“Never, with an aching Heart I say it, never did the warlike Spirit burn with so intense a flame throughout the civilized World as at this moment.”* That is not a quotation from the twenty-first century. Those are the words of John Quincy Adams, written to his mother in 1812. Adams was in Russia. In his estimation the whole world was at war. And he was right, of course, because there’s no time in history when the world hasn’t been at war. Adams also told his mother, “Never was the prospect of its [the warlike Spirit] continuing to burn and becoming still fiercer, so terrible as now.”
Those who experience war personally are often horrified by its visible effects. Adams knew personally the destruction Napoleon had wrought upon Russia, and as an articulate observer of his world was aware of multiple simultaneous conflicts. Those who experience war personally are often affected by their experience throughout their lives. I think of all those who served heroically in World War II who, now in their eighties and nineties, suffer from depression or unspecific anger without knowing the cause: Horrors tucked away in a youthful brain now subtly emerging in old age.
We live in a rather enlightened time with respect to human psychological maladies. One of those is PTSD, a condition unrecognized before the twentieth century. Yes, people around those suffering knew something was wrong. “Shell shock” was one of the terms used after WWI and during WWII. But think of what Adams said. In the early nineteenth century war was rampant. Did not many of those soldiers also suffer PTSD? Go back further through the many wars in Europe to the wars in the Middle East to those in Africa, Asia, South and Central America, and those between the peoples of North America long before Columbus. Even beautiful Hawaii knew warfare. Why else were there weapons with which to kill Captain Cook?
The “warlike Spirit” is among the most persistent of human entities. Nothing seems to put out the fires of its burning. It is pervasive, so much so that we can see it in everyday crimes against the innocent, such as home invasions. Maybe some form of PTSD is a universal condition with which we all must deal.
If you have been in some personal war, your neurons might still hold its ravages. Know that you aren’t the first to suffer and that you won’t be the last. That in itself is not a consolation, but it is an indication that maybe all of us share in human tragedy, tragedy that extends to our beginnings—and probably into our prehumen ancestors. We might not be able to overcome completely the emotional effects of the “warlike Spirit,” but in understanding it, we come closer to knowing what role it has played in our lives and in the lives of others, even those who preceded us.
Recognizing and understanding empowers us, and that applies to traumas we have experienced.
*Letter of John Quincy Adams to his mother, dated October 24, 1812. Gutenberg Project http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54545/54545-h/54545-h.htm
Those who experience war personally are often horrified by its visible effects. Adams knew personally the destruction Napoleon had wrought upon Russia, and as an articulate observer of his world was aware of multiple simultaneous conflicts. Those who experience war personally are often affected by their experience throughout their lives. I think of all those who served heroically in World War II who, now in their eighties and nineties, suffer from depression or unspecific anger without knowing the cause: Horrors tucked away in a youthful brain now subtly emerging in old age.
We live in a rather enlightened time with respect to human psychological maladies. One of those is PTSD, a condition unrecognized before the twentieth century. Yes, people around those suffering knew something was wrong. “Shell shock” was one of the terms used after WWI and during WWII. But think of what Adams said. In the early nineteenth century war was rampant. Did not many of those soldiers also suffer PTSD? Go back further through the many wars in Europe to the wars in the Middle East to those in Africa, Asia, South and Central America, and those between the peoples of North America long before Columbus. Even beautiful Hawaii knew warfare. Why else were there weapons with which to kill Captain Cook?
The “warlike Spirit” is among the most persistent of human entities. Nothing seems to put out the fires of its burning. It is pervasive, so much so that we can see it in everyday crimes against the innocent, such as home invasions. Maybe some form of PTSD is a universal condition with which we all must deal.
If you have been in some personal war, your neurons might still hold its ravages. Know that you aren’t the first to suffer and that you won’t be the last. That in itself is not a consolation, but it is an indication that maybe all of us share in human tragedy, tragedy that extends to our beginnings—and probably into our prehumen ancestors. We might not be able to overcome completely the emotional effects of the “warlike Spirit,” but in understanding it, we come closer to knowing what role it has played in our lives and in the lives of others, even those who preceded us.
Recognizing and understanding empowers us, and that applies to traumas we have experienced.
*Letter of John Quincy Adams to his mother, dated October 24, 1812. Gutenberg Project http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54545/54545-h/54545-h.htm
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