Reviews for Biobehavioral Resilience to Stress

The average rating for Biobehavioral Resilience to Stress based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-11-15 00:00:00 James Farber My first insight into man's inhumanity to man came to me as a seventeen year old one evening in Amersham, a well off London dormitory suburb. I was standing in queue after pub-closing time, waiting to buy a kebab. I had joined the queue behind two girls out for the evening. In front of them was a drunk looking hard man and in front of him a guy, let's call him the victim, who was just about to take a bite out of a gently steaming, newly purchased kebab. Without warning the hard man punched the victim on the side of his face and pushed him to the ground - a completely unprovoked assault right in front of my eyes. It was one of those moments when instinct told me to act immediately. I stepped forward next to the prettiest of the two girls and started trying to chat her up. "Look at that disgusting brute", I was about to say, hoping to contrast my sophisticated fine-dining self favorably against this vicious thug. The look of blissful excitement on her face stopped me from speaking. "Go on, hit him harder" she shouted. The best way to say it is that she was aroused. I cannot pretend that my opinion of women did not drop at that moment, albeit from an unrealistically high level. I choked back my chat up line and did what any nerdy, middle-class Englishman would do in the situation. While the girl was distracted I stepped around her to the front of the queue and ordered a large kebab. It was a valuable life lesson. Not everyone shares my high-minded, if rarely acted upon, set of moral values. I have since learnt that there are crimes against humanity far greater than a punch up in front of a kebab van. I have also learnt that humanity's response to them has often not been much better than that of the girl I wanted to chat up. I have never come close to experiencing a war directly. The Cold War ended when I was old enough to serve in a hot war but now I am too old serve in any war, except as one of those desperate militia that always seem to be called up when the war is about to be lost. I count myself very lucky but also think I owe it to people not so as lucky as I to understand what they have experienced of war So with that view in mind I am fortunate that Chris Hedges has spent much of his life descending into war's dark pit and truthfully reporting what he found there. The truth of war is not a pretty sight and he doesn't spare us the details. Take this report on the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars: "...it is estimated that more than a million bushels of human and inhuman bones were imported…[from the battlefields of Europe and used as fertilizer]...They have been shipped to the port of Hull and thence forwarded to Yorkshire bone grinders who have erected steam engines and powerful machinery for the purposes of reducing them to a granulary state…". The truth of Hedges basic thesis on the nature of war is self evident: War is a myth, a collective delusion constructed around false narratives which is exploited by criminals, psychopaths and the very worst of us for their own ends: "...They are manufactured wars, born out of the collapse of civil societies, perpetrated by fear, greed and paranoia, and they are run by gangsters, who rise up from the bottom of their own societies and terrorize all, including those they purport to protect…" How different is Dick Cheney, adding up the value of his Halliburton stock options after a hard day's golf, from Arkan, one of the Serbian gangsters promoting the Balkan war, who spends his money on nightclubs and strippers. The difference is down only to scale and preferred leisure time activities. What is the myth of war constructed on? The "Plague of Nationalism" -the title of one of the book's chapters - and the exaggeration of ethnic differences and historical wrongs. Nationalist and ethnic conflicts are often myths sustained by absurdities and almost imperceptible nuances within society: "...there were heated debates over the origin of gingerbread hearts...The Croats insisted that the cookies were Croatian. The Serbs angrily countered that the cookies were Serbian . The suggestion to one ethnic group that gingerbread hearts were invented by the other ethnic group could start a fight…" Sadly historians, the media, archaeologists and others that should know better help to sell these myths without caring about the consequences: "..Those who seek meaning in patriotism do not want to hear the truth of war, wary of bursting the bubble…" And what of those in opposition to the myth of war? The collective failure of the US media to challenge the lies that sustained the second war in Iraq are a fresh example. "...Those voices within the ethnic group or the nation that question the state's lust and need for war are targeted. These dissidents are the most dangerous. They give us an alternative language...one that recognises the humanity of the enemy…". The damage done after ethnic hatreds are stirred into a war is not easily undone. Kurdish captives speak after liberating their prison from their Iraqi guards: "....We wanted them all to come back to life...so we could kill them again…" My first experience of human cruelty was limited to a dust up in a kebab queue and that was enough for me. But I think it is the moral duty of every person to understand the evils perpetrated during war. So I owe Chris Hedges an enormous debt for having done the dirty work for me. I am glad and, based on some of the places he went, also a little surprised he survived the trip to report back. "The military histories - which tell little of war's reality- crowd out the wrenching tales by the emotionally maimed. Each generation again responds to war as innocents. Each generation discovers its own disillusionment - often after a terrible price…" I wonder whether my children are old enough to avoid serving in a war? The odds are looking good for the oldest one but not quite as favorable for the younger. But if either of them show any hints of believing the war myth I will leave my copy of Chris Hedges book by their bedside table. A few nightmares are worth it for the chance to save their lives.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-08-21 00:00:00 Carlos Bello Read this book to be disturbed. The author is a seasoned war correspondent who's been in the thick of warfare from El Salvador and Guatemala to Iraq and Bosnia. It is an anti-war treatise by a man who admits being addicted to war. Hedges describes that he is "hooked" on the narcotic of war, on the rush that it gives. It's a world where power is all that matters. The meek do not inherit the Earth; they are murdered, and then often mutilated. The book is a philosophical inquiry into What War Is. It feels like it gives meaning to the lives of the men fighting it, he says, but it does so by playing to our most animal instincts, and by obscuring and numbing all that make our regular lives joyful. And by destroying individualism, turning people into objects, and life into a myth. I read the book with a yellow highlighter in one hand, to mark the passages that really stuck with me. One: "The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. . . . It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble." (page 3) Another: "Most of those who are thrust into combat soon find it impossible to maintain the mythic perception of war. . . . Wars that lose their mythic stature for the public, such as Korea or Vietnam, are doomed to failure, for war is exposed for what it is - organized murder." (page 21) Here is a description of what war does to us: Our minds, our culture, our love of our fellow man. It makes us lie to ourselves and to each other. The book was published in 2002, after the 9/11 attacks, and just on the eve of America's invasion of Iraq. It describes how a culture can censor itself into believing a great cause and squash the speech of any who disagree (e.g., Scott Ritter, or The Dixie Chicks). Another quote: "By destroying authentic culture - that which allows us to question and examine ourselves and our society - the state erodes the moral fabric. It is replaced with a warped version of reality. The enemy is dehumanized; the universe starkly divided between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. . . . Cultural or national symbols that do not support the crusade are often ruthlessly removed." (page 63) Genocide, ethnic cleansing, mutilation, the killing of innocents; it is all the side of war unseen to those supporting it. The war is enabled by myth, and the myth is a lie. The lie is captivating and grabs us all. Every nation feels like it is fighting the ultimate evil, and they have no choice but to defeat it. The war will only end when the lie has collapsed under overwhelming evidence - hard-fought, over a long time. All that is left when the lie disappears is guilt, and shame, and the holes in people's lives where loved ones used to be. And the anger of the victims: The seeds of the next war.