3 Rejecting warfare is not beyond our ability
Sociobiology tells us that Neanderthals, too much governed by the primitive parts of their brains, succumbed to Homo Sapiens Sapiens in the race for natural selection's brass ring. We beat them out in the evolutionary struggle for dominance largely because of our greater ability to behave altruistically, resulting in the greater functionality of his/her in-groups. As a result of this competence, we have become our own greatest threat. Humans now have the ability to globally self-destruct, taking most of life on the planet with us. No body of data yet indicates that our capacity to universalize social altruism constitutes more than a hypothesis. On the other hand, growing evidence from history and anthropology tells us that when warfare posed a lose-lose proposition our ancestors adeptly formed new combinations, cutting across in-groups, in order to avoid it.
If horses, dogs, goats and pigs had existed in the Neolithic Western hemisphere as well as in Eurasia, or if life had been as difficult in Eurasia as it was on most of the planet, global conflict might pose a far weaker threat than it does at present. Eurasians became immune to the diseases spread by the animals that made them prosperous. Agriculture came easily and hard metals for weapons were plentiful. Communities quickly over-populated. Horses were plentiful and warfare became a useful strategy for finding new territories to exploit. When Eurasian warrior hordes used up the human and natural resources of a region, they simply moved on.
In the Western Hemisphere things were different. Life was hard, and it took great concentration to eke a decent living out of unfertile plains, un-nourishing jungles and arid mountains. In Meso-America, occasional conquering tribes often starved to death trying to rebuild what they had destroyed. Aztecs indeed practiced terrible cruelties, as did other empires of the Western Hemisphere from time to time. Nevertheless, Aztecs, Incans, Mayans, Toltecs and Olmecs among many others invented methods of city and regional planning, of political coordination, and social integration far beyond the common practice in Europe. They were masters of genetic engineering before Mendel, creating maize (not discovering it, as is commonly thought); transforming the Amazon forests into plentiful gardens, and much more. European writers understood none of this, describing Indians as noble savages living effortlessly off of nature's bounty. In North America, the constant migration of tribes southward from the Bering Straits created ripe conditions for perpetual warfare. A growing literature reveals how among the great Indian confederations, such as the Iroquois, warfare was usually a last resort, and even then highly controlled.
If Europeans were fine warriors and poor negotiators, it wasn't their military skills that brought the New World to its knees in the fifteenth century. It was the diseases they brought with them. The many millions thriving in North and South America lacked immunity and their devastation was beyond measure.. Guns and swords only briefly provided the Spaniards some advantage, and then mainly when they wielded them from horseback. With the invention of the bolo (a weapon made by attaching two balls to the ends of two ropes bound at one end, and then whirled and thrown at an animal's legs) even this advantage evaporated.
But for the diseases, the clash of European and American cultures might have moved quickly beyond conflict to an entirely new kind of cooperative society. The vision of just such a renaissance motivated Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson to borrow from the Iroquois in attempting to fashion models for their own peers to consider, with all too limited success..
Part II How to maximize rational behavior and prevent chaos
1 Describing aggression as poor strategy rather than as inhumane
How does debunking myths about human nature constitute rational activist strategy? How can it help when a world of violently clashing civilizations appears to be inevitable? Based on the analysis above, people seem less likely to reject governmental strategies maximizing confrontation because they seem inhumane, than because they seem ill advised and likely to enhance our descent into chaos.
Key U.S. policy makers, arguably the world's most powerful aggressors in history, assume the clash of civilizations to be inevitable. In order to survive in a world of civilization size tribes (or gangs) according to neoconservative thinking, the United States must remain the toughest such group on Earth. President Jimmy Carter’s chief Middle Eastern advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski in The Grand Chessboard, and his equally prestigious colleague Samuel Huntington, in The Clash of Civilizations stated this thesis clearly and concisely. These works constitute cornerstones of the ideological edifice of the Right, and find extensive acceptance on the Left as well. Within the United States, and by default everywhere given U.S. military supremacy, warfare as survival strategy appears to be on the rise, not the decline.
On the other hand, Machiavellian policies adopted by U.S. leaders and their mirror images abroad cannot promise, as in the past, to guarantee national security. Quite apart from the awful moral and ethical implications of ruthlessly conquering and oppressing weak opponents following only token efforts at negotiation, this behavior seems outmoded and disastrous – very likely inconsistent with any outcome other than chaos. If we the citizens perceive this to be so, can we change our nation’s course?
Our real human nature well equips us to operate other than as passive observers. We seem to be entirely capable of choosing a course other than aggression. However, not because aggression is inhumane. We are likely to reject aggression toward others only when such policy threatens our own security and well being.
What is required of change agents, then, is to bring about a public examination of whether aggression is – whether or not humane – in any degree rational...
2 The real meaning of “power corrupts”
History tells us that while our species at large seems to operate rationally, isolated groups and individuals develop patterns of irrationality. Elites in particular easily lose their way. Power does indeed corrupt. The powerful tend to shut out news of reality in favor of what they want to hear, or surround themselves with sycophants fearful of telling their masters bad news even when they ask for it. Witness the failure of post-WWII Western powers to acknowledge Islam’s rapid modernizing trend until Brzezinski spelled it out in the 1960s. In The Grand Chessboard he warned that unless Arab initiatives could be undermined,Western economic control of the world would be in dire peril. Owen Lattimore, the nation’s leading Asian expert counseled in The Situation in Asia for negotiation rather than aggression. Unfortunately, the irrationality that had shut out awareness of Asian trends also held to the premise that imperial suppression of the Third World was still feasible.
In today's world when powers-that-be bent on global conflict become socially lost, the predictable consequence is universal devastation. Our world is so interconnected that this time the certain chaos produced by the decline of the ruling empire would surely engulf all life on the planet. Nor could we envision a simple circulation of elites, where a new, more rational if no less ruthless ruling class seamlessly replaced the old. A true clash of civilizations could well mean the end of civilization..
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