Chris Hedges, a longtime war correspondent who now chronicles the effect of war on the human psyche notes the connection between myths of the past - of ethnic, religious, and national conflict - and their use in the present day to justify conflicts in the Middle East, Kosova and other war-torn regions. He notes in War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning that
"Most national myths, at their core, are racist . . . By finding our identity and meaning in separateness the myth serves another important function: It makes communication with our opponents impossible" (24). That is, the myths that underwrite warfare ask that we ignore our common humanity. He also quotes Simone Weil, who wrote about the nature of violence in the Iliad: "Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, . . . as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates" (21). The heady narcotic of wielding force unmakes a million years of evolution in a single instant, and turns the most peaceful, ordinary setting - a city park, a busy street, a college campus -- into a place of slaughter.
But I would also point out that epic in its most interesting and finest moments points the utter sameness of opposed forces and cultures, even as it seems to revel in bloodshed. The sins of the protagonist are often revisited and reborn in the enemy -- if the enemy is not identical with the protagonists themselves. Beowulf's enemies are as human as they are monstrous, and so our own monstrosity is inextricably bound with our humanity. Priam and Achilles find their common humanity in perhaps the only two cultural universals: food, and grief for the dead. If you find value in the epics of the ancient and medieval worlds, that value is bound to be idiosyncratic and different for each of you. But I would ask you to consider what ethical demands these texts make on us: do they ask us to accept the hero uncritically, the cause for war without question, the results without mourning?
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