War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press have turned war into a vast video arcade game. Its very essence-death-is hidden from public view.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the desensitization of society towards war, viewing it as entertainment rather than a grave reality.
Chris Hedges's quote reveals how modern society has come to perceive war through a lens of distance and detachment, much like watching a game rather than experiencing its harsh realities. The military and media's portrayal of war reduces the actual suffering and death to mere spectacle, obscuring the true human cost and ethical implications of conflict.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about the impact of media on public perception of war.
As long as we think abstractly, as long as we find in patriotism and the exuberance of War our fulfillment, we will never understand those who do battle against us, or how we are perceived by them, or finally those who do battle for us and how we should respond to it all. We will never discover who we are. We will fail to confront the capacity we all have for violence.
The moral nihilism of celebrity culture is played out on reality television shows, most of which encourage a dark voyeurism into other people's humiliation, pain, weakness, and betrayal.
The few surviving Armenians no longer ask to go home. They do not ask for restitution. They ask simply to have the memory of their obliteration acknowledged. It is a moral obsession, the lonely legacy passed onto the third and fourth generation who no longer speak Armenian but who carry within them the seeds of resentment that will not be quashed.
It is better to be an outcast, a stranger in one’s own country, than an outcast from one’s self. It is better to see what is about to befall us and to resist than to retreat into the fantasies embraced by a nation of the blind.
Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history.
There are two sets of principles. They are the principles of power and privilege and the principles of truth and justice. If you pursue truth and justice it will always mean a diminution of power and privilege. If you pursue power and privilege, it will always be at the expense of truth and justice
In North America, the greatest threat to the Jewish people is not the external force of antisemitism, but the internal forces of apathy, inertia and ignorance of our own heritage.
When holy and devout religious men are at their beads, 'tis hard to draw them thence; so sweet is zealous contemplation.
I don't know whether you can look at your past and find, woven like the hidden symbols on a treasure map, the path that will point to your final destination.
We must be convinced that abundance is the natural state of the Universe. To experience and accept abundance in our life, we must be convinced that as we conceive and believe, the Universe handles the details.
We're living in an age of genocide. ...And we do believe that there is not only the genocide of war, and the genocide that took place with the extermination of the Jews, but the whole program....of birth control and abortion is another form of genocide.... [T]hey claim the poor are bringing forth tremendous numbers of children and so the solution is to kill them off.
Being religious without knowing the cross is like owning a Mercedes with no motor. Pretty package, but where is your power?
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