Causes Of Warfare

3 Pages 790 Words

Assignment 3: Causes of War
NOTE: *in parts A and B, Keegan is quoted unless otherwise noted
*in part C quotes and figures are taken from Al J. Venter’s
“A Scarcity of Water May Lead to War,” in War.


In my opinion, war is very human. Just look at the games we play. Most popular sports pit two enemy sides against each other in a battle for victory. Sports serve to satisfy our aggressive impulses, while war metaphors are abound. Football, Hockey, and Boxing are extremely violent sports, just to name a few. We swing, punch, tackle, hit, injure, and win or lose for fun. Teams brawl. Kids play with toy guns and pretend to kill each other. Why would we play war, if somewhere inside we didn’t want to fight it? But this is all my opinion. There’s people with degrees who got the facts (but still can’t agree).

A) War, but more so aggression, has been related to human nature biologically. “Aggression is a function of the lower brain, amenable to control by the higher brain.” However, while scientists have found hormones (testosterone), chemicals (serotonin), and regions of the brain that effect aggression, Keegan feels that neurology hasn’t made clear how aggression is produced or regulated inside the brain. Moreover, just because people are aggressive doesn’t mean they’ll organize into troupes all of a sudden.

Genetic and Darwinian analysis have been more successful “in showing how context and ‘selection for aggression’ correlate. Writes Keegan, “…aggressiveness is clearly a genetic inheritance that may enhance the chance of survival. If life is a struggle, then those who best resist hostile circumstances are likely to live the longest and produce the largest number of resistant offspring.” Still, this doesn’t “explain why groups of individuals combine to fight others.”

Ethology, “in which psychological theory is combined with the study of animal behavior,” gives a good explanation of...