PAGE
4
WHY WE LOVE WAR
L WHAT WE CAN DO TO PREVENT IT ANYWAY
‘J
the Many,” we view of ourselves as separate and individual.
In “The Way of the One,” we are seen as part of the total
cosmos; nothing within it, including ourselves, is separate
from anything else.
According to these traditions, humans have what the
Roman mystic Plotinus called an “amphibious nature" and must
integrate both views if we are to survive, let alone reach our full
potential. All such schools espouse various meditative techni
ques as a means for achieving this integration. Meditation can
sharpen our perception, heighten a sense of self, and increase
a sense of individual being. It can also lead to a more profound
sense of oneness with all existence. The schools insist there is
no contradiction here. The problem is that the meditative path is
too lengthy and difficult for most people. Though it promises —
and apparently often delivers — a solution to this basic human
tension, its historical influence has been small.
Historically, there is a second means of resolving this
tension between our conflicting needs for singularity and group
identification: war. Tolstoy described its effect in War & Peace:
“Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own
insignificance, aware of being but a drop in an ocean of men,
and yet at the same time conscious of his strength as a part of
that enormous whole." Again and again, descriptions of war by
experienced participants and by great artists (and Tolstoy was
both) demonstrates that it fulfills these fundamental needs.
War sharpens experience, heightens perception, and makes
one more aware of one's own existence. At the same time, war
allows us to become part of something larger and more intense.
The Way of the One and The Way of the Many intensify each
other.
The writer Jo Coudert recounts:
And in England, shortly after the war, I commented to a
Londoner what a relief it must have been to have the bombings
ended. “Oh," she said, “it was a marvelous time. You forgot
about yourself and you did what you could and we were all in
it together. It was frightening, of course, and you worried about
getting killed, but in some ways it was better than now. Now
we’re all just ourselves again.
It is important to note that wartime consciousness is not
limited to the front lines. Nor is it only known to men. It was once
argued that allowing women to vote would lead to more peace,
but in fact the female vote has had no effect on war’s frequency
or ferocity.The attraction to war is a human characteristic, appar
ently not limited by gender. Though war clearly does not deliver
exactly what it promises, it does offer temporary solutions to
psychological problems for a very large percentage of the popu
lation. And once a war begins, the social pressures to continue
it are very strong. Anyone who questions an ongoing war is
considered a traitor or a lapsed heretic, and such people are
traditionally imprisoned or killed. One cannot question the
accepted wisdom that the war being waged is a wonderful
crusade to rid the world of evil.
And after a war, with the general disillusionment and
social confusion that accompanies the failure of the postwar
dream, no one cares to examine the contradictions. When
Johnny comes marching home with a chronic disability from
his wounds, we all try to forget our recent bout of psychological
illusion as soon as possible.
ROB HATEM
BY LAWRENCE L e SHAN
"My first wish is to see this plague of mankind,
war, banished from the earth."
-GEORGE WASHINGTON
U...
.-.V.
I»,.' ■
f.oi
I . i J i . i J tjlit 1
To understand why humans go to war, and have
done so throughout history, we have to acknowledge certain
psychological facts. One of these is a relatively recent scientific
insight: that humans organize perceptions of reality in a variety
of different ways, and that we often shift between these modes
without being aware of it. No single mode reveals the absolute
“truth” of the world around us, and each has its advantages and
disadvantages. We also know that during war our view of reality
is quite different than it is in peacetime. Once this shift occurs,
war becomes more difficult to prevent or stop. Learning to
recognize this shift allows us to see the signs that a society is
moving toward war — and to understand what must be done if
war is to be avoided.
War is not an entirely universal activity — there have
been a few cultures in which it is unknown. But under almost
every form of economic and political organization, regardless
of different family structures, child-rearing practices, and other
social norms, people fight wars on a fairly regular basis. The
problem of why we go to war has been with us for a long time.
The Histones, written by Herodotus in the 5th century B.C.,
was one of the first attempts to pinpoint causes of a particular
war (in this case, between the Greeks and Persians). Since
then, countless investigators have studied the causes of other
conflicts, but attempts to generalize from their conclusions have
failed. Though many theories have been developed on why war
is so widespread, none has helped to stop it, and none-fits the
actual data on how war happened.
As suggested in The Statistics of Deadly Quarrels, a
classic numerical study of conflict by the British mathematical
psychologist Lewis Fry Richardson, our accepted beliefs about
when and why wars occur have little validity. For example,
people of my generation were taught the harsh peace treaties
concluding World War 1 brought the next world war into being
much more quickly. Richardson's analysis shows the opposite
— that statistically speaking, the harsher the peace treaty, the
longer the peace that follows it. During the Crimean War in
the early 1850s, A.W. Kingslake theorized that war is a foreign
circus put on by rulers or ruling classes to distract citizens from
troubles at home. As Richardson points out, this theory, though
attractively simple, does not fit the data. In World War 1, for
example, Germany’s rulers were far more occupied with trying
to unify the country in order to fight the war than with fighting
the war in order to unify the country.
Today, no single theory on the cause of war is generally
accepted. There has been a lot of discussion about using our
knowledge of psychology, sociology, and other social sciences
to prevent war. Much has been done on techniques — such as
intercultural student exchange, international organizations, inter
national mediation efforts and armament reduction — for reduc
ing war’s likelihood. But there appears to be a great reluctance
to deal with general theories about the cause of war — or even
to admit such theories are necessary.
Before we can find new ways to prevent war, we have
to understand why it is so popular. War at least promises to fulfill
some fundamental human need or tension. One central human
tension is the problem of how to be both an individual and a part
of the larger group. Many of the great literary works explore this
theme, dealing over and over with how we try to reconcile these
conflicting drives. The same issue runs through modern text
books on psychology, sociology and anthropology. On the one
hand is the drive to be more and more unique and individual, to
heighten one’s experience and being. On the other hand is the
drive to be a part of something larger, a full-fledged member of
the tribe.
There are two different means to satisfy these drives
simultaneously and without contradiction. Both appear in every
age and nearly every culture. The first involves turning to one
of the schools of esoteric or spiritual development, including
Zen, Sufism, and the Christian, Hindu, and Jewish forms of
mysticism. These schools agree that there are two ways of
“being-in-the-world.” In what is generally called “The Way of
There are three ideas that, when they appear in society,
should be regarded as signals that we are moving toward war,
and that strong action must be taken against this drift:
-The idea that there is a particular enemy nation that
embodies evils, and if it were defeated, the world would become
paradise. (The latter part of this statement is the crucial danger
signal.The first part may well be true—as with Hitler's Germany.)
~The idea that taking action against this enemy (now the
enemy) is the path to glory and legendary heights of existence.
~The idea that anyone who does not agree with this
accepted wisdom is a traitor.
These danger signals often appear at the same time in
two enemy nations, which probably speeds the slide into armed
conflict. If they appear in only one, and that nation then attacks
its enemy, then the attacked nation is likely to believe that it has
been victimized (the great majority of wars start with an armed
attack preceding a declaration of war). This in turn increases
that nation's sense that its attacker is evil.
The way that people begin to perceive reality in the
period typically preceding the outbreak of war is very seductive.
I call it the “mythic" mode of perception, as opposed to the
“sensory" mode we ordinarily use. Once mythic perception takes
over, we cease to structure the world in our customary way and
turn to the ways of a fairy tale or a myth. In the mythic reality we
never question why evil exists: it simply is. Since the enemy is
evil, we’re quite ready to starve, torture or kill them; after all,
they cannot really be considered part of our own species.
During a mythic war, God, history, and destiny are
clearly on one’s side. The division of the world into Good and
AFTER WAR
Here, over bloodstained
craggy barren soil
the tattered banner waves,
high above the final
battlegrounds,
where hundreds slaughtered lie
in eternal sleep,
their blood tinting the dirt.
P O L K R IL E Y S P R IN T IN G • A 9 T O R IA 5 0 3 3 2 8 7 7 7 8 1 8 0 0 7 3 2 7 7 7 8
The banner flies
held up by the wind
witness to desolation
until time itself
tears the fabric remnants
from the pole
and everything crumbles
to dust
RECORD & TAPE SHOP
-MARGIT LIA BOWLER
POPULAR MUSIC FROM THE 17TH TO 21 ST CENTURY
& ALLEY C A T ESPRESSO
389 12TH ST. ASTORIA 3338-6376
MUSIC NON-PROFIT TO THE
SPAY * NEUTER HUMANE ASSOCIATION
Margit Bowler was 11 when she wrote this poem in 2001,
which appeared in that year's July issue of the NOTE.
She will be 15 on August 9.
I