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Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War
In Blood Rites, Barbara Ehrenreich confronts the mystery of the human attraction to violence: What draws our species to war and even makes us see it as a kind of sacred undertaking? Blood Rites takes us on an original journey from the elaborate human sacrifices of the ancient world to the carnage and holocaust of twentieth-century “total war.” Sifting through the fragile records of prehistory, Ehrenreich discovers the wellspring of war in an unexpected place – not in a “killer instinct” unique to the males of our species but in the blood rites early humans performed to reenact their terrifying experience of predation by stronger carnivores.
Brilliant in conception, rich in scope, Blood Rites is a monumental work that will transform our understanding of the greatest single threat to human life.
Brilliant in conception, rich in scope, Blood Rites is a monumental work that will transform our understanding of the greatest single threat to human life.
304 pages, Paperback
First published May 15, 1997
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3566 people want to read
About the author
Barbara Ehrenreich
95 books2,011 followersBarbara Ehrenreich was an American author and political activist. During the 1980s and early 1990s, she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. She was a widely read and award-winning columnist and essayist and the author of 21 books. Ehrenreich was best known for her 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, a memoir of her three-month experiment surviving on a series of minimum-wage jobs. She was a recipient of a Lannan Literary Award and the Erasmus Prize.
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August 20, 2014
Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War covers the development of war from the prehistoric people who were at first the prey of larger animals and to the early 1990s when some thought that war had become outmoded with the advent of nuclear weapons so horribly destructive that we would dare not use them again. We see the roots of war develop via sacred blood rites. It tells about early people coming together in bands and eventually the development of the warrior elites. You will see the beginning of the end of the elites and ‘honorable’ battle in the American Revolution. Civilians increasingly become victims of wars in the twentieth century. The diseases of nationalism, Nazism and American patriotism are discussed. You might cringe at the discussion about the democratization of war. Even countries with no weapon production facilities are able to obtain all the necessary materials of war on the open market.
I like a book with notes, bibliography and index even if I don’t use any of them. Blood Rites has all three. This, to me, suggests some academic rigor. I like that we have the opportunity to see how the author came to her conclusions. Ehrenreich’s Ph.D. in biology gives her some scientific credibility.
I like how Ms. Ehrenreich writes. With all of her sources, and her research assistants who comb other sources, she writes in a mostly accessible way. She is enjoyable to read and you learn something to boot. In some ways I am a lazy reader, I usually like information presented clearly and with some assurance. Ms. Ehrenreich’s writing covers complex topics in a way that I can absorb without stripping the gears of my brain.
Replication is a key to scientific research. The information in Blood Rites could be checked and expanded but it is hard to see how her conclusions could be confirmed. If another “scientist” wanted to investigate the same topic (Origins and History of the Passions of War), what would constitute a proof that could be compared to Ehrenreich? Are we talking about battling research assistants?
If you want to get a sense of how the book is constructed, The Ecstasy of War (Chapter One) can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/e/... . The NY Times review includes this:
A more recent review (04/24/2011) in a British publication concludes:
Finally, a review from 1997 (when the book was published) in The Atlantic is interesting reading:
After 15 years of change since the book was published, I would love to see some aspects updated. Is war built into our genes? Our ideas about how nature and nurture create the human beings that we are have advanced in those years. A section of the book titled “DNA and Bedtime Stories” asks some good questions about the nature/nurture debate and suggests some answers that require new thinking. As trained killers, are men and women the same? The role of women in the military is significantly different than it was when the book was published. Some of the changes discussed have occurred over 10s and even 100s of thousands of years. What can be said about the change of the role of women in the modern military in just 15 years? The idea that a woman POTUS (president) would make war less likely certainly needs re-examination and seems less credible than it once did.
Conclusions to books attacking huge issues can be disappointing since the issues seem to have much more clarity than the solutions. Blood Rites concludes in the 1990s and leaves me wondering if we have advanced in our efforts to contain war since then. The continuous string of wars throughout the world in the past fifteen years makes optimism difficult.
On the final page Ehrenreich slips in “an enormous human achievement”: anti-war movements. Less than one page leaves me seriously unsatisfied.
While it is easy to give this book three stars, parts of me (the anti-war parts) wish I could give it four or five. Since the U.S. has initiated several military actions and even a couple of wars since Blood Rites was published, it is obvious that the book hasn’t made much of a mark yet. Maybe next year. Thanks for trying, Barbara!
I like a book with notes, bibliography and index even if I don’t use any of them. Blood Rites has all three. This, to me, suggests some academic rigor. I like that we have the opportunity to see how the author came to her conclusions. Ehrenreich’s Ph.D. in biology gives her some scientific credibility.
There is something in us, or at least something in some of us, that urgently seeks to make sense out of disconnected data and unassimilated experience, to draw links between people “like us” and people not at all like us, between what happened long ago and what is happening right now or what could happen next. The urgency increases when the subject at hand, like war or disease, involves life and death, including the potential death of all people on earth. We need to know, and we need to know something more than piles of unrelated observations.
I like how Ms. Ehrenreich writes. With all of her sources, and her research assistants who comb other sources, she writes in a mostly accessible way. She is enjoyable to read and you learn something to boot. In some ways I am a lazy reader, I usually like information presented clearly and with some assurance. Ms. Ehrenreich’s writing covers complex topics in a way that I can absorb without stripping the gears of my brain.
Replication is a key to scientific research. The information in Blood Rites could be checked and expanded but it is hard to see how her conclusions could be confirmed. If another “scientist” wanted to investigate the same topic (Origins and History of the Passions of War), what would constitute a proof that could be compared to Ehrenreich? Are we talking about battling research assistants?
If you want to get a sense of how the book is constructed, The Ecstasy of War (Chapter One) can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/e/... . The NY Times review includes this:
{Ehrenreich} brings appropriate caution to her task. She knows that ''Blood Rites'' is an extended essay, not an academic treatise, and that she surveys rather than exhausts an enormous range of scholarship. Properly awed by her subject, she seeks to nudge and provoke readers, not overpower them. It is a welcome approach, in contrast to the stern, pontificating style of many other (usually male) authorities on war.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/25...
A more recent review (04/24/2011) in a British publication concludes:
Ehrenreich's answer delves back into prehistory: once a prey species, we learned to defend ourselves by banding together and fighting off predators. This common experience has shaped all human societies since. Part anthropology, part sociology, part history, this is an original, eye-opening and highly persuasive account.
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ent...
Finally, a review from 1997 (when the book was published) in The Atlantic is interesting reading:
But although Ehrenreich does not fear to guess deep, she never pretends to a higher degree of certainty than is possible. She has done a great deal of homework, she is free of cant, and she is smart. Her starting points are firm and clear: she thinks that human beings have a nature, that our attraction to war is at least partly inherited, and that the study of human culture can provide clues to the structural place and function of war-making in the human psyche; and she believes that knowing what war is may help humankind to control it.
Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/...
After 15 years of change since the book was published, I would love to see some aspects updated. Is war built into our genes? Our ideas about how nature and nurture create the human beings that we are have advanced in those years. A section of the book titled “DNA and Bedtime Stories” asks some good questions about the nature/nurture debate and suggests some answers that require new thinking. As trained killers, are men and women the same? The role of women in the military is significantly different than it was when the book was published. Some of the changes discussed have occurred over 10s and even 100s of thousands of years. What can be said about the change of the role of women in the modern military in just 15 years? The idea that a woman POTUS (president) would make war less likely certainly needs re-examination and seems less credible than it once did.
Conclusions to books attacking huge issues can be disappointing since the issues seem to have much more clarity than the solutions. Blood Rites concludes in the 1990s and leaves me wondering if we have advanced in our efforts to contain war since then. The continuous string of wars throughout the world in the past fifteen years makes optimism difficult.
What is war that it exerts such cruel demands on us? It is first, in an economic sense, a parasite on human cultures – draining them of the funds and resources, talent and personnel, that could be used to advance the cause of human life and culture. But “parasitism” is too mild a term for a relationship predicated on the periodic killing of large numbers of human beings. If was is a “living” thing, it is a kind of creature that, by its very nature, devours us. To look at war, carefully and long enough, is to see the face of the predator over which we thought we had triumphed long ago.
On the final page Ehrenreich slips in “an enormous human achievement”: anti-war movements. Less than one page leaves me seriously unsatisfied.
While it is easy to give this book three stars, parts of me (the anti-war parts) wish I could give it four or five. Since the U.S. has initiated several military actions and even a couple of wars since Blood Rites was published, it is obvious that the book hasn’t made much of a mark yet. Maybe next year. Thanks for trying, Barbara!
September 2, 2022
It is a major feat to make war boring.
Ehrenreich is attempting here (or so it seems) to walk the thin line between academic rigor and readability; she has not succeeded in the latter, and, as a self-described amateur, she undoubtedly has also fallen shot of the former. It's a shame, really. Ehrenreich can be an insightful and clever commentator, but by attempting to please both audiences, she has created a dull read.
Part of the problem here may be that she has only one basic premise, and has attempted to flesh out this single idea to book length. Let me save you the trouble:
The premise of this book is that we go to war and participate in other bloody rituals primarily to act out the legacy of a time when we had to be aggressive to avoid being eaten by predators. After all (her thinking goes) only those of our ancestors most prone to violence (and perhaps foolhardiness) in the face of, say, a sabertooth tiger attack would have lived to pass their genes on to us. The rest of the book is either a recapitulation or illustration of this theme.
Which is not to say she doesn't make some other fascinating arguments. One which particularly struck me was that men are the fighters of our species not because of superior strength, but because they are essentially disposable. Reproductively, a male's contribution is negligible, the matter of a few moments. She also points out that the difference in strength between men and women would have been entirely meaningless when faced with the attack of a predator of far greater strength than either.
Ehrenreich details, too, how we have made war sacred, a secular religion propped up by quasi-religious rituals and traditions such as those underlying July 4th or Memorial Day.
Perhaps I am spoiled, and want all my reading to be entertaining as well as informative (eg, Omnivore's Dilemma or Maps and Legends). I did not find this book to be much of either.
Ehrenreich is attempting here (or so it seems) to walk the thin line between academic rigor and readability; she has not succeeded in the latter, and, as a self-described amateur, she undoubtedly has also fallen shot of the former. It's a shame, really. Ehrenreich can be an insightful and clever commentator, but by attempting to please both audiences, she has created a dull read.
Part of the problem here may be that she has only one basic premise, and has attempted to flesh out this single idea to book length. Let me save you the trouble:
The premise of this book is that we go to war and participate in other bloody rituals primarily to act out the legacy of a time when we had to be aggressive to avoid being eaten by predators. After all (her thinking goes) only those of our ancestors most prone to violence (and perhaps foolhardiness) in the face of, say, a sabertooth tiger attack would have lived to pass their genes on to us. The rest of the book is either a recapitulation or illustration of this theme.
Which is not to say she doesn't make some other fascinating arguments. One which particularly struck me was that men are the fighters of our species not because of superior strength, but because they are essentially disposable. Reproductively, a male's contribution is negligible, the matter of a few moments. She also points out that the difference in strength between men and women would have been entirely meaningless when faced with the attack of a predator of far greater strength than either.
Ehrenreich details, too, how we have made war sacred, a secular religion propped up by quasi-religious rituals and traditions such as those underlying July 4th or Memorial Day.
Perhaps I am spoiled, and want all my reading to be entertaining as well as informative (eg, Omnivore's Dilemma or Maps and Legends). I did not find this book to be much of either.
May 2, 2020
This is a reissue of Ehrenreich’s stimulating 1997 book, in which the author synthesizes the work of anthropologists, historians, and evolutionary biologists (among others) to explore the religious feelings that war inspires in humans. She’s particularly interested in the question of “sacrifice,” which is not only central to many religious traditions but also invoked in descriptions of military service and the deaths of servicemen. Blood sacrifice—including human sacrifice, notes Ehrenreich, is a key theme in Jewish and Christian texts. In the Old Testament, along with the mention of the innumerable animals killed as offerings to God, we have the story of Abraham’s aborted sacrifice of his son Isaac; in the New Testament, the Christian deity sacrifices his son Jesus. Before war became “a widespread and massive enterprise,” humans likely approached the transcendent through socially sanctioned ritual killing. The transgressive nature of the ritual inspired awe.
War is often explained as a means for men to advance their collective interests: to gain resources and geopolitical advantage. Following Freud, others regard war as a product of deep aggressive instincts in humans. Ehrenreich points to the ways in which war, like religion, appeals to psychological needs: It releases people from emptiness, submerses them in great causes, and promises unified purpose and longed-for community—needs otherwise fulfilled by love, religion, intoxication, and art. Quoting French historian and social scientist Rene Girard, the author also notes that war and ritual sacrifice likely served a similar end: damping down disruptive, aggressive energy by redirecting it towards an external focus.
According to Ehrenreich’s account, the roots of both religion and war lie in early hominid vulnerability to and primal fear of predation by wild beasts. She suggests that two to three million years ago, when our African ancestors moved out of the forest and onto the savannah, they were threatened by large cats. Being hunted and eaten by lions and leopards was the original human trauma. However, early man developed a taste for meat and may well have had an “ambivalent relationship” with the beasts that killed but also provided for human scavengers.
Nowadays we think of animals as pets or commodities for consumption, but Ehrenreich writes that they played an outsize “vivid and active”—godlike—role in the primitive mind. She suggests that early people’s fear of predatory animals contributed to the development of religion, noting that many archaic deities were carnivores or human-animal hybrids. Think of the lion-headed ancient Egyptian goddess of war, Sekmet, the jackal-headed god of death, Anubis, and the Hindu gods Ganesha and Hanuman (who take the forms of an elephant and a monkey respectively). The original form of the huntress Artemis—the ancient Greek goddess who is believed to predate the Olympians—was that of a bear or a lioness. In mythology and folklore, animals morph into humans and gods possess the ability to transform themselves into animals.
The driving force behind natural selection for humans’ large brains may well be attributed to our ancestors’ need to defend themselves against powerful predators. Language may have its roots in alarm calls, fire’s original value may have been more for warding off beasts than for cooking them, and hominids may have evolved into social creatures because groups were more successful than individuals in resisting predators. Humans may have made their first (ritual) sacrifices to placate the wild animals that outnumbered them. Perhaps the loss of a child by predation was more tolerable when it was framed as a “sacrifice” that prevented further terror and victimization. Eventually, by making animal and human sacrifices, man could show he had, through the development of hunting tools, gained a position at the top of the food chain, elevating himself from prey to predator. Over time, ritual sacrifice also became “apotropaic”—an action aimed at warding off evil in the form of spirits, enemies, or disease.
Ehrenreich postulates that war grew out of prior conflicts with animals. In early human groups, males guarded against predators and eventually hunted hoofed mammals. Around 10,000 years ago, animal populations decreased as a result of humans developing and using hunting implements (bows, arrows, and spears). As humans turned from pastoral to agricultural ways, hunters found themselves out of work, and a redirection of male energy was necessary. Conditions supported the rise of a warrior class that defended settlements against other opportunistic groups of humans. According to some scholars, the earliest systematic wars grew out of nomadic peoples’ raiding of settled agricultural communities, not just for goods but for objects of prestige that could enhance status.
Ehrenreich shows how the formation of a male warrior class shaped civilization through the ages. The terror and destruction that warriors could inflict on the enemy “other” could also be applied to their own people, keeping them in line, subservient and dedicated to meeting fighters’ needs. Lower classes were in part made up of conquered peoples.
Ehrenreich examines how the newer, more universalist religions—Christianity and Buddhism—impacted the practice of war. She also considers the ways in which advancing technology—particularly guns—allowed warriors to fight at a distance, on the ground (rather than on horseback), and in ever increasing numbers. Large armies contributed to the rise of the bureaucratic state, which collected taxes to fund the troops. Meanwhile, revolutions—the French and American, in particular—encouraged the new religion of nationalism. No longer were wars fought to gain captives for sacrifice, young men could sacrifice their lives for their country, be martyrs of a sort for the nationalist cause.
I’ve only scratched the surface of Ehrenreich’s a rich and fascinating book. I gained a lot from it, but I was also aware that it’s 23 years old, particularly as I reached its conclusion, which focuses on the then-fairly-recent Gulf War, the turmoil in the former Yugoslavia, and the increasing enlistment of women in the US military. Since that time, we’ve had 9/11, wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and the rise of the Islamic State. Drones are common. The threat of nuclear war has reared its head again—this time from North Korea. Cyber and germ warfare loom. While I understand why an author would not feel inclined to re-immerse herself in subject matter she’d explored years before, I nevertheless lament that an afterword/update was not included to address more recent developments on the world stage. Even so, I do recommend this book.
Thank you to the Goodreads giveaway program and the publisher who provided me with a copy of this book.
War is often explained as a means for men to advance their collective interests: to gain resources and geopolitical advantage. Following Freud, others regard war as a product of deep aggressive instincts in humans. Ehrenreich points to the ways in which war, like religion, appeals to psychological needs: It releases people from emptiness, submerses them in great causes, and promises unified purpose and longed-for community—needs otherwise fulfilled by love, religion, intoxication, and art. Quoting French historian and social scientist Rene Girard, the author also notes that war and ritual sacrifice likely served a similar end: damping down disruptive, aggressive energy by redirecting it towards an external focus.
According to Ehrenreich’s account, the roots of both religion and war lie in early hominid vulnerability to and primal fear of predation by wild beasts. She suggests that two to three million years ago, when our African ancestors moved out of the forest and onto the savannah, they were threatened by large cats. Being hunted and eaten by lions and leopards was the original human trauma. However, early man developed a taste for meat and may well have had an “ambivalent relationship” with the beasts that killed but also provided for human scavengers.
Nowadays we think of animals as pets or commodities for consumption, but Ehrenreich writes that they played an outsize “vivid and active”—godlike—role in the primitive mind. She suggests that early people’s fear of predatory animals contributed to the development of religion, noting that many archaic deities were carnivores or human-animal hybrids. Think of the lion-headed ancient Egyptian goddess of war, Sekmet, the jackal-headed god of death, Anubis, and the Hindu gods Ganesha and Hanuman (who take the forms of an elephant and a monkey respectively). The original form of the huntress Artemis—the ancient Greek goddess who is believed to predate the Olympians—was that of a bear or a lioness. In mythology and folklore, animals morph into humans and gods possess the ability to transform themselves into animals.
The driving force behind natural selection for humans’ large brains may well be attributed to our ancestors’ need to defend themselves against powerful predators. Language may have its roots in alarm calls, fire’s original value may have been more for warding off beasts than for cooking them, and hominids may have evolved into social creatures because groups were more successful than individuals in resisting predators. Humans may have made their first (ritual) sacrifices to placate the wild animals that outnumbered them. Perhaps the loss of a child by predation was more tolerable when it was framed as a “sacrifice” that prevented further terror and victimization. Eventually, by making animal and human sacrifices, man could show he had, through the development of hunting tools, gained a position at the top of the food chain, elevating himself from prey to predator. Over time, ritual sacrifice also became “apotropaic”—an action aimed at warding off evil in the form of spirits, enemies, or disease.
Ehrenreich postulates that war grew out of prior conflicts with animals. In early human groups, males guarded against predators and eventually hunted hoofed mammals. Around 10,000 years ago, animal populations decreased as a result of humans developing and using hunting implements (bows, arrows, and spears). As humans turned from pastoral to agricultural ways, hunters found themselves out of work, and a redirection of male energy was necessary. Conditions supported the rise of a warrior class that defended settlements against other opportunistic groups of humans. According to some scholars, the earliest systematic wars grew out of nomadic peoples’ raiding of settled agricultural communities, not just for goods but for objects of prestige that could enhance status.
Ehrenreich shows how the formation of a male warrior class shaped civilization through the ages. The terror and destruction that warriors could inflict on the enemy “other” could also be applied to their own people, keeping them in line, subservient and dedicated to meeting fighters’ needs. Lower classes were in part made up of conquered peoples.
Ehrenreich examines how the newer, more universalist religions—Christianity and Buddhism—impacted the practice of war. She also considers the ways in which advancing technology—particularly guns—allowed warriors to fight at a distance, on the ground (rather than on horseback), and in ever increasing numbers. Large armies contributed to the rise of the bureaucratic state, which collected taxes to fund the troops. Meanwhile, revolutions—the French and American, in particular—encouraged the new religion of nationalism. No longer were wars fought to gain captives for sacrifice, young men could sacrifice their lives for their country, be martyrs of a sort for the nationalist cause.
I’ve only scratched the surface of Ehrenreich’s a rich and fascinating book. I gained a lot from it, but I was also aware that it’s 23 years old, particularly as I reached its conclusion, which focuses on the then-fairly-recent Gulf War, the turmoil in the former Yugoslavia, and the increasing enlistment of women in the US military. Since that time, we’ve had 9/11, wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and the rise of the Islamic State. Drones are common. The threat of nuclear war has reared its head again—this time from North Korea. Cyber and germ warfare loom. While I understand why an author would not feel inclined to re-immerse herself in subject matter she’d explored years before, I nevertheless lament that an afterword/update was not included to address more recent developments on the world stage. Even so, I do recommend this book.
Thank you to the Goodreads giveaway program and the publisher who provided me with a copy of this book.
December 13, 2018
PhD student who decided to use this book as a resource for my qualifying exams. It turned out to be one of the most meaningful books I've ever read. Cried in the final subsection of it. In part it reads:
“This book has been about the passions of war, and they are, as we have seen, among the “highest” and finest passions humans can know: courage, altruism, and the mystical sense of belonging to “something larger than ourselves.” But if we concede to war at least some measure of the autonomy enjoyed by living things, then we must acknowledge that we have invested these lofty passions in a peculiar kind of god indeed—an entity that Is ultimately alien to use an supremely indifferent to our fate. We have sacrificed our loved ones for what is worse than nothing: we have sacrificed them for something that has no use for us.
To return to the question I posed at the beginning of this section: What is war that it exerts such cruel demands on us? It is first, in an economic sense, a parasite on human cultures—draining them off the funds and resources, talent and personnel, that could be used to advance the cause of human life and culture. But ‘parasitism’ is too mild a term for a relationship predicated on the periodic killing of large numbers of human beings. If war is a ‘living’ thing it is a kind of creature that, by its very nature, devours us. To look at war, carefully and long enough, is to see the face of the predator over which we thought we had triumphed long ago.
But in at least one way, we have gotten tougher and better prepare to face the enemy that is war. If the twentieth century brought the steady advance of war and war-related enterprises, it also brought the beginnings of organized human resistance to war. Anti-war movements, arising in massive force in the latter half to the century, are themselves products of the logic of modern war, with its requirements of mass participation and assent. When the practice and passions of war were largely confined to a warrior elite, popular opposition to war usually took the form of opposition to that elite. But int eh situation where everyone is expected to participate in one way or another, and where anyone can become a victim whether they participate or not, opposition could at least develop to the institution of war itself.
This represents an enormous human achievement. Any anti-war movement that targets only the human agents of war—a warrior elite or, in our own time, the chieftains of the ‘military -industrial complex’—risks mimicking those it seeks to overcome. Anti-war activists can become macho and belligerent warriors in their own right, just as revolutionaries all too often evolve into fatigue-clad replacements for the oppressors they overthrow. So it is a giant step from hating the warriors to hating the war, and an even greater step to deciding the ‘enemy’ is the abstract institution of war, which maintains its grip on us even in the interludes we know as peace.
For all the failings, anti-war movements should have already taught us crucial lesson: that the passions we bring to war can be brought just as well to the struggle against war. This is a place for courage and solidarity and self-sacrifice other than in the service of this peculiarly bloody institution, this inhuman ‘meme’—a place for them in the struggle to shake ourselves free of it.
What have all the millennia of warfare prepared us for, if not this Armageddon fought, once more, against a predator beast?”
“This book has been about the passions of war, and they are, as we have seen, among the “highest” and finest passions humans can know: courage, altruism, and the mystical sense of belonging to “something larger than ourselves.” But if we concede to war at least some measure of the autonomy enjoyed by living things, then we must acknowledge that we have invested these lofty passions in a peculiar kind of god indeed—an entity that Is ultimately alien to use an supremely indifferent to our fate. We have sacrificed our loved ones for what is worse than nothing: we have sacrificed them for something that has no use for us.
To return to the question I posed at the beginning of this section: What is war that it exerts such cruel demands on us? It is first, in an economic sense, a parasite on human cultures—draining them off the funds and resources, talent and personnel, that could be used to advance the cause of human life and culture. But ‘parasitism’ is too mild a term for a relationship predicated on the periodic killing of large numbers of human beings. If war is a ‘living’ thing it is a kind of creature that, by its very nature, devours us. To look at war, carefully and long enough, is to see the face of the predator over which we thought we had triumphed long ago.
But in at least one way, we have gotten tougher and better prepare to face the enemy that is war. If the twentieth century brought the steady advance of war and war-related enterprises, it also brought the beginnings of organized human resistance to war. Anti-war movements, arising in massive force in the latter half to the century, are themselves products of the logic of modern war, with its requirements of mass participation and assent. When the practice and passions of war were largely confined to a warrior elite, popular opposition to war usually took the form of opposition to that elite. But int eh situation where everyone is expected to participate in one way or another, and where anyone can become a victim whether they participate or not, opposition could at least develop to the institution of war itself.
This represents an enormous human achievement. Any anti-war movement that targets only the human agents of war—a warrior elite or, in our own time, the chieftains of the ‘military -industrial complex’—risks mimicking those it seeks to overcome. Anti-war activists can become macho and belligerent warriors in their own right, just as revolutionaries all too often evolve into fatigue-clad replacements for the oppressors they overthrow. So it is a giant step from hating the warriors to hating the war, and an even greater step to deciding the ‘enemy’ is the abstract institution of war, which maintains its grip on us even in the interludes we know as peace.
For all the failings, anti-war movements should have already taught us crucial lesson: that the passions we bring to war can be brought just as well to the struggle against war. This is a place for courage and solidarity and self-sacrifice other than in the service of this peculiarly bloody institution, this inhuman ‘meme’—a place for them in the struggle to shake ourselves free of it.
What have all the millennia of warfare prepared us for, if not this Armageddon fought, once more, against a predator beast?”
September 28, 2025
Bardzo pobudzający intelektualnie esej, napisany rzeczowo, ale przystępnie, z obszerną bibliografią. Wnioskowanie w paru miejscach wydawało mi się niedostatecznie podbudowane dowodami, ale (może to kontrowersyjna teza) dla mnie wartość tego typu pozycji leży bardziej w tym, że pozostawiają mnie one z pracującymi trybikami, niż z jedyną słuszną interpretacją. Jeśli czegoś oczywistego mi zabrakło, to odniesienia do tego, jak traumatyzujące bywa, niby dla nas naturalne, sprawstwo przemocy. Ale i bez tego było bardzo dobrze.
October 9, 2024
It's been almost 40 years since the "end of history" as professed by Francis Fukuyama, yet wars are still happening in some major flashpoints in the world. In Blood Rites, Barbara Ehrenreich presents interesting research into humanity’s relationship with war, tracing its roots to ancient rituals and sacrificial rites. While hardly authoritative, it presents fresh ideas that still hold relevance, given this book was first published almost 30 years ago. She begins with an intriguing premise: that war, while seemingly a natural part of human existence, is not instinctual but deeply cultural and ritualistic in its origins. She argues that warfare’s emergence is intertwined with early human experiences of predation, where humans, once preyed upon by larger animals, evolved an emotional and psychological response to collective violence.
The idea sets Ehrenreich's analysis apart from typical explorations of war from the standpoint of military history: that our history as prey underlies our inclination for war. In this book, war is not examined merely as a socio-political phenomenon but as an emotional and spiritual one. She posits that early humans’ need to come together in the face of the existential terror of wild animals laid the groundwork for the sense of kinship and community that war can offer, alongside the obvious destruction it brings.
The book presents a detailed journey through history, where Ehrenreich connects the ancient world’s blood sacrifices with modern combat, presenting war as a secularised ritual that retains its primal roots. In prehistoric societies, ritualistic violence was a way to commune with the divine and appease higher powers. Over time, as humanity’s technological and societal sophistication grew, those same impulses became redirected into organised warfare. War emerged as both a survival strategy and a psychological necessity for group cohesion, and in time, nation-states.
One of the book’s core arguments is that war is fuelled not only by political ambition or territorial disputes but by deep-seated emotional needs. Ehrenreich suggests that collective combat offers a paradoxical sense of transcendence, wherein individuals can experience the feeling of becoming a part of something larger than themselves, allowing them to overcome their fear of death. This intertwining of fear, survival and transcendence makes warfare alluring in ways that rational arguments against it fail to address fully.
The narrative in Blood Rites is rich with anthropological and historical insights, yet Ehrenreich consistently returns to the psychological and emotional dimension of war. She explores how modern armies' militaristic rituals and hierarchical structures mirror ancient sacrificial rites. It’s here that the book raises the unsettling questions: Given its emotional and spiritual origins, is war an inevitable part of human existence? And can we ever escape our historical need for violent, collective sacrifice?
Ehrenreich does not offer easy solutions, but she encourages us to rethink the origins of conflicts to understand the factors that perpetuate them. While the book does not present a clear roadmap to peace, it does invite us to engage with war’s deeper motivations beyond the immediate causes. She frames war as an enduring part of the human condition yet remains optimistic that understanding its cultural and psychological underpinnings is the first step toward lessening its grip on us.
Blood Rites is well-researched in a way that it melds history, anthropology and sociology to present a compelling argument about the origins of war. By shifting focus away from the traditional narratives of power and politics, Ehrenreich provides a more nuanced exploration of why humans have fought and continue to fight. Though the book's dense historical passages and quotations may slow the pace, the author’s ability to connect ancient rituals to contemporary warfare keeps the book engaging. This is a powerful reminder of the deep emotional roots of conflict, and it challenges us to think more critically about how we engage with the realities of war today.
The idea sets Ehrenreich's analysis apart from typical explorations of war from the standpoint of military history: that our history as prey underlies our inclination for war. In this book, war is not examined merely as a socio-political phenomenon but as an emotional and spiritual one. She posits that early humans’ need to come together in the face of the existential terror of wild animals laid the groundwork for the sense of kinship and community that war can offer, alongside the obvious destruction it brings.
The book presents a detailed journey through history, where Ehrenreich connects the ancient world’s blood sacrifices with modern combat, presenting war as a secularised ritual that retains its primal roots. In prehistoric societies, ritualistic violence was a way to commune with the divine and appease higher powers. Over time, as humanity’s technological and societal sophistication grew, those same impulses became redirected into organised warfare. War emerged as both a survival strategy and a psychological necessity for group cohesion, and in time, nation-states.
One of the book’s core arguments is that war is fuelled not only by political ambition or territorial disputes but by deep-seated emotional needs. Ehrenreich suggests that collective combat offers a paradoxical sense of transcendence, wherein individuals can experience the feeling of becoming a part of something larger than themselves, allowing them to overcome their fear of death. This intertwining of fear, survival and transcendence makes warfare alluring in ways that rational arguments against it fail to address fully.
The narrative in Blood Rites is rich with anthropological and historical insights, yet Ehrenreich consistently returns to the psychological and emotional dimension of war. She explores how modern armies' militaristic rituals and hierarchical structures mirror ancient sacrificial rites. It’s here that the book raises the unsettling questions: Given its emotional and spiritual origins, is war an inevitable part of human existence? And can we ever escape our historical need for violent, collective sacrifice?
Ehrenreich does not offer easy solutions, but she encourages us to rethink the origins of conflicts to understand the factors that perpetuate them. While the book does not present a clear roadmap to peace, it does invite us to engage with war’s deeper motivations beyond the immediate causes. She frames war as an enduring part of the human condition yet remains optimistic that understanding its cultural and psychological underpinnings is the first step toward lessening its grip on us.
Blood Rites is well-researched in a way that it melds history, anthropology and sociology to present a compelling argument about the origins of war. By shifting focus away from the traditional narratives of power and politics, Ehrenreich provides a more nuanced exploration of why humans have fought and continue to fight. Though the book's dense historical passages and quotations may slow the pace, the author’s ability to connect ancient rituals to contemporary warfare keeps the book engaging. This is a powerful reminder of the deep emotional roots of conflict, and it challenges us to think more critically about how we engage with the realities of war today.
March 5, 2023
Potencjalne powody, dla których ludzkość prowadzi wojny od tysiącleci. Poparte wieloma mitami, opowieściami i wyobrażeniami uwiecznionymi w kulturach wielu cywilizacji.
Z książki wynika, że kiedy już staliśmy się drapieżcami i łowcami, a duże zwierzęta zaczęły w mezolicie wymierać, to gatunek ludzki przerzucił się na swoich pobratymców. Po co? jako substytut dla zwierzyny łownej i dla definiowania męskości. Potem już tylko wojna ewoluowała, a jej ewolucja pociągała za sobą także zmiany ustrojowe (feudalizm jako rezultat elitarnego rycerstwa (lub samurajów) wymagającego zasobów i pomocy zastępu giermków, i kolejna zmiana na państwo biurokratyczne, kiedy wielkie armie potrzebowały dyscypliny i funduszy).
Jak to obecnie się zmienia - autorka stawia tezę, że wojna stałą się dawkinsowskim memem - czyli sapomopowielającym się wzorcem zachowań.
Bardzo interesująca lektura!
Z książki wynika, że kiedy już staliśmy się drapieżcami i łowcami, a duże zwierzęta zaczęły w mezolicie wymierać, to gatunek ludzki przerzucił się na swoich pobratymców. Po co? jako substytut dla zwierzyny łownej i dla definiowania męskości. Potem już tylko wojna ewoluowała, a jej ewolucja pociągała za sobą także zmiany ustrojowe (feudalizm jako rezultat elitarnego rycerstwa (lub samurajów) wymagającego zasobów i pomocy zastępu giermków, i kolejna zmiana na państwo biurokratyczne, kiedy wielkie armie potrzebowały dyscypliny i funduszy).
Jak to obecnie się zmienia - autorka stawia tezę, że wojna stałą się dawkinsowskim memem - czyli sapomopowielającym się wzorcem zachowań.
Bardzo interesująca lektura!
January 22, 2025
Czy to, że człowiekowate padały ofiarami dzikich bestii faktycznie straumatyzowało je na resztę ich dziejów? A pokłosiem tego były krwawe ofiary składane mięsożernym bóstwom? I gdzie w tym wszystkim są kobiety, które krwawią przez kilka dni w miesiącu, a nie umierają? Czy miesiączka stanowi początek i podstawę wszystkich rytuałów? Czy wojna wyrasta z uprzednich konfliktów ze zwierzętami? I jak zmieniała się na przestrzeni wieków.
May 20, 2025
Absolutely love all of Ehrenreich’s material. This being the deepest she’s been able to delve into a topic due to the amount of references she has gone through.
Highly recommend.
Highly recommend.
October 8, 2008
Wow! I was already a fan of Barbara Ehrenreich, based on her more recent work, when this book caught my eye. This is a thoughtful, skeptical, probing, thorough exploration of one of the most important and puzzling problems our species faces.
Dr. Ehrenreich makes a strong argument for turning some of our conventional wisdom about the development of human societies upside down, most especially our somewhat grandiose belief that from the time our distant hominid ancestors climbed down from the trees and moved out onto the grasslands, we were the new apex predators on the block. In fact, both logic and evidence make it easier to believe that there was a long era when hominids and early humans were scavengers at the kills of big predators, and fairly often their prey.
She then traces the entwined development of hunting, religion, war, and gender roles from that stage through the end of the 20th century.
For anyone interested in warfare, religion, individual and group human psychology, or the history of the shifting roles and status of gender and social class, this is a must-read.
Dr. Ehrenreich makes a strong argument for turning some of our conventional wisdom about the development of human societies upside down, most especially our somewhat grandiose belief that from the time our distant hominid ancestors climbed down from the trees and moved out onto the grasslands, we were the new apex predators on the block. In fact, both logic and evidence make it easier to believe that there was a long era when hominids and early humans were scavengers at the kills of big predators, and fairly often their prey.
She then traces the entwined development of hunting, religion, war, and gender roles from that stage through the end of the 20th century.
For anyone interested in warfare, religion, individual and group human psychology, or the history of the shifting roles and status of gender and social class, this is a must-read.
August 4, 2025
This book offers a unique vantage point regarding wars: that it is a sacralized enterprise and will forever remain so. It is a tour de force across history, insisting that the passion for war has always been a spiritual venture for humankind.
How so?
The author begins with an extremely unusual position. We usually associate warfare with the “aggressive impulse” possibly inherent in man. This idea, the author suggests, originated only from the recent romanticisation of machismo and other masculine values. But violent emotion is almost absent at a macroscopic level of warfare. It is precise, meticulous, and brutal rather than erratically violent or sadistic.
This “aggressive impulse” theory originated from the belief that human ancestors overcame nature through their machismo and warfare. But the author provides a long list of evidence showing how the force of nature—especially that of predation by large carnivores—has always haunted mankind.
Instead of “attacking,” the author envisions our ancestors as perpetually “defending” against predators. This is supported by analyses of early human diets, which show less than 20% carnivorous input. Rather than brave hunters, analysis of carcasses shows that early humans were actually scavengers. Early human societies may have been formed around females as the core of foraging groups, while males scattered around the periphery to safeguard the gathering party.
This formation, the author hypothesizes, eventually led to males inevitably becoming sacrifices to predators for the betterment of the whole group. This feeling of guilt, coupled with the realization that they needed predators to bring a stable supply of carcasses to scavenge, eventually developed into a sublimated relationship between humans and their predators.
The author points out how many of the earliest depictions of religion involve zoomorphic entities—e.g., stag-men—reflecting such a relationship. She also notes that virtually all ancient religions demand some kind of ritual blood sacrifice, and most of the deities are either predatory animals themselves or are accompanied by predator beasts. The ritual of blood sacrifice reflects this ancient relationship between mankind and predators, or so the author insists.
Eventually, early humans triumphed by overturning their past through the development of tools and cognitive revolutions. This rise coincides with the decline of mega-predators, allowing more room for early humans to play the role of hunter. Yet they continued to pay homage to these past fierce goddesses of predation to ensure a stable supply of prey.
A question might be raised: why did ancient people continue to worship these prehistoric shadows of their predators? The author answers that it is the same reason we continue to enjoy horror or slasher movies even though we live in a relatively safe and stable environment: it is embedded in our psyche, and even in our bodies (as with phobias and PTSD).
The second part of the book focuses on the latter part of our history, demonstrating how we transformed this tribalistic practice of warfare into wars of nations. What allows violence to reach such a level of acceptance and democratization is the sacralization of war by imbuing it with religious qualities. The engineers of the modern nation recognize the mimetic function of religious sentiments, which allows people of different backgrounds and political standings to merge together. Consider how a socialist abandons his “international proletariat” the moment his nation declares war. The author provides three cases of war being worshipped as part of religious rituals: Nazism, State Shinto during Imperial Japan, and the rise of American patriotism.
The author indeed follows an interesting course in demonstrating her thesis that warfare is propagated as a sacralized ritual. It begins with the submissive relationship of blood with predatory beasts in the hominid days, the rebellion against predators that continued as cults of hunters and warriors, and eventually the incorporation of state violence as part of religious and national creeds.
Philip Zimbardo, in his book The Lucifer Effect, offers two mechanisms by which evil can be propagated to the level of Guantanamo—or even today’s Gaza: total obedience to authority and dehumanization. All three cases of war-worship demand total obedience to the Führer, the Emperor, or the American Flag. They also denigrate their opponents as subhuman using labels such as “Christ-killer,” “Japs,” or “gooks.” Religion, if misused, has the mimetic apparatus to bestow both of these elements on its zealous adherents.
This book provides a unique approach to explaining the pervasive nature of warfare in our society. It is highly readable, and its depth of erudition is commendable.
Now, a body of coherent facts does not automatically result in correspondence to reality. People may call us dogmatic—but not all dogmas are bad. Dogmas are thought to be rigid and monolithic due to the passage of time; yet, at the beginning of their Revelation, they are lived and experienced. If such “dogmas” are lived and experienced in the same way their original followers lived them, they become transformational and relevant. The noble nature of mankind must not be reduced to mere obedience to base impulses. The faults and tragedies arising from such uniqueness do not exclude the nobility of the intellectual faculties of man, but rather point toward their misuse.
How so?
The author begins with an extremely unusual position. We usually associate warfare with the “aggressive impulse” possibly inherent in man. This idea, the author suggests, originated only from the recent romanticisation of machismo and other masculine values. But violent emotion is almost absent at a macroscopic level of warfare. It is precise, meticulous, and brutal rather than erratically violent or sadistic.
This “aggressive impulse” theory originated from the belief that human ancestors overcame nature through their machismo and warfare. But the author provides a long list of evidence showing how the force of nature—especially that of predation by large carnivores—has always haunted mankind.
Instead of “attacking,” the author envisions our ancestors as perpetually “defending” against predators. This is supported by analyses of early human diets, which show less than 20% carnivorous input. Rather than brave hunters, analysis of carcasses shows that early humans were actually scavengers. Early human societies may have been formed around females as the core of foraging groups, while males scattered around the periphery to safeguard the gathering party.
This formation, the author hypothesizes, eventually led to males inevitably becoming sacrifices to predators for the betterment of the whole group. This feeling of guilt, coupled with the realization that they needed predators to bring a stable supply of carcasses to scavenge, eventually developed into a sublimated relationship between humans and their predators.
The author points out how many of the earliest depictions of religion involve zoomorphic entities—e.g., stag-men—reflecting such a relationship. She also notes that virtually all ancient religions demand some kind of ritual blood sacrifice, and most of the deities are either predatory animals themselves or are accompanied by predator beasts. The ritual of blood sacrifice reflects this ancient relationship between mankind and predators, or so the author insists.
Eventually, early humans triumphed by overturning their past through the development of tools and cognitive revolutions. This rise coincides with the decline of mega-predators, allowing more room for early humans to play the role of hunter. Yet they continued to pay homage to these past fierce goddesses of predation to ensure a stable supply of prey.
A question might be raised: why did ancient people continue to worship these prehistoric shadows of their predators? The author answers that it is the same reason we continue to enjoy horror or slasher movies even though we live in a relatively safe and stable environment: it is embedded in our psyche, and even in our bodies (as with phobias and PTSD).
The second part of the book focuses on the latter part of our history, demonstrating how we transformed this tribalistic practice of warfare into wars of nations. What allows violence to reach such a level of acceptance and democratization is the sacralization of war by imbuing it with religious qualities. The engineers of the modern nation recognize the mimetic function of religious sentiments, which allows people of different backgrounds and political standings to merge together. Consider how a socialist abandons his “international proletariat” the moment his nation declares war. The author provides three cases of war being worshipped as part of religious rituals: Nazism, State Shinto during Imperial Japan, and the rise of American patriotism.
The author indeed follows an interesting course in demonstrating her thesis that warfare is propagated as a sacralized ritual. It begins with the submissive relationship of blood with predatory beasts in the hominid days, the rebellion against predators that continued as cults of hunters and warriors, and eventually the incorporation of state violence as part of religious and national creeds.
Philip Zimbardo, in his book The Lucifer Effect, offers two mechanisms by which evil can be propagated to the level of Guantanamo—or even today’s Gaza: total obedience to authority and dehumanization. All three cases of war-worship demand total obedience to the Führer, the Emperor, or the American Flag. They also denigrate their opponents as subhuman using labels such as “Christ-killer,” “Japs,” or “gooks.” Religion, if misused, has the mimetic apparatus to bestow both of these elements on its zealous adherents.
This book provides a unique approach to explaining the pervasive nature of warfare in our society. It is highly readable, and its depth of erudition is commendable.
Now, a body of coherent facts does not automatically result in correspondence to reality. People may call us dogmatic—but not all dogmas are bad. Dogmas are thought to be rigid and monolithic due to the passage of time; yet, at the beginning of their Revelation, they are lived and experienced. If such “dogmas” are lived and experienced in the same way their original followers lived them, they become transformational and relevant. The noble nature of mankind must not be reduced to mere obedience to base impulses. The faults and tragedies arising from such uniqueness do not exclude the nobility of the intellectual faculties of man, but rather point toward their misuse.
September 26, 2014
A truly beautiful, brilliant, and amazing book. Love it, love it, love it. One of the best nonfiction books I've ever read. This book explains so much, not just about war, but human beings everywhere. A magnificent book full of research and enlightenment.
September 14, 2008
Surprisingly short and speculative examination of the passions of war--will most certainly get you thinking.
Read
January 12, 2014this book has amazing implications and it's eerie that it was written just a few years before the u.s. invasion of Iraq- in "peace time"
November 27, 2024
This is a brilliant, worldview-changing book - however, it regrettably ends in a very poor conclusion, with Ehrenreich simply coming to the conclusion that people who bough the "end of history" lie are unduly optimistic, before coming to the conclusion herself that war can be ended without war. Her anti-Marxism specifically is baffling and poignant in this sense: we see this much earlier on when she jabs at old Carlus Marximus with this sentence
Okay, I don't disagree, but quite simply... what does that have to do with the means of production not shaping human societies? Do swords, spears, pikes, cannons and guns grow on trees now? Or are they produced and thus subject to the limitations and capabilities of a society's means of production?
This attitude towards Marxism shows itself again at the end, when she writes that
But, in praising the modern anti-war movements - does she forget that the 1917-1923 revolutions came about, overwhelmingly, as anti-war protests? - she goes on to unironically write, but a few paragraphs later:
What is this, to put it plainly, anything but a Disney version of a war speech, where the enemy is War Itself and defined in exactly the same parameters as modern war propaganda - unstoppable unless we act, demanding sacrifice, even the "ultimate sacrifice" of life, inhuman, and so on? The difference between this view of stopping war and Lenin's is that the latter's may have actually worked had it not failed on a more international scale, i.e. in Germany, Italy et al.
With that little critique out of the way, do not get me wrong; this is an eye-opening investigation into the nature of blood sacrifice and warfare, in the lines of Georges Bataille's L'Erotisme: like Bataille, Ehrenreich sees warfare as developing from archaic forms of initiation rituals and forms of bloody sacrifice, but she goes further: rather than tying the wasteful nature of early warfare and sacrifice (specially human sacrifice), Ehrenreich goes into its evolutionary roots from the extremely long but rarely considered period (that it is rarely even acknowledged is in itself telling) where humanity was not an unchallenged apex predator but indeed weak prey which struggled with all manner of superior predators. From this the origins of blood sacrifice, of religion, of the carnivorous character of the gods in all religions, are explored, and it is startling, eye-opening how coherent it is, how much sense it makes, how, indeed, it is a theory of religion, well researched and based on previous theories of religion, that finally goes down to the startling ground zero of how and why it all started in gloomy animal prehistory...
We can say, though, that similar technologies and styles of warfare place similar demands on human cultures, and that these demands tend to impose a kind of sameness in areas of social endeavor that are seemingly remote from the business of war. Contrary to Marx, it is not only the “means of production” that shape human societies, but “the means of destruction,”31 and for much of human history the means of destruction have favored societies ruled by warriors themselves.
Okay, I don't disagree, but quite simply... what does that have to do with the means of production not shaping human societies? Do swords, spears, pikes, cannons and guns grow on trees now? Or are they produced and thus subject to the limitations and capabilities of a society's means of production?
This attitude towards Marxism shows itself again at the end, when she writes that
War, at the end of the twentieth century, is a more formidable adversary than it has ever been. It can no longer be localized within a particular elite and hence overthrown in a brilliant act of revolution. Revolution, in fact, was redefined by Lenin and others as little more than a species of war, fought by disciplined “cadres” organized along the same hierarchical lines as the mass armies of the modern era.
But, in praising the modern anti-war movements - does she forget that the 1917-1923 revolutions came about, overwhelmingly, as anti-war protests? - she goes on to unironically write, but a few paragraphs later:
And we will need all the courage we can muster. What we are called to is, in fact, a kind of war. We will need “armies,” or at least networks of committed activists willing to act in concert when necessary, to oppose force with numbers, and passion with forbearance and reason. We will need leaders—not a handful of generals but huge numbers of individuals able to take the initiative to educate, inspire, and rally others. We will need strategies and cunning, ways of assessing the “enemy’s” strength and sketching out the way ahead. And even with all that, the struggle will be enormously costly. Those who fight war on this war-ridden planet must prepare themselves to lose battle after battle and still fight on, to lose security, comfort, position, even life.
But what have all the millennia of warfare prepared us for, if not this Armageddon fought, once more, against a predator beast?
What is this, to put it plainly, anything but a Disney version of a war speech, where the enemy is War Itself and defined in exactly the same parameters as modern war propaganda - unstoppable unless we act, demanding sacrifice, even the "ultimate sacrifice" of life, inhuman, and so on? The difference between this view of stopping war and Lenin's is that the latter's may have actually worked had it not failed on a more international scale, i.e. in Germany, Italy et al.
With that little critique out of the way, do not get me wrong; this is an eye-opening investigation into the nature of blood sacrifice and warfare, in the lines of Georges Bataille's L'Erotisme: like Bataille, Ehrenreich sees warfare as developing from archaic forms of initiation rituals and forms of bloody sacrifice, but she goes further: rather than tying the wasteful nature of early warfare and sacrifice (specially human sacrifice), Ehrenreich goes into its evolutionary roots from the extremely long but rarely considered period (that it is rarely even acknowledged is in itself telling) where humanity was not an unchallenged apex predator but indeed weak prey which struggled with all manner of superior predators. From this the origins of blood sacrifice, of religion, of the carnivorous character of the gods in all religions, are explored, and it is startling, eye-opening how coherent it is, how much sense it makes, how, indeed, it is a theory of religion, well researched and based on previous theories of religion, that finally goes down to the startling ground zero of how and why it all started in gloomy animal prehistory...
November 12, 2013
Excellent investigation into the underlying reasons for war.
Ehrenreich first shows how the hallmarks and idealizations of war have strong similarities with those of religion, perhaps because the fight against a common enemy allows class differences to fall away while making each individual feel part of a larger whole. Ehrenreich then points out that the vast majority of religions are centered around some form of sacrifice, animal or human, and implies that this basis for religions (and war) is not unlikely grounded in the hunting our forefathers did.
However, not in a way to celebrate the hunt by the superior over the inferior, but more like to steel ourselves against the uncertainties and risks involved in hunting animals larger, cleverer and better than us.
The overlap between religion and war is strong. This is hinted at by the roles classic generals played, such as Alexander the Great or Caesar, being both generals and religious leaders. This to the extent where the Pope's job is directly descended from Caesar's religious tasks as the supreme bridge builder, pontiff.
One of the more interesting insights is Ehrenreich's observation that, when man was slowly moving from the trees to the plains, the big predators surrounding them were both takers and givers of life. Takers, though the obvious predator-prey relationship between, say, big cats and early humans, but also givers of life through early humans' scavenger status in relation to other prey of these bug hunters.
The obvious and likely function of sacrificing, whether animals or other humans, to these outside powers then becomes a mix of keeping the hunters at bay (by satisfying them) while making sure they stay around (like putting out a bowl of milk for stray cats).
Ehrenreich shows that not only has (almost) all religion sacrifice at its core, there is also plenty of suggestive proof that, once, those sacrifices were typically human.
The author then claims that a major transition occurred in prehistoric societies when humans were able to move away from just being prey to also being predator, and it is this transition which until modern times is still commemorated, or reenacted in social initiation rights that still exist.
This change, at the time, must have been nothing short of a revolution, perhaps starting with the burial of the dead, depriving predators the symbiosis humans benefited from, before, as scavengers, and is remembered in many of the creation myths, where an often human hero slays a devouring god, heralding a new era.
Related to this, the fight or flight attitude of man in the face of danger is known to trigger a sense of alarm, heightened awareness, and a sense of solidarity, perhaps a result of, in prehistoric times, standing a chance of driving predators away by banding together, making a group of individuals appear and act as a single entity.
These two features, however, are also exactly what happens at time of war; man enters an exhilarating state and bonds.
Another change, perhaps around the same time and possibly for the same reasons as man becoming primarily predator, was the move away from man's depiction and perception of woman as the primary fury. Though Ehrenreich feels less convincing as to why this originally was the perception, it is easy to accept that there must have been a certain awe for woman's ability to periodically bleed, without consequences, while having her menstrual cycle tied to the ever changing moon, while women in groups, apparently as by magic, typically synchronize their cycles.
It is likely that, with the slow disappearance of large predators in prehistoric times and the introduction of weapons which allowed killing at a distance, predation slowly become stalking, where the hunters had no choice but to stay out longer, for days. Though, when operating in groups, women were partaking in the hunt, now, women were the ones staying at home, losing their status of fighters.
Nevertheless, Ehrenreich shows that in many cases, the bloodletting initiation rights, for men, have proven links with women's menstrual bleeding, also for the first time happening at the onset of maturity, when children, helpless before, make their own transition from prey to predator.
The switch from prey-predator to stalker happened around the same time that man started to look towards agriculture as a, at least in part, means of survival, and around the same time that war became a more prominent facet of life. With marauding predators and big game being less and less an option for survival, predatory behavior on other humans, perhaps for livestock or possessions, became more and more a viable alternative, with a male warrior class being the heirs to the male hunter-stalking class.
As a result, in many societies, it became war that made men and men that made war. And, consequently, as there is no defense against bands of warriors but to breed warriors yourself, war has had no alternative but to become a major ingredient of society.
Ehrenreich then points out that, starting with Zoroastrianism, the religions popping up in the, roughly, thousand years since, perhaps as a result of the rise of a merchant class and pastoralism losing its dominance, sacrifice became much less, if at all, part of the religious experience.
Then, the author observes that, particularly in medieval Europe, war and religion started to merge, the warrior class adopting the religion of the underclasses, those providing in the knights' livelihoods, and the church adopting the language and concepts of war, the ultimate union of the two being the holy crusades and the emergence of warrior monks such as the knights Templar.
Sadly, Ehrenreich's explanation as to why this merging occurred happened feels inadequate.
Then, walking the reader through the democratization of glory, in battle, as a result of the American colonists rediscovering, from the Indians, the stone age way of fighting and the Napoleonic armies building on that, the author claims that the rise of the bureaucratic nation state dovetailed with the rise of the foot soldier and soldiers' passions for the fatherland, or nation. This, as opposed to being forced conscripts in the conflicts of the landed gentry, before.
Interesting as it is enlightening, it feels here, that the link between war and religion becomes more tenuous. Interesting, Ehrenreich makes the point that nationalism, as such, the passionate favoring of one's own country, would have a hard time to exist if not being defined through conflict, one's own nation fighting major battles against others, not seldom represented in modern times as a battle between predators, countries imagining themselves as lions, eagles, bears or other dangerous animals.
And, as in earlier times, these predators need to be fed regularly, through sacrifice, to stay happy.
Nationalism, Ehrenreich claims, and its American variant, patriotism, are, in turn, throwbacks to a form of religion more typical in ancient times. This, because, artificial groupings that nations are, their leaders had to typically reach back in time to a mythical period in order to create a sense of shared destiny.
In the afterword, added this year to this 1998 book, Ehrenreich suggests that, with war becoming more and more a 'game' played by robots, it might be that, in the not too distant future, with 'war' no longer requiring humans to 'survive', perhaps humans will no longer need war.
Ehrenreich first shows how the hallmarks and idealizations of war have strong similarities with those of religion, perhaps because the fight against a common enemy allows class differences to fall away while making each individual feel part of a larger whole. Ehrenreich then points out that the vast majority of religions are centered around some form of sacrifice, animal or human, and implies that this basis for religions (and war) is not unlikely grounded in the hunting our forefathers did.
However, not in a way to celebrate the hunt by the superior over the inferior, but more like to steel ourselves against the uncertainties and risks involved in hunting animals larger, cleverer and better than us.
The overlap between religion and war is strong. This is hinted at by the roles classic generals played, such as Alexander the Great or Caesar, being both generals and religious leaders. This to the extent where the Pope's job is directly descended from Caesar's religious tasks as the supreme bridge builder, pontiff.
One of the more interesting insights is Ehrenreich's observation that, when man was slowly moving from the trees to the plains, the big predators surrounding them were both takers and givers of life. Takers, though the obvious predator-prey relationship between, say, big cats and early humans, but also givers of life through early humans' scavenger status in relation to other prey of these bug hunters.
The obvious and likely function of sacrificing, whether animals or other humans, to these outside powers then becomes a mix of keeping the hunters at bay (by satisfying them) while making sure they stay around (like putting out a bowl of milk for stray cats).
Ehrenreich shows that not only has (almost) all religion sacrifice at its core, there is also plenty of suggestive proof that, once, those sacrifices were typically human.
The author then claims that a major transition occurred in prehistoric societies when humans were able to move away from just being prey to also being predator, and it is this transition which until modern times is still commemorated, or reenacted in social initiation rights that still exist.
This change, at the time, must have been nothing short of a revolution, perhaps starting with the burial of the dead, depriving predators the symbiosis humans benefited from, before, as scavengers, and is remembered in many of the creation myths, where an often human hero slays a devouring god, heralding a new era.
Related to this, the fight or flight attitude of man in the face of danger is known to trigger a sense of alarm, heightened awareness, and a sense of solidarity, perhaps a result of, in prehistoric times, standing a chance of driving predators away by banding together, making a group of individuals appear and act as a single entity.
These two features, however, are also exactly what happens at time of war; man enters an exhilarating state and bonds.
Another change, perhaps around the same time and possibly for the same reasons as man becoming primarily predator, was the move away from man's depiction and perception of woman as the primary fury. Though Ehrenreich feels less convincing as to why this originally was the perception, it is easy to accept that there must have been a certain awe for woman's ability to periodically bleed, without consequences, while having her menstrual cycle tied to the ever changing moon, while women in groups, apparently as by magic, typically synchronize their cycles.
It is likely that, with the slow disappearance of large predators in prehistoric times and the introduction of weapons which allowed killing at a distance, predation slowly become stalking, where the hunters had no choice but to stay out longer, for days. Though, when operating in groups, women were partaking in the hunt, now, women were the ones staying at home, losing their status of fighters.
Nevertheless, Ehrenreich shows that in many cases, the bloodletting initiation rights, for men, have proven links with women's menstrual bleeding, also for the first time happening at the onset of maturity, when children, helpless before, make their own transition from prey to predator.
The switch from prey-predator to stalker happened around the same time that man started to look towards agriculture as a, at least in part, means of survival, and around the same time that war became a more prominent facet of life. With marauding predators and big game being less and less an option for survival, predatory behavior on other humans, perhaps for livestock or possessions, became more and more a viable alternative, with a male warrior class being the heirs to the male hunter-stalking class.
As a result, in many societies, it became war that made men and men that made war. And, consequently, as there is no defense against bands of warriors but to breed warriors yourself, war has had no alternative but to become a major ingredient of society.
Ehrenreich then points out that, starting with Zoroastrianism, the religions popping up in the, roughly, thousand years since, perhaps as a result of the rise of a merchant class and pastoralism losing its dominance, sacrifice became much less, if at all, part of the religious experience.
Then, the author observes that, particularly in medieval Europe, war and religion started to merge, the warrior class adopting the religion of the underclasses, those providing in the knights' livelihoods, and the church adopting the language and concepts of war, the ultimate union of the two being the holy crusades and the emergence of warrior monks such as the knights Templar.
Sadly, Ehrenreich's explanation as to why this merging occurred happened feels inadequate.
Then, walking the reader through the democratization of glory, in battle, as a result of the American colonists rediscovering, from the Indians, the stone age way of fighting and the Napoleonic armies building on that, the author claims that the rise of the bureaucratic nation state dovetailed with the rise of the foot soldier and soldiers' passions for the fatherland, or nation. This, as opposed to being forced conscripts in the conflicts of the landed gentry, before.
Interesting as it is enlightening, it feels here, that the link between war and religion becomes more tenuous. Interesting, Ehrenreich makes the point that nationalism, as such, the passionate favoring of one's own country, would have a hard time to exist if not being defined through conflict, one's own nation fighting major battles against others, not seldom represented in modern times as a battle between predators, countries imagining themselves as lions, eagles, bears or other dangerous animals.
And, as in earlier times, these predators need to be fed regularly, through sacrifice, to stay happy.
Nationalism, Ehrenreich claims, and its American variant, patriotism, are, in turn, throwbacks to a form of religion more typical in ancient times. This, because, artificial groupings that nations are, their leaders had to typically reach back in time to a mythical period in order to create a sense of shared destiny.
In the afterword, added this year to this 1998 book, Ehrenreich suggests that, with war becoming more and more a 'game' played by robots, it might be that, in the not too distant future, with 'war' no longer requiring humans to 'survive', perhaps humans will no longer need war.
July 25, 2023
A very thoughtful investigation into why the human race is so addicted to war, we may in time (maybe soon, given the rise in nationalism and totalitarianism) obliterate ourselves. I don't know if the shift from prey to predator does in fact play a significant role in blood rites, and their expansion into mass war, and now less disciplined militant fighting groups, but it's interesting to think about. The blood rites addiction does make some sense, however -- the primitive belief that spilled blood may propitiate some angry, elemental or supernatural force out to get us. Right now, with wars of differing scale going on all over the world, one senses a greater and likely insatiable appetite for blood of "whatever it is." The suggestion, toward the end -- that war simply replicates itself like a virus -- makes a lot of sense but is the opposite of reassuring.
July 27, 2024
Read this for a book club. Was a bit too speculative in the first half and the chapter on women's menstruation is total whack but overall lots of food for thought in here
March 4, 2020
In some ways this was a difficult book to read but mostly because war is an unpleasant subject. But Ehrenreich's insights into its likely origins in the human instinct to protect ourselves and our families and communities from predators was interesting. She also looks at blood sacrifice as a nearly universal component of religion, feudalism, modern nationalism and war and the unique American form of a nationalist religion that we call patriotism.
November 10, 2009
Blood Rites rekindled my long held interest in (almost non-existent) theories of war. It made me recall running around playing "army" with neighborhood kids; long and involved role-playing war-fantasies from my pre-teen years; and my later interest in movies like Full Metal Jacket and books like Blood Meridian and Citizens.
Blood Rites manages to tie my youthful digressions into a theory about the larger, bloodier, more despairing, and bleak world of historical warfare. According to the book, my obsession with war is part of long-running tradition that equates "becoming-a-man" with the indoctrination into the ways of war. She doesn't claim that war comes from aggressive hunter males (in fact, she tries to thoroughly stomp that argument into the ground). She claims that our aeon-long status as prey created a long running fear and admiration of animal predators. Later, after we became predators, the fear and admiration was shifted to the small-band male hunters. (She states recent archeological evidence that suggests that small band hunters were predated by tribal herding practices. These practices ended after we drove most of the large herdable herbivores into extinction.) The hunters started providing a smaller portion of the tribal food (around 90% of our ancestor's diet was provided by gathering). And at some point, they turned their predator skills against other tribes and demanded the fear and admiration that once exclusively belonging to animals. (Kind of... it's a little more involved than that.)
Warriors (almost exclusively male) ascended to total power on the back of war. However, once created, War had a "life" of its own. No one could be totally peaceful unless completely cut-off from contact with war-like states (which was hard to do unless you were an Eskimo or an Australian Bushman). Once war was discovered or invented no one could ignore it. Every society had to escalate the potential and possibility of war. This constant escalation of warfare changed the rules and eventually led to today's "total war." In today's war there is almost no notion of civilian. Everyone is forced into war.
However, her book fumbles near the end. She states that a theory of war is needed in order to fight it, but the end of the book sounds false and forced. She starts to throw ideas at the wall, hoping one or two will stick. (She does admit to having no real working idea on how to stop war.) Still, the ending doesn't take away from the brilliant originality of the majority of the book...
One of things I'm interested in is any connection between her theory and Deleuze and Guattari's theories of the "war machine." Their "war machine" seems to be largely ! a theory about the effects of war and hers is largely about the origin and perpetuation of war.
Blood Rites manages to tie my youthful digressions into a theory about the larger, bloodier, more despairing, and bleak world of historical warfare. According to the book, my obsession with war is part of long-running tradition that equates "becoming-a-man" with the indoctrination into the ways of war. She doesn't claim that war comes from aggressive hunter males (in fact, she tries to thoroughly stomp that argument into the ground). She claims that our aeon-long status as prey created a long running fear and admiration of animal predators. Later, after we became predators, the fear and admiration was shifted to the small-band male hunters. (She states recent archeological evidence that suggests that small band hunters were predated by tribal herding practices. These practices ended after we drove most of the large herdable herbivores into extinction.) The hunters started providing a smaller portion of the tribal food (around 90% of our ancestor's diet was provided by gathering). And at some point, they turned their predator skills against other tribes and demanded the fear and admiration that once exclusively belonging to animals. (Kind of... it's a little more involved than that.)
Warriors (almost exclusively male) ascended to total power on the back of war. However, once created, War had a "life" of its own. No one could be totally peaceful unless completely cut-off from contact with war-like states (which was hard to do unless you were an Eskimo or an Australian Bushman). Once war was discovered or invented no one could ignore it. Every society had to escalate the potential and possibility of war. This constant escalation of warfare changed the rules and eventually led to today's "total war." In today's war there is almost no notion of civilian. Everyone is forced into war.
However, her book fumbles near the end. She states that a theory of war is needed in order to fight it, but the end of the book sounds false and forced. She starts to throw ideas at the wall, hoping one or two will stick. (She does admit to having no real working idea on how to stop war.) Still, the ending doesn't take away from the brilliant originality of the majority of the book...
One of things I'm interested in is any connection between her theory and Deleuze and Guattari's theories of the "war machine." Their "war machine" seems to be largely ! a theory about the effects of war and hers is largely about the origin and perpetuation of war.
June 7, 2010
I chose to read this book because I agree with the author, Barbara Ehrenreich, that “in an economic sense, [is:] a parasite on human cultures—draining them of the funds and resources, talent and personnel, that could be used to advance the cause of human life and culture.”
Of course, as someone living America, the most powerful and militarized nation on the planet, I can afford to take an anti-war position. Nonetheless, I wanted to read this book to get some insight about what influences humans to destroy one another the way they do and why we allow it to happen.
Ehrenreich provides some insightful understanding of the origins of war, from how we as human beings went from the preyed upon to the predator in relationship to other animals. And then she reports on many of the ancient mythologies, divisions of labor along gender lines, and entire masculinity of power that influences and sustains war.
She reports that the reasons for war are different from conflict to conflict, so while ancient influences for war may be inherent in modern war, the roots of modern wars are still different than in the past. She also talks about the religious influence of war, which could have been an entire book itself. Religious beliefs have both influenced violent conflict as well as supported it when war was/is particularly political. Eight years of the illegal war on Iraq was definitely supported by religious views of superiority and the so-called war against the “evil-doers.” Rarely if ever do churches in America come out against war. Instead they prey to their god for protection and strength, no matter who the enemy is that is being harmed, maimed and killed. They believe god is on “our” side.
So for the most part, Blood Rites is pretty good book. However, I do wish she had spent at least a chapter on the anti-war movement and its influences, because modern war has definitely been challenged by a different mentality that sees war as inherently wrong and unjustified. A book about the history of anti-war movements and its influences would be a very interesting follow-up to this one, because Ehrenreich only touches on it in the last few pages.
#end
Of course, as someone living America, the most powerful and militarized nation on the planet, I can afford to take an anti-war position. Nonetheless, I wanted to read this book to get some insight about what influences humans to destroy one another the way they do and why we allow it to happen.
Ehrenreich provides some insightful understanding of the origins of war, from how we as human beings went from the preyed upon to the predator in relationship to other animals. And then she reports on many of the ancient mythologies, divisions of labor along gender lines, and entire masculinity of power that influences and sustains war.
She reports that the reasons for war are different from conflict to conflict, so while ancient influences for war may be inherent in modern war, the roots of modern wars are still different than in the past. She also talks about the religious influence of war, which could have been an entire book itself. Religious beliefs have both influenced violent conflict as well as supported it when war was/is particularly political. Eight years of the illegal war on Iraq was definitely supported by religious views of superiority and the so-called war against the “evil-doers.” Rarely if ever do churches in America come out against war. Instead they prey to their god for protection and strength, no matter who the enemy is that is being harmed, maimed and killed. They believe god is on “our” side.
So for the most part, Blood Rites is pretty good book. However, I do wish she had spent at least a chapter on the anti-war movement and its influences, because modern war has definitely been challenged by a different mentality that sees war as inherently wrong and unjustified. A book about the history of anti-war movements and its influences would be a very interesting follow-up to this one, because Ehrenreich only touches on it in the last few pages.
#end
July 13, 2007
Barbara Ehrenreich's overview of the seemingly impulsive nature of humans to violence is a real eye-opener in that it brings points to the discussion table that academia seems to have easily dismissed. The author simply has a respect for both human psychology and geological time: two things that seem simple enough but are often overlooked by researchers.
Her research led her to link killing and war to ritual and sacrifice and how religion and the sacrificial nature of war continues to act as a legitimaizing agent pitting the proverbial "us" against "them". Using texts such as Gilgamesh, the Bible, ancient Japanese and Greek poetry and other texts she points out a common link of fear of the unknown as viewed by the ancients in beasts, women, and nature.
A flaw though in her tone is that it gets a tad repetative and it seems as though she uses the old academic trick of pulling from a variety of sources to make smaller points that coincide with her overall thesis. You eventually see what she is getting act but when she goes back and forth, say from the Inquisition to the Aztecs to Aborginies in each paragraph it tends to be cumbersome.
Don't overlook this one. It brings together recent texts such as 'A History of Toture' and 'Male Fantasies' with a concise passion for the subject matter.
Her research led her to link killing and war to ritual and sacrifice and how religion and the sacrificial nature of war continues to act as a legitimaizing agent pitting the proverbial "us" against "them". Using texts such as Gilgamesh, the Bible, ancient Japanese and Greek poetry and other texts she points out a common link of fear of the unknown as viewed by the ancients in beasts, women, and nature.
A flaw though in her tone is that it gets a tad repetative and it seems as though she uses the old academic trick of pulling from a variety of sources to make smaller points that coincide with her overall thesis. You eventually see what she is getting act but when she goes back and forth, say from the Inquisition to the Aztecs to Aborginies in each paragraph it tends to be cumbersome.
Don't overlook this one. It brings together recent texts such as 'A History of Toture' and 'Male Fantasies' with a concise passion for the subject matter.
May 7, 2018
A fascinating set of topics treated very compellingly. Ehrenreich cites example after example, idea after idea, and comes out with observations that link insightfully with each other throughout, whether within an individual chapter or across the Predation and War sections of the book. The central thesis seems to be that much of human behavior - violent and otherwise - can be explained by our uncomfortable position between prey and predator, and she hangs all her analyses on that premise thoughtfully. Some of her ideas would be hard to falsify, but they provide good jumping off points for further investigations, and she does support everything she writes thoroughly. The book is exciting through to the end, where Ehrenreich puts out her big twist: war is not just something that humans developed to sate our need to prove our status as predators, but is in fact a conceptual predatory beast that we have inadvertently created to make prey of ourselves. I read this mainly because the first half is related to a self-indulgent interest of mine, but the whole thing turned out to be smart and broadly relevant in ways I didn't expect. It is amazing that this book was written before 9/11; a lot of what Ehrenreich brings up is unsettlingly on the nose for a 2018 audience.
November 4, 2012
This is a mind-expanding, audacious book, especially for someone like me without much knowledge of the history of war. Ehrenreich proposes several innovative theories about the origins of- and passions behind war. First she flips the conventional story of human origins, which usually depicts culture (language, weapons, settlement) as a result of the evolutionary demands of hunting. Instead she changes the focus to the overwhelming human experience of being vulnerable prey. Predation may be the key to understanding the development of human culture, collective rituals and sacrifice, and the masculine feeling surrounding hunting. For her, modern wars are the result of a “democratization of glory” as citizens share in the larger meaning of the Nation; thus mass mobilization through national “religions”. She’s compiled a parade of material, collaged from anthropology, history, religion and psychology. Though I’m not totally convinced of all her points, I learned something new on every page.
October 9, 2008
This is a fascinating and tremendously ambitious exploration of the origins of war. I read it almost 10 years ago and it's still with me. Ehrenreich draws on biology, anthropology, and theology (among other -ologies) in her efforts to understand the complicated nature of the subject. This is an oversimplification of her astonishingly creative theory, but she traces the roots of religion and war back to the same thing: the human experience of being prey. Our religious rituals began as a reenactment and celebration of our triumphant transformation from prey to predators. The blood rites became sacred. These rituals have the same origin, whether they involve animal sacrifice or a symbolic sacrifice like that of Jesus Christ. She argues that modern warfare stems from the latest and most sophisticated religion: nationalism. Man, this book was awesome. Don't trust my oversimplification-- just read it.
March 17, 2012
It's a book telling us "passions of war". In the first part, it's pretty much anthropological stuff. It traces human's the most primitive impulse, the bloodlust passion for war. Therefore in the second part, the author concludes that War is a self-repeating "thing", it may or may not have something to do with human or robot.
The best opinions concentrated in the second part of the book. For example, Is war something which really does have "a life of its own"? A self-replicating pattern of behavior. p.232 and what's more important, What is it in us that draws us,over and over, to an undertaking we know to be destructive and suspect, in most cases, to be thoroughly immoral? The author is trying to create an atmosphere or a feeling for readers to feel the answer to those questions themselves. It's hard to conclude with any existing scholarly theories, but a feeling. After all, we are human beings, we knew ourselves, sometimes.
The best opinions concentrated in the second part of the book. For example, Is war something which really does have "a life of its own"? A self-replicating pattern of behavior. p.232 and what's more important, What is it in us that draws us,over and over, to an undertaking we know to be destructive and suspect, in most cases, to be thoroughly immoral? The author is trying to create an atmosphere or a feeling for readers to feel the answer to those questions themselves. It's hard to conclude with any existing scholarly theories, but a feeling. After all, we are human beings, we knew ourselves, sometimes.
March 21, 2010
This is a well done history of war, and how it has affected civilization and people since the beginning of time. It is meticulously researched. I like how the author presents war as a self perpetuating entity, with a life of its own that defies any concerted attempt to rationalize it away. Also, I like how she makes an analysis of how human sacrifice has evolved from deliberate killing of enemy captives to allowing our young people to become "sacrificed" by dying "for their country" in modern wars.
January 19, 2012
I love this book, but I think I need to read it again. Interesting take on war and religion and gender and stuff. That sounds idiotic, but it's like so many connections/ideas I hadn't thought of before I can't quite process it yet.
I saw another review that faulted it I think for not being more academic and reliable. I suppose I didn't read it thinking that, I mean, it's got footnotes and I assume it's pretty well researched, but it comes across more as a discussion of ideas than a scholarly tome, which I guess is what I prefer.
I saw another review that faulted it I think for not being more academic and reliable. I suppose I didn't read it thinking that, I mean, it's got footnotes and I assume it's pretty well researched, but it comes across more as a discussion of ideas than a scholarly tome, which I guess is what I prefer.
October 16, 2007
This was a very interesting book. The author is not a historian and at times that much is obvious. The ideas are thought provoking and while I think her argument may have a couple small leaks, for the most part it held water. She's presenting a pretty new idea about a pretty untouched subject and so when she has the material to use she is over supporting her argument, using a lot more examples than are neccessary to illustrate her point.
December 28, 2012
I read this for work -- seeing if it might be useful for the introduction to peace and justice studies course I teach -- but I still enjoyed it. It's especially engaging and thoughtful as an explanation of the pre-historical origins of violence and war. I'm not sure I fully bought her argument -- I'm skeptical of these evolution-meets-culture kinds of things, but it's certainly worth considering, and I think a few chapter from it might work well in a class.
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