Social Violence and Open-Hearted Immediacy
Social Violence
NOTE:This chapter is currently just a few notes and quotes.
The Moral Injury by David Brooks.
“Trauma destroys the fabric of time,” David J. Morris writes in his book, “The Evil Hours.”
“People generally don’t suffer high rates of PTSD after natural disasters. Instead, people suffer from PTSD after moral atrocities. Soldiers who’ve endured the depraved world of combat experience their own symptoms. Trauma is an expulsive cataclysm of the soul. ”
“Sherman, who is a philosopher at Georgetown University, emphasizes that most of the work will have to be done at the micro level — through individual conversations between veterans and civilians that go beyond the cheap grace of “thank you for your service.””
Nancy Sherman’s forthcoming “Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of Our Soldiers”; and therapy programs like the one on moral injury found at the San Diego Naval Medical Center.
We live in a culture that emphasizes therapy, but trauma often has to be overcome morally, through rigorous philosophical autobiography, nuanced judgment, case by case.
The predominant ethos of getting what’s ours at the expense of our communities has made a mess of things on all scales. -David Brooks
Cheap grace of “thank you for your service” no different from “sorry for your loss”