Until We Fix Ourselves, the Hope of Fixing Others Is a Delusion — the War-Making Impulse

30 March 2011

Warmongering is an irrational human trait, and the Libyan intervention highlights the lack of self-awareness that goes into making internally contradictory arguments in its favor

Two opinion columns caught my attention today because they connect America’s self-defeating militarism to its irrational source.

The philosophically broader of the two is by anthropologist Scott Atran. He wrote in regard to the war-making impulse generally. The narrower and more concrete example comes from former Congressman Joe Scarborough. He attacked the logical inconsistencies involved in President Obama’s intervention in Libya.

Scott Atran’s research indicates that “sacred values” trump rational analysis in starting wars

Atran and Jeremy Ginges have researched the war impulse and disproven the idea that war-making is a rational calculation:

Our surveys of people confronted with violent situations in the US, Middle East and Africa suggest that people consistently ignore quantifiable costs and benefits, relying instead on "sacred values."

In one study, we asked 656 Israeli settlers in the West Bank about the dismantlement of their settlement as part of a peace agreement with Palestinians.

When it came to nonviolent options such as picketing and blocking streets, the rational behavior model predicted settlers' decisions.

But in deciding whether to engage in violence, the settlers defied the rational behavior models. Rather than how effective they thought violence would be in saving their homes, the settlers' willingness to engage in violent protest depended only on how morally correct they considered that option to be.

We found similar patterns of "principled" resistance to peace settlements and support for violence, including suicide bombings, among Palestinian refugees who felt "sacred values" were at stake . . . .

Diplomats and militarists

Atran and Ginges did followup surveys in the United States and Nigeria. They used hypothetical hostage situations (in which the abductors threaten to kill the hostages) and asked respondents to choose between diplomatic and violent solutions.

For example, in one version of the survey, when told that their action would result in all hostages being saved, both groups endorsed the plan presented to them.

Told that one hostage would die, however, most "diplomats" became reluctant to endorse the proposed response.

Those opting for military action had no such qualms. In fact, the most common response suggested that they would support military action even if 99 of 100 hostages died as a consequence.

As a SWAT-trained ex-cop, I can think of no situations in which killing 99 percent of hostages makes sense. (Which is Atran’s point.)

And I doubt that initiating a confrontation that killed so many hostages would be appreciated by those killed, unless they were military members who thought some greater benefit would result from the rescue team’s idiotically executed mission.

Sacred, unquestioned rules — probably psychically darker than they are light

Scott Atran’s conclusion from these studies is that societies have sacred rules.

Sacred rules motivate a willingness to risk death in preference to compromise, even if the costs of retaliation outweigh any benefits gained.

(American political parties' obtuse unwillingness to deal reasonably and constructively with obvious realities is an example of "sacred values" dementia.)

Atran and colleagues have also discovered that “sacred values” are orchestrated in the portions of the brain that govern rules. These areas of the brain are not concerned with cost-benefit analyses and are more responsive to emotional inputs.

Respondents in the hypothetical hostage situation thought that the abductors had violated the sacred rule against killing. Consequently, the respondents were morally obligated to use violence against them, regardless of its cost in lives.

The take away message — the war impulse is irrational

In truth, war is almost always an emotional matter of status and pride, of shedding blood and tearing the flesh of others held dear, of dread and awe and of the instinctual needs to escape from fear, to dominate and to avenge.

Joe Scarborough insightfully shows us just how adroitly irrational war reasoning is

Scarborough, whose common sense makes him almost unique among nationally recognized Republicans, often spotlights those among us who act in apparently unperceived hypocritical ways:

For a decade now, we have been told of George W. Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s moral failings. They have been regularly compared to Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini and every other tyrant of the past century.

But in the morally murky afterglow of the Obama years, the certainty of these secular saints has melted away.

President Barack Obama bowed to his generals’ demands by tripling troops in an unending war. CODEPINK did nothing.

Obama backed down on Guantanamo Bay. Anti-war protesters stayed at home.

America invaded its third Muslim country in a decade. The American left meekly went along. Without the slightest hint of irony, liberals defended the president’s indefensible position by returning again to a pose of moral certainty.

Scarborough thinks that one can make a humanitarian argument for attacking the Qaddafi regime in Libya. But:

If Obama and his liberal supporters believed Qadhafi’s actions morally justified the Libyan invasion, why did they sit silently by for 20 years while Saddam killed hundreds of thousands?

And if the President’s justification for war in Libya is a rationally sound one, Scarborough asks why we do not now exercise military force in situations that are arguably as bad or worse — like Syria, Yemen, Sudan, and the Ivory Coast.

His implied conclusion is that reason is not determinative. Instead, “The American left is also making it abundantly clear that it does not find all wars morally reprehensible — only those begun by Republicans.”

Tying it all together — a lack of self-awareness dooms us to poor impulse control

One cannot be intelligent and violently impulsive at the same time. That’s why many martial arts disciplines stress emotional self-control.

Spiritual teachers say that self-awareness and self-control must precede our efforts to help, teach, or control other people.

If we remain unaware of our emotions’ negative impact on our reasoning, we are doomed to live like randomly moving amoeba in dirty water. That’s true of nations, too.

PeteFree.com

Until We Fix Ourselves, the Hope of Fixing Others Is a Delusion — the War-Making Impulse