Some Thoughts on the Times

A kinder, gentler world, a pleasant thought, or so it may have seemed to readers in 1899 with the appearance of Warsaw financier Ivan S. Bloch’s massive three volume study, Is War Now Impossible? In detail, Bloch argued that a general European war amounted to suicide and was impossible to conceive (discussed in N. Ferguson, The Pity of War, 1998, 9-10). In 1914 the thesis would have seemed premature, in 1918 a prescient though tragic joke. One hundred years later we have similar pronouncements. Most recently Ian Morris’ War! What is it Good For? (2014), grounded in Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011), proclaims a bright and peaceful world in the 2040s as war becomes obsolete. The cynic in me—the result of witnessing death and mayhem in 1970-1971 Vietnam—regards these as well intentioned but academically remote studies at best, elite provincialism at worst.

Bloch’s thesis and the catastrophic events of 1914 offer cautionary lessons, as the future of war is a vital concern for planet Earth today. Of the two essays under discussion in this Clio Psyche’s forum, Ken Fuchsman’s “Being Civilized” and Paul Elovitz’ “Reflections,” I am inclined to favor the former but find much to agree with in both. The authors ably outline the origins and development of civilization (“Leviathan” in Pinker’s terminology) and identify the many factors that brought forth what is today an increasingly monolithic global civilization, unlike Morris, who argues that civilization emerged from the institutions created for the waging of war.

Civilization, like mankind, is Janus-faced—savage man, peaceful man. The tension has energized scholars since Hobbes and Rousseau, though Homer knew these images too as he depicts cities at war and peace on the famous “Shield of Achilles.” Some scholars claim that hunting-gathering societies were vicious, that

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their “wars”—skirmishes and raids in reality—slaughtered some 15-20% of the population. In comparison, the advent of civilization has blessed man with a lowly 2-3% war-related death rate. However the percentages for pre-civilization mankind are tentative at best, perhaps even just short of meaningless as base numbers are unknown. Percentages for “civilized” mankind are hardly more useful. That “only” 1-2% of the world’s population were victims of war-related death in the 20^th century (100-200 million of 2.5 billion) seems just a little debatable when you begin subtracting those populations that observed but did not participate in the wars and massacres of the time (cf. Morris 2014, 8). The numbers are problematic, but it seems to me that civilization has enabled man to become a most proficient killing machine.

Much could be said about the content of these two essays and space imposes restraints. Let me add two observations. First, I’m surprised that the authors do not take into account more fully biology or psychology, either evolutionary or general. Research into these fields over the last 20 years has revealed much that explains human evolution and identity, including the nature of courage as well as the physiology of trauma. It has also revealed how little mankind has changed over the last 50 thousand years or 200 thousand years. In short, it is the same brain that made the hunter-gatherer’s axe in Paleolithic times that now sends telecommunication satellites into space. Dr. Ron Glasser, author of one of the great Vietnam War books, 365 Days (1971) tells me that the 21^st century will be the century of the brain, that neurological discoveries will, it is hoped, inform us more fully on the nature of the human condition. Such knowledge can only help us learn more about ourselves, how we came to be, and what our possibilities and potentialities might be.

Such self-knowledge just might further enlarge the “civilizing process” that Norbert Elias did helpful theorization about. On the other hand, civilized life comes easily when there is plenty, but what happens in a world of shrinking resources and growing populations? What happens when the income gap between haves and have-nots, as in the US today, becomes greater? Civilization’s veneer is thin, frightfully thin. Contemporary understanding of biology and psychology reveal the truth of what Thucydides

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observed millennia ago in his classic account of a prosperous community, stressed by war that destroyed itself in civil conflict, that “war is a violent teacher,” and that it brings people down to the level of their circumstances (Book 3, section 82).

This might make for a useful lesson today. In a world of ISIS and ISIS-inspired beheadings, suicide bombings, the killing of civilians in places as far apart as Syria and Iraq, the West Bank and Gaza, Mexico, so much of Africa, and Ferguson, Missouri, the violence continues and inspires, for the most part, only retribution. It is a warm thought to imagine with Ian Morris that the 2040s will see the triumph of civilization and the eclipse of war and violent acts among mankind. Yet I have my doubts.

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