What WWI Can Teach Us About the Meaning of Life

Ernst Jünger's most epic battle as a counterpoint to modern meaninglessness

The Course of Empire: Destruction. Thomas Cole. 1836

“May the sons of your enemies live in affluence.” – Antisthenes¹

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I liked to use boulders for cover. There were times when I would lift my eyes over the edge for a brief glance and thousands of splinters of rock and dust would shatter in front of my face from an enemy bullet. At other times, tiny plumes of soil and dried bits of goat feces would rise around me as I sought the safety of a satisfying slab of stone.

When I got home, I found a paradox staring back at me: men and women in war are more likely to ask “How do I live?” while those in affluence are more likely to ask “What is the point of living?” I want to unriddle this paradox because I sense a deep wisdom here.

Nature once dictated our lives with a must. Traditionalist cultures once guided us with an ought. I believe that a core feature of our affluent culture, however, is that we are given neither a must nor an ought, and in this void many are left with a why: Why do we live? Why were we put here? But when the answer is unclear or unsatisfying, the question gets worse: What is the point? This is when life is no longer an adventure to be lived but a cross to be carried. This is a cancer of meaninglessness.

War is a modern remnant of natures must and I believe this makes it a window into our soul. So let us turn to Ernst Jünger. He describes a battle in Fire and Blood.

This mighty battle advanced according to a stop watch. The artillery fire behind the waiting fighters became a glowing “bloody twitch high in the clouds” above them, only to form a “glowing wall” in front of them. Their fight took place beneath a dome of smoke, fire, lightning, and screams.² The infantry’s task was to wage war across the trenches and fields of broken bits of bone and bronze shell casings, staying just inside of this forward rolling “wall of fire and steel” so that the enemy could not get their bearings in time to rise from the trenches and fight.

Jünger could have asked some questions: Why am I trapped between the steel artillery and the fire wall with a satchel of grenades and a deadly enemy? Why must we share bullets and not wine? Why, O God, did you give me life only for this? But he did not because his why was clear: keeping his brothers alive was better than watching them die; inhaling air into his lungs was better than his lungs getting torn to shreds by shrapnel; in sum, life was better than non-life. The closeness of death made why-I-live clear. All that was left was how-I-live.

How, then, did he live? By leaning into the rolling fire. Jünger was so eager to lean into it that he ran into it: “As I turn around, I realize that I am already in the middle of our fire. Not only is it spraying up in front of me, but also beside and behind me, coal-black, milk-white, nitrogen-brown, spicy-yellow, and fire-red. I have been too heated; but jumping back now seems even more precarious. So I decide to lie still and wait for the roller to advance again.” His how was to lean into chaos, to be of use to others, and to reduce his world to this exact second in time, treating it as seriously as if it were his last. His how was to find poetry in existence, even in war.

What then? The trenchmen took what they could not control — why are the clouds lit with red flame? why is a wall of fire illuminating the horizon? why do the bullets snap? why do the wounded scream? why do I exist? — and placed it aside. They then leaned into what they could control – how to zigzag under fire and how to save a friend, as well as how to savor the stash stumbled upon in an enemy trench at the end of the day: black cacao, red jam, white bread, slabs of ham, and a dry bit of earth to sleep on.

I sense a hidden irony here. What might an affluent culture turn into if a large enough share of its population becomes disenchanted with existence? My hunch is that those with a weak answer to why-I-live are more likely to burn the world down than those with a strong answer to how-I-live. They are terrified of the empty pit inside, so they do not look within; but if they do not look within, they must look without; but when they look without, a two-bit tyrant will surely promise them meaning in the form of a glorious Purpose, a Cause, or a Movement, and they just might find themselves crawling on knees and elbows through trenches and under barbed wire. It is as if they subconsciously crave the most simple and savage gift of war – the pleasure of realizing that they are alive when they could have died a few minutes ago, the relief of not having the time to ruminate on the past or the future. Suddenly the setting sun in its pool of purple and pink and orange across the horizon appears beautiful. Suddenly life is worth living. Can it be that those who seek a why — any why, and at any cost — solely in terror of the empty pit in their stomachs are those who start World Wars? And is it those with a strong how who wind up fighting and dying in them? Is this prophetic? Or is it merely history?

So much for our paradox that life can feel worthless in heating and air conditioning and yet so nice to have while sprinting through puddles of mud and blood and bits of whistling metal.

What then does affluence reveal about the human condition? The thousand abstract reasons why we exist are apparently not enough. Let us look to nature. She has no patience for an affluent ape bored out of its wits and expecting some profound meaning to arise from within. She mercilessly makes the why-I-live clear, which then orients our minds to how-I-live — to innovate on the how, play with the how, savor the how, sweat for the how, and maybe even live for the how. Life, as Jünger showed us, is a matter of poetry. What then do we learn of ourselves? We are built for an epic, gritty, self-transcending struggle. We are not built for its absence: an absence of fang, of fear, of fatigue, of freezing, of famine, of fire roller; we were not built for affluence. I believe the world we have inherited requires training.

What then? How can we train for affluence?

There is a shared truth among the men and women I know who have walked off a killing field, out of the wilderness, or away from tyranny. Once they witness how quickly every luxury imaginable can be taken for granted, it becomes clear that affluence murders gratitude.

What might some wild-eyed trenchman say to those who cannot quite deal with existence? This is worth an epic gratitude ode. Let us lean into it: Can you not be grateful that you are alive when so many have met their end in a godforsaken trench? Can you not be grateful for a lack of war and for your family’s safety from the black plumes of the fire roller? Can you not be grateful for the taste of cacao, for the leisure to obsess over a painting or a book or a song, and for the stars above a wood fire? Can you not drop down to your knees in gratitude that how you live is more important than why you live, and that it is entirely up to you to lean into each and every single day of your life as we leaned into an inferno of fire and steel and death?

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1. As related by Diogenes Laertius.

2. Jünger, Ernst. Fire and Blood. 1925. Independently published.