“Why war?” is a question that haunts everyone, including both Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. For Einstein, it was a question that had no rational answer. For Freud, war was an expression of the “death drive” for violence and destruction that was inherent in every human. If Einstein was hoping for optimism, Freud was drawing from his theoretical insights into the human character, a conclusion confirmed by the unequivocal message of history.
This question of Why War? became the subject and the title of a book by a British historian, Richard Overy, and reviewed in The Economist (August10, 2024). Both the book and the review—the reviewer was not identified—examine this disturbing question without coming to a clear answer. “Contested, fractured and frustratingly elusive” is Overy’s final conclusion about an explanation for war. But the search does provide some useful information that even has environmental implications.
The scientific approach provides no satisfactory answers. Anthropology, biology, psychology and ecology only confirm what has always happened. But the Darwinian selection of the fittest hints that war may be functioning at the sociological as well as the individual level—it is our psychology working collectively. In other words, some social structures assert their superiority over others by aggressive domination. The individual doesn’t necessarily notice this, but becomes so absorbed in the feelings of the tribe or the idea of the nation that he or she is willing to kill others for the identity and support received from the group.
The optimistic option is that people have agency, the power of personal choice, and can choose to fight or not. But this option, Overy suggests, is influenced by “four broad motivational categories”, namely belief (religion), power, resources and security. These splice into psychology, and the extent to which people actually feel threatened. In many cases, they have to be convinced that this is actually the case, which raises the subject of propaganda and its invention of justifications for war, which it does by creating enemies, warping truth, building deception, and exploiting the gullibility of people.
Who are we as people? What kind of a culture are we? What do we deserve? What are our grievances? What is our future? Do we perceive others as fellow human beings, or as animals, vermin, pests and objects to be destroyed? Answers to these questions have been manipulated by propaganda to justify wars.
Mythology, too, plays a role. It determines what people think of themselves, and what they are inclined to do. The Nazi notion of an “arian race” and its cultural destiny can be a powerful motivational force. Mix together all these factors and war does not become justifiable, but it does become explainable.
Mythology also has an environmental element worth considering. In the West, the basic mythological structure was determined by the Genesis account of Creation. That is, humanity was created separate from nature, and placed in it to care and supervise it. This fundamental sense of separation has motivated and justified our treatment of nature as something foreign, alien and inferior. This is opposite to the Eastern mythologies of China and Japan in which humans are thought to have come from nature and are extensions of nature. But Eastern mythology did not prevent the abuse of nature, nor did it prevent wars.
Most indigenous peoples live in cultures that pre-date the Agricultural Revolution, which probably explains their sense of inseparability from nature. However, archeological evidence confirms that indigenous people did design weapons specifically to kill people, and that mass killings did occur. So the question remains open as to whether their honouring of nature was really inherent in their respective cultures, or whether it was merely a consequence of technological limits that committed them to total dependence on their natural surroundings.
This brings us to our current treatment of the environment. Give us the technology to build civilizations and we will exploit, degrade or destroy the natural structures that we depend upon. Again, very few exceptions contradict the historical record. Of course, if we are creatures of agency—that we can choose—then this is a testing time like no other. Unfortunately, we are running out of time to prove that we are exceptions to the rule.
As for the conclusion that Freud may have been correct, despite our current aversion to war and to environmental destruction, our response to the importance of our individual and collective survival motivates us in directions that we abhor but tolerate. Overy ends with the statement that, “If war has a very long human history, it also has a future.” Maybe this is our fate. Try as we might, we may not be able to escape the character of our species.
Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra
Top image credit: F-16A, F-15C and F-15E flying during Desert Storm – photo courtesy Air Combat Command (Public Domain)