A Plan for Lasting Peace
A Plan for Lasting Peace
by John M Repp
A book review of Shift: The Beginning of War, the Ending of War (2014) by Judith L. Hand
“None of us realized how much more powerful is instinct compared to intelligence. We would do well to bear this in mind or the tragic errors of the past may be repeated.”
Albert Einstein, Heinz Norden, and Bertrand Russell
Einstein on Peace, p. 26 (1988) (p. 71 in Hand )
In the last few years, there have been many books published that argue for the abolition of war. Examples include War No More: The Case for Abolition (2013) by David Swanson, a peace activist, and The End of War (2012) by John Horgan, a science writer. These works conclude that if humanity can just find the political will to end war, it can be abolished. Dr. Judith L. Hand believes that it is possible to end war as well, but that achieving the political will, while the most important step is not the only one. Hand thinks we need to understand human evolution and biology in order to mount a successful campaign to end war and make that achievement stick.
Hand is a biologist who has studied the behavior of complex animals. She published a paper in 1981 about a group of Laughing Gulls who were put in a confined but large space with a very unbalanced sex ratio of seven males and two females. Eventually, two of the males started “keeping house”. They did not behave in the way that species usually did where males fight each other for females. They engaged in “courtship” behaviors, built a nest, and when Hand put several fertilized eggs in the nest, the two males incubated the eggs, hatched the chicks and fed them. The point is complex animals put in environments different from the ones in which they evolved can display new behaviors.
Hand writes that our ancestors evolved as nomadic foragers living in small bands. These bands dispersed rather than fight wars when there were conflicts over resources. War was not an evolutionary adaptation like walking and running on two legs or like human language. The earliest archaeological evidence of war is just 12 to 14 thousand years old. The nomadic bands were egalitarian and the females had as much status as the males, sharing power in the important decisions of the group.
It was when our species “settled down” that the tragedy began. Gaining access to reliable, rich and stable resources as the last glacial period ended, gave those groups a reason to defend territory. In effect, our species started living in a radically altered environment, essentially a new ecological niche. There were three unintended consequences that we are still contending with: 1) social stratification (the new roles of chief or shaman, later emperor), 2) loss of status for women, and 3) war.
So war is not an innate behavior in our species. The existence of societies without war is evidence that war is not an innate behavior in our species. Some examples of societies without war are Hopi, Sami, Kalahari Bushman, and the modern nations of Switzerland and Norway. More evidence is the existence of the innate human aversion to killing another human (not everyone has it) who is not guilty of a serious offense. Such aversion explains the PTSD or moral injury soldiers experience when returning from war as well as the necessity for soldiers to undergo extensive training to kill before being sent to war.
However, there are four innate traits that make us susceptible to war: 1) the dominance behavioral system (DBS) (“the inclination to form dominance hierarchies, and to defer to superior authority”), 2) the passionate bonding of especially males for group defense and hunting, 3) personal sacrifice or altruism (“willingness to sacrifice oneself for the survival of the group”), and 4) xenophobia (“a tendency to be wary or suspicious of unknown groups or individuals”) p.48. Notice that traits number 2 and 3 are normally viewed as good but they are used by warmongers to build armies and recruit young men to fight. Trait number 1 is the basis of armies, governments, and corporations. Our nomadic foraging ancestors were able to mitigate DBS by the whole band cooperating to prevent alpha males from dominating their small societies.
After twelve millennia of ever more lethal warfare, we face a “full world” in so many ways. We have developed nuclear weapons and that technology is spreading. The atmosphere as waste dump for greenhouse gases is more than full. We live after the development of the modern scientific method, the return to democratic and republican government, women getting to vote and having reliable family planning, and the Internet. We face a new historical situation and the opportunity to end war.
Hand thinks that ending war using nonviolent “obstructive” action should have a higher priority than nonviolent “constructive” action (doing good things). She lists nine cornerstones of a campaign to end war. (see www.afww.org for more information and to order the book) She advocates the coordination and leadership model of “massively distributed collaboration” used by the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines and the successful search by the scientific community for the Higgs boson. (pp 231-233)
Hand writes that both males and females can be aggressive but manifest aggression in different ways. In general, males use violence more and a few are willing to upset the social order to advance their status, while females have a preference for several generations of social stability so they can raise their children and grandchildren. This explains why war is overwhelmingly a male endeavor. For Hand, a key condition for ending war and establishing peace, again one of the cornerstones, is to create a real partnership between males and females in all decision-making bodies in society. In her discussion of another cornerstone, the spreading of mature democratic governance, she cites the statistic that the U.S. has 16.9% participation of women in governing i.e. elected officials, far behind Sweden with 44.7%. Hand suggests women take a front-line roll during nonviolent direct action while men do the support work. This, she thinks, would change the “chemistry” on the streets.
Hand lists many organizations already working on some aspects of what could become a movement to abolish war. Fellowship of Reconciliation is listed twice under the two cornerstones of embracing the goal to end war and of promoting nonviolent conflict resolution. Shift is a good book that challenges some of the thinking of many peace activists. The book is difficult to distill in a short review or even touch all the insights in it.
By bringing in an understanding of human biology, Dr. Judith Hand has reformulated the vision of the abolition of war. Hopefully this can lead to the consensus needed among activists to begin the task. Hand thinks it can be done in two generations and that our window of opportunity may be closing.