What Makes War, and What Makes Peace?

Values, ethics, and the implicit dangers of socio-cultural conditioning.

Thoughts and images. Personal or social?

A few weeks ago I’ve listened to a thought-provoking lecture. It was recorded and held in the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and the guest speaker there was no one else but probably the most loved and hated public intellectual of this decade, the Canadian psychologist, Dr. Jordan Peterson. During the lecture, Peterson shared his thoughts on topics revolving around ethics, scripture, and the problem of perception. There he raised a rather interesting question: if there’s an almost infinite amount of things to perceive, why do we perceive some of them and not the others? What guides our perceptions?

The lecture got me thinking about another presentation I’ve heard recently, where an American anthropologist Douglas Fry talked about the deterrence of war, promotion of peace, and value systems. During his talk, Douglas reminded me of an old Jungian idea, which states that societies are not governed by people, nor are they governed by their materialistic individual needs. They are governed by ideas, values, and perceptions mixed with deep ingrained primal instincts. But where do the societal values come from? What dictates which ideas will be selected as plausible, and which ones discarded? As said by Alan Watts:

“We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”

During this week’s read, I’m hoping to shed some light on the ideas presented in both of the previously mentioned talks and express my concerns relating to the dangers lying beneath social conditioning, and people’s lack of individual responsibility. The latter two will be very important in helping us understand the nature and origin of values, ethics, and various pervasive, highly influential ideologies. Furthermore, we will see that value creation is a two-way process, partly coming from the wider society and partly, from the individual himself. As pointed out by Jiddu Krishnamurti in his second public talk in Ojai, back in 1944:

“As we are — the world is. That is, if we are greedy, envious, competitive, our society will be competitive, envious, greedy, which brings misery and war. The State is what we are. To bring about order and peace, we must begin with ourselves.”

Let’s begin by defining what are values, ethics, and social conditioning. Later, we are going to discuss what part personal responsibility plays in bringing about a sane and peaceful society, analyze the currently ongoing “culture wars” and inquire into the structure and ethics of the Western state of mind and social contract.

Cultures, values, and conditioning of the mind.

In order to understand the meaning lurking beneath the words such as “values” and “ethics”, it’d be wise to first and foremost consult the dictionary. Looking through a couple of online resources I’ve selected the following definitions:

Values — the principles that help you to decide what is right and wrong, and how to act in various situations. Also, values define what is worthwhile to pursue and what is better to avoid.

Ethics — a branch of philosophy dealing with values and their relationship to human conduct. The major concerns of ethics include questioning the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human actions can be judged right or wrong.

By distilling these two definitions, we can refine the idea that the totality of one’s values forms his or her ethics.

This personal ethic guides one throughout all walks of his or her life. But, as mentioned before, values don’t come out of nowhere. Even though every single individual has an inborn set of varying inclinations, he is also a subject to a collective, external value system, which shapes his self-concept, behavior, and ways of thinking. So, as mentioned previously, the formation of values is a two-way street. Human beings are both the creators and the creations of the societies they are born and live in. Similarly, they are also both the producers and the after-effects of the value systems which they inhabit.

Even though each person has an internal moral compass, its parameters might vary greatly depending on the person’s innate character and socio-cultural context. Unfortunately, much too often this moral compass is subject to change when subdued to the values of the greater whole. As Voltaire put it:

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”

A thing that is deemed “immoral” on an individual level can be labeled as “morally just” on the societal one, and vice versa. Therefore it is the responsibility of the individual to fine-tune his moral compass and not be swayed by the constantly changing popular fads and customs. Trying to personally recognize that which is just from what is wrong requires courage, faith, and belief in one’s own internal strength and discernment. To fully subordinate one’s thinking to the external structure of the larger whole (nation, society, culture, etc.) leaves a danger of getting led astray when its fabric begins to get shaped by forces that don’t have ethically just intentions in mind. Subjecting oneself to this type of structure is not just a sign of weakness, but also a show of lack in character, individuation, and personal judiciousness.

Of course, it is quite easy to blame people for acting villainously, but in doing that we forget a few fundamental truths:

1) Individuals who lack self-consciousness are often overpowered by their instincts and the influences of smarter and psychologically fitter people.

2) Everyone is more or less conditioned by his or her socio-cultural surroundings. If the social fabric is warped, a person lacking in self-awareness will move in the same direction that the whole society is moving, acquiring its tastes, beliefs, moods, and goals.

3) It is estimated that about 1 percent of the general population are psychopaths, while sociopaths make up an additional 4 percent. Because these individuals do not experience common socially bonding emotions (such as empathy), they tend to be cruel, violent, and sadistic.

Although nothing much can be done about the sociopathic and psychopathic types, fortunately, there are some things that can be achieved by changing the minds of the non-self-realized and non-self-responsible people. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu believed that all of us hold a varying amount of “cultural capital” (the tangible and intangible assets that give us social mobility). If a person extends the confines of his or her knowledge and becomes a subject of a wider set of circumstances and experiences, probably he will have a better-informed and clearer view of the world around him. If not, he will live a life of ignorance, beautifully illustrated by the 4th-century Chinese Daoist, Zhong Zhou. In his Collect Essays, he wrote:

“A frog in a well cannot discuss the ocean, because he is limited by the size of his well. A summer insect cannot discuss ice, because it knows only its own season. A narrow-minded scholar cannot discuss the Tao, because he is constrained by his teachings.”

Some people’s conditioning is tight and narrow, others — vast and diverse. When the cultural norms promote inclusivity, the socially acceptable values bring tolerance. If the culture’s self-concept is restricted to limited beliefs about its own supremacy, odds are that such a culture will grow seeds of isolation and animosity in its citizens. Thus it is important to understand the effects of one’s socio-cultural context and not to be its puppet.

Waring values and peace systems.

As mentioned before, different societies promote different values. Some of them might be tilted towards greed, exploitation, and violence whereas others might be founded on the basis of compassion, reciprocal altruism, and honest trade. Now, it is important to mention that compassion and cooperation are not always good or suggestable, just like competition is not always wrong or lacking in human-kindness. The matter lies in the details, the goals, and the incentives. Are we trying to be kind to win someone over with a plan to use him or her later? Or maybe we are being competitive in order to grow our and others’ competencies? Anything can be put upside down depending on the situation. Nothing in this world is substantially white or black.

The American Anthropologist Douglas Fry has spent many years inquiring into the most extreme sides of human conflict and aggression. Contrary to the beliefs of many, Douglas argues that war and other types of lethal aggression are not rooted in human evolution, nor that there is any significant historical evidence to prove that point. In his book “Beyond War: The Human Potential for Peace” the Anthropologist suggests that the Western belief in the myth of “man the warrior” is not an objective reality. Instead, it is part of Western cultural self-entrenchment. According to the author:

“The belief that war is part and parcel of human nature has a long history. Thomas Hobbes philosophized in Leviathan, published in 1651, on the natural state of war; renowned psychologist William James saw humans as naturally bellicose; Sigmund Freud devised a death instinct to account for some forms of human destructiveness. But it is an often ignored fact that scientists and scholars, as human beings, are members of a culture too. Like everyone else, they are exposed to cultural traditions and worldviews that influence their thinking and perceptions. When the learned and shared beliefs of a culture hold that humans are innately pugnacious, inevitably violent, instinctively warlike, and so on, the people socialized in such settings, whether scientists or nonscientists, tend to accept such views without much question.”

According to Douglas, it is dangerous to exaggerate the importance of warfare and other types of extreme violence as our primary and fundamental way of conflict resolution. In doing so, we limit and underappreciate the human potential for solving problems in a non-violent manner. As said by Fry:

“Naturalizing war creates an unfortunate self-fulfilling prophecy: If war is natural, then there is little point in trying to prevent, reduce, or abolish it. After all, if we can’t help being warlike, why should we even bother resisting such tendencies? The danger of assuming that humans are fundamentally warlike is that this presumption may help justify “doing what comes naturally.” It also may contribute to an exaggerated fear that naturally warlike “others” are eager to attack us. Harboring such assumptions also can stifle the search for viable alternatives to war. Why attempt the “impossible”?”

In the course of the book, the author makes a claim that war is part and parcel of the given culture’s value system and narrative. Even though each culture holds many different (often conflicting) beliefs, today let’s categorize some of them into two groups, which Douglas Fry labels as War and Peace Systems. According to the anthropologist, both systems have shared attributes, which can be clustered along similar lines. In his March 31, 2022 presentation at the ‘Anthropological Insights into Deterring War and Promoting Peace’ conference, he showed a slide, peaceful and warlike characteristics were aggregated in a similar manner as present below:

Waring Systems:

• Promote war values & norms.
• Promote high levels of individuality and independence from other groups.
• Are led by unimaginative and/or totalitarian leaders.
• Have restricted, limited (parochial) identities.
• Have war-promoting symbols and rituals (parades, demonstrations, etc.)
• Manages conflicts violently.
• Do not have a common governance.

Peace Systems:

• Promote peace values & norms.
• Are interdependent and woven with other groups.
• Are led by visionary leaders.
• Have overarching identities (an inclusive identity that expands “the Us” to include “the Them”.)
• Have peace-promoting symbols and rituals.
• Encourage nonviolent conflict management.
• Have cooperative governance.

A careful reader might intuit a grey area between the formerly mentioned structures. Thinking about a certain society, some attributes might be missing while other (opposite) characteristics can be identified. That is normal, as no two societies are the same. The presented clustering is just a vague representation of some of the most common combinations of values found in the scientist’s cross-cultural research.

According to Douglas, in order to increase planetary stability and invoke unprecedented growth, all cultures should strive toward maintaining peaceful relationships with their neighbors. This can be achieved by forming peace systems:

“Clusters of neighboring societies that do not make war with each other.”

In his short, introductory YouTube video “A Path Away From War | The Science Of Peace Systems” the anthropologist gave us a few examples of already existing peace systems. Some of them include:

• the Nordic Nations
• the Swiss Confederation
• Orang Asli of Malaysia
• Upper Xingu tribes of Brazil
• Haudenosaunee
• the European Union

Therefore, peace systems are not just romantic ideas. They are firm realities, some of which have existed for centuries, if not millennia. But forming a peace system is not an easy task. What is required to achieve it, is a change in the values and conduct both on a micro (individual) and a macro (political, societal) levels.

In conclusion

All values rest on one’s identity, on the belief of who he, she, or it is. If the identity is inclusive, the whole cosmos is the extension of one’s body. If it is exclusive, the world becomes chopped into bits and pieces of animose and hostile fragments, which have to either be destroyed or subdued. Exclusivity makes one protect his or her identity and beliefs. Inclusiveness extends one’s identity in order to understand and incorporate the “other”. As said by Douglas, the goal of a peace system is:

“To extend the We to include the Them”

For this reason, I urge everyone (myself included) to reflect on the values and beliefs that influence our lives daily. Let’s try to be more conscious of the ideas that inhabit our minds, and the minds of others. In striving to see them for what they are, we understand that most of our beliefs are merely ungrounded yet comfortable assumptions. If these assumptions are leading to pain, war, and suffering, probably they are warped and should be re-evaluated. A conscious, ethical and self-realized individual always tries to decipher right from wrong and live accordingly to the former, not the latter. Beliefs are very infectious, so we have to always remain conscious of what inhabits our minds. As believed to be said by the great Buddha Shakyamuni:

“Be a light unto yourself; betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth. Look not for refuge to anyone besides yourselves.”

A sane society is the sum total of sane individuals. Once one person begins to live sanely, sanity spreads. Most probably that is why Krishnamurti said: “As we are — the world is.” A sane society is not the responsibility of its government or social institutions. It’s the responsibility of the people who form and inhabit them. The responsibility of you and me.

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