Saral Sarkar
This post is the final chapter from the book "Factors of Conflict and Conditions of Peace", written by Saral Sarkar.
The book is now (since February 2025) also available in German, under the title "Krieg, Gewalt und die Grenzen des Wachstums" (Metropolis). The English version of the book was published 2024 by Books on Demand.
In his A Study of War, Quincy Wright (1965:
100) wrote a sort of a summary of the history of civilization:
„Out of the warlike peoples arose civilization, while the
peaceful collectors and hunters were driven to the ends of the earth, where
they are gradually being exterminated or absorbed, with only the dubious
satisfaction of observing the nations which had wielded war so effectively to
destroy them and to become great, now victimized by their own instruments.”
(quoted in Wilson 1978/1995: 116)
But such are the facts; we are all living in
civilization, even most of the tribal peoples of the world.
Against the background of all the knowledge on wars and conflicts, we can now talk about conditions of peace in our world. We can generalize that economic interests have been the strongest, though not the only, factor in the history of conflicts and wars among humans and among groups of humans. The will to survive and to pursue one’s own economic and other material interests related to survival (i.e., selfishness) was ingrained in our character, when we evolved from some ape species. That is what the theory of evolution says. But it has not been an absolutely dominant trait of our character, not in all situations. Primatologists who have studied character traits of chimpanzees, our closest relatives in the animal world, have come to a conclusion that agrees with everyday observations of us humans made also by ordinary people. Eminent primatologist Frans de Waal (2006: 136) writes:
When it comes to love and hate, powerful emotions
can be aroused and conflicts with out-groups can lead to violence, even to war.
Only the borders between the in-groups (sometimes aka Identity groups) and the
corresponding out-groups have never been stable in the course of history.
With reference to the biblical commandment „Thou shall
not kill”, Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt writes:
„The interesting question is however whether we declare our support
for this article of faith only on the basis of rationality, or whether we
additionally also follow innate proclivities. If the latter is the case, then
our hope for peaceful co-existence would surely be better founded than if only
compulsion or pure reason makes us law-abiding.“ (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1971: 113,
translated by S. Sarkar)
De Waal thinks we may have this hope. Even lay
people know and can observe that we humans, like animals, have some genetically
inherited inhibitions that control aggression, particularly inhibition to kill
members of in-groups. More such innate tendencies can be observed among our
nearest relatives, the chimpanzees. De Waal found that chimps share with us
humans character traits like generosity as well as a sense of morality. He
writes in his books (1996, 2006, 2010) that the human character traits empathy,
kindness, helpfulness, solidarity and cooperation must also be innate, because
they are not uniquely human, they are also present in apes.
Also Eibl-Eibesfeldt, who, with Konrad Lorenz, believes
in the existence of an innate aggression-drive in humans, cannot be regarded as
a complete pessimist. He writes, let me repeat, in an essay (1990: 81,
translated by S. Sarkar):
„We are not fully predetermined by our instincts. We are
capable of controlling our nature through culture. […] What is decisive is that
we are the first creatures that can set goals for themselves and thus give our
life a meaning. By doing this, we, of course, do not free our-selves from [our]
nature. But we actively enter into new situations, in which new conditions of
selection act upon us.”
It is not clear in this quote how, according to
Eibl-Eibesfeldt, the new conditions of selection would act upon us. Will they
act in the usual biological evolutionary way? That is, through genetic
mutations and selection of those mutants that are best adapted to the new
requirements of the changed situations?
Ian Morris, a famous historian of the genre Big History,
of course accepts the ethological thesis of presence of innate aggression in
humans, but, unlike Eibl-Eibesfeldt, he does not think that assumption of a
special ability to make radical cultural adaptations to new situations is
necessary for hoping that in some near future, say in the next 30 to 40 years,
peace will be possible (Morris 2014).
Morris thinks that although war is a terrible thing, on
the whole, the wars of the past have also brought progress, technological as
well as political, albeit inadvertently. Things that were invented as weapons
and/or further developed in order to get some advantage in war, later also
proved to be valuable for civil life. Sooner or later, all peoples of the world
copied the inventions. Thus, a competition for ever better inventions and
innovations arose among rival powers, which drove technological progress ahead
for the whole human civilization.
After every war, when peace came, ever increasing trade
between formerly enemy countries (and also others) enriched societies of both.
And trade required better law and order, better administrations and many other
better institutions. Even if one people was defeated and integrated in the
kingdom or empire of the victors, the defeated and subjugated people also
contributed to the might of the victors and hence had also to be granted the
advantages of living in a large and strong state/empire.
This essay is not the right place for a detailed summary
of Ian Morris‘ book (War! What it is Good For?). Suffice it to say that
Morris thinks that the horrendous costs of war and the great advantages of
peaceful co-existence are so obvious that soon making war would become
obsolete, an anachronism.
There is also not enough space here for a detailed
critique of all the points that Morris makes for his argument. I shall here
mention only the basic flaw in it. Morris has arrived at his conclusion
by studying the development of human civilization through the past centuries.
And he assumes that in the foreseeable future our civilization would go on
developing in the same manner and in the same direction. He assumes continuous
economic growth and incessant political progress. His hope (prognosis, if you
will) of a peaceful world in the near future totally depends on these two
assumptions. His book appeared in 2014.
The same flaw in thinking builds the basis of the
expectation of a “demographic dividend” in certain newly rising
developing countries such as India, where population growth has been continuing
in the current decades. I remember having heard such talks even from India’s
leading politicians. The reasoning was that a plethora of cheap laborers
contribute to industrial development of hitherto underdeveloped countries.
But the Club of Rome’s famous book Limits to Growth
(by Meadows et al.) appeared already in 1972. This possibility, that there are
limits to growth, cannot be ignored. After all, all essential nonrenewable
resources that our civilization needs, including arable land, are limited, and
it is becoming ever more difficult and ever more expensive to extract them.
Also, the capacity of nature to absorb man-made pollutions is limited.
Otherwise, there would not be any necessity to raise such alarms as we hear
since many years now. Parallel to this, the global human population is growing
continuously, albeit at a slower rate than before.
Eibl-Eibesfeldt, in the quote above, does not indicate
what “new situations” he is thinking of. So far as I can visualize, those would
be the dire consequences of climate change, and of other global and local
environmental damages. Shortage of essential resources may lead to resource
wars. It is already causing large-scale unwelcome immigration from
overpopulated countries into the rich countries. Technological solutions to
such problems are increasingly becoming difficult, if not impossible. This is a
completely new political-economic situation.
Thinkers like De Waal and Eibl-Eibesfeldt appear to have
thought about the problems of war and peace in isolation. They thought about
these, of course, in connection with the results of their own scientific
research on human and animal nature. But they, like Morris, appear to have been
working under the assumption that in the surrounding areas of human life, other
things and developments would remain more or less the same, or, when changes
take place, the direction of the changes would remain the same, i.e., ever
better and upward. They did not notice, it seems, that in the areas of
economic, political and social conditions, and in the related areas of thought,
massive changes have been taking place that should necessitate a whole shift
from the hitherto valid “Growth Paradigm” to what I call “Limits-to-Growth
Paradigm” (Sarkar 1999).
Thinkers, who have accepted this paradigm shift
seriously, already know of the possibility of world-wide economic, political
and societal collapse. They are writing books on subjects that, taken together,
may be called collapsology.
Now let us suppose that in such a new situation, the
leaders of the world are in a position and have the strength to take the right
decisions and set the right short-, middle- and long-term goals, for the world
as a whole as well as for their own particular countries. So far as I can
reasonably see, these decisions would have to be such that they would initiate
a worldwide economic contraction, de-growth
in modern jargon. Mankind must accept these goals and adapt itself to
everything resulting from implementation of the corresponding policies. That
would be a collection of radical cultural, economic, and political changes.
That would not happen through a gradual millennia-long process of spontaneous
genetic mutations and selections. And if the needed changes do not take place
very soon, the world would sink into global chaos with dozens, if not hundreds
of low-intensity wars, civil wars and conflicts – big and small. The wars and
conflicts of the future would not be waged for building empires, but for
defending “our” land, or for taking possession of the land of “others”, and,
for that matter, the mines containing valuable minerals. Already now, we can
see walls and fences being erected at many places between sovereign countries
and territories. The wars in Palestine-Israel have always been about possession
of land. Similar has been the case in Rwanda (Diessenbacher 1998). And in
Western Sahara, the bone of contention are the phosphate mines.
But science-savvy people may ask: can’t we use genetic
engineering for solving once for all the problem of peace? John Keegan (2012:
133), a military historian, tried to imagine a biological-evolutionary solution
to the problem of innate aggression, that leads to frequent wars and other acts
of violence: He writes:
„A successful adaptation through mutation, in which-ever way
the latter may have occurred, is a reaction to the conditions of the
environment. Although […] genetic engineering may make it possible to bring
about ‚specific mutations‘ or ‚genetic mutations‘ and thus breed creatures
without any aggression, it would be necessary for their survival to keep them
under conditions in which there would be no threat for them. But such
conditions do not exist in the natural environment, and they cannot also be
created. Even if a fully agression-free human race would come into being and
would live under exclusively favorable circumstances, it would still see itself
compelled to kill; apart from lower organisms (germs) that cause diseases and
insects and tiny animals that house the disease-germs, also bigger animals that
compete with humans for plants, on which the latter subsist. One can hardly
imagine how creatures that are incapable of any kind of aggressive reaction
would be able to control their environment.“ (translation and italics by S.
Sarkar)
Prospects of peace have become very dim. A long
period of (violent) conflicts and societal collapse in one country after
another is in the offing. It seems to me, if we at all dare to speculate on a
peaceful world, then it should be temporally located after the long era of
collapse, during which the world population will go down drastically. We
already know enough about the factors of wars and conflicts. This knowledge
only needs to be spread.
If government leaders want to do something for peace
already before that time, they can enforce a birth control policy in countries
where population is still growing. A non-growing population would immediately
lead to increase in per capita availability of all consumption goods. And that
would, incidentally, also mitigate the severity of the other causes of
conflict, such as unemployment and illegal migration. De Waal writes:
„We know that bonobos presently live in a richer habitat than
chimps, one that allows mixed groups of males and females to forage together.
This permits greater social cohesion than in chimps, who in their quest for
food split up into small parties. The ‘sisterhood’ among unrelated females that
is typical of bonobo society would not have been possible without predictable,
abundant food sources” (de Waal 2006: 227f.)
Another thing that should be done, but is very
difficult to do, is to drive out from the head of young people the thought that
the task of their governments and political parties is to make them ever more
prosperous and happier. The primary task of governments today is to save the
environment for life in general, including animal life. But to achieve any
degree of success in this direction, a degree of egalitarianism must become
part of the core of policy.
If cultural leaders of a society want to, dare to, try
to contribute something toward peace, they can try by all non-aggressive,
non-offending and non-provocative means
to reduce the importance of a person’s religious and other similar identities.
What exactly should and could be done in this regard is a discussion that must
be carried out, but at another place.
Literature
Deschner, Karlheinz (ed.) (1990): Woran ich glaube. Gütersloh (Gütersloher Verlagshaus)
De Waal, Frans (1996): Good Natured. The
Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Cambridge MA,
London (Harvard University Press)
De
Waal, Frans (2006): Our Inner Ape – The Best and Worst of Human Nature.
London (Granta Books)
De
Waal, Frans (2010): The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society.
London (Souvenir Press)
Diessenbacher,
Hartmut (1998): Kriege der Zukunft –Die Bevölkerungsexplosion gefährdet den
Frieden. München, Wien (Hanser)
Eibl-Eibesfeldt,
Irenäus (1971): Liebe und Hass – Zur Naturgeschichte elementarer
Verhaltensweisen. Frankfurt a. M. etc. (Büchergilde Gutenberg)
Eibl-Eibesfeldt,
Irenäus (1990): „Glaube als Offenbarungswissen und Zuversicht”, in:
Deschner (1990)
Keegan,
John (2012): Die Kultur des Krieges. Köln: (Anaconda Verlag)
Meadows,
Donella, et al. (1972): Limits to Growth. New York (Universe Books)
Morris,
Ian (2014): War! What it is Good For? The Role of Conflict in Civilisation,
from Primates to Robotes. London (Profile Books)
Sarkar,
Saral (1999): Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? – A Critical Analysis of
Humanity’s Fundamental Choices. London (Zed Books)
Wilson,
Edward O. (1978): On Human Nature. Cambridge MA (Harvard University
Press)
Wright, Quincy (1965): A Study of War. 2nd edition, Chicago (University of Chicago Press)
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