Battle
Essay by review • February 2, 2011 • Study Guide • 867 Words (4 Pages) • 1,176 Views
* First evidence of war- Mesolithic, 12,000 years ago
* Ice Age- all animals died off--advent of human hunter
* Humans and animals hunt; as a way of reenacting the primal transformation from prey to predator
* War and violence reassure the fact that people are no longer prey
* With decline of wild predator and game populations, there would be little to occupy the male who specialized in hunting-p. 123
* Because farming was a major food source; no uniquely male occupation left- woman could care for domesticated animals- 124
* Men who failed as warriors have been reviled as "woman"-p.126- woman looked upon as inferior gender
* War-making is not another occupation that men have monopolized, it is an activity that has defined manhood itself
* Male leadership, just like adult male status in general, must be proved with blood
* Woman are not incapable of fighting
* No compelling biological or natural reason who men have starred in the drama of war
* Men make war to establish fact that they are "real men"
* Insults inflicted in one war call forth new wars of retaliation- effects of one war lead to the next war
* No longer brush off a war party
* Each human society be as war-ready as the other societies it is likely to encounter; that spears be matched with spears
* "but ultimately 'we' fight 'them' because they are different, and their difference is threatening in its challenge to the validity of the ideas we live by"-135
* We make enemy look less human so it is easier to kill
* Given time, fighting will cause two sides to become more like each other- war represents perhaps the most imitative activity known to man
* Practice of naming a child after a particularly valiant enemy was once widespread
* Even with wide race and differences, enemies can admire each other for their conduct as warriors-141
* Warrior depends on his weapons that enables him to exploit the labor of others
* Warriors become predators with in human species
* Warriors and leaders come from aristocracy
* Birthright of men to become warriors
* Woman are tools of warfare
* Some people can never stop fighting- menace to society
* Page 158- battle as a kind of sacrifice
* Battle is rebirth; boyman
* To the true member of the warrior elite, every war can be a holy one
* War brings back captives for religious sacrifice
* War is often pointless destruction
* Factors Favoring the New Religions
* Trade differs from war in that it channels greed into the nonviolent acquisition of wealth; merchant class helped end religious sacrifices
* Factor- growth of lower class composed of the representative of military defeated peoples
* Glory no longer belongs to those who triumph by force but to those who are triumphed over
* Religion is no longer about being militarily strong
* Peasants and common people beginning to get involved in war
* Those who fell in battle could be seen as martyrs analogous to Jesus-170
* Crusades against European heretics represent the ultimate fusion of church and military-171----"kill them all; God will know which are His"
* Religion of was, held little room for the common man, much les the common woman
* Nationalism replaces religion
* Missile-bases warfare favored mass, sub-elite armies in another war too; it made killing as impersonal business
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