[extropy-chat] 'History' and the fulcrum of 1945

[Keith Henson]

At 09:54 PM 30/01/05 +0000, Steve Davies wrote:

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Keith Henson" <hkhenson at rogers.com>
>
> >From Amara Graps

snip

>I would broadly agree with that but it isn't enough by itself. Wars can
>often arise towards the end of long periods of growth when the prospects
>would seem very good.

Actual situation or what should be does not matter.  What is important to 
this mechanism is forward prospects as seen by the population.

Now it is dicey to try to figure out what is activating psychological 
mechanisms adapted to stone age hunter gatherers.  I don't know the actual 
economic situation before WW I but I will predict that whatever it was, the 
population in the state that started the war had a dim view of future 
prospects.

The US civil war started in conditions of no worse than average economic 
conditions for the times.  But the (white) population of the southern 
states could see that slavery was going to go one way or another.  And they 
were right about their future economic prospects without slaves.  The case 
is fair that the south *never* recovered.

>The Great War  of 1914-1918 broke out after what was
>the longest and most rapid period of sustained intensive growth in human
>history till then. I would supplement Keith's argument with one drawn from
>economics and the use of game theory to model aggregate human behaviour.

This is neat analysis, but if you are going to make a case to me, you are 
going to have to show how the psychological Hawk/Dove traits evolved in 
stone age hunter gatherer tribes where there just wasn't a way to 
accumulate wealth.

>Historically there are two ways of getting wealth, by production or trade
>and by force. These translate into the two strategies of Hawk (predation)
>and Dove (cooperation/production). If everyone is a Hawk no wealth is

snip most of Hawks and Doves.

>However the other time when conflict is most likely is precisely when growth
>seems to be opening up unlimited opportunities. Here the temptation is for
>one set of Hawks to try to capture as much as possible of the new revenue by
>increasing its power at the expense of  rival groups of Hawks. In economic
>terms the judgement that Hawks may make is that the benefits of resorting to
>large-scale violence (war) will be greater than the costs (for them that is)
>and they are most likely to arrive at that judgement either when they are
>faced by stagnant/declining output (so it pays to eliminate other Hawks and
>grab their Doves) or when it seems overall production is rising so fast that
>there are huge gains to be made by trying to eliminate the competition. It's
>at this point that memes or ideology if you will can play a crucial role in
>the way it shapes the Hawks' assessment.

There was a time many years ago when I thought the content of a meme was 
important.  For some things, like chipping rocks it is.  But for wars, 
*anything* will do.  Consider the long ears and the short ears, as 
arbitrary a distinction as  can be made.  The Easter Islanders killed about 
95% of their populations off over totally arbitrary reasons.  (And the real 
reason--that they had destroyed the environment and were starving.)

>The German elite took what was by
>objective standards an insanely risky decision in 1914 partly because they
>had come to see the world in a way that made the economic growth of places
>such as Russia seem a threat rather than an opportunity.

In other words, they *felt* they were facing bleak times.  That's enough to 
activate war mode in a hunter gatherer tribe and we have not lost those 
mechanisms.

Incidentally, mechanisms that worked fine in the stone age as ultimate 
limits on population might be very poorly adapted to more modern times.  In 
my paper I cite Steven LeBlanc's studies of wars among the corn farmers of 
the American Southwest.  Their response was to enter a 
social/psychological/physical trap that resulted in the 24 out of 27 groups 
dying out.

>Since 1945 not only has economic growth exceeded population (that's been
>true ever since the 1740s) the Hawks have realised their interests are not
>served by violent competition but rather by cooperation. That's both good
>and bad news for the Doves - mainly good of course. One critical factor is
>the way the wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 affected and killed all levels
>of society, including elites, and left a huge psychological mark - anyone
>who has been to Verdun or Thiepval will recognise this. I don't think this
>is necessarily permanent though.

WW I was at least as much of a psychological mark generator than WW 
II.  And yet, 21 years later they went at it again.  It has been almost 
three times as long from WW II to now.  Many people have made a connection 
between the hard economic times of the 20 and the rise of the war mode Nazi 
memes.  My only addition is to model what happened in terms of evolved 
psychological responses to tight resources by hunter gatherer tribes over a 
few million years.  And to make the claim that those mechanisms are still 
with us.  :-(

I might note that the connection between hard economic times and war mode 
was understood in practical terms right after WW II when the victor 
countries went to considerable effort to jump starting the European economy.

Keith Henson