
The Moral Equivalent of War (1906) - Alupis
https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/moral.html
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labster
This is a fascinating essay, which manages to predict the mood and military
conflicts of the first half of the twentieth century quite well. It doesn't
manage to be postmodern enough, which isn't all that surprising considering
when it was written.

But we now live in a world where the weapons are so good, that the next war
truly could be the last one. And where the values and greatness of martial
spirit led to disastrous results. I don't really feel that the values were all
that great to begin with, to be honest, but I can see why some people do.

Certainly, there have been projects to try to channel ambition and nationalism
into peace, and the Olympic Games are the top example. And like a lot of
modernist endeavors it works up to a point, but has obvious flaws.

I'm not entirely sure that war is a permanent state of humanity, though.
Possibly humans are still in the process of domesticating themselves.

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perfmode
This is, so far, a fascinating essay. Can't wait to get home to finish it.

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shredprez
I know commenting to agree is not encouraged on HN, but I feel obligated to.
This is an extremely compelling case/strategy guide for uncompromising
pacifism and I haven't ever read anything like it. Powerful in a way so much
of the conversation around conflict isn't.

To anyone seeing this comment before reading: take the time, it's worth it.

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perfmode
> "Peace" in military mouths today is a synonym for "war expected." The word
> has become a pure provocative, and no government wishing peace sincerely
> should allow it ever to be printed in a newspaper. Every up-to-date
> dictionary should say that "peace" and "war" mean the same thing, now in
> posse, now in actu. It may even reasonably be said that the intensely sharp
> preparation for war by the nations is the real war, permanent, unceasing;
> and that the battles are only a sort of public verification of the mastery
> gained during the "peace"-interval.

~~~
ValleyOfTheMtns
"If you want peace, prepare for war."

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nicolashahn
tl;dr:

War has been the natural state of man for millions of years, our short stint
of civilization will not breed it out of us any time soon. There's obviously a
terrible price to war, but it does have the upside of keeping a community
disciplined and strong. It also has an equalizing aspect: rich and poor are
shoved next to each other; identical in the trenches. Removing war without
replacing its disciplining/strengthening/equalizing aspects would cause a
degeneration of society.

However, war is unsustainable in the long run, and so the author's solution is
to create conscription not to fight other nations, but to fight nature. What
this means: have everyone spend a couple years doing laborious tasks:
construction, mining, fishing, dishwashing, etc. This can breed the "martial
type of character" that would be lacking without war.

I'm pretty in favor of the idea. I can definitely recommend the full read.

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peisistratos
> War has been the natural state of man for millions of years

He mentions tribes, and there is no evidence of tribes existing prior to
10,000 years ago. Which is about 25,000 to 30,000 years after the cave
paintings in Chauvet and El Castillo.

Not that conflict never happens between hunter-gatherer bands, but evidence is
it was, and is, fairly limited.

Real conflict and war started ramping up 10,000 years ago, with the dawn of
slave societies and empires.

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eloff
I don't buy that. Even chimps go to war between different bands, so we've
likely got that in common going back at least 6-7 million years when we shared
a common ancestor.

There's not a lot of evidence for war, but there's not a lot of evidence for
anything. Very little survives over time. So I don't think a lack of evidence
is meaningful yet.

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peisistratos
There is evidence of war in the past 10,000 years, little before.

Prior to 500 years ago there was little modern contact with the Americas,
Australia, parts of sub-Saharan Africa etc., so observation of lack of
conflict in hunter-gatherer bands there is more evidence. Obviously I mean
hunter-gatherers, not the Aztec warriors.

I don't see what chimpanzees have to do with humans, unless chimpanzees are
sculpting Venus Madonnas and drawing buffalo on caves.

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iguy
But there is no such "observation of lack of conflict in hunter-gatherer
bands". At least if you use sensible units, like the proportion of deaths
which are due to deliberate violence, on which such bands tend to score way
above modern society.

I think this myth comes from early studies, who wanted to see this, and
observed no warfare during the 6 months they spent around 20 people. Later
studies asked these 20 to reconstruct their family trees & tabulate how each
great-uncle died, etc.

(The other possibility is definitional. If we define war as involving
thousands of soldiers, then obviously this never happened until societies
which could co-ordinate thousands of people arose. May as well define it as
involving uniforms & automatic rifles, too.)

