I'm not ignoring Max Hastings, but I have 2 or 3 of his books (maybe
more) some place and can't lay my finger on them. I'm planning to move
to Idaho early next year and have been weeding out my library, getting
rid of books I've read and didn't like, or books I've read but won't
read or want to refer to again to minimize the stuff I take to Idaho. I
don't think I got rid of any Max Hastings, in fact my intention is to
keep most of the serious works on history. When I'm looking for a
change from poetry I most often turn to history.
I'm not up to another overview quite yet. I'm slowly wending my way
through Rick Atkinson's trilogy and am half way through /The Day of
Battle. /The philosophy of why we fight interests me more at present.
Fighting great wars couldn't have occurred during our 185,000 years as
hunter-gatherers, but once we created villages they got much larger than
the H-G tribal battles. With cities they got larger still. But the
option to fight to protect (or acquire) territory probably developed
during the 185,000 years as H-G's, and no edict saying "we won't do that
any longer" will mean much. Peaces such as the Pax Romana and the Cold
War are merely interregnums between wars. Rousseau's Nobel Savage who
lived at peace with nature and his fellow man was a fiction. The
pacifist walks into a tough neighborhood and when confronted by muggers
says "I don't want any trouble." Good luck with that argument.
Then too when I was 16 in 1951 I tried to enlist in the Marine Corps. I
was accepted but the pulled me off the bus destined for MCRD and told me
to come back when I was 17; which I did. Looking back I often wonder
what impelled me to do that. Not everyone does that, but in history we
see that enormous numbers of young men do -- more than enough usually to
fight all the wars of history . . . unless we assume that a majority
were drafted or forced by royal laws to fight, but that isn't my
assumption. There has been in history a liking for battle, a willingness
to fight. Old men gathered around will often ask each other about their
military experience. Those who don't have any will be embarrassed to
admit it.
So how likely is Nietzsche's "last man"? Those "last men" clustered in
cities want to be without guns and have the police and other
tax-supported authorities and leaders take care of them from the cradle
to the grave. But out beyond the cities are plenty left who will still
enlist when there is the likelihood of war. If this willingness to
fight is in our genes, put there during our 185,000 years as
hunter-gatherers and further fostered during our wars in villages and
cities and, in modern times, on larger tapestries, can anything be done
about it, and more especially should anything be done? If we can
anticipate mere wars then we probably don't want to do anything about
them, but as happened during the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war,
we pull back and put our weapons away, confused by the choice between
protecting (or enhancing) our territory and annihilation.
Many current movies show mankind being wiped out by zombies (the "last
men" hungry?) or apocalyptic events -- very pessimistic. But other
movies show us moving out to other planets. I think the latter while
not eliminating our willingness to fight will give us plenty to do in
order to survive. We may one day (30,000 years from now as Isaac Asimov
hypothesizes in his /Foundation /series) be living on millions of
planets. Asimov doesn't see that as an end to war. There are still
wars between planets and political wars between powerful leaders, but if
we need a beneficent robot to guide is into a more peaceful future we
may be out of luck. Terminator movies have convinced most of us that
machines are not to be trusted. ;-)
Lawrence