War

What is it good for?

This is the third week of the month, and we are starting on our third series that I am calling Big Picture Narratives. These books are those sweeping, ambitious works that provide a frame to see world history, anthropology, and human development. They help us zoom out and see our human history within the much larger story, but they are also theories and can be flawed. The book we are going to look at today is about war and sadly, violence will be a theme for many months to come.

Ian Morris, the book’s author, is a professor at Stanford. In addition to this book, “War,” he is also the author of “Why the West Rules for Now.” He is an archaeologist and has directed excavations. The book was published in 2014 and reading it make me think of the philosophical idea known as utilitarianism. The premise that war has a good side is only true if you were one of the ones who survived. With that, let’s dive in.

In the greatest paradox in history, war has actually made humanity safer. The alternative would have been worse. By fighting wars, people have created larger, more organized societies that have reduced risk. This observation rests on major findings of archaeologists and anthropologists over the last century. Low level violence for centuries created an appalling toll on human life. 10-20 percent of those who lived in Stone Age societies died at the hands of other humans. By contrast, in the 20th century, despite two world wars, a string of genocides, government induced famines, (killing 100-200 million people), the percentage still only adds up to 1-2 percent of the planet’s population who died.

In the beginning section of the book, Morris shows us that starting around 10,000 years ago (since the last ice age), the winners of wars incorporated the losers into larger societies and the only way to make those larger societies work was for their rules to develop stronger governments and suppress violence within society. This process was not pretty and at times brutal but it was beneficial.

And while war is the worst way imaginable to create larger, peaceful societies, it is the only way that humans have found. The Roman empire could not have been created without killing millions of Gauls and Greeks. American immigrants killed Native Americans. People hardly ever give up their freedom including their right to kill and impoverish others, unless forced to do so. As well as making people safer, these larger societies have made us richer. The process has been messy and uneven.

War may be the lesser of all evils and a little killing now and then preventing a lot of killing later will always give us uncomfortable choices. So this book is a disturbing read. He believes that the evidence found in archaeology and anthropology is unambiguous. The first to write about this concept was Norbert Elias in the Civilizing Process. Just think about writings as recent as those of Shakespeare where those who practice violence are more often praised than blamed. We now have sophisticated databases of death, extending back to 1500. Azar Gat’s monumental book, “War in Human Civilization” is another example that tells a story of how humanity tamed its own violence.

I suspect anyone who supports the current war against Iran has convinced themself of this idea, that a little killing now will prevent a lot of killing later. I am not making this case and I think it is entirely possible that a little killing now, will simply result in an explosion of violence. But it is worth thinking about how war has unfolded over the arc of human history.

There are books which deny that early human societies were violent but it seemed to Morris that they use evidence rather selectively. On the other side, there are new books like, “Winning the War on War” and Pinker’s, “Better Angels of our Nature” that make the point that the world has gotten safer. If you remember, Jared Diamond in “The World Until Yesterday” made the same point. We will cover Pinker’s book later. We also have one coming in a few months, that tells a completely different story, “The Dawn of Everything.”