Book Review – Sapiens (Is war a positive influence on human development?)

Noah Yuval Harari’s book Sapiens got me thinking about whether war is a positive influence on human development.

 

World War I and World War II are two of the most devastating examples of wars that have affected the world. World War I was a war centered in Europe that took place from July 28, 1914 to November 11, 1918. It was a huge war that pitted the Allied powers of Great Britain, France, and Russia against their allies, including Germany and Austria. More than 9 million soldiers died in the war, making it one of the deadliest wars on record. World War II was fought from September 1, 1939, to September 2, 1945, and left behind the largest loss of life and property in human history. It began with Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Polish border and ended with the United States dropping atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Imperial Japan. The war resulted in an estimated 25 million military deaths and another 25 million civilian casualties.
The history of mankind can be described as the history of war. There have been wars, large and small, throughout the history of the world, and they are ongoing. And most of them have had devastating consequences, as described above. Because of this, many people tend to focus on the negative aspects of war. However, I argue that wars have contributed significantly to human development, and furthermore, that human development can be explained by the competitive psychology of humans, which can be represented by war. Of course, as I will explain later, this argument does not encourage war. The past has shown that war has had a positive impact on the development of humanity and civilization, and understanding this helps us prepare for the future.
The dictionary definition of war is “the act or state of being between two or more opposing nations or equivalent groups of people who seek to impose their will on each other by any means, including military force.” As you can see from the definition, there are many different purposes and forms of warfare beyond the physical military force we commonly think of.
In the past, before territories were defined between nations, wars were primarily fought for national gain through territorial expansion. In the modern era, when capitalism was established, wars could be used to secure resources or to benefit from the creation of hierarchical relationships between nations. Of course, wars can also be used to create mental unity within a nation. Until the modern era, most wars have remained the same: the mobilization of military force to create physical conflict, with only the tools and technology used changing. However, in the modern era, wars have taken many forms beyond the use of physical force. For example, the Cold War era between the United States and the Soviet Union, a coalition of nations based on ideological differences, is also a form of warfare. In addition, advances in technology have made it possible to store information in virtual space, resulting in cyber warfare, a war over information within virtual space.
I would describe any confrontation between two groups that has some kind of purpose and form as war. Since technology has become too advanced and dangerous for both groups to fight wars with physical force, international law has prohibited war since World War II. This definition of war refers to physical acts of violence, so war in its various forms can and does still occur. Terrorist acts by terrorist organizations such as IS also fall under the category of war, as they are confrontations between groups that are equivalent to states.
There is no denying that war, as defined above, has caused great and small harm to humanity. However, I argue that war has had a positive impact on the development of human civilization. Looking at the past, there are many examples of how war has had a positive impact on modern civilization. For example, modern civilization and science and technology were born out of war.
In a nutshell, modern warfare, typified by World War I and World War II, coincided with a period of rapid advancement in science and technology. The new war-related technologies developed during this period formed the backbone of modern civilization after the wars ended. For example, the importance of identifying pia in warfare led to the development of radar. The war technology of radar was adapted to use microwaves, which are used in many modern objects such as microwaves. The importance of supply in warfare led to the need for rapid processing and preservation of food. This led to the development of food processing industries, and in modern civilization, the manufacturing revolution led to the widespread distribution of processed foods such as Spam. It also led to the spread of fast food restaurants, represented by hamburgers, around the world. It goes without saying that information transmission and information processing are crucial in warfare. The technologies related to information processing that were developed during the war would later lead to the development of point-to-point communication networks and the Internet. Computers were developed to speed up the processing of information, and encryption and decryption technologies were developed to secure and search the Internet. In the modern era of capitalism, the development of technology leads to the development of civilization, so it is undeniable that world wars have advanced human civilization.
Modern wars are not the only ones that have influenced the development of human civilization. Wars in the past have also contributed a lot to the development of humanity. The Crusades, the signature battle of medieval Europe, took place over a long period of time from the 11th to the 13th century BC. As Christian Europe as a whole fought to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims, European civilization developed through the introduction of new technologies from Islamic societies, such as compasses and gunpowder. The introduction of gunpowder led to the production of artillery and firearms, which led to the downfall of the knightly feudal society. Looking further back in time, we have the Battle of Issus, where Alexandros the Great defeated a large Persian army. This battle led to Alexandros’ conquest of Persia and western India, and in the Gandhara region of India, a new culture, Gandhara art, was born, a fusion of Western Greek and Indian culture. As you can see from the above examples, humans have learned lessons and developed civilizations from the process and outcomes of war.
In some cases, wars have led to cultural or technological regression. For example, the Inca civilization in nearby Peru fought a two-year war with the Spanish in 1531, resulting in the destruction of their kingdom and the collapse of their social institutions. This can be explained by the fact that the war caused the Inca civilization to regress. However, from the perspective of humanity as a whole, this war was the process of the relatively underdeveloped Inca civilization being eliminated and replaced by the more advanced Western civilization. It is natural for the more developed human race to win the competition, just as Homo sapiens drove out the Neanderthals. In the end, the war replaced the Inca civilization with a better one, which can be thought of as development in terms of the entire human race.
I think war is the most extreme example of humanity’s desire for power. Our desire for power, possession, and the desire to have more power has led to competition between individuals and individuals, or groups and groups. And when the competition and conflict between groups intensifies, it leads to conflict, which we can define as war. Humans have developed their civilizations through competition, and they have developed themselves to satisfy their desires. War is part of that process.
War is not necessary for humanity to compete or fulfill its desires. War is an extreme way to do this, but not a necessary one, so you might wonder why we say that war is the cause of human progress. However, war can accelerate the development of human civilization because it maximizes competition between two groups. Unlike peacetime, when technology is developed at a leisurely pace, wartime allows for more efficient development because it concentrates large amounts of human and material resources to develop technology. It’s no coincidence that many technologies are developed in the course of war. The development of technology in war is the source of human development, as technology is later commercialized and made available to the masses, leading to the development of civilization. Taken together, wars are a prime example of human desire, and civilizations have developed through warfare. This is true not only for the physical violence of the past, but also for the many forms of warfare that exist today. The development of network and security technologies through cyber warfare is one example.
There are still questions about the relationship between human desires and the development of human civilization. For example, we can ask whether human desire is the most important cause of human development. If human civilization has not developed according to desire, then it cannot be said that war, which is a clear example of desire, has developed human civilization. There are several scholars who do not explain the development of civilization in terms of human desires, such as Yuval Harari, author of the book Sapiens.
Harari identifies three revolutions as the most important in human development: the Cognitive Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, and the Scientific Revolution. He summarizes the Cognitive Revolution as the period when humans became smarter than other animals. One of his main arguments is that it was our unique ability to believe in fiction that propelled humanity forward. Humans, Homo sapiens, had the ability to communicate more information about social relationships, creating cohesive groups of up to 150 people. In addition to this, Homo sapiens developed the ability to communicate fictions that didn’t actually exist, such as tribal mentality, nations, limited liability companies, and human rights, which allowed strangers to feel a sense of identification and cooperation. Homo sapiens was physically weak compared to other species of humans and other animals, but through cooperation, we developed the power to overcome them. In history, large-scale cooperation occurred under dynastic political systems based on the myth of kingship, and today’s economy runs on the fiction of corporations, the dollar, and corporate trademarks.
To summarize Yuval Harari’s argument, the species Homo sapiens has a fiction-based cooperative system unlike any other animal, and it has allowed large groups of people to cooperate and evolve. He argues that fiction-based cooperative systems developed when Homo sapiens competed with other species, such as Neanderthals, and are now ubiquitous. However, his theory of fiction-based cooperation is flawed in several ways. First of all, myths and totems did not exist in the Paleolithic, the time of the cognitive revolution. Primitive religions such as animism, totemism, and shamanism emerged in the Neolithic, while the Paleolithic consisted of drawing bison on walls and praying to them. These magical practices did not have the power to unite large numbers of homo sapiens, so the idea that Homo sapiens drove out other species through cooperation is a stretch. Also, the basic structure of post-Neolithic societies is dominance and subjugation, and it is not possible to explain this in terms of a cooperative system. Yuval Harari acknowledges this in his book when he says, “Cooperation sounds very altruistic, but it was not always voluntary and rarely egalitarian; human cooperation networks were mostly geared toward oppression and exploitation.” However, the second sentence contradicts his fiction-based cooperative system. In other words, cooperative systems alone cannot fully explain human development.
Fiction-based cooperative systems are not the end-all be-all of cooperative systems. There are other ways to explain cooperation in groups. There are also many other explanations for the causes of competition in human development. What is clear, however, is that no single concept can explain all of human development, and that the multiple desires that humans have are also an important explanation for human development. Based on this, I argue that war, as one form of human desire expression, has had a positive impact on human development.
In the future, there will be more varieties of warfare than there are today. For example, we can expect conflicts between Homo sapiens and new species if advances in biotechnology lead to the creation of new genetically engineered species. Human desire is a natural emotion, and war is always a possibility. Therefore, we need to understand war better. Competition between groups and groups is what drives the development of humanity in the past, present, and future, and war is what drives human civilization. As such, we need to understand that war does not have only negative aspects, but also positive aspects in terms of human development. Of course, wars that cause physical damage between two groups should be reduced. The future of warfare should be a form of warfare that reduces the damage to both groups, encourages competition, and advances humanity.