STARING DOWN THE GODS OF WAR

US Marine finds infant during battle on Saipan, June 1944

Last week's blog used the symbol of the butterfly related to its Greek derivation for psyche, meaning both butterfly and soul of our humanity.
I expressed the story of Eros (love) and Psyche in class from Greek mythology and how Psyche only attains eternal existence after she rescues Eros trapped in a tower. But first she must create a bond of trust with Eros before the release can be accomplished. It is as much the bond as the release that is the intent, implying the building of a relationship of trust between our natural and spiritual selves. Else we remain trapped in the tower incapable of genuine human development.
In the second chapter from the Life of Meaning, titled "Staring Down the Gods of War," Chris Hedges relates his experience as a war correspondent in the Balkans for the New York Times during the nineteen-nineties. His witness to death and genocide of war draws him to remark on the inherent presence of this unfathomable trait of human character. He describes war as an addiction, a drug that can overwhelm our sense of reality. For the soldier as well as the correspondent, the uncanny life of war becomes familiar as the familiar life turns uncanny. Here again, Hedges, by way of Freud, introduces Eros (love) as the diametrical opposite of Thanatos or death, which war is in its most naked form. War in the mind and action of humanity is something that Freud and also Hedges affirm as being eternally a character of our human condition. Eros and Thanatos are seen as in a continuing tug of war, a constant tension.
So where is the hope? Hedges appears to point to the individual expression of those who risk for Eros even in the terror of war. What does that say to us who live in a world of war many times "fostered" by multicultural-ethnic and pluralistic religious values that creates innumerous "orphans?"