{"id":12714,"date":"2026-04-05T21:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T01:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/kahlil-gibrans-moving-letter-to-a-soldier-in-a-senseless-war-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T21:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T01:45:09","slug":"kahlil-gibrans-moving-letter-to-a-soldier-in-a-senseless-war-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/kahlil-gibrans-moving-letter-to-a-soldier-in-a-senseless-war-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Kahlil Gibran\u2019s Moving Letter to a Soldier in a Senseless War \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

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\"Sentinels<\/a><\/p>\n

War is an ism \u2014 nationalism, dogmatism, capitalism \u2014 paid for by an is: the living beingness of human beings made a sacrificial offering to an ideology so powerful it has quelled the two things that make us most human: compassion and critical thinking. <\/p>\n

\u201cThose people who see clearly the necessity of changed thinking must themselves undertake the discipline of thinking in new ways and must persuade others to do so,\u201d the visionary Kathleen Lonsdale wrote in what remains the most lucid and luminous manifesto for how peace becomes possible<\/a>. Few have seen this more clearly or articulated its cruel absurdity more persuasively than the Lebanese-American poet and philosopher Kahlil Gibran<\/a> (January 6, 1883\u2013April 10, 1931) in one of the meditations included in The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 the wonderful collection of essays and poems drawn from Gibran\u2019s Arabic writings about the spiritual life, never before available in English.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Kahlil Gibran<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Addressing personally and with great tenderness the individual soldier fighting the impersonal war, he writes:<\/p>\n

\n

You are my brother, and I love you\u2026 Why then\u2026 do you come to my country and try to subdue me, in order to please leaders who seek glory by exploiting your words and happiness by appropriating the fruits of your labors? Why do you forsake your wife and little ones, following death to a remote land for the sake of commanders who wish to buy high rank with your blood and great honor with the grief of your parents? But is it high honor for a human being to make war on his brother?<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

I have seen those ambitious for prestige attempt to instill in you a love of self-sacrifice, in order to make slaves of your brothers. They say that the desire to survive requires an attack on the rights of others. And I say, \u201cSafeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Anchoring the present in the past, evolutionary and cultural, he considers the cost \u2014 always the same across the aeons and epochs \u2014 of this dangerous delusion:<\/p>\n

\n

Egotism, my brother, was the origin of blind competition, and competition generated group loyalty, and group loyalty founded political power, which in turn became a motive for strife and enslavement. The soul asserts the rule of wisdom and justice over ignorance and tyranny, and it rejects the authority that extracts from mines knives and blades with which to spread folly and oppression. This is the political power that devastated Babylon, razed Jerusalem to its foundations, and pulled down Rome\u2019s edifices.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Questioning why a human being would cede their humanity to serve \u201cthe nationalists\u201d who \u201cinaugurated bloodshed and killing,\u201d he adds:<\/p>\n

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What has impelled you, O my brother\u2026 to be devoted to the one who harms you? True power is the wisdom that protects the universal, just, natural law. Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

You are my brother, and I love you, and love is justice in the most sublime of its manifestations.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Couple with C.S. Lewis, writing in the middle of a world war, on our task in turbulent times<\/a>, then revisit Gibran on the building blocks of friendship<\/a>, how to raise children<\/a>, how to weather the uncertainties of love<\/a>, and his recipe for our spiritual perfection as a species<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

War is an ism \u2014 nationalism, dogmatism, capitalism \u2014 paid for by an is: the living beingness of human beings made a sacrificial offering to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}