In the United States, November 11 is Veterans Day, first celebrated in 1919. Back in 1919 it was called Armistice Day, commemorating the 1918 armistice that ended what Americans originally called the European War. When the European War started, Americans wanted no part of it. If European nations wanted to fight each other, then let them: we crossed the Atlantic to get away from that kind of thing.
But the deep state of the time ran a couple of propaganda ops to inflame public sentiment, and the Wilson Administration eventually dragged Americans into what came to be known as the Great War. Ironically, Wilson had been elected president on the slogan that he “kept us out of war,” but despite it all, Americans ended up “over there.”
It’s no longer called the Great War: first, it wasn’t all that great, and it was arguably the beginning of the end for Western civilization. Second, it’s now called World War I because — as many people warned at the time — the June 1919 Treaty of Versailles guaranteed and delivered a World War II. More tens of millions were needlessly killed.
And the wars continue. Our newly-elected president seems less inclined to start wars, but how much he can stop them is in doubt. Apart from the huge amounts of money to be made, the animalistic side of human nature revels in the death and destruction that war brings. Whether we like it or not, we have only a thin veneer of intelligence covering our instinctive savagery. As William James wrote in “The Moral Equivalent of War” (1910):
“Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder, but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war’s irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.”
Human nature remains as it always was; only the technologies and excuses have changed. We can hold back the savage tide a little, now and then, but each generation has to start anew on trying to maintain a decent — and peaceful — civilization.
The Thousand-Year View 
I think war belongs in the same category as death and taxes as the only sure things in life.
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Very likely. One problem of larger societies is that people who start and profit from war seldom bear personal risk for their actions. In the past, kings and the like were at least occasionally expected to lead their followers into battle, such as England’s King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt. Now, politicians and bureaucrats stir up bloodshed for their own purposes but let others (soldiers and civilians) do the dying, as the instigators cash in by selling weapons and then supplies to rebuild devastated countries. As convenient and helpful as it would be if the problem were just a few bad people who could be removed from power (as they should be), the problem is a systemic result of humans in large groups. I have no prescription except to do what we can, when we can, to oppose needless conflict and carnage.
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N.S. I was thinking about an exchange we had a few years back and I wanted to revisit it. I wrote something on my blog and you responded – it seems like your writing is a mix of philosophy and creative writing, and you are used to philosophy that proceeds by means of argument. And I said – I can make an argument. What would you like me to make an argument about? And the exchange petered out. I think what I could have said was — I think arguments are one way of proceeding in philosophy and that was has its pluses and minuses. The plus is that there’s a certain transparency which is honorable. The minus is that it can provide the illusion that we have reached a conclusion. All my phillosohpical writing for me is only worth anything if it helps people’s ethical practice — if it gives people the tools to co-operate better, love each other, and appreciate the beauty and awesomeness of nature. And I fear there are two ways of dropping the ball here. One is giving up in frustration. And the other is stopping too early — of thinking we have reached the goal when there is a lot more to be done. So whenever I write anything philosophically I try to leave some work for the reader to do, and leave things a little unbalanced and unclear — because I want to make it clear that no intellectual stopping point is worth stopping at as long as there is still work to be done in our ethical lives. How does that strike you?
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One thing I like about your writing is that it makes me think. There is always more work to be done, both in our ethics and in our understanding. To be more than a parlor game, argument must make a difference in how we live our lives. One benefit of clarity is that it helps us know which way to go in our arguments. If we don’t know which way to go, we have to figure it out before proceeding. It might have been a case like that. More later, I have to run …
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I agree that there are different ways of doing philosophy, and I’ve always thought your way leaned more toward creative writing, often with stories that let the reader draw his or her own conclusions. I lean more toward trying to make clear arguments, but that doesn’t save readers from doing their own intellectual work. It just makes it easier for them to see where they disagree with me and where I might have made mistakes. One advantage of your approach is that it’s more open-ended. I think our respective styles come partly from our philosophical backgrounds and partly from personality.
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