Status Updates From Constant Battles: Why We Fight

And, with the fantasy about the perfectibility of man rearing its retarded head, we can finally see this thing to a close at last. And good riddance. Something, something the fool doth think he is wise...

No, that's a new method of infanticide, not a new thing altogether. It's not going to fix your model because it's not a new addition, it's the same thing in a new form.

And now we summarize the summary of what we've summarized. I could be finished reading this right now.

Yes, let's repeat the mantra for the six dozenth time. Gotta pad out this book somehow.

So... war is caused by lack of resources, but lack of resources is fixable. Except that when you fix lack of resources, you get population until lack of resources. That's the repeated cycle you say took place for thousands if not millions of years... yet you think that it's eventually going to stop happening? Using what fragmented logic, my dude? Gah, what do the final five pages have for us?

Speak for yourself. Modern warfare is just as rational as it's always been, you just don't like the logic of it and it doesn't make sense to you personally.

Ohhh.... fuck. You're one of the people who thought we'd tame the Middle East, aren't you? Damn your ornery hide, that was never going to work, but you helped sell the idea, didn't you?

And now the delusion goes into warp drive. WTF do you mean agriculture is less economically important than in the past. That is not true, has never been true, will never be true, and you damn well know it, you silly hamster. By your own argument, war is caused by food shortage, and agriculture is the antidote to food shortage. You are a fool, sir. You speak self-contradictory nonsense. Get in the sea.

Oh. Right. I forgot the reason he wanted to make this was to absolve humans of responsibility, and discredit the value of religion in any form.

I'm gonna go ahead and say no. You think we have six million years of history where there has always been warfare. I don't need you to give me an additional thirty pages to say whether or not that's going to change after that immense span of time. The answer, unless you forgot to take your blatant pattern recognition pills this morning, is most assuredly no.

No, that's EXACTLY what you find, you just don't term it warfare because of arbitrary perimeters you set. But lighting shit on fire and stealing each other's resources is EXACTLY what you find in nation-states, to exactly the degree you'd expect. You absolute tin of corn, Steven.

woof, that Taliban comment did NOT age very well, did it?

It's been, like, eight-four years since our dear author was even remotely interested in talking warfare. Instead, he's on his environmental destruction in human nature soap box, and shows absolutely no signs of getting off any time this century.

The way he keeps circling back to a lack of centralized control leads me to believe he is of a socialist mindset... assuming he has a mindset of his own, which I doubt.

Oh piss off, Jane Goodall pioneered jackshit, she was using methods already developed by previous researchers. The methodology you're so proudly speaking of here is used in ecology books I have which predate your precious Goodall's study of chimps. You're supposed to be a fucking historian, Steven. That's literally your job. I shouldn't have to tell you about history, Steven.

Here we are in fantasy-land, where early human societies didn't have an obvious hierarchy, except for the fact that he just admitted that they did, because how do you think some men managed to obtain many wives and others did not? How do you think they supported more wives (and children) than other men? The author may think he's escaped delusions of ideal primitive society, but he has not.

Well, if you're done fantasizing about Planet of the Apes, maybe you can go back to the, I dunno, science part of this book.

Hold the fuck up. You SAID bonobos hunt, but not monkeys. Now you're saying they don't hunt. This chapter is such a waste of everyone's time. You don't even know what you're saying. This is just evolutionist bullshit unrelated to the book's subject except via means of elaborate fantasizing based on evidence that's sketchy as fuck.

Congrats, you've also just described typical lion (and porpoise) behavior. Astounding, predators that hunt in coordinated groups show a lot of similar behaviors... because those behaviors work... this isn't a protohuman thing, genius, this is a how reality just works, thing.

Oh stop worshiping Jane Goodall, I'm starting to lose respect for you.

Ohhh... I have bad news about rabbits and deer as "not being capable of warfare." You should see the does around here rip each other to pieces for the best nest sites prior to giving birth. They do some serious damage to each other for the right to expand their population.

Yes, alright, we GET IT, you think warfare can be solved by abortion and conservationism even though it's literally never worked even one time before by your own admission. Get off your fucking podium and return to the script.

A more nonsensical attempt to draw a line between man and beast I have seldom heard, though this is the constant refrain. Animals do conduct battles in groups, and they do it to take resources. That's literally what a coalition of male lions is. This is not a human behavior. Get over it.

Ah, here we get to the real meat of WHY he wants to pursue this knowledge. He wants to prove humans aren't intrinsically warlike. Firstly by discounting anything that appeared to be internal conflict (such as familial murders) as not being war, and secondly by viewing things backwards. Was there war when times were bad? Yes. Was there war when times were good.... hmmm. no comment.

That's ignoring that a significant number of those children don't live to reproduce, but sure, trot out ye old more than two children per woman number again, see if it fits. No, no it doesn't because that maintenance number is a fantasy and you know it.

Ah yes, so the assumption things happen slowly being substituted for the realization they often happen quite abruptly 1. didn't cause you to discard Darwin even though his theory was dependent upon gradual change and 2. didn't make you reconsider the "true" age of the planet despite carbon dating only being "accurate" to a few thousand years, meaning there's no measurement for the "millions of years" theory. Neato.

So, now that you've entered the world any Christian worth their salt would know already existed... maybe we can... oh. never mind, you want to talk about our "ape relatives" and Jane Goodall. To which I have to ask. WHY.