001002.gif)
007001.gif)
001001.gif)
March 15, 2006 Meeting Notes
I. Book/Media Discussion – 6:00 – 6:10
o Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes
A classic on the brutal nature of life and meant as a treatise on political philosophy. It’s a tough read with its Elizabethan English but interesting none the less.
o Democracy in
A classic analysis of democracy versus monarchy with interesting insights on warfare.
o The Moral Equivalent
of War, William James
A fascinating essay in which James explores the
issue of “how to sustain political unity and civic virtue in the absence
of war or a credible threat”.
o All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Mario Remarque
A classic tale
of World War I told from the German perspective, or rather the human
perspective as neither side is presented as evil, just humans caught
in a nightmare.
There was much discussion but the general conclusion was that war is any armed conflict between people.
o State of conflict. War is opposite of peace.
o Use of force to get what you want.
o Terrorist are at war but lack the means to fight with direct military approach.
o Guerilla warfare tactics is still warfare.
Causes of war:
o Ideals/Ideas
o Economics – would
the
o If both sides are rational, there could be no war. Only when
one or both sides are irrational do wars occur. When a rational
power comes into conflict with an irrational power, they may need
to resort to war. Rational as defined by the person who raised
this idea is the side that recognizing natural, inalienable, rights
as identified by the
o Issue: Who is to say that the other side is irrational? Often
both claim the other side is irrational. Was the holocaust as
carried out in
o Can religious fanatics claim to be rational, i.e. their reasons for fighting are rational to them? Or does reason demand a logical thought process?
o Often people are like puppets on a string.
o Often war can give meaning to life, i.e. thrive on a war.
o
What are ethics of
warfare? 6:30 – 6:50
De Tocqueville
o Democracies are slow to go to war but once started they will escalate
and get bloodier with time. Initially military personnel will
be of poor quality but as prestige and value of military goes up,
the quality of people who go into the military will rise and the country
will get better at war.
William James and The Moral Equivalent
of War
“
Men are now proud of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off subjection. But who can be sure that other aspects of one's country may not, with time and education and suggestion enough, come to be regarded with similarly effective feelings of pride and shame?
The martial type of character can be bred without war.
Strenuous honor and disinterestedness abound everywhere. Priests and
medical men are in a fashion educated to it, and we should all feel
some degree if its imperative if we were conscious of our work as
an obligatory service to the state. We should be owned, as soldiers
are by the army, and our pride would rise accordingly. We could be
poor, then, without humiliation, as army officers now are. The only
thing needed henceforward is to inflame the civic temper as part history
has inflamed the military temper. H. G. Wells, as usual, sees the
centre of the situation. "In many ways," he says, "military organization
is the most peaceful of activities. When the contemporary man steps
from the street, of clamorous insincere advertisement, push, adulteration,
underselling and intermittent employment into the barrack-yard, he
steps on to a higher social plane, into an atmosphere of service and
cooperation and of infinitely more honorable emulations. Here at least
men are not flung out of employment to degenerate because there is
no immediate work for them to do. They are fed a drilled and training
for better services. Here at least a man is supposed to win promotion
by self-forgetfulness and not by self-seeking. And beside the feeble
and irregular endowment of research by commercialism, its little shortsighted
snatches at profit by innovation and scientific economy, see how remarkable
is the steady and rapid development of method and appliances in naval
and military affairs! Nothing is more striking than to compare the
progress of civil conveniences which has been left almost entirely
to the trader, to the progress in military apparatus during the last
few decades.
Star Trek and the Planet with the Continuous War
o There is an episode in which a planet determines that war is inevitable
and so they just keep an ongoing war with another planet for centuries,
forgetting what the cause was. To avoid the destruction of the
cultures, they simulate attacks that just identify who the causalities
are and these people then have to report to a station where they are
executed by their own side. Kirk forces a real war on them and
then have to come to terms with either peace or a devastating war.
History – The strong (the warlike) survive and the weak perish
/ War and the Bible