>I don’t buy that that is any longer a significant contributing factor. Unadulterated societies should graduate from barbarism as they move up Maslow's hierarch

>I don’t buy that that is any longer a significant contributing factor. Unadulterated societies should graduate from barbarism as they move up Maslow's hierarchy. That is a very idealistic view. The truth is that the majority of the world still lives a stone's throw from death, and even lower class American neighborhoods are filled with violence that is inseparable from traits that are amplified by male biology - pride, aggression, anger - compounded by physical differences between the sexes which affect psychology - i.e. a lifetime spent weaker or stronger than average. Don't get me wrong. These drives and emotions have their place, and I would argue that they are also responsible for much of the good in the modern world. But these biological and social properties continue to force an association between manliness and war, although to some degree propaganda and Hollywood do have an amplifying affect, as you suggest.