Putting someone else's welfare above your own, its at the heart of combat, but ironically it's also at the heart of much of religious thought.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Strange Bedfellows Indeed
From an interview with Sebastian Junger wrote A Perfect Storm, and was embedded in Afghanistan for a year. Here he is talking about his new book War:
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3 comments:
Strange comment.
I would have thought the *real* heart of combat is trying to end the life of, or incapacitate, someone else.
It's not strange at all. Soldiers in combat, as Junger noted, are willing to risk their lives for each other. That's a sort of selflessness and fellowship that's rare in peacetime outside of religious communities.
Junger's also not the first writer to make the connection. See, for example, the soldier-poet Wilfred Owen's Apologia Pro Poemate Meo
Soldiers are trying first and all to survive. Most soldiers never fire their weapons. Aggression is the last thing in their minds.
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