1917 has been designated one of ten most spiritually literate films of 2019
What about the Thrill of Killing?
"Empathy involves being aware of and sensitive to the feelings and situation of another person so that you have an experience of life as that person would know it. A few weeks ago, we recommended doing empathy practices with the children of Iraq. Now it's time to take our practice to the battlefield and empathize with the soldiers." (Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice)
When you feel what a soldier feels, you certainly feel the suffering, fear, and anguish. But all soldiers will tell you that, in order to prepare for war, you must desensitive yourself, learning not to empathize with the enemy. And some also report they are taught to experience, even enjoy, bloodlust: that is, the joy of killing. If we are loving people, should we 'know' these feelings, too, experiencing them as the soldier experiences them?
If we are of an open and relational outlook on life, it gets even more complicated. We may place our trust in an encompassing Love whose very essence includes empathy. We may, in the words of Thomas Oord, understand love as sympathetic response to others.
We will then ask: In God's empathy for the soldier, is God aware of and sensitive to the emotional anaesthesia of turning another person into a mere object? And is God likewise aware of and sensitive to feelings of bloodlust? Does God know these feelings and understand them, not only intellectually but emotionally? Does God know the thrill of killing?
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Consider the peacemakers of the world. It is difficult for peacemakers to acknowledge that desensitization to violence and an enjoyment of the thrill of killing can be part of a soldier's experience. And it can be even more difficult for them to acknowledge that they, too, have such capacities. And yet, without such acknowledgment, they -- we -- are hiding from the reality of the soldier's experience and from the reality of our own. We are not in harmony with who we are. We hide behind a mask of purity, all in the name of an overly-sentimental love of peace.
Consider also God whose very heart is love. It is also difficult for us to imaging a God of love as knowing these feelings. We want God to be pure, too.
But surely God, too, must know what it is like to enjoy killing another, even as God knows what it is like to be the other who is killed. Not to say God approves of the bloodlust, or shares in it. But God knows the joy of it: both the thrill and the pain. God is, as Whitehead puts it, a fellow sufferer who understands. Only if God knows this momentary joy, feeling its thrilling intensity, can God truly understand.
It is in the spirit of believing in this kind of God that we believers might consider watching war movies as a spiritual practice. We watch because we want to be honest about ourselves and because we want to be fellow sufferers who understand. We want our own love to be full-blown, not hiding from anything, so that we might become vessels of a peace for which all hearts yearn.
-- Jay McDaniel
When you feel what a soldier feels, you certainly feel the suffering, fear, and anguish. But all soldiers will tell you that, in order to prepare for war, you must desensitive yourself, learning not to empathize with the enemy. And some also report they are taught to experience, even enjoy, bloodlust: that is, the joy of killing. If we are loving people, should we 'know' these feelings, too, experiencing them as the soldier experiences them?
If we are of an open and relational outlook on life, it gets even more complicated. We may place our trust in an encompassing Love whose very essence includes empathy. We may, in the words of Thomas Oord, understand love as sympathetic response to others.
We will then ask: In God's empathy for the soldier, is God aware of and sensitive to the emotional anaesthesia of turning another person into a mere object? And is God likewise aware of and sensitive to feelings of bloodlust? Does God know these feelings and understand them, not only intellectually but emotionally? Does God know the thrill of killing?
*
Consider the peacemakers of the world. It is difficult for peacemakers to acknowledge that desensitization to violence and an enjoyment of the thrill of killing can be part of a soldier's experience. And it can be even more difficult for them to acknowledge that they, too, have such capacities. And yet, without such acknowledgment, they -- we -- are hiding from the reality of the soldier's experience and from the reality of our own. We are not in harmony with who we are. We hide behind a mask of purity, all in the name of an overly-sentimental love of peace.
Consider also God whose very heart is love. It is also difficult for us to imaging a God of love as knowing these feelings. We want God to be pure, too.
But surely God, too, must know what it is like to enjoy killing another, even as God knows what it is like to be the other who is killed. Not to say God approves of the bloodlust, or shares in it. But God knows the joy of it: both the thrill and the pain. God is, as Whitehead puts it, a fellow sufferer who understands. Only if God knows this momentary joy, feeling its thrilling intensity, can God truly understand.
It is in the spirit of believing in this kind of God that we believers might consider watching war movies as a spiritual practice. We watch because we want to be honest about ourselves and because we want to be fellow sufferers who understand. We want our own love to be full-blown, not hiding from anything, so that we might become vessels of a peace for which all hearts yearn.
-- Jay McDaniel
Watching War Movies
as a Spiritual Practice
Excerpt from the Courage for Peace: Daring to Create Harmony in Ourselves and the World (Conari Press, 2000) by Louise Diamond, offered in Spirituality and Practice
"We each need to discover our own relationship with violence. Even if we hold a strong moral or ethical view about the importance of nonviolence, we need to come to terms with our own experiences of frustration and rage that can turn into violent action. I discovered this through an intense and difficult process.
In order to deal with this aversion to violence, I decided to psychologically desensitize myself. I spent a year going to every war movie I could ever find, and reading stacks of soldiers' memoirs and true life accounts of wartime adventures. I didn't limit myself only to the tales of soldiers. I also read about the experiences of doctors and nurses, bystanders and victims, leaders and followers.
At first I would have to leave the theater in the middle of the film or close the book partway through. Gradually, I was able to stay to the end, without running away. I began to come to terms with the experience of violence, and the profound damage it does to all the parties involved.
There came a time when I noticed a slight shift over some invisible boundary, when I started to feel inside myself the thrill of the kill that was portrayed in these books and movies. It was subtle at first, but eventually I had to admit that I was having a visceral experience of what people call bloodlust. I could understand the rush, the heightened state that some soldiers described, as they poured the power of destruction onto the 'enemy.'
I could also experience the fear of the firefight, the terror of the trenches or the night patrol, the horror of seeing your friends blown apart beside you, and how that horror could be translated into unthinking brutality against fellow human beings. At the same time, I came to relate to the desire and willingness to live through this kind of nightmare for the greater good — the intention to serve and protect the people. When I came to know in myself this range of emotions and possibilities, I met the warrior within, with all her potential for violence and for service, and I was humbled."
- Louise Diamond
Becoming More Informed
"Eight million people died in World War I. It was a shattering historical event which transformed the manner of war more than any prior war. In a very real sense, it taught the world that if conflicts are to be settled by war, the means they use to do it will be constantly changing. Thus a movie like 1917 gives viewers opportunities to reflect on the face of war and practice empathy with those suffering through it." So write Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat in their review of 1917. Then they offer links for considering many topics, including:
- Life in the Trenches: Letters from the Trenches
- The Permanent War Economy: Review of America at War with Itself
- The Warfare Welfare State: The corruption of American values (article in The Nation)
- New Technological Weapons of War: Drone Warfare and Cyber Warfare
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