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> Aboriginal cultures went to war not just for material reasons, but also for cultural reasons, ritualistic, and religious reasons. Those are always just emoti

> Aboriginal cultures went to war not just for material reasons, but also for cultural reasons, ritualistic, and religious reasons. Those are always just emotional excuses for gaining more power over resources. If you ignore incentives and take everyone's word at face value, then we're all saints and nary a sin has ever been committed in the name of some righteous cause. Mutual misunderstandings, is all, I suppose. > People make fortunes out of everything regardless of its cause. Author took care to mark the fortunes of companies at peacetime vs war time and noted that fortunes increased by an order of magnitude in some cases, as a result of war. If your net worth or social standing is due to jump one or two orders of magnitude as a result of a war or two, your subconscious mind will find more reasons than are rational to justify and support a war. You'll say it's to save your people. You'll say it's self-defense. You'll say it's necessary and just. You'll ignore any path to peace that might avert such a disaster, in particular if you never have to enter the fox holes yourself. That's the author's point. Rackets aren't always some men conspiring to gain power or money or fame in smoke-filled parlor rooms. Often, they are emergent properties of incentivized systems. > The conspiratorial idea that war is largely driven by shadowy elites doesn't really hold up to anthropology. The only part that is wrong about that statement is the idea of the elites being 'shadowy'. No, they conduct their racket right out in the public eye. This isn't a particularly insightful phenomenon, by the way. Power always follows a power law of distribution. Of course the elites are primarily responsible for war. If the elites are ever against war, it just means that the incentives of the moment are temporarily more favorable for peace. As a blatant example, let's take the American Civil War for example. Well over 90% of white southerners didn't own slaves. So why would they go to war and lay down their life, by the hundreds of thousands, if they stood to gain almost nothing? Most of these kids were raised on subsistence farms and didn't even know how to read. Of course, to those boys it was a cultural cause, defense of their homeland, states rights, yadi yadi. That's what they were sold. But the ones really pulling the strings in that war, were the rich Southern elites, who did in fact own many slaves and stood to lose a great deal over Lincoln's election. Again, this is true of the vast majority of wars and battles in human history. Pick your time and place in history.

mrguyorama 3y ago
>cultural cause, defense of their homeland, states rights, yadi yadi. It was explicitly to enforce the white mans superior position over the black man. That's what many confederate soldiers wrote about, that's what pastors gave sermons about, that's what the confederate government discussed in their legislative chambers. It wasn't even "states rights to own slaves", but explicitly that most of the southern population believed it was by god's will that the white man guide the black savage. They believed the north was morally wrong to elevate the black man as an equal. They were fighting to maintain their societal hierarchy.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  Let's take a couple more recent examples then circle back to the Civil War. If I take your interpretation, which is a single side of a complex multi-dimensional conflict that involved millions of participants, and apply it to more recent conflicts: the American soldiers who fought in the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq were totally just trying to dominate the middle eastern man. In fact, they owned cars and stood to gain from having access to cheap oil. Many people texted about it, saying we should keep the oil and bomb the whole lot. Sermons about the risks of Islam, etc were spoken, in Christian churches. And if you choose to discard all the other sides of the die, that's all there is to the story. Those words were spoken at various times. People earnestly meant them on some level. But it's not the whole picture. It's a flat, 2D perspective. It's jingoistic in the opposite extreme. But what we do know from the so-called "War on Terror" (itself a propagandistic title), is that elites went so far as to even make up stories about fake nuclear weapons in order to drum up support for that war. We actually caught them in this blatant lie, for once. None of those people, of course, have gone to jail for it, but I digress. If you think that every war in history isn't similarly manipulated to drum up popular support, you don't know the first thing about war or propaganda. But we also know, from a certain perspective, that in the wake of 9/11, there was some popular sentiment to do something in retaliation for the innocent lives lost. Nevermind that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. It was pitched as an extension of the War on Terror. And having been swept up in that, I can tell you, I didn't disagree with it at first either. The war was supported on both sides of the political aisle. As for the Civil War, can you find damning documents if you look for them? Of course. But that doesn't tell you the whole story. My own brother was drafted into the War on Terror, not because he wanted to, but because he was a member of the National Guard. Similarly, in the South and the North and most wars in history: young men don't get a choice, they get drafted. If they don't go to war, and are fully capable, they get arrested or executed. Desertion is also punishable by death. But there's also softer influences. Your own brother is going to war, your cousins, your neighbors and best friends. Why wouldn't you go with them, to have their back? They would have yours, wouldn't they? Reciprocation is another extremely important influence in human psychology. We actually have recordings of Civil War veterans taken from the early 20th century, when they were still alive: https://youtu.be/swifvJEOF6s?t=160 https://youtu.be/swifvJEOF6s?t=160 "I didn't feel much interest in it, because I felt kindly towards the darkers, and they were kindly towards me, and towards my family." "Now, attending school, in Spring of '61, when news came war was declared...there was a rally among 75-100 boys at school. Well right then, about half of our pupils, boys around 18, quit school...I wanted to go too! But my father said I was too young, but if the war lasted long enough, you may have an opportunity." "Well, so I rested. War began. And I heard about it. And I heard about at Williamsburg, some of my classmates fell in the battle there, and I grieved about it because the boys I had been brought up with. They were a little older than I, and I felt sorry they were killed." "Then in 1862, General Lee began to need more men, naturally. Although the biggest battles had not come yet...I a boy, of 16 1/2 years old, joined a cavalry company." "It was a great curse on this country that we had slavery, and I thank God that I did not bring up my boys and girls under a system of slavery which I was brought up under." You can see in Howell's own retrospective about it. He was convinced it was about state's rights. He saw Virginia as his homeland moreso than even the U.S.A. In the 1860s, most men around the world would have done the same for wherever they resided, whatever tribe they belonged to, whatever monarch was in power and whatever cause was presented. But that instinct that men have to fight for their tribe, well that has been tapped successfully by elites for millenia.

mrguyorama 3y ago

>cultural cause, defense of their homeland, states rights, yadi yadi. It was explicitly to enforce the white mans superior position over the black man. That's what many confederate soldiers wrote about, that's what pastors gave sermons about, that's what the confederate government discussed in their legislative chambers. It wasn't even "states rights to own slaves", but explicitly that most of the southern population believed it was by god's will that the white man guide the black savage. They believed the north was morally wrong to elevate the black man as an equal. They were fighting to maintain their societal hierarchy.

chrisco255 3y ago
Let's take a couple more recent examples then circle back to the Civil War. If I take your interpretation, which is a single side of a complex multi-dimensional conflict that involved millions of participants, and apply it to more recent conflicts: the American soldiers who fought in the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq were totally just trying to dominate the middle eastern man. In fact, they owned cars and stood to gain from having access to cheap oil. Many people texted about it, saying we should keep the oil and bomb the whole lot. Sermons about the risks of Islam, etc were spoken, in Christian churches. And if you choose to discard all the other sides of the die, that's all there is to the story. Those words were spoken at various times. People earnestly meant them on some level. But it's not the whole picture. It's a flat, 2D perspective. It's jingoistic in the opposite extreme. But what we do know from the so-called "War on Terror" (itself a propagandistic title), is that elites went so far as to even make up stories about fake nuclear weapons in order to drum up support for that war. We actually caught them in this blatant lie, for once. None of those people, of course, have gone to jail for it, but I digress. If you think that every war in history isn't similarly manipulated to drum up popular support, you don't know the first thing about war or propaganda. But we also know, from a certain perspective, that in the wake of 9/11, there was some popular sentiment to do something in retaliation for the innocent lives lost. Nevermind that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. It was pitched as an extension of the War on Terror. And having been swept up in that, I can tell you, I didn't disagree with it at first either. The war was supported on both sides of the political aisle. As for the Civil War, can you find damning documents if you look for them? Of course. But that doesn't tell you the whole story. My own brother was drafted into the War on Terror, not because he wanted to, but because he was a member of the National Guard. Similarly, in the South and the North and most wars in history: young men don't get a choice, they get drafted. If they don't go to war, and are fully capable, they get arrested or executed. Desertion is also punishable by death. But there's also softer influences. Your own brother is going to war, your cousins, your neighbors and best friends. Why wouldn't you go with them, to have their back? They would have yours, wouldn't they? Reciprocation is another extremely important influence in human psychology. We actually have recordings of Civil War veterans taken from the early 20th century, when they were still alive: https://youtu.be/swifvJEOF6s?t=160 https://youtu.be/swifvJEOF6s?t=160 "I didn't feel much interest in it, because I felt kindly towards the darkers, and they were kindly towards me, and towards my family." "Now, attending school, in Spring of '61, when news came war was declared...there was a rally among 75-100 boys at school. Well right then, about half of our pupils, boys around 18, quit school...I wanted to go too! But my father said I was too young, but if the war lasted long enough, you may have an opportunity." "Well, so I rested. War began. And I heard about it. And I heard about at Williamsburg, some of my classmates fell in the battle there, and I grieved about it because the boys I had been brought up with. They were a little older than I, and I felt sorry they were killed." "Then in 1862, General Lee began to need more men, naturally. Although the biggest battles had not come yet...I a boy, of 16 1/2 years old, joined a cavalry company." "It was a great curse on this country that we had slavery, and I thank God that I did not bring up my boys and girls under a system of slavery which I was brought up under." You can see in Howell's own retrospective about it. He was convinced it was about state's rights. He saw Virginia as his homeland moreso than even the U.S.A. In the 1860s, most men around the world would have done the same for wherever they resided, whatever tribe they belonged to, whatever monarch was in power and whatever cause was presented. But that instinct that men have to fight for their tribe, well that has been tapped successfully by elites for millenia.