War and Human Nature

War is a controversial topic that has been discussed many places. Some people say that it's a part of human nature, while others argue that it's not. But we're not going to get into that here. Instead, we're going to talk about whether making war is something that humans do naturally. We'll explore some questions about nature that can complicate things a bit, but we're just doing that for now. Waging war is something humans are known to do, with varying degrees of success. %Some% of the popular philosophical thinkers regarding this topic have been Hobbes and Rousseau, with their differing viewpoints on human nature. Learning about these thinkers through world history has helped to illuminate the debate. Without a time machine, it's difficult to say for certain if life in the "state of nature" was better or worse than what people experienced during civilization. However, anthropological evidence can help shed some light on the matter. Making assumptions about the very distant past based on observations of present hunter-gatherers is exceedingly difficult, yet it's all we have. That, and archaeology. So, what do anthropologists have to say? It's not looking good for Rousseau. Many anthropologists believe that pre-civilization social arrangements were rather violent. Killing and fighting, for example, were among the leading causes of death in Australia, and archaeology has uncovered traces of violence dating back thousands of years. Some of these anthropological results are debatable, but when paired with cave drawings and remains of individuals who were clearly slain by other humans, it becomes evident that we've been killing each other for "a long ass time". So Hobbes appears to be correct in his assessment that life in the "state of nature" was most likely brutal and fleeting. Was it, however, war? Again, anthropologists can help us out here. Some studies have shown relatively large-scale group conflicts akin to battles, although they are mostly symbolic and rarely result in much death. The majority of the real violence committed by hunter-gatherers against one other occurs during raids, in which one group creeps up on another and assaults. So, in the end, there may be a very violent middle way between individual homicides and, say, Cain v. Abel, and today's modern warfare. But why do humans appear to be hardwired for violence? It may be evolution, after all. Thank you so much, Thought Bubble. So, let me be really clear about something. We may be aggressive "by nature," but you can't murder others! You also don't have to. Many of us, if not the majority of us, go our whole lives without murdering someone. So, while I don't believe our genes have turned us into stone-cold killers, it is plausible that hostility is an intrinsic feature in humans. And, given the appropriate circumstances, it may manifest itself in violence and conflict. We should all be suspicious of applying evolutionary biology to cultural qualities such as warlike conduct, because Darwin's concepts have been misapplied to explain a wide range of undesirable phenomena. Particularly in nineteenth-century ideas about race. You know, if you're in a socially privileged position, it's easy to think, "Huh, I wonder how I got here. Probably natural selection." "When in fact, you know, slavery was not a function of biology; it was a function of oppression." Another reason we should be aware is that we often refer to cultures "evolving" very quickly, often in a generation, but biological evolution takes a lot longer. That said, there are a few ways that evolutionary imperatives could contribute to a warlike human nature. As a result, we may be required to fight in order to protect members of our clan. However, attempting to defend your family from harm is not the same as murdering other people's families. Here's where remembering that for the great bulk of human history, conflict consisted of raiding comes in handy. It was all about stealing things from other people's kin groups so that your kin group might take them. That's how we battled for 99% of human history. Not as many structured states are at odds with one another. So, instead of thinking about groups of individuals or even individual humans, consider genes for a moment. Insofar as genes are concerned, they want to continue. We must be careful not to interpret conflict only as an evolutionary need, as this might lead to the fatalistic conclusion that war is unavoidable. But it isn't. In human history, the cycle of bloodshed depicted in the Odyssey is constantly broken. And, while ending a war is considerably more difficult than starting one, it is not impossible. When we get carried away with biological explanations, we lose sight of the fact that, while humans haven't changed all that much in the last thousand years, our institutions have. And this has occurred as a result of human decisions that go well beyond the demand for sustenance or the drive to reproduce.