A War to End All Wars to End All Wars to End All Wars...
So I'm watching Real Time with Bill Maher as I tend to do on Sunday afternoons, and there is a satellite interview with Victor Davis Hanson, a personal adviser to Vice President Cheney. Hanson has, in his written works, supported the position that war is the natural state of mankind, and that it is inevitable in any case. I go through the usual paces of rolling my eyes, clenching my teeth and muttering bad words under my breath.
But for the rest of the day, I can't get it out of my head: what if this guy is right? I mean, look at history. When you can stomach it. The whole of human recorded history is sectioned by wars. I can't, offhand, think of one instance of great sociopolitical change that did not come about at least in part by violence or unrest of some kind. We, as a species, have yet to come up with a workable alternative to war as a method of sociopolitical evolution.
And then my brain had to go and connect these horrific thoughts to others I had previously -- specifically, the idea that mankind has stopped evolving. With the advent of civilization, there is no more need for survival of the fittest. This is not to say that lazy people being mauled by a sabretooth tiger is a better scenario than lazy people sitting around watching TV all day, but loss of any kind of evolution can only serve to make a species weaker and more vulnerable to the whims of the surrounding environment.
And so my damned brain combined these two horrors into a new thought that kept me up last night: What if the human race needs war? I mean, wars have been justified throughout time by numerous red herrings: a king's ambition, a personal grudge, extreme nationalism, political expansionism and/or colonialism, and most often, religion. All of those reasons are pure B.S. There is only one real reason wars are fought: Too many people, not enough resources. At its most basic, it is the notion that we need war to thin the herd or else we'll literally waste away.
And so I am forced to consider: could this all be for real? We, as a species, need war to evolve? Somebody please convince me that I'm wrong.
But for the rest of the day, I can't get it out of my head: what if this guy is right? I mean, look at history. When you can stomach it. The whole of human recorded history is sectioned by wars. I can't, offhand, think of one instance of great sociopolitical change that did not come about at least in part by violence or unrest of some kind. We, as a species, have yet to come up with a workable alternative to war as a method of sociopolitical evolution.
And then my brain had to go and connect these horrific thoughts to others I had previously -- specifically, the idea that mankind has stopped evolving. With the advent of civilization, there is no more need for survival of the fittest. This is not to say that lazy people being mauled by a sabretooth tiger is a better scenario than lazy people sitting around watching TV all day, but loss of any kind of evolution can only serve to make a species weaker and more vulnerable to the whims of the surrounding environment.
And so my damned brain combined these two horrors into a new thought that kept me up last night: What if the human race needs war? I mean, wars have been justified throughout time by numerous red herrings: a king's ambition, a personal grudge, extreme nationalism, political expansionism and/or colonialism, and most often, religion. All of those reasons are pure B.S. There is only one real reason wars are fought: Too many people, not enough resources. At its most basic, it is the notion that we need war to thin the herd or else we'll literally waste away.
And so I am forced to consider: could this all be for real? We, as a species, need war to evolve? Somebody please convince me that I'm wrong.
2 Comments:
Ahoy Ben! "Survival of the Fittest" is a pretty poor misnomer for "Natural Selection," which includes a whole lot of things. It could be manifest in your ability to survive mauling by a sabertooth tiger, but really natural selection is any factor which allows you to survive long enough to successfully breed and to find a mate. A peacock's feathers are just as much an example of natural selection as is duck-and-covering. So, the question is, what's going to get you a mate? Appearance and social networking abilities, generally, though I guess there's something to be said for cash. Any way you look at it, natural selection is still alive and well.
But even if that weren't enough, there are still three whole other forces of evolution acting on humanity: mutation, genetic drift and gene flow (also called migration). We're not in any danger of ceasing our evolution any time soon, with or without the existence of war.
Jason outranks me in Anthropological lore, and his point is very good, so I will add some snarky political commentary.
Hanson and Cheney haven't ever been to fucking war. Their "natural state" is bellying up to the bar at a washington social function and sweating their fat asses off on the golf course. I submit that any discussion of the "natural state" of man is an attempt to wedge their own heinous belief systems and political ideology into a comfortable moral framework, thereby justifying whatever asinine plans they have for the future of our country.
In any case, we are creatures born of our environment, not slaves to an overarching state of being. If you really want to apply some sort of deterministic philosophy to the state of humanity, the natural state of man is to avoid war, avoid pain, avoid death. Our most basic instinct is to survive, regardless of method. You can talk about competition for resources all you want - those who willingly go to war (for war's sake) risk ending their genetic line. When resources are plenty, there is no need for war beyond our own petty grievances.
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