbooks and they know the truth: long-term employees are so last century.

The problem with employees, you see, is everything. You have to pay to hire them and pay to fire them, and, in between, you have to pay them. They need business cards. They need computers. They need ID tags and security clearances and phones and air-conditioning and somewhere to sit. You have to ferry them to off-site team meetings. You have to ferry them back home again. They get pregnant. They injure themselves. They steal. They join religions with firm views on when it’s permissible to work. When they read their e-mail they open every attachment they get, and when they write it they expose the company to enormous legal liabilities. They arrive with no useful skills, and once you’ve trained them, they leave. And don’t expect gratitude! If they’re not taking sick days, they’re requesting compassionate leave. If they’re not gossiping with co-workers, they’re complaining about them. They consider it is their inalienable right to wear body ornamentation that scars customers. They talk about (dear God) unionizing. They want raises. They want management to notice when they are doing a good job. They want to know what’s going to happen in the next corporate reorganization. And lawsuits! The lawsuits! They sue for sexual harassment, for an unsafe workplace, for discrimination in thirty-two different flavors. For—get this—wrongful termination. Wrongful termination! These people are only here because you brought them into the corporate world! Suddenly you’re responsible for them for life?

The truly flexible company—and the textbooks don’t come right and say it, but the graduates can tell that they want to—doesn’t employ people at all. This is the siren song of outsourcing. The seductiveness of the sub-contract. Just try out the words: no employees. Feels good, doesn’t it? Strong. Healthy. Supple. Oh yes, a company without employees would be a wondrous thing. Let the workers suck up a little competitive pressure. Let them get a taste of the free market.

The old-timers’ stories are fairy tales, dreams of a world that no longer exists. They rest on the bizarre assumption that people somehow deserve a job. The graduates know better; they’ve been taught that they don’t.” (pp. 41-3)


On Senior Management:

“You can say this for Senior Management: it knows how to articulate a goal. The strategy may be fuzzy, the execution nonexistent, but Senior Management knows what it wants.” (p. 54)


On Customers:

“Customers are vermin, Mr. Jones. They infect companies with disease.” He says this with complete solemnity. “A company is a system. It is built to perform a relatively small set of actions over and over, as efficiently as possible. The enemy of systems is variation, and customers produce variation. They want special products. They have unique circumstances. They try to place orders with after-sales support and they direct complaints to sales.” (p. 105)


Machiavellian business ethics:

“Do you want the ethics speech? Because we have one. It’s on video, this whole spiel about how we’re improving business efficiency, creating jobs, and building a stronger America. By the time it’s over, you’ll think anyone who doesn’t like what we’re doing is a Communist. We hand them over to our more religious investors. You’re not religious, are you?
“Well, not really—”
“It’s kind of a joke. When someone asks for the ethics tape, we know they’ve already decided to invest. They just want some reassurance so they can feel good about it, too. That’s the thing you learn about values, Jones: they’re what people make up to justify what they did. Did you take business ethics in college?”
“Yes.”
“They teach you people’s behavior is guided by their values, right? That’s a load of crap. When you watch people like we do, you find out it’s the other way around. Look, I believe in what Alpha does, I really do. But do I worry about whether every little thing we do is ethical? NO, because you can rationalize anything as ethical. You talk to a criminal—a tax dodger, a serial killer, a child abuser—and every one of them will justify their actions. They’ll explain to you, totally seriuosly, why they had to do what they did. Why they’re still good people. That’s the thing: when people talk about the importance of ethics, they never include themselves. The day that anyone, anywhere, admits that they personally are unethical, I’ll start taking the whole issue seriously.” (pp. 111-2)


On potential corporate consolidation:

"Throughout the building, work stalls. The wheels of industry crash to a halt and the rumor mill starts turning. Within minutes Zephyr is manufacturing rumors at world-class levels. If rumors could be sold, this kind of productivity would be cause for special announcements and award ceremonies—but they can’t, and even Senior Management knows this. When it realizes what is going on, Senior Management places a conference call to the department heads. All staff are forbidden to speculate about the consolidations, it instructs. They should know better; here Senior management is trying to save everyone’s job, and all they care about is whether they still have a job. Get back to work!

"The department managers could not agree more. Their heads bob up and down, even though this is a phone call. Their voices drip of earnestness. They are behind Senior Management 110 percent. Or more! The bids rise quickly.

"But once they’re off the phone their level of support drops, first to realistic levels, then lower. “Senior management hasn’t decided which departments will be consolidated,” the managers say in response to their staff’s nervous, sweaty questions. “Or maybe they have but they’re not telling. Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t know what the hell they’re doing.” Frightened employees huddle around coffee machines. Rumor production heads underground and flourishes there. The out-trays of laser printers grow thick with updated resumes." (pp. 159-160)