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The Devastating Impact of a Broken Society | Why Hurt People Hurt People, narrated by Chris Hedges, takes a powerful look at how systemic disconnection and social breakdown lead to cycles of pain and destruction. In this compelling video, Hedges examines the root causes of trauma, revealing how societal neglect fosters despair, violence, and self-destruction. Through poignant insights, he uncovers how the loss of meaningful work, community, and dignity drives individuals to harm themselves and others.
Hedges explores how deindustrialization and the erosion of social infrastructure have devastated working-class communities, leaving millions alienated and disconnected. He paints a vivid picture of a society that denies people avenues to self-actualize, stripping them of the dignity needed to thrive. In the vacuum left behind, addiction, violence, and hate take root—symptoms of a deeper societal rupture that prioritizes profit and control over human well-being.
Through examples such as the opioid epidemic, broken urban centers, and the collapse of unions, Hedges highlights how these structural failings perpetuate trauma and create a vicious cycle. Those who inflict harm are often responding to their own unacknowledged pain, acting out of a profound sense of loss and self-destruction. This powerful narrative challenges us to confront the systemic roots of harm rather than treating its symptoms.
The Devastating Impact of a Broken Society is both a critique of systemic inequality and a call to action. Chris Hedges emphasizes the urgent need to reinvest in people and rebuild the social bonds that nurture humanity. This video is essential viewing for those seeking to understand the deeper causes of societal dysfunction and explore pathways toward healing and transformation.
At its core, trauma is about the inability to feel. It’s being cut off from your own humanity and the humanity of others. What is it that drives groups and individuals to carry out acts of self destruction, self annihilation?
When people are completely cornered and the only way they feel they can affirm themselves is to destroy, they will.
This rupture of social bonds – people are pushed outside the system. So that all of the ways that they can actualize themself, find dignity within the social structure are denied to them, and they essentially affirm themselves through destructive acts.
Work is not simply about exchanging labor for a wage. Work is about family. It’s about being able to live within the society with dignity. We’ve taken that away from the working class, especially with the destruction of unions and deindustrialization.
All the manufacturing has been offshored.
Much of my family comes from working class Maine and the mills are all gone. Even the bank is boarded up. There’s methamphetamine labs everywhere.
Camden, New Jersey was a hundred years ago a huge manufacturing center. RCA was there. Campbell Soup, which still has a headquarters, but they don’t make soup there. And now the population is cut in half. And essentially what we see in these urban centers is that inability to be integrated within the society.
The opioid crisis, alcoholism, gambling, suicide, hate groups are an inevitable response to the rupture of social bonds. That’s because those who seek the annihilation of others are driven by feelings of self annihilation.
We have to rebuild the social infrastructure. It really comes down to investing in people, not into systems of control.
Christopher Hedges is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, author and television host. Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, West Asia, Africa, the Middle East (he is fluent in Arabic), and the Balkans. He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times,[2] where he was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years (1990–2005) serving as the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the war in the former Yugoslavia.
“Beautiful and well said as always Chris Hedges…”
“Investing into people 👍👍”
“Chris Hedges is the prophet of our time in the US. A man whose writings and descriptions and analysis is profound and simple. His understanding, integrity and commitment to truth, beauty, civil and human rights are lived. He speaks truth to power and he moves the spirit of all that listen. A great man. I love you Chris… You are as Auden wrote… An ironic flash of light where just people gather.. As the good draw to themselves the good…. You are an inspiration to millions my friend.. Long may your voice be heard..”
“We are people not commodities to be thrown away when they the governing or corporate elite feel we are no longer useful to them”
“Hurting others is a viscous cycle. Humans don’t come into the world as haters they were abused /hurt so they feel better about their fear and low self esteem by hurting others. Just…like… that!”
“Chris is a national treasure, He should be running this country………”
“When a beaten dog bites, nobody blames the dog. When a human being, who is much more emotionally and psychologically complex than that dog does the same thing, suddenly we blame the human being. Maybe people need to stop treating each other like garbage. Maybe human beings should stop dehumanising each other. When you dehumanize someone, when you tell them they are less than human, how can they possibly commit anything other than inhuman acts? That’s all they were ever taught to be.”
“if we as a race are to survive on this earth than we must stop the global elites.”
“the fact that the western world is ramping up systems of control kinda gives you a sense of where this is headed. none of this is about racism, sexism, transphobia, covid, etc. it’s about the richest people on the planet not giving any shits about you and me and they want us gone.”
“Chris Hedges is a moral leader.”
For more from the speaker, visit his website.
Music credits:
The Devastating Impact of a Broken Society | Why Hurt People Hurt People, narrated by Chris Hedges, takes a powerful look at how systemic disconnection and social breakdown lead to cycles of pain and destruction. In this compelling video, Hedges examines the root causes of trauma, revealing how societal neglect fosters despair, violence, and self-destruction. Through poignant insights, he uncovers how the loss of meaningful work, community, and dignity drives individuals to harm themselves and others.
Hedges explores how deindustrialization and the erosion of social infrastructure have devastated working-class communities, leaving millions alienated and disconnected. He paints a vivid picture of a society that denies people avenues to self-actualize, stripping them of the dignity needed to thrive. In the vacuum left behind, addiction, violence, and hate take root—symptoms of a deeper societal rupture that prioritizes profit and control over human well-being.
Through examples such as the opioid epidemic, broken urban centers, and the collapse of unions, Hedges highlights how these structural failings perpetuate trauma and create a vicious cycle. Those who inflict harm are often responding to their own unacknowledged pain, acting out of a profound sense of loss and self-destruction. This powerful narrative challenges us to confront the systemic roots of harm rather than treating its symptoms.
The Devastating Impact of a Broken Society is both a critique of systemic inequality and a call to action. Chris Hedges emphasizes the urgent need to reinvest in people and rebuild the social bonds that nurture humanity. This video is essential viewing for those seeking to understand the deeper causes of societal dysfunction and explore pathways toward healing and transformation.
At its core, trauma is about the inability to feel. It’s being cut off from your own humanity and the humanity of others. What is it that drives groups and individuals to carry out acts of self destruction, self annihilation?
When people are completely cornered and the only way they feel they can affirm themselves is to destroy, they will.
This rupture of social bonds – people are pushed outside the system. So that all of the ways that they can actualize themself, find dignity within the social structure are denied to them, and they essentially affirm themselves through destructive acts.
Work is not simply about exchanging labor for a wage. Work is about family. It’s about being able to live within the society with dignity. We’ve taken that away from the working class, especially with the destruction of unions and deindustrialization.
All the manufacturing has been offshored.
Much of my family comes from working class Maine and the mills are all gone. Even the bank is boarded up. There’s methamphetamine labs everywhere.
Camden, New Jersey was a hundred years ago a huge manufacturing center. RCA was there. Campbell Soup, which still has a headquarters, but they don’t make soup there. And now the population is cut in half. And essentially what we see in these urban centers is that inability to be integrated within the society.
The opioid crisis, alcoholism, gambling, suicide, hate groups are an inevitable response to the rupture of social bonds. That’s because those who seek the annihilation of others are driven by feelings of self annihilation.
We have to rebuild the social infrastructure. It really comes down to investing in people, not into systems of control.
Christopher Hedges is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, author and television host. Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, West Asia, Africa, the Middle East (he is fluent in Arabic), and the Balkans. He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times,[2] where he was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years (1990–2005) serving as the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the war in the former Yugoslavia.
“Beautiful and well said as always Chris Hedges…”
“Investing into people 👍👍”
“Chris Hedges is the prophet of our time in the US. A man whose writings and descriptions and analysis is profound and simple. His understanding, integrity and commitment to truth, beauty, civil and human rights are lived. He speaks truth to power and he moves the spirit of all that listen. A great man. I love you Chris… You are as Auden wrote… An ironic flash of light where just people gather.. As the good draw to themselves the good…. You are an inspiration to millions my friend.. Long may your voice be heard..”
“We are people not commodities to be thrown away when they the governing or corporate elite feel we are no longer useful to them”
“Hurting others is a viscous cycle. Humans don’t come into the world as haters they were abused /hurt so they feel better about their fear and low self esteem by hurting others. Just…like… that!”
“Chris is a national treasure, He should be running this country………”
“When a beaten dog bites, nobody blames the dog. When a human being, who is much more emotionally and psychologically complex than that dog does the same thing, suddenly we blame the human being. Maybe people need to stop treating each other like garbage. Maybe human beings should stop dehumanising each other. When you dehumanize someone, when you tell them they are less than human, how can they possibly commit anything other than inhuman acts? That’s all they were ever taught to be.”
“if we as a race are to survive on this earth than we must stop the global elites.”
“the fact that the western world is ramping up systems of control kinda gives you a sense of where this is headed. none of this is about racism, sexism, transphobia, covid, etc. it’s about the richest people on the planet not giving any shits about you and me and they want us gone.”
“Chris Hedges is a moral leader.”
For more from the speaker, visit his website.
Music credits:
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