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tl;dr: War has been the natural state of man for millions of years, our short stint of civilization will not breed it out of us any time soon. There's obviousl

tl;dr: War has been the natural state of man for millions of years, our short stint of civilization will not breed it out of us any time soon. There's obviously a terrible price to war, but it does have the upside of keeping a community disciplined and strong. It also has an equalizing aspect: rich and poor are shoved next to each other; identical in the trenches. Removing war without replacing its disciplining/strengthening/equalizing aspects would cause a degeneration of society. However, war is unsustainable in the long run, and so the author's solution is to create conscription not to fight other nations, but to fight nature. What this means: have everyone spend a couple years doing laborious tasks: construction, mining, fishing, dishwashing, etc. This can breed the "martial type of character" that would be lacking without war. I'm pretty in favor of the idea. I can definitely recommend the full read.

coderintherye 8y ago
>rich and poor are shoved next to each other; identical in the trenches. Rather than blithely shoot this down with statistics, rather I'll recommend you watch "Cross of Iron" which does a great job of exploring this topic.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jmclaughlin 8y ago
rich and poor are shoved next to each other; identical in the trenches. And how completely false this is. The rich can buy their way out of the trenches. The poor cannot. And war is not exactly fought in trenches anymore. Ground patrols exist. But only after aerial bombardment and other force multipliers reduce the other side to an asymmetric adversary dominated by concrete walls of all things.
msla 8y ago
> What this means: have everyone spend a couple years doing laborious tasks: construction, mining, fishing, dishwashing, etc. Taking food out of the mouths of people who'd otherwise be paid to do such work. Not to mention giving the government what amounts to slave labor, in the form of people who can't say no to whatever work they're assigned.
- twic 8y ago
  There are countries which still have conscription. In many of those countries, people can choose to do civil rather than military service. For example, Denmark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Denmark#Military_and_non-military_duty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Denmark#Milita... I am certainly not a fan of conscription (and two-thirds of Danes aren't either), but this doesn't seem to be a huge problem in practice.
peisistratos 8y ago
> War has been the natural state of man for millions of years He mentions tribes, and there is no evidence of tribes existing prior to 10,000 years ago. Which is about 25,000 to 30,000 years after the cave paintings in Chauvet and El Castillo. Not that conflict never happens between hunter-gatherer bands, but evidence is it was, and is, fairly limited. Real conflict and war started ramping up 10,000 years ago, with the dawn of slave societies and empires.
- eloff 8y ago
  I don't buy that. Even chimps go to war between different bands, so we've likely got that in common going back at least 6-7 million years when we shared a common ancestor. There's not a lot of evidence for war, but there's not a lot of evidence for anything. Very little survives over time. So I don't think a lack of evidence is meaningful yet.
  - peisistratos 8y ago
    There is evidence of war in the past 10,000 years, little before. Prior to 500 years ago there was little modern contact with the Americas, Australia, parts of sub-Saharan Africa etc., so observation of lack of conflict in hunter-gatherer bands there is more evidence. Obviously I mean hunter-gatherers, not the Aztec warriors. I don't see what chimpanzees have to do with humans, unless chimpanzees are sculpting Venus Madonnas and drawing buffalo on caves.
    - iguy 8y ago
      But there is no such "observation of lack of conflict in hunter-gatherer bands". At least if you use sensible units, like the proportion of deaths which are due to deliberate violence, on which such bands tend to score way above modern society. I think this myth comes from early studies, who wanted to see this, and observed no warfare during the 6 months they spent around 20 people. Later studies asked these 20 to reconstruct their family trees & tabulate how each great-uncle died, etc. (The other possibility is definitional. If we define war as involving thousands of soldiers, then obviously this never happened until societies which could co-ordinate thousands of people arose. May as well define it as involving uniforms & automatic rifles, too.)
watwut 8y ago
I would like to know what exactly was disciplining effect of WWI. Cause it ended in quite undisciplined mess, revolutions, high criminality, you name it. Bands of ex-soldiers and young men roaming streets beating people to push for this or that agenda - or just because they can. WWII did not made us disciplined either. It made stealing and rapes more prevalent. People were stealing to survive. Also, rich and poor might be identical when side by side in trench, but I would much rather be rich during war then poor. Rich have better survival chances - less chance to be sent to trench. More money to buy food during necessary hunger. Able to bribe enemies and own government alike. Btw, communism tried to do the have everyone spend doing laborious tasks: construction, mining, fishing, dishwashing thing.
kristianov 8y ago
https://serviceyear.org/ https://serviceyear.org/ Basically the same idea.

coderintherye 8y ago

>rich and poor are shoved next to each other; identical in the trenches. Rather than blithely shoot this down with statistics, rather I'll recommend you watch "Cross of Iron" which does a great job of exploring this topic.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

jmclaughlin 8y ago

rich and poor are shoved next to each other; identical in the trenches. And how completely false this is. The rich can buy their way out of the trenches. The poor cannot. And war is not exactly fought in trenches anymore. Ground patrols exist. But only after aerial bombardment and other force multipliers reduce the other side to an asymmetric adversary dominated by concrete walls of all things.

msla 8y ago

> What this means: have everyone spend a couple years doing laborious tasks: construction, mining, fishing, dishwashing, etc. Taking food out of the mouths of people who'd otherwise be paid to do such work. Not to mention giving the government what amounts to slave labor, in the form of people who can't say no to whatever work they're assigned.

twic 8y ago
There are countries which still have conscription. In many of those countries, people can choose to do civil rather than military service. For example, Denmark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Denmark#Military_and_non-military_duty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Denmark#Milita... I am certainly not a fan of conscription (and two-thirds of Danes aren't either), but this doesn't seem to be a huge problem in practice.

peisistratos 8y ago

> War has been the natural state of man for millions of years He mentions tribes, and there is no evidence of tribes existing prior to 10,000 years ago. Which is about 25,000 to 30,000 years after the cave paintings in Chauvet and El Castillo. Not that conflict never happens between hunter-gatherer bands, but evidence is it was, and is, fairly limited. Real conflict and war started ramping up 10,000 years ago, with the dawn of slave societies and empires.

eloff 8y ago
I don't buy that. Even chimps go to war between different bands, so we've likely got that in common going back at least 6-7 million years when we shared a common ancestor. There's not a lot of evidence for war, but there's not a lot of evidence for anything. Very little survives over time. So I don't think a lack of evidence is meaningful yet.
- peisistratos 8y ago
  There is evidence of war in the past 10,000 years, little before. Prior to 500 years ago there was little modern contact with the Americas, Australia, parts of sub-Saharan Africa etc., so observation of lack of conflict in hunter-gatherer bands there is more evidence. Obviously I mean hunter-gatherers, not the Aztec warriors. I don't see what chimpanzees have to do with humans, unless chimpanzees are sculpting Venus Madonnas and drawing buffalo on caves.
  - iguy 8y ago
    But there is no such "observation of lack of conflict in hunter-gatherer bands". At least if you use sensible units, like the proportion of deaths which are due to deliberate violence, on which such bands tend to score way above modern society. I think this myth comes from early studies, who wanted to see this, and observed no warfare during the 6 months they spent around 20 people. Later studies asked these 20 to reconstruct their family trees & tabulate how each great-uncle died, etc. (The other possibility is definitional. If we define war as involving thousands of soldiers, then obviously this never happened until societies which could co-ordinate thousands of people arose. May as well define it as involving uniforms & automatic rifles, too.)

watwut 8y ago

I would like to know what exactly was disciplining effect of WWI. Cause it ended in quite undisciplined mess, revolutions, high criminality, you name it. Bands of ex-soldiers and young men roaming streets beating people to push for this or that agenda - or just because they can. WWII did not made us disciplined either. It made stealing and rapes more prevalent. People were stealing to survive. Also, rich and poor might be identical when side by side in trench, but I would much rather be rich during war then poor. Rich have better survival chances - less chance to be sent to trench. More money to buy food during necessary hunger. Able to bribe enemies and own government alike. Btw, communism tried to do the have everyone spend doing laborious tasks: construction, mining, fishing, dishwashing thing.

kristianov 8y ago

https://serviceyear.org/ https://serviceyear.org/ Basically the same idea.