A rchive Date
[ 12-06-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/London/Nicole_Langlois/2004/06/12/495884.html
Glory of war vs. banality of peace
NICOLE LANGLOIS, For the London Free Press
2004-06-12
In the midst of D-Day commemorations last weekend, as veterans of the Second World War were justly honoured for saving the western world from fascism, one thought kept recurring: How can we remember the suffering of our war heroes without glamorizing war itself? How do we break free of the siren call of war?
The rhetoric of our commemorations is misleading.
We say "Never again," but our hearts -- both personal and collective -- are divided. We yearn for the bitter-sweet drama, the dangerous allure and the heightened sensation of meaning that come from war.
Last year, American war correspondent Chris Hedges wrote an acclaimed book that at first repelled me with its title: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.
I expected a justification of war. What I found was a powerful indictment of the "meaning" that war confers. "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."
Only in the midst of conflict, Hedges writes, do we recognize how trivial and shallow we have allowed our daily lives to become. "And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble."
As we see in their own anecdotes, in history books and in fiction, many young men go off to war unthinkingly, looking for adventure.
Or perhaps they have vague notions of fighting for an abstract ideal such as freedom or human rights. Consider, for instance, that most of the concentration camp atrocities of the Holocaust came to light, in North America at least, only after the war ended. What could Nazism have meant to the 18-year-old Canadian who volunteered to go overseas and fight?
The answer is excitement, the kind that feels like love, or a drug high, or some other form of intoxication.
"In the beginning," Hedges writes, "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."
British journalist Anthony Loyd called war "the ultimate drug experience" in his unsettling memoir, My War Gone By, I Miss it So.
It is not new to recognize war as an empty promise. Late in the 19th century, philosopher William James wrote: "What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible."
The moral equivalent of war -- what a compelling idea, that we might find meaning in our earthly existence -- without resorting to hating and killing, or to banal and shallow pursuits that kill the spirit.
To fill the void that so many people feel, our culture offers no end of meaning-substitutes.
For those who know that drugs, alcohol, a television show, a sports team, or a perfect body can never fill the void, however, there are other possibilities on offer.
Religious leaders promise that faith in God (their God, of course) will give meaning to events in our lives, whether we can see the logic behind those events or not.
William James looked to voluntary poverty as "the strenuous life" that would simulate the hardships of war and thus keep humans grounded.
And there are promises from any number of commentators that finding inner peace, or your passion, your true work, your artist within or your child within, will make for a life of meaning.
But perhaps the most compelling "moral equivalent of war" was offered by psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning. He writes that he and his fellow sufferers in the camps "needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life -- daily and hourly. Our answer must consist . . . in right action and right conduct."
In Frankl's view, happiness -- or meaning, to put it another way -- must happen simply as the result of living in a responsible, active, loving relationship to others.
When we think of those who gave their lives, their innocence, the peaceful sleep of a lifetime, let us thank them, yes.
But let us also consciously create a world that offers meaning to all our young people, so we might say "Never again" with undivided hearts.
Nicole Langlois is a freelance writer based in Embro. Her column appears Saturdays. Home Page
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