Quote: Chris Hedges on Friendship and Comradeship in "War is Force that Gives Us Meaning"

In War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges (Twitter) explains why the bonds among soldiers are likely comradeship, not friendship.

There are few individual relationships – the only possible way to form friendships – in war. There are not the demands on us that there are in friendships. Veterans try to regain such feelings, but they fall short. Gray wrote that the “essential difference between comradeship and friendship consists, it seems to me, in a heightened awareness of the self in friendship and in the suppression of self-awareness in comradeship.”

Comrades seek to lose their identities in the relationship. Friends do not. “On the contrary, “Gray wrote, “friends find themselves in each other and thereby gain greater self-knowledge and self-possession. They discover in their own breasts, as a consequence of their friendship, hitherto unknown potentialities for joy and understanding.”

The struggle to remain friends, the struggle to explore the often painful recess of two hearts, to reach the deepest parts of another’s being, to integrate our own emotions and desires with the needs of the friend, are challenged by the collective rush of war. There are fewer demands if we join the crowd and give our emotions over to the communal crusade.

The only solace comes from simple acts of kindness. They are the tiny, flickering candles in a cavern of darkness that sustain our common humanity.

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