Refusal to War

Lejla Panjeta
29 minutes ago
7 min read

Guns N' Roses Use Your Illusion II (1991) — Guns N' Roses *Use Your Illusion II* (1991)

Armed with 1980's soundtracks and fully protected with headband bandanas and plaided flannel shirts around hips, driven by courage and pride, the young of Sarajevo defend their besieged city in 1992. Using almost supernatural power, we succeed in stopping the aggressor set not only to kill, but to destroy all the culture and civilization in this multifaceted small European city. We were not separated by our religions, nationalities, ethnicities, nor color of the skin. We were united by our culture in protecting our monomyth and elementary ideas introduced by Adolf Bastian. We embarked on a real-life hero's journey, empowered by the images of Bruce Willis, Silvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eddie Murphy and Tom Cruise with the music of Bruce Springsteen, U2, Bon Jovi, Guns N' Roses, AC/DC, Metallica, etc. But behind the black pilot mask of the Top Gun bogey was not an evil unidentified mythological enemy. It was our neighbour but raised, bred and fed by Adolf Bastian’s folk ideas. Those were the ideas of separation and differences created by the higher powers of politics. If tempered with, they create stereotypes, from which prejudices are born, and they in turn give birth to conflicts, war and genocide, as is perfectly explained in “Civil War” by Guns N' Roses.

Moral refusal

Across cultures, epochs, and belief systems, Joseph Campbell observed a recurring narrative pattern: the monomyth. This narrative structure, as old as humanity itself, is a sort of shared psychic grammar. Adolf Bastian would call this Elementargedanken (Elementary Ideas): the ideas embedded in human consciousness, independent of culture, waiting to be expressed in different metaphorical costumes. On the other hand, his Völkergedanken (Folk Ideas) are the same universal ideas expressed differently in specific social and physical environments. When these folk ideas are frozen into ideology, they create enemies, because the self (us) in those ideas needs an antagonist (they) as a threat, in order for “us” to survive. “They are not us.” “They threaten our way of life.” “They must be removed.” Shared human ideas are binding humanity. But when abstracted into rigid ideologies, they exterminate logic. Myth stops being a mirror. It becomes a weapon.

Campbell would say that when a myth stops evolving and is not based on elementary ideas, it rots. “Civil War” by Guns N’ Roses is precisely about this rot. It is a song that stares directly at a corrupted myth and says, “I’m not going.” I refuse to participate in this festered journey. “Civil War” is not just a protest song; it is a mythological malfunction. It asks a heretical question: what if the adventure itself is a lie?

In traditional myth, the Call to Adventure is an invitation to leave status quo comfort behind and confront chaos. Odysseus was summoned to Troy, Luke Skywalker beckoned by Obi-Wan, and Gilgamesh haunted by mysteries of immortality. The call initiates transformation. But Campbell also emphasized the Refusal of the Call. Sometimes the hero hesitates out of fear. Sometimes, however, the refusal might be the wisdom behind transformation. It is not passive withdrawal but an ethical issue of saying no to something that demands obedience over conscience. In that moment, courage of our convictions is not found in advancing forward, but in standing one’s ground against a lie dressed as an adventure. “Civil War” transforms refusal not as weakness, but as moral clarity:

My hands are tied

The billions shift from side to side

And the wars go on with brainwashed pride

For the love of God and our human rights

And are washed away by your genocide

And history hides the lies of our civil wars

The lyrics expose the mythic camouflage. Folk God, not Campbell’s metaphor of the God, and human rights are here invoked not to protect life, but to rationalize its destruction. History becomes a skilled editor, trimming inconvenient truths until slaughter looks like sacrifice. The hero does not embark on a sacred quest but is being conscripted into a recycled narrative as in the Slavic folk wisdom saying: "In war, the state gives cannons, the rich oxen, and the poor their sons. When the war is over, the state takes its cannons, the rich get new oxen, and the poor look for their sons in graves."

“Civil War” is a song about refusing this threshold of no return because the destination is well known and morally bankrupt. Real daring lies not in marching forward blindly, but in recognizing the abyss before stepping into it. Refusing a false adventure requires more bravery than accepting a myth that is not based on elementary ideas that unite humanity. The song understands that the call to adventure is industrialized and sold back to young people as sacred obligations: nation, land, honor, God, while quietly serving someone’s balance sheet.

I don't need your civil war

It feeds the rich, while it buries the poor

The heroic sacrifice, once sacred, is revealed as a lie.

In the belly

In Campbell’s Belly of the Whale phase of the journey, the hero is swallowed by darkness, stripped of identity, and forced to confront truth. In “Civil War,” it is a collective realization.

Look at your young men fighting

Look at your women crying

Look at your young men dying

Look at the blood we're spilling

Look at the world we're killing

Look at the hate we're breeding

Look at the fear we're feeding

Look at the lives we're leading

The way we've always done before

The symbolism of the verses’ repetition is ritualistically literal. Guns N’ Roses expose how myth is falsified. The hero refuses to participate in a narrative where death is outsourced downward and profit flows upward. This is not a sacred story, but a scam.

Modern ideologies, nationalism, religious extremism, racial mythology often exploit the Separation phase of the monomyth. Young people are told: leave the ordinary life; it is small, corrupt, unworthy. The world beyond is painted as sacred destiny. Obedience becomes transcendence. Campbell warned that societies often externalize the hero myth onto their youth, demanding literal sacrifice instead of symbolic transformation. In such cases, the return never comes. The hero does not come back with wisdom; he comes back in a coffin, or not at all.

“Civil War” is not just a protest song; it is a mythological malfunction. It asks a heretical question: what if the adventure itself is a lie?

Uselessness of the false journey

In “Civil War” the listener is swallowed into the symbolic death of identity by images and sounds of hate, fear, repetition, and inherited violence. In concert, lead singer Axl Rose jumps, runs and screams on the stage as if trapped in the belly. He debunks the false stories constructed by politics, ideologies, extreme religions and media. This song is not a rebellion, but a confession that this adventure is false. Heroic battle between a Top Gun F14 and bogey is not a part of it. Instead, this call is completely useless and should be refused.

What remains after this distorted myth collapses is not heroism, but humility in the knowledge of how small human life is, how easily manipulated, and how actually very precious it is when stripped of grand but false narratives and folk ideas that separate us. Survival itself is a lesson in scale: no gods, no glory, just people keeping each other alive. So, for four years Sarajevo civilians stayed in the belly of shelters. Ironically and absurdly, I remember unplugged playing and singing Guns N' Roses’ “Civil War” there. We thought our hero’s adventure belonged to the monomyth elementary ideas, but in the fifth stage of the first act of the Journey we found ourselves just waiting for it to end. This was not a story. We returned with the knowledge on how to survive without water, electricity, and food in the urban jungle. And how to make an oil lamp. Sarajevo city siege was the longest siege in modern warfare; it lasted 1492 days. 200,000 were killed in Bosnia in the early 1990’s. Nothing monomythical about Sarajevo Safari and killing children, women, and stray dogs for fun. The Sarajevo siege was a twisted and orchestrated destruction, fueled with lies aimed at destroying elementary ideas and universal cultural identity. This was not even a civil war. As Axl Rose said: “What’s so civil about the war anyway?”

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MythBlast authored by:

Dr. Lejla Panjeta is a Professor of Film Studies and Visual Communication. She was a professor and guest lecturer in many international and Bosnian universities. She also directed and produced in theatre, worked in film production, and authored documentary films. She curated university exhibitions and film projects. She won awards for her artistic and academic works. She is the author and editor of books on film studies, art, and communication. Her recent publication was the bilingual illustrated encyclopedic guide – Filmbook, made for everyone from 8 to 108 years old. Her research interests are in the fields of aesthetics, propaganda, communication, visual arts, cultural and film studies, and mythology. https://independent.academia.edu/LejlaPanjeta

This MythBlast was inspired by the Separation stage of the hero's journey.

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