"Human nature is what we were put into this world to rise above ..."
But, as John Derbyshire points out, in times of "total war," we humans routinely doff the sheep's clothing of civilization and morality. That's not nice, says Derbyshire; it's just the way it is, and -- unfortunately -- the way it will always be.
Much as conservatives like Paul Wolfowitz, Charles Krauthammer, and Victor Davis Hanson appeal to my heart (and my head), Derbyshire gets me in the gut. That's not nice, and it's not elegant; it's just the way it is.
Much as conservatives like Paul Wolfowitz, Charles Krauthammer, and Victor Davis Hanson appeal to my heart (and my head), Derbyshire gets me in the gut. That's not nice, and it's not elegant; it's just the way it is.
posted by Kate Marie | 3:14 PM | Permalink
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18 comments
18 Comments:
Kate Marie,
Hmmmm....If John Derbyshire gets you in the gut you might want to see a gastroenterologist. I read the post you linked to and it was a bunch of tripe. "Total war" is a very recent phenomenon in human history, whatever J.D. might claim to know about early hunter-gatherers. The current research on PTSD demonstrates that nothing in human nature prepares an individual for the experience of war, and that however cruel and barbaric a person may act in combat only a sociopath is left emotionally unscarred by the experience. Moreover, nothing the U.S. is experiencing now even approaches "total war," the eagerness with which guys like J.D. rush to portray our current crisis as a "total war" (and his "ho-hum we'll have to raze cities but what can you do" posturing) frankly gives me the creeps.
Madman,
I think you're misunderstanding Derbyshire.
Where does Derbyshire characterize our "current crisis" as total war? What do YOU know about early hunter-gatherers, such that you can seem to dismiss his references to the violence of those societies? Can you direct me to the research on PTSD which makes claims about the constitution of human nature? And, what, after all, does research on PTSD have to do with Derbyshire's point, which is not that human beings aren't affected by modern warfare, but that some wars or violent conflicts reach a tipping point in atrocities such that the object becomes to "crush" and humiliate the "other tribe" and that such a response is consistent with his view of human nature?
Derbyshire's post is meant to explain why men like Paul Tibbets (who is a war hero, to my mind, and certainly not a sociopath) could be left relatively unscarred by his experience in the war. And please remember that the starting point for his post was not our "current crisis" but Ramesh Ponnuru's piece on Hiroshima.
You may find Derbyshire's view of human nature creepy, but your righteous indignation and race to the moral high ground don't go any farther to prove your view of human nature correct than Deryshire's putative "posturing."
Here's where Derbyshire mentions "total war":
"If -- which God forbid -- we again face total war, we will massacre our enemy's civilians and erase his cities, and he will do the same to us, until one of us cries Uncle, or ceases to exist. It's fine to argue the morality of this as a theological exercise; but if you believe -- I do -- that that's how things will inevitably go, then the arguments are all just about angels on the heads of pins."
-- Where in there do you come up with a rush to characterize the *current* situation as total war?
And JD's reference to "tribal war" (with its object as the extermination of the other tribe) being coded deep in human nature has nothing to do with whether human beings, in modern warfare, experience post-traumatic-stress-disorder.
Derbyshire's post, in my opinion, is a varation of Dostoyevsky's line about "man can get used to anything, the scoundrel." You may think better of man. I don't. The fact that I don't doesn't make me creepy and it doesn't make you right.
Madman, I'm not really a Derbyshire fan, but I don't think your PTSD example, which is certainly plausible, necessarily proves him wrong. It's possible that the war impulse can be a sad but typical part of human nature, but it's also possible, and not contradictory, that humans aren't psychologically or biologically suited to handle the awful consequences of that impulse. You and Derbyshire may both be right, or wrong; I think they're separate issues.
Jeff, I think you're right. I'm not a huge Derbyshire fan, or at least I tend to disagree with him more than I agree with him, but I guess I see him as representing the conservative id (but maybe that's not fair, either, since he's obviously a bright guy). The thing is, even when I disagree with him (which I don't in this instance) I feel momentarily caught in the undertow of his relentless pessimism.
Kate Marie,
I haven't rushed to the moral high ground, Derbyshire charges into a moral trough. As for the current research on PTSD- it's all over the web, look it up. For example, here is a tidbit about WWII-
"One in four WW2 casualties was caused by "combat fatigue." For those in lengthy, intense fighting, the ratio was one in two. In the Pacific, where combat fatigue was most prevalent, 40% of 1943 evacuations were "mental." 26,000 psychiatric cases were reported just from Okinawa. To keep sailors from going mad anticipating kamikaze attacks, they weren't alerted to approaching planes until they absolutely had to be."
http://www.pbs.org/perilousfight
/psychology/the_mental_toll/
The incidence of PTSD among Vietnam War veterans is even higher than it was for WWII vets, and tracking veterans finds that the longer you follow a particular group of vets the higher the incidence of PTSD you find- latent trauma can express itself dozens of years after a soldier returns from war.
As for Paul Tibbets, I don't know how Derbyshire or you can be confident that he or anyone else was left "unscarred" by his experience in the war. He may have no regrets about flying the Enola Gay, but I wouldn't want to bet on whether a man who flew as many combat missions as he did wasn't haunted by some pretty terrifying memories. In any case none of Derbyshire's pontificating about hunter-gatherers (and I'll tell you something I do know about prehistoric hunter-gatherers- its some trick to make any kind of quanitative claims about a society that left no written records) helps explain any of what Paul Tibbets experienced. Modern warfare makes vast destruction possible with minimal psychological stress precisely because the modern warrior can sit at a mile-high remove from the damage s/he inflicts. All that proves about human nature is that we have a capacity for emotional alienation that is aided by technology- our capacity for savagery is at its highest when we don't have to directly experience the human consequences of our actions. That does not indicate, as Derbyshire argues, that "war is coded deep in human nature"- quite the contrary.
As for when Derbyshire mentions "total war"- look at the first line of the post. His entire discussion concerns "total war," its "deep encoding" in human nature, and its imminent return to our shores:
"I know from my email -- and so I suppose Ramesh and my other colleagues know it, too -- that the USA is full of people who believe that some really major atrocity will be committed against us at some point in the next few years, and that we will respond by shucking off all civilized restraints, as we did in the later stages of WW2, until we have dealt with the issue. Then we shall calmly re-moralize."
His conflation of the current crisis with the "later stages of WW2" asserts that what we face now is total war (a total fallacy) and that the depths of barbarity to which we will sink are predictable, inevitable, and ultimately excusable, given "that moralizing about total war is pointless."
The fact is that history does not provide evidence that "tribal war, in which the object is to exterminate the other tribe" is a normal or natural occurence. Such instances are very exceptional. Look at Thucydides- he was a soldier who lived in a society raised on Homer which had known millenia of war, and yet the brute savagery of the Pelopennesian War left him struggling to comprehend what he and his contemporaries had lived through. All of Derbyshire's bluster about "tribal war" is a bunch of macho BS, he is making claims about human nature that are directly contradicted by human history.
P.S. The Ponnoru piece on which Derbyshire was commenting, "Hiroshima Now," is entirely devoted to discussing the implications of historical arguments over Hiroshima for the current "war on terror," so it is no stretch to read Derbyshire's opening assertion that "moralizing about total war is pointless" as applying to both WWII and the current crisis.
P.S. The Ponnoru piece on which Derbyshire was commenting, "Hiroshima Now," is entirely devoted to discussing the implications of historical arguments over Hiroshima for the current "war on terror," so it is no stretch to read Derbyshire's opening assertion that "moralizing about total war is pointless" as applying to both WWII and the current crisis.
"Madman,
Regarding Tibbets -- I said "relatively unscarred." And I know that from reading about him, though I can't know whether he's had some "haunting dreams;" in fact, I assume he has. The issue is not bad dreams, or even the evidence of PTSD, but whether, in general, a society and its war veterans are able to "re-moralize," to use Derbyshire's phrase. I don't think there's any evidence that they *aren't* able to do this, despite the significant psychic costs to some percentage of individual veterans.
"His conflation of the current crisis with the "later stages of WW2" asserts that what we face now is total war (a total fallacy) and that the depths of barbarity to which we will sink are predictable, inevitable, and ultimately excusable, given "that moralizing about total war is pointless."
-- But he *does not* conflate the current crisis with total war; he suggests that a really major atrocity committed against the U.S. will give rise to "total war", as in the later stages of WW2. And, depending upon how you define "a really major atrocity," I think he's correct that the response will be predictable, inevitable, and ultimately excusable." Call it macho B.S, if you will, but again, that doesn't make it wrong.
Your example of Thucydides and the Peloponessian War does not constitute proof of the entire tendency of human history and human nature. But let me ask you, do you consider the twentieth century to be an anomaly in human history? The Armenians, the Jews, the Muslims in the Balkans, the Ukrainians, the Tutsis, etc. might disagree with your notion that the idea of tribal war and extermination is macho B.S. posturing.
P.S.
I don't see a way to interpret the phrase "if -- which God forbid -- we again face total war ..." to mean that the situation we face *now* is total war. How do you make that out?
Kate Marie,
"The issue is not bad dreams, or even the evidence of PTSD, but whether, in general, a society and its war veterans are able to "re-moralize," to use Derbyshire's phrase. I don't think there's any evidence that they *aren't* able to do this, despite the significant psychic costs to some percentage of individual veterans."
The issue is not whether soldier's can "re-moralize," but whether they were ever acting under a different set of morals to begin with. Derbyshire writes that this "re-moralization" is as easy as donning different sets of clothing, the traumatic experiences of war veterans prove that it is not. The question you keep resisting is very simple- if "total war" were so deeply encoded in human nature why would it do so much psychological damage to those who experience it?
Thucydides is only one of thousands of examples that one could draw from human history. Cicero in ancient Rome. The author of the "Sunzi bingfa" in China. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Remarque, and the whole "lost generation." Wherever societies experience total war for the first time (an occurence that was rare prior to the twentieth century) it finds people emotionally and psychologically unprepared.
I think at this point some clarity needs to be introduced about "total war" and what it means. Total war takes place when two societies pit all of their human and material assets and resources against one-another. Most wars in human history have been rather limited affairs- two or more potentates fielding armies against one-another using whatever treasure they could extort out of the populace under their control or groups of warriors from two or more communities setting into the field with whatever they can carry on their backs. Total war only happens when human beings organize themselves into communities that are capable of concentrating and mobilizing all of the human and economic assets of the whole, a circumstance which has been pretty rare prior to the 20th century.
So in answer to your question about the Jews, Armenians, Tutsis, etc.- 1) Genocide is different from total war- the peoples who were the victims of those atrocities had not mobilized to destroy their tormentors. 2)Not just the 20th century, but all of recorded human history is an anomaly when one discusses human nature. Events like genocide and total war are clearly not expressions of human nature, because examples of that type of behavior can not be found among communities that have not experienced the particular historical conditions that give rise tofacilitatd them. If genocide were an expression of human nature why would the U.S. have stopped at interring Japanese-Americans? Why would European nations ever relinquish their colonies? Genocide and total war are expressions of complex forces that arise from human history and human artifice, not human nature- commercialization, industrialization, colonialism, nationalism, urbanization, etc. etc. etc.
As for Derbyshire, maybe he doesn't feel that the war on terror has become a total war yet, but even suggesting that it could do so is frankly creepy. We are threatened by a small group of fanatics that do not represent any "tribe" or whole community. Even if they did commit some terrible atrocity against us that would not be "total war." Derbyshire's promiscuous use of language and history is perhaps what offends me most. Anyone who looks at history would no that not only is total war NOT intrinsic to human nature, but that the next time it happens in any large-scale symmetrical conflict will be the last. The advent of nuclear weaponry raised the price of total war to "mutually assured annihilation," a fact which kept the Cold War cold for almost 50 years. 9/11 demonstrated that in the new technological climate of the 211st century one does not have to embark upon total war to wreak terrible havoc and destruction. It would be madness and idiocy (and frankly, evil) to escalate an already tragic conflict into a world-ending one.
"Genocide and total war are expressions of complex forces that arise from human history and human artifice, not human nature- commercialization, industrialization, colonialism, nationalism, urbanization, etc. etc. etc."
-- And human history, commercialization, nationalism, colonialism, urbanization, etc. are *not* expressions of human nature? It's a bit of hubris to think you can make your case in the comments section of this blog, isn't it? I mean, it's not as if what constitutes human nature isn't an age-old question.
Total war is a recent phenomenon, because human societies have only recently had the technology/resources to wage it. That doesn't prove that it's not an expression of some impulse of human nature. As Jeff suggested, it is possible that the impulse arises from human nature and that humans are ill-equipped biologically and psychologically to deal with it.
But you have suggested (with your Thucydides example) that the impulse to make any kind of war does not arise from human nature. Why do we still have war? If "not just the 20th century, but all of recorded human history is an anomaly when one discusses human nature," what good are *your* historical examples?
P.S. Hemingway and Fitzgerald are not great examples to address the psychological costs of the lost generation, as Fitzgerald never actually fought in the war (and didn't generally address its psychic costs in his writing) and Hemingway -- despite A Farewell to Arms -- isn't exactly an exemplar of anti-macho B.S. posturing.
Dear Kate Marie,
Why are my assertions any more expressive of hubris than Derbyshire's? He feels he can make sweeping assertions about human nature in the space of a few paragraphs on poor reasoning and little evidence, I'm just pointing to the gaping holes in his argument. I haven't made any positive claims about the content of human nature, I'm only arguing what is evident from history, that total war is "deeply encoded" in human nature.
I don't see where you read Thucydides (or my invocation of him) as arguing that human nature contains no impulse to war whatsoever. Thucydides grew to manhood in a profoundly warlike society that celebrated martial endeavors and experienced almost constant violence. Even so, when total war hit the Hellenic world it caught everyone (not just Thucydides) by surprise and left all of Greek society reeling.
It would be folly to deny human nature's profound potential for competition, aggression, and violence. But it would be equally foolish to deny human nature's profound potential for nurturing, empathy, cooperation, and love. Taken altogether one cannot point to instances of total war and say "that's the way it's always been"- that simply is not true.
As for industrialization, commercialization, urbanization, etc. being expressions of human nature, why would that be so? They do not appear everywhere that human beings have lived or live today, and human beings can thrive very well without them. I'm not saying that we need to turn back the clock, but these phenomena are artifices that human beings created (which is different from saying that they are expressions of human nature). If it was in our power to create them it is in our power to change them if we see that they are affecting us adversely.
I wouldn't contradict Jeff's assertion that human beings are born with impulses that facilitate conflict and war, but that is a long way from saying that "total war" is deeply encoded in human nature.
PS- Fitgerald may not have directly experienced the war, but his prose well exemplifies the disenchantment it produced throughout American society. Mach posturing or no, Hemingway is an excellent example of the psychic torment war inflicts.
"I'm not saying that we need to turn back the clock, but these phenomena are artifices that human beings created (which is different from saying that they are expressions of human nature). If it was in our power to create them it is in our power to change them if we see that they are affecting us adversely."
-- They are artifices created by humans, yes, but are you suggesting that artifices created by humans can not be expressions of human nature? So the impulse to create art is not an expression of human nature? And for an artifice to be an expression of human nature, it must have appeared everywhere where humans have lived? Why?
"PS- Fitgerald may not have directly experienced the war, but his prose well exemplifies the disenchantment it produced throughout American society."
-- You're stretching, guy. The Great Gatsby, for instance, is not a disquisition on the disenchantment produced by the Great War, and in any event, I think it would be hard to argue that American society had the same experience of the Great War as Europeans did.
"Nature is made better by no mean
But nature makes that mean; so over that art/
Which you say adds to Nature, is an art/
That nature makes;.....this is an art/
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but/
The art itself is nature."
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