Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. This book is, thus far with three chapters left to read, wonderful. It is a treasure. This man has listened to combat vets from Vietnam over many years with his heart and has done a great job in translating that complex otherworld of our souls into a form that can make sense. Through using 'The Odyssey' as allegory in explaining the processes of homecoming by a combat vet it gives us a roadmap.
Page 45 he writes about veterans combat experience as having a constant roll of the dice. I read 'The Iliad' recently and while the heroes in it fight, pitting their prowess against the other, there is also the very real sense that there is much chaos working behind the scenes of the fight. The warriors, then, have a choice... they can continue to fight as though all were decided by their own honor and virtue and skill... or they can fight (live their lives) without such notions. This latter, to me, seems to run toward cowardice eventually. For the warrior there is only one way to fight, to be, and that is as if what you do mattered, even though you know there are events, fates, that are out of your control and influence and outside of a notion of universal justice. While reading page 45 I came upon this sentence...."it is as if, having lived in a world where the dice were constantly rolling, the calm, plan-filled responsibility of civilian life (or for that matter, of peacetime military service) is intolerable". This isn't, mind you, the boredom of teenager who is without his favorite video game. When I read this I thought of the many streets I drove down in Iraq that were known IED alleys. Of seeing the wires and aiming sticks of roadside bombs, of the craters of prior exploded bombs, and more. There is, in the back of your mind, the gnawing feeling that the fates are rolling the dice whenever you start to drive down a street. How many patrols have I done? I can't begin to count.
Page 83 has some good writing on our perception on how we spoil everything we touch. This ties into some thinking I have and also might tie in with something I read in another book by Haidt on purity and such (some earlier entry, I dont' remeber) and perhaps it might bear fruit to look at this more in depth from a psychological perspective. What could Positive Psychology say about this?
After I got the call that the book had arrived I went to get it and then sat down at the coffee shop to read. After reading for a while I stopped to write. Very rough stuff to follow, transcribed out of my paper journal.
Page 4. Recovery happens only in community. Two people are not a community. Erich Maria Remarque's exerpt from the book "The Road Back" is a good example of our attitudes on getting back from war. It is on page 11 and 12.
There is great distinction between the Thumos (great hearted spirit/ heart) and the Gaster (greedy, demanding, uncultivated/ belly) of our heroes/veterans/soldiers on page 12.
Page 14. When Odysseus is in the court and the bar sings a song of Troy it brings Odysseus to tears. But to the 'civilians' it is the same as all the other tales... ENTERTAINMENT.
Odysseus doesn't talk about the war at Troy with people who show themselves incapable of hearing the stories with their heart.
Feel that ache? That subtle, almost inperceptable tingling in your arms... under your skin. Your heart feels made out of lead and you are balanced between explosive action, running away or outburst of exclamation, and roling up into a ball, shutting off the outside world. Think of a lover who has scorned you, out of the blue and without reason. Think of a dear family member who died all too soon and without knowing the depth of your love.... that sense of lost opportunity, wasted time, of injustice. Remember when you lost your job and didn't know where to go next? Creditors calling you and the sense of shame that seemed to define who you really are. Can you feel that desire, the pressing need to weep with your full weight of your soul? to let out all the anguish and dread that is drowning you in hope that you can breathe? That in weeping you can also protest the fates with all the righteousness a heartbroken soul can muster?
How can the stoic soldier, the providing father, the hero of untarnished virtue, the savior, feel such weakness? How can the brave, the best of our generation, the hope and pride of a country, express these emotions? We aren't the only heroes. Single parents working two jobs, an ICU nurse who comfortss the sick and dying, the police officer who arrests the drunk driver before a deadly crash, and more... Part of their identities of these heroes have, by definition, their care, their heart, the love for another, their selfless service to their community, a community that at times transcends even when it is rooted firmly in their local community. What of the soldier? We kill. We are the purveyors of death. We rip and maim and hurt and destroy. As a religious minded person might ask, what loving god can be a destroyer, what god of mercy can invent a place called hell, so too we ask of ourselves. for we've ridden through hell... we've gleefully unleashed the power in our arms and cunning of our mind in all its hellish fury. We've struck out with reckless abandon with Ares in all his bloodthirsty gluttony, only to find ourselves asking why in the periods of calm therafter. What hero, what human of goodness and virtue can so easily, happily, wantonly kill and still be called good?
Think this a question of no importance and you are not asking it with heart. Imagine seeing a parent with a child at a public event. The child acts up and the parent slaps the child in the face in response. You do not stop to wonder if the parent is stressed from a multitude of things, like two jobs and a foreclosures on the house with a dying parent in the hospital. No. Likely you see the person, at lest initially with your emotional/moral sense, as being bad and possibly a bad parent. It is a natural, gut reaction, an emotional judgment made in the blink of an eye. We are hardwired to do this. This same hardwired emotional/moral judging is done by ourselves in our own histories every day.
Ask the question... what good and decent person kills (when the killer is you)?
page 39. To be really home is to be emotionally present and engaged.
page 74. you have sex but you don't have intimacy. We live in a hell that is ours alone and we dont want to drag her into it, so we live in there alone and cut off intimacy. With a life partner you want to be able to share everything with her. You can't even come close, she has enver experienced anything like that. Her image is that a man goes off to fight, you're strong, you come home and you build your life. You have the reality.
Page 45 he writes about veterans combat experience as having a constant roll of the dice. I read 'The Iliad' recently and while the heroes in it fight, pitting their prowess against the other, there is also the very real sense that there is much chaos working behind the scenes of the fight. The warriors, then, have a choice... they can continue to fight as though all were decided by their own honor and virtue and skill... or they can fight (live their lives) without such notions. This latter, to me, seems to run toward cowardice eventually. For the warrior there is only one way to fight, to be, and that is as if what you do mattered, even though you know there are events, fates, that are out of your control and influence and outside of a notion of universal justice. While reading page 45 I came upon this sentence...."it is as if, having lived in a world where the dice were constantly rolling, the calm, plan-filled responsibility of civilian life (or for that matter, of peacetime military service) is intolerable". This isn't, mind you, the boredom of teenager who is without his favorite video game. When I read this I thought of the many streets I drove down in Iraq that were known IED alleys. Of seeing the wires and aiming sticks of roadside bombs, of the craters of prior exploded bombs, and more. There is, in the back of your mind, the gnawing feeling that the fates are rolling the dice whenever you start to drive down a street. How many patrols have I done? I can't begin to count.
Page 83 has some good writing on our perception on how we spoil everything we touch. This ties into some thinking I have and also might tie in with something I read in another book by Haidt on purity and such (some earlier entry, I dont' remeber) and perhaps it might bear fruit to look at this more in depth from a psychological perspective. What could Positive Psychology say about this?
After I got the call that the book had arrived I went to get it and then sat down at the coffee shop to read. After reading for a while I stopped to write. Very rough stuff to follow, transcribed out of my paper journal.
Page 4. Recovery happens only in community. Two people are not a community. Erich Maria Remarque's exerpt from the book "The Road Back" is a good example of our attitudes on getting back from war. It is on page 11 and 12.
There is great distinction between the Thumos (great hearted spirit/ heart) and the Gaster (greedy, demanding, uncultivated/ belly) of our heroes/veterans/soldiers on page 12.
Page 14. When Odysseus is in the court and the bar sings a song of Troy it brings Odysseus to tears. But to the 'civilians' it is the same as all the other tales... ENTERTAINMENT.
Odysseus doesn't talk about the war at Troy with people who show themselves incapable of hearing the stories with their heart.
Feel that ache? That subtle, almost inperceptable tingling in your arms... under your skin. Your heart feels made out of lead and you are balanced between explosive action, running away or outburst of exclamation, and roling up into a ball, shutting off the outside world. Think of a lover who has scorned you, out of the blue and without reason. Think of a dear family member who died all too soon and without knowing the depth of your love.... that sense of lost opportunity, wasted time, of injustice. Remember when you lost your job and didn't know where to go next? Creditors calling you and the sense of shame that seemed to define who you really are. Can you feel that desire, the pressing need to weep with your full weight of your soul? to let out all the anguish and dread that is drowning you in hope that you can breathe? That in weeping you can also protest the fates with all the righteousness a heartbroken soul can muster?
How can the stoic soldier, the providing father, the hero of untarnished virtue, the savior, feel such weakness? How can the brave, the best of our generation, the hope and pride of a country, express these emotions? We aren't the only heroes. Single parents working two jobs, an ICU nurse who comfortss the sick and dying, the police officer who arrests the drunk driver before a deadly crash, and more... Part of their identities of these heroes have, by definition, their care, their heart, the love for another, their selfless service to their community, a community that at times transcends even when it is rooted firmly in their local community. What of the soldier? We kill. We are the purveyors of death. We rip and maim and hurt and destroy. As a religious minded person might ask, what loving god can be a destroyer, what god of mercy can invent a place called hell, so too we ask of ourselves. for we've ridden through hell... we've gleefully unleashed the power in our arms and cunning of our mind in all its hellish fury. We've struck out with reckless abandon with Ares in all his bloodthirsty gluttony, only to find ourselves asking why in the periods of calm therafter. What hero, what human of goodness and virtue can so easily, happily, wantonly kill and still be called good?
Think this a question of no importance and you are not asking it with heart. Imagine seeing a parent with a child at a public event. The child acts up and the parent slaps the child in the face in response. You do not stop to wonder if the parent is stressed from a multitude of things, like two jobs and a foreclosures on the house with a dying parent in the hospital. No. Likely you see the person, at lest initially with your emotional/moral sense, as being bad and possibly a bad parent. It is a natural, gut reaction, an emotional judgment made in the blink of an eye. We are hardwired to do this. This same hardwired emotional/moral judging is done by ourselves in our own histories every day.
Ask the question... what good and decent person kills (when the killer is you)?
page 39. To be really home is to be emotionally present and engaged.
page 74. you have sex but you don't have intimacy. We live in a hell that is ours alone and we dont want to drag her into it, so we live in there alone and cut off intimacy. With a life partner you want to be able to share everything with her. You can't even come close, she has enver experienced anything like that. Her image is that a man goes off to fight, you're strong, you come home and you build your life. You have the reality.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment