Every road towards a better state of society is blocked, sooner or later, by war, by threats of war, by prepareations for war. ...............War is a purely human phenomenon. The lower animals fight duels in the heat of sexual excitement and kill for food and occasionally for sport. ...........................Some social insects, it is true, go out to fight in armies; but their attacks are always directed against members of another species. Man is unique in organizing the mass murder of his own species.
(Start of the chapter 'War' by Huxley)
Aldous Huxley in Ends and Means, 1937 has quite aptly analyzed the nature of war and the causes of war. What i found most intriguing though was the last few paragraphs of his writing where he has considered the psychological causes of war and how they might be eliminated. He says War is sometimes welcome because peace-time occupations seem boring, humiliating and pointless - which i think held more true in his time...1930s .......now this is rarely applicable or more so, there are so many wars already ongoing that we have not had yet that boredom felt of peace-time...where is peace-time? However, he had given a solution pertaining to job-rotation which he believed would remove the boredom in the occupations.
The second psychological phenomenon during wartime was the decline in suicide rate - as during war-time, people had heightened significanc and purposefulness of life as opposed to peace-time. Danger heightens the sense of social solidarity and quickens patriotic enthusiam. Life takes on sense and meaning and is lived at a high pitch of emotional intensity.
Both the psychological causes of war seem very convincing amongst the many other nationalistic, political, religious, economic, social and power gaining reasons of war he sites. The psychological reasons of war are less thought of and more in the individual's control as opposed to all the other reasons why societies, sects and countries fight.
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