Unfinished Business: War 1

Fatal Obsession

Hopeless fool that I am, I thought War was gone from our lives after the Berlin Wall came down. It seemed nuclear weapons would be dismantled, and that Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) were a thing of the past. The world's problems would be settled less violently. We were on our way to the stars.

In the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life (SETI), various calculations are used to estimate where to look and what we might find. Carl Sagan cited the lengthy multiplication of probabilities (by Morrison?) in trying to estimate how many intelligent, technical civilizations there might be. One of the last, critical factors in the long chain of improbable events is the half-life of technical civilizations, such as ours.

The immediately previous factor is whether an intelligent civilization would CHOOSE or DEVELOP INTO a technical civilization. Our own history of the last 10,000 years shows that technical prowess is not quick to develop. The Chinese, Greeks and Romans all had much of the antecedent stuff to become technical civilizations like ours thousands of years ago. It just didn't happen until the European Renaissance 500 years ago. Why then and there? I don't think anyone really knows the answer; it just happened.

What is the probability of intelligent civilizations developing into technical ones? If, as I've read, there have been as many as 7, or as few as 5, independently evolved cultures on this planet, the chances are roughly 14% - 20% of that happening. In our experience, technical civilizations have overwhelming advantages over non-technical ones. So, once this step is taken, all the other cultures must follow as a matter of survival.

How long does a technical civilization last? We just don't know. Ours has gone on for some 500 years, but the past is not a guideline to the future. About the same time Sagan was printing SETI calculations 25 years ago, the Alvarez' father and son team published their Asteroid Impact hypothesis. The Alvarezes correlated the Asteroid Impact with the K-T boundary, 65 million years ago, at which dinosaurs disappear from the geological record. Those considerations led to the publication of the now-famous Nuclear Winter hypothesis in SCIENCE (1982). Thus, all at once, the end of the dinosaurs and technical civilizations were intimately mixed up with our chances of finding ET.

Things seemed bleak to me 20 years ago. With Ronald Reagan in charge, the warmongers were on the loose. Soon enough, Star Wars would bury us with the dinosaurs. My lifelong hope and purpose, that human civilizations would become space faring, seemed unlikely and wasted. Until, almost miraculously, there was Gorbachev and the walls came tumbling down. Then we thought we had pests like Saddam Hussein under control, and, to boot, a seemingly progressive, anti-Imperialist President was elected.

After nearly a century of death, destruction, fear and terror, surely, peace and prosperity in our time were finally at hand.

But, after a few years of hope, we have neither peace nor prosperity again. The dream of going to the stars seems farther away than ever.

One of the discussions among SETI workers is whether we haven't found any ETs, because technical civilizations might have a propensity to blow themselves up. One might suppose that being technically competent (TC) is the result of a very long Darwinian struggle. So, whether by design or accident, TC critters are feisty and competitive by nature, accustomed to knocking off any perceived claimants to their territory or grandeur. This beastly nature persists beyond its usefulness in the maturity of the civilization, and eventually becomes its undoing. It's what Kevin Phillips calls "overreach" in his "Wealth and Democracy." Colloquially, big shots eventually 'bite off more than they can chew,' and get done in, as demonstrated over and over in Hollywood's Westerns.

It's the same concept for Cold War Liberals, Reaganites, and Neo-conservatives: Truth, Justice and the American Way will triumph, even if we have to fight to the last man. It's the concept and soaring emotion of our victory that counts, not that anyone is around to savor it. So, even the White Hats ride into glorious Sunsets, and evaporate into eternity.

Unfinished Business

In my seniority, I've had to come to grips with a life of mistakes and half-truths, often publicly. I take these humiliations and embarrassments as punishments suiting the crime.

One of my crimes was not writing and presenting a seminar paper on the Ethics of War. I had to quit the seminar mid-term to obey a Court Order to work and not attend Graduate School. That Order was part of divorce proceedings, which in turn was partly the result of my political activism. Like many others in Berkeley in the '60s, I was caught up by the Free Speech Movement, the Anti-War Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, Labor Organizing and more. At the time, it seemed to me we needed to create a good and just society more than anything else. That was a costly attitude that changed the rest of my life.

Despite the hard consequences, it is still clear to me that American society of the '60s needed major changes: social liberation, political revolution and economic upheaval. 40 years later, not all of those changes have been made; some were made but did not "stick." Since the 2000 election, the Bush Administration has waged open warfare against anything tainted by the 1960s, and the 1930s as well. So what progress - as I think of progress - was made is slipping away, further invalidating and rebuking my life (which I resent).

I believe American society still needs major reforms. People need to be liberated from stupidity, ignorance and incompetence wherever possible. They need improved food, clothing, housing and medical care. Most of all, people need a better understanding of their true worth and actual position in a capitalist society that undermines the many while elevating the few.

When I proposed to give a seminar on the ethics of war in 1966, I had "neo-Kantian" idealistic views; i.e. I followed Immanuel Kant's ideas on ethics (cf Critique of Practical Reason). My views are much changed since then, as I evolved into a materialist and a relativist. Unlike Kant and other dualists (e.g., Plato, Descartes), now I think there is just one world, not an ethereal world of forms and souls and another of inchoate material. The stuff of our Universe is just one thing, whatever it is; there are no eidos or noumena required to inform or explain the phenomena.

In the same vein, I don't think there are any First Principles, Universal Laws or other mystical guidelines that inform or provide a logical basis for ethics. I am quite sure that ethical considerations are biologically based and species specific, but only come into play when agents are sufficiently intelligent and informed. A critical component of ethical behavior is informed choice.
 

I think we can "see" the 'ethical rules' by which antelope, tigers and zebras abide, because we are sufficiently educated about ethical matters. But, those animals aren't concerned about ethical considerations; they don't select the rules guiding their behavior. So, to the extent we attribute ethical behavior to other species, it is only by analogy and comparison to our species. We are projecting, in the Freudian sense.

While it is often quite clear what behavioral rules apply to other species, we only see the rules applying to ourselves 'through a glass, darkly.' Our desires often overwhelm our reason, so we believe we are pushed, pulled and confused. We feel we cannot explain our behavior; that we often do immoral things. So, many people believe there must be "higher principles" by which to judge our behavior.

At this point, I prefer a forceful application of Occam's Razor: Things are just what they seem. The same application that rids us of the dualism of things, also dumps gods, souls and eternal verities. We haven't added a single thing to the explanation of behavior by judging its morality, or invoking ethical principles. What people do is exactly what they do.

My view does not prevent researching someone's behavior or asking for justification. We might find out the someone had a strong urge for chocolates and stole some, despite medical advice to avoid sweets and laws against robbery. In this case, the urge seems stronger than advice. But, even if we found the theft was motivated by intellectual rejection of the advice, the chocolates were still stolen. Ethical analysis doesn't change the facts "on the ground," and often fails to deter unethical behavior.