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

[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.