Guest Post: Thomas Merton

Simone Weil says clearly that the acceptance of war as an unavoidable fatality is the root of the power politician's ruthless and obsessive commitment to violence.

The typology of the Trojan war, "known to every educated man," illustrates this. The only one, Greek or Trojan, who had any interest in Helen was Paris. No one, Greek or Trojan, was fighting for Helen, but for the "real issue" which Helen symbolized. Unfortunately, there was no real issue at all for her to symbolize. both armies, in this war, motivated by symbols without content, which in the case of the Homeric, heroes took the form of gods and myths.

Instead of going to war because the gods have been arguing among themselves, we go because of "secret plots" and sinister combinations, because of political slogans elevated to the dignity of metaphysical absolutes: "our political universe is peopled with myths and monsters--we know nothing there but absolutes." We shed blood for high sounding words spelled out in capital letters. We seek to impart content to them by destroying other men who believe in enemy-words, also in capital letters.

But how can men really be brought to kill each other for what is objectively void? The nothingness of national, class or racial myth must receive an apparent substance, not from intelligible content but from the will to destroy and be destroyed. (We may observer here that the substance of idolatry is the willingness to give reality to metaphysical nothingness by sacrificing to it...).

Thomas Merton "Faith and Violence"