Tough on war: soft on the causes of war
To consider this issue in depth I would first like to consider the drawbacks of ‘Make Love not War.’ As argued in an Issue 20 (‘There is no purpose of life...and all people are equal in pursuing it’), we can see a circularity in the purpose of life: the purpose of life is love, and the purpose of love is life:
Can we not have a society that recognises and celebrates this circularity, and recognise that this is incompatible with war, in which the power to exploit is either asserted or defended?
But life can pour cold water on things: love does indeed lead to life, but in a society where economic hardship has been overcome, the population doubles every generation, so we hear. Thus Britain became ‘great’ through exploiting India among others, then her population increased and many Brits went out to places like Australia, Canada, etc. And some of course came back!
So by simply asserting love, we are indeed tough on wars, but without recognising factors such as population growth, we are being soft on the causes of war.
A very important illustration of tough on war but soft on the causes, is that of European integration. The theory goes that with European integration, we come closer together and in effect ‘love each other’. But to pursue this love, we pursue precisely the same financial orthodoxy that gave rise to Nazism and thence WWII. Within the economic union, the rich get richer and the poor poorer: not just people within nations, but across nations. Something has to snap.
By Martin Prior
The Philosophy Takeaway 'War' Issue 28
