Sunday, April 10, 2022

War And Civilization

War is part of humanity and the source of our civilization.

There is a lot of hand-wringing going on over the Ukraine war and indeed, it is an awful spectacle.  Innocents are being slaughtered all in the name of.... what was the point of this war, again?  Territory?  Security?  It doesn't seem like any of those goals will be met.

But it got me thinking again, that without war, human beings would never have evolved to the level they have, and never have developed civilization.  The greatest achievements of mankind are all based at least in part, on war technology - or the desire to avoid it.

Early man - going back to caveman days - hunted mastadons or whatever, or gathered nuts and berries or tried his hand at primitive farming.  It was hard work and not everyone was successful at it.  Somewhere along the way, some clever cave man decided that it would be a lot easier to clock his neighbor over the head with a club and just take all his stuff rather than try to farm or hunt or gather.

And this probably goes back beyond primitive man.  We like to think "animals" live in peace and harmony, but we know that "The Lion King" when he takes over, kills all the male infant cubs who are the progeny of his predecessor.  Monkeys have been known to kill and even eat infants.  The animal world is hardly a world of innocents.

So early on, cave-men or early man, gathered together in tribal families for mutual support and protection - and on occasion to attack their neighbor and gain territory and wealth.  The motivations of Putin - worrying about security and encroachment by the EU and NATO - are no different than the motivations of the cave tribe who sees a neighboring tribe encroach on their hunting grounds.  This is not to excuse Putin's actions - we supposedly are evolved beyond cave-men.  Well, some of us have.

War ended up forcing us to socialize and band together.  It forced us to form societies and create governments and promote leaders - as well as devise a hierarchy of power, rank, and privilege.  For better or worse (mostly worse it seems) war is what made us what we are.  Worse yet, war is what drove the evolution of our brains, developed our use of tools (mostly to make or use as weapons) and what created our minds, our intellect, our religions, our philosophies.  We are not very nice people, but it is part and parcel of our DNA it seems.

Native Americans are an example of this tribal trend. They banded together in tribes and often ruthlessly attacked one another.  I grew up in Central New York and learned in Junior High School about the various tribes of the Iroquois Nation who banded together to put an end to their inter-tribal squabbling.  That and to band together to attack the Algonquins.  Yea, fuck the Algonquins, man!

But to hear some folks tell it, Native Americans were all living in peace and harmony with one another and the land, until the white man arrived.  Sadly, prejudice and greed as well as disease decimated their number and they were pushed onto reservations.  It didn't help that they chose the wrong side in more than one war.

But in addition to guns, germs, and steel, the Europeans had something else - a more advanced civilization, which was forged on the anvil of war.  In Europe, city-states developed as tribes banded together and formed protective societies, with a King anointed to lead them.  The King formed armies with knights, as well as conscripts and volunteers from the populace.  With such a structure in place, they could prevent attack from neighboring city-states as well as attack other city-states and expand their territory.  And over the years, wars raged across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, as one civilization or Empire came and went.

War built our civilizations.  Without the threat of war, there was no reason to band together.  No reason to anoint a king, built fortifications, make weapons, raise armies, enact laws, and strive for peace.

Even today, we see this.  The war in Ukraine has forced Europe and to a lesser extent, the United States, to re-evaluate their positions, and re-unite after years of squabbling (often created or festered by the Russians, using their Internet troll farms).  Suddenly, Finland decides maybe joining NATO is a swell idea.  Other countries decide that maybe they need to spend more on defense - after shirking their duties under the NATO treaty.  Our European friends who were cozying up to Russia and its oil and gas are now having second thoughts and maybe the good old USA isn't so bad after all.  Putin's war has done one thing - united a divided Europe.  Too bad this didn't happen before Brexit.

Tribalism prevails.  Once again, we band together to fight a common enemy. 

Putin may have also empowered the United Nations - and maybe finally, Russia will be booted out of the Security Council once and for all.  The UN itself was a major accomplishment of our civilization - even if it is ineffectual most of the time.  But it was created as a result of war - and it is doubtful it would exist if not for that war.

This is not to say war is good, only that it seems to be an inevitable part of our nature.  We are not nice people.  Neither are the other animals and even plants, on our planet.  Competition for resources is the norm, and indeed, without such competition, I doubt we would have evolved at all.

It is interesting as well that war also created things like diplomacy and strategy.  In Sun Tzu's Art of War, he describes how to win a war, not through military might, but through strategy - including psychological strategies.  And we see this even today - with countries "saber rattling" and making threats and trying to destabilize enemies through social media.  Not all wars are fought with bullets or swords - many are fought in the arena of public opinion.

It is an ancient lesson, but we seem to forget it on a regular basis.  And of course, part and parcel of this propaganda effort is to shout down anyone who points out the propaganda.  "You're seeing Russians behind every tree!" they cry.  But the antics of the Russian Internet Research Agency are by now, well-documented.  And funny how, when the fake Twitter and Facebook accounts of Russian bots are cut off, people start to see things in a different light.

Perhaps there is a tipping point in all of this.  War evolved us into what we are today - a species always on the brink of extinction.  We have overpopulated the planet in part because every major religion says to "go forth and multiply" in order to generate new generations of cannon fodder and to out-populate opponents.  War acted as a population check in the past and kept us from overpopulating our planet and using up all the resources.  It culled the weakest and least intelligent from the population.  It had a pruning effect.

But perhaps we have outgrown it - or more precisely, it has outgrown us.  When a world war means extinction of the species (or indeed, life itself) perhaps war is really not the answer.  Maybe we have reached a point in our intellectual development where we can move beyond war.  Maybe, but I doubt it. Sadly, without war to cull the morons from our populace, we seem to be "dumbing down" more and more.

We can envision a world without war, where people work together toward a common goal and expand and explore our place in the universe.  We realize now that life on Earth was a very chancy thing, and it is only because we have a perfect combination of elements coming together - a planet with a certain gravitational pull, a certain distance from the sun, a certain water content and oxygen content, and even an over-sized moon  - for life to evolve.  And it is only because we haven't had a major meteor impact in a few hundred thousand years that we're still around.   It could have gone either way, at any time during our evolution.  Luck plays quite a role.

And still will, which is why some folks are trying to track these near-earth objects and perhaps develop a way to divert them.  While we squabble over the rights to decayed swamp grasses, the whole thing could end in a heartbeat, and most of us would never know it.

Others say that in order to survive, we must become a space-faring species - living in zero-G and hopping from planet to planet, star to star.  Maybe this is true - or maybe it is an impossible fantasy.  It could take decades to reach even the nearest stars, and one impact with a grain of dust at half the speed of light would blow a spaceship to smithereens.  And lets not even talk about cosmic radiation.

So what's the point?   I guess there is none.  But maybe the point is not to get caught up in these propaganda wars, which often lead to real wars.  A lot of people in Russia believe what is going on is right - because that is all they know.  Ditto for China, and yes, even in the USA.  People believe in bizarre fantasies and nothing can dissuade them.

Maybe, if people started thinking more logically, none of this would happen.  Sadly, all it takes is a few deranged people to screw things up for the rest of us.

UPDATE:  One reason, I think, that modern Western civilization developed in Europe was because of the endless wars and nationalistic and racial hatreds that extend back 1000 years or more.  Castles were built, countries formed, weapons improved, and commerce commenced, all because they hated each others' guts (and still do today).    Without wars, all we would have, as a reader reminds me, is the cuckoo clock.

Of course, much of modern Western technology of that era (gunpowder, for example) came by way of China.  Oddly enough, even though Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War and the Chinese were "civilized" long before Europe was, the Europeans ended up colonizing China, at least for a while.  So civilizations can rise and fall - and rise again.  The dark ages is always around the corner.  Putin seems to be rooting for it.