What is it like to go to war? What does the experience have to teach us, and could it in any way be a spiritual endeavor? What does the Temple of Mars have to teach us in a climate-changing world?

Karl Marlantes is a Rhodes Scholar who put aside graduate studies at Oxford University to lead a Marine rifle platoon in Vietnam in 1968. He is featured extensively in the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary series, The Vietnam War. His memoir, What It Is Like to Go to War, and novel, Matterhorn, address what we ask our nation’s young warriors to do from within a cultural environment that denies the multifaceted truth of what it means to be a warrior. His recent novels Deep River and Cold Victory address big questions of agency and what it means to recognize oneself as a historical actor.

Is combat terrifying? Exhilarating? Mystical? Carnal? Is it everything all at once? If we only acknowledge the experience as negative, how might that cause repression and misunderstanding in a world unlikely to leave war behind permanently?

If climate change is not successfully addressed as soon as possible, the geopolitical situation may become more rivalrous and difficult. We need to understand the nature of war, of our relationship to our shadow, in order to chart an honest course to a better future.

Resources

Ken Burns & Lynn Novick's The Vietnam War series

Karl Marlantes' books:

- Matterhorn

- What It Is Like to Go to War

The shadow in psychoanalysis

Leo Tolstoy

Cincinnatus

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