World Peace: Difference between peace and culture of peace-3

A full understanding of the culture of war requires a detailed analysis of its evolution and history, beginning in human prehistory, examining the first recorded civilizations 5,000 years ago, and bringing up-to-date the continuing evolution of the state. Although there are many histories of war, the account in Adams (2008) is the first account, as far as I know, of the history of the culture of war. As for a history of the culture of peace, that remains to be written in future years and by future generations, although I have imagined its beginnings in my utopian novel (Adams, 2009).

To understand the evolution and history of culture is a task that is not often undertaken. The laws of cultural evolution are similar although not identical to the laws of biological evolution. The best scientific formulation of this, in my opinion, is by the anthropologist Leslie A. White in his book The Evolution of Culture (1959).

"We may think of the culture of mankind as a whole, or of any distinguishable portion thereof, as a stream flowing down through time. Tools, implements, utensils, customs, codes, beliefs, rituals, art forms, etc., comprise this temporal flow, or process. It is an interactive process: each culture trait, or constellation of traits, acts and reacts upon others, forming from time to time new combinations and permutations. Novel syntheses of cultural elements we call inventions. . ."

. . .The interrelationship of these elements and classes of elements and their integration into a single, coherent whole comprise the functions, or processes, of the cultural system. . ."

"For certain purposes and within certain limits, the culture of a particular tribe, or group of tribes, or the culture of a region may be considered as a system. Thus one might think of the culture of the Seneca tribe, or of the Iroquoian tribes, or of the Great Plans, or of western Europe as constituting a system. . . But the cultures of tribes or regions are not self-contained, closed systems in actuality, at all. They are constantly exposed to cultural influences, flowing in both directions with other cultures."

In the present book, the culture of war is considered in the framework of the preceding anthropological analysis: it is a cultural system that was invented and has evolved over the flow of time. Although at one time or another, some tribes or regions have been relatively independent from this culture, over the course of history most peoples have come under its influence. And, as we shall see, the system of states has been, from the beginning, embedded within the context of the culture of war. Going back to seek its origins, we will consider it as a cultural invention with a certain usefulness at the time it was invented.

Also following White's analysis we see that the various components of the culture of war are all interrelated. As he says, "It is an interactive process: each culture trait, or constellation of traits, acts and reacts upon others." Hence, to give just one of many possible examples, the secrecy of the culture of war supports authoritarian control by allowing certain information to be held only by those in power, and both make possible the practice of warfare by concentrating the command structure in the hands of a few.

Cultural inventions are retained and diffused if they are useful, just as biological mutations are retained if they are useful. For example, pottery was a very successful invention in human history, as it enabled people to carry and store water and other liquids. The usefulness of pottery is immediately obvious on a day-to-day basis. But the usefulness of war and the culture of war has not always been evident.

Sometime the usefulness of a cultural invention, such as war, is difficult to determine because it occurs so rarely. Herein, lies a serious weakness in the scientific method which is designed to investigate frequent or easily-repeatable events. Science is based on repeatability; hence, a scientific article includes a methods section that allows other scientists to reproduce the observations or experiments, as well as a results section that submits the obtained data to statistical analysis. But events that occur very rarely and are not easily repeated, are not easy for science to deal with. In fact, during my 30 years of scientific work, I saw many unexplainable events in the laboratory that occurred only once. These could not be repeated; they could not be subjected to statistical analysis. Hence, it was not possible to study these events by the scientific method.

To illustrate this point, here is an example of a cultural trait for which the usefulness may be evident only once in many generations. The example is taken from animal behavior although it applies equally well to human behavior: the care of sick and elderly animals. As a college student, I heard from Professor John Buettner-Janusch, about his observations on a troop of baboons in Kenya at a time of extreme drought, the worst in 25 years. When the last water-hole dried up, the troop would have died except for an extremely old and infirm individual. He was the only one more than 25 years old. He set out across the parched land toward a distant location where he remembered the only water-hole that still contained water during the previous drought. The group survived thanks to the care they had given to this old individual enabling him to keep up with the troop's movements, sharing food with him, etc. Although such an even might not occur more often than once in 25 years, it was crucial for the survival of the entire group.

The culture of war in prehistory was such a cultural trait for which the usefulness was rarely evident. The evidence presented in Adams (2008) supports the theory that prehistoric warfare was useful when there was unpredicted drought or natural disaster so extreme that a tribe would perish if it did not succeed in raiding the food supplies of its neighbors. Since this might occur only once in many generations, its usefulness would not be immediately evident. This is illustrated in Adams (2008) by taking as a model the description of the biological evolution of fire-resistant seeds.

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