War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges

[abaris]

Banality is defiantly the opposite of meaning.  I don't think the book refers to religious meaning, though.  I think it is talking about national, political, racial and human identity.  Religion only comes up in the discussion of the Yugoslavian conflict, since the area has a Muslim population.

I didn't refer to that book, which I didn't read and can say nothing about. I was talking about the reality of death, being exposed to it and noticing the fundamental banality surrounding most letal circumstances.

[Combanitorics]

Regarding your original question about Yugoslavia's dissolution and subsequent wars, it's my understanding that at its base was a nexus of ethnic and religious tensions, as opposed to national identities.

I do think that upstart nations can gain a sense of national identity through warfighting. I don't know enough about the current conditions in the Balkans to say that that is the case there, though.

Really what I'm wondering is what it has to do with the Balkans being a post communist society.  As I said, the author makes a substantial thread of the conflict in his book, and never mentions the classless society.  I guess this has something to do with the fact that the classless society was effectively a failure.  I wondered while I was reading it if the racial and religious conflict was somehow connected to an attempt to re-establish some kind of structure to the society in that part of the world, in the wake of said failure of communism.

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Banality is defiantly the opposite of meaning.  I don't think the book refers to religious meaning, though.  I think it is talking about national, political, racial and human identity.  Religion only comes up in the discussion of the Yugoslavian conflict, since the area has a Muslim population.

I didn't refer to that book, which I didn't read and can say nothing about. I was talking about the reality of death, being exposed to it and noticing the fundamental banality surrounding most letal circumstances.

I see.

[Edwardo Piet]

Is that the same Chris Hedges that Sam Harris debated?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prWFkt9-HT0

[Thumpalumpacus]

Regarding your original question about Yugoslavia's dissolution and subsequent wars, it's my understanding that at its base was a nexus of ethnic and religious tensions, as opposed to national identities.

I do think that upstart nations can gain a sense of national identity through warfighting. I don't know enough about the current conditions in the Balkans to say that that is the case there, though.

Really what I'm wondering is what it has to do with the Balkans being a post communist society.  As I said, the author makes a substantial thread of the conflict in his book, and never mentions the classless society.  I guess this has something to do with the fact that the classless society was effectively a failure.  I wondered while I was reading it if the racial and religious conflict was somehow connected to an attempt to re-establish some kind of structure to the society in that part of the world, in the wake of said failure of communism.

I don't doubt that. Nations are like any other grouping of people in that they need an organizing precept, I think. The nations and leaders which arose from the dissolution of Yugoslavia had to have an anchor for the cohesive sensibilities of people. People want to belong to something, usually, and nations have a vested interested in garnering buy-in from subject populations: the failure to attain that buy-in is often fatal to polyglomerate countries (see Iraq and Syria, as well as Yugoslavia, once the cementing authority was destroyed, weakened, or died, respectively.)

Tito's death removed the obstacle to latent religious and ethnic tensions, and after a decade or so of nervous tension, the country flew apart. I don't know much about the social systems in place there, so I'm afraid I can't help you much with an analysis of socialism's failure to garner buy-in. But I do take note that with few exceptions, socialist/communist countries historically have eventually run into a wall which limits public support, either because a charismatic leader is taken offstage, a security-state apparatus takes on too much power, or standard-of-living issues arise. It seems to me that the first issue was certainly in play with Tito's death. I'm not terribly informed about the facts on the other two possibilities vis Yugoslavia, so I leave this post where it is and hope that I've contributed something to the discussion.

[Foxaèr]

Sociologically, war merely provides the meaningless, short term convergence of caring for someone other than one's self.

That in no way means war is an answer, because it is not a long term solution for community.

[The Grand Nudger]

I didn't read the book, but I was a KFOR peacekeeper out of Pristina.  My company (1/18INF. COLD STEEL! HOOOOAAAAAH, ) held Fire Base Rock, a remote observation post two miles from the Macedonian border overlooking one of the more heavily trafficked paths taken by arms smugglers.  None of -us- could tell you who was serbian, bosnian, or croat.  Our translator, however, seemed to have an opinion on the ethnicity of everyone we detained.  Easy for me to chalk up as true in part in both.  Our translator couldn't tell the difference, for example, between a cowboy and a cracker (he incessantly pestered me and a boy named Boucher from Lafayette - my No. 2 Crew, about rodeos, no matter how many times we told him we were from the swamp...just something about the way we talked, to him. He'd just forget that we weren't from Texas over and over).  He'd most likely be ignorant of any division of culture (and even ethnicity) within our ranks.  They are minor, after all - easy to miss.  Those differences are important to us though, and we don't seem to have any trouble picking out our various crowds.  If the conflict did rely on puffing up the differences, it's easy to see how that could be accomplished.  It works here too, as minor as our differences may be by one metric, they're clearly not by another to which we are all keenly aware.

That place was/is a fuckin mess, btw. Beautiful, though, especially the bombed out villages and piles of booby trapped daipers in the mountains. There's very little better for entertainment, than watching a fuel oil bomb destroy a house made of stone and mud and straw at 5am, as the mist rolls down and settles into the surrounding hovels. Something about the contrast between the bleached white scenery and the acrid, black smoke is mesmerizing. Sets the stage for the morning, black and white. You're going to have one group of detainees huddled on this side of the ditch....and the second on the other. One group goes home....the other shuts it's mouth and gets in the godamned truck, for the last fucking time, or so help me god I'm going to start shooting.

[abaris]

Really what I'm wondering is what it has to do with the Balkans being a post communist society.  As I said, the author makes a substantial thread of the conflict in his book, and never mentions the classless society.  I guess this has something to do with the fact that the classless society was effectively a failure.  I wondered while I was reading it if the racial and religious conflict was somehow connected to an attempt to re-establish some kind of structure to the society in that part of the world, in the wake of said failure of communism.

Obviously neither you nor the author do realize what lay at the root of the Balkan conflicts in the 90ies. It wasn't a class war, it was an ethnic conflict, dating back as far as the Middle Ages. Former Yugoslavia included dozens of ethnicities bearing very old grudges against each other. It was a result of the Treaty of Saint Germain, which - as opposed to Wilson's 14 points - surrendered it all to the Serbian kings.

It's a very complicated matter and class or being a post communist region, doesn't figure into it. Even more so, since Tito steered a very independent course within the communist world. In 1961, he even founded the non-aligned states, which was a clear sign that he didn't consider Yugoslavia to be part of the communist block.