Everyone in this conversation should read William James' 1910 essay, "The Moral Equivalent of War" -- one copy's at http://www.constitution.org/wj/meow.htm . His candid description of the militarist position is appalling; but he makes a case that martial effort and self-sacrifice are good in themselves, but should be mobilized for purposes a bit nobler than killing one's neighbors and taking their stuff.
The Peace Corps, the old Civil Conservation Corps, and the like were and are a partial expression of what he hoped for; but it would be good to see this go further. War is more harmful than beneficial on balance (read up on WWI, especially, and the way in which Western civilization was coming apart at the seams by the end); collective self-defense is of course necessary, but we should seek better ways of gaining these benefits.
(Solidarity against entropy, perhaps? That would be doubly interesting since fighting entropy is both a good thing and a lost cause...)
It might be that the best option is perpetual war against an ineffectual enemy. If you have an enemy that you can absolutely keep in check, and periodically have to fight without much loss to yourself, then you can achieve solidarity and a militaristic spirit without causing too much harm to your own people.
I'm thinking the Israelis vs the Palestinians, for example. If Israel can keep Palestinians as a perpetual enemy, given the much smaller power of the Palestinians, a limited perpetual war will keep the Israeli people ever-united without bringing them much harm. All the benefits of war without downside.
You're forgetting one important downside: the Israel-Palestine stuff kills a lot of innocent people. The whole point of James' idea is getting cohesion and self-sacrifice _without_ taking innocent lives or leaving people to live in misery...
I think you mean the Jordanians vs Palestinians, propping up a remote group to fight a proxy war against an invented enemy to avoid taking damage at home.
That's what Edward Bernays did, after discovering the galvanizing effect of war on the human spirit. Except he strove to recreate that same effect in peacetime by turning active citizens into passive consumers who fight each other for superiority from the products they buy, instead of conquering lands.
I can't tell if you're praising his effort or condemning it; but I'd point out that that sort of conflict is a Hobbesian warre of all against all, in which cohesion and self-sacrifice are impossible -- which is what both James and the pre-WWI militarists were afraid of.
I'd point out that that sort of conflict is a Hobbesian warre of all against all
The current structure of social media seems to incentivize people separating into isolated walled camps while demonizing the other groups and figuratively throwing rocks.
That's certainly true, but I think that this reflects the extent to which the US is divided into warring tribes -- and so isn't in Bernays' consumption-only state of affairs.
The Peace Corps, the old Civil Conservation Corps, and the like were and are a partial expression of what he hoped for; but it would be good to see this go further. War is more harmful than beneficial on balance (read up on WWI, especially, and the way in which Western civilization was coming apart at the seams by the end); collective self-defense is of course necessary, but we should seek better ways of gaining these benefits.
(Solidarity against entropy, perhaps? That would be doubly interesting since fighting entropy is both a good thing and a lost cause...)