“War is Only an Invention; Not a Biological Necessity”: An Adaptation

Margaret Mead was an American anthropologist. She was born in 1901 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and passed away in New York City, New York in 1978. You can say she was the anthropological version of Neil deGrasse Tyson in the ‘60s and ‘70s – introducing anthropology to the mass public. I was first introduced to her in college many decades later. To this day, it sticks out in my head, maybe because it is so pertinent in today’s environment, because it is so generalizable, or because it is so confounding. Regardless, I want to discuss it, or “bump it up” in modern lingo. The essay was first published in the journal Asia in August 1940 under the title “Warfare is Only an Invention – Not a Biological Necessity”. I think it could prove to be valuable.

Let us begin with abridged snippets in italics (republished in The Dolphin Reader, 1990^[1]), adapted and framed with my own narrative in standard font.

Once upon a time, there were humans and there was warfare. The child asked the mother, “Dear Mother, why is there war?”

Mead: “Is war a biological necessity, a sociological inevitability or just a bad invention?”

The mother answered that there are two camps. The first:

“Those who argue for the first view endow man with such pugnacious instincts that some outlet in aggressive behavior is necessary if man is to reach full human stature.”

Child: “Pugnacious?! No, it is honorable!”

The mother added:

“…those who wish to outlaw war or outlaw competitiveness merely try to find new and less socially destructive ways in which these biologically given aspects of man’s nature can find expression.”

Child: “This is a very jaded view of humankind. Humans are then warlike but weak. They want to destroy each other but that is too much. They destroy but in less destructive ways. Still, war is in the human DNA.”

The mother continued. There is another camp:

“War is…inevitable unless we change our social system and outlaw classes, the struggle for power, and possessions…”

The child: “So, war is not inevitable. If we change our social system, etc., we can avoid war! War is NOT in the human DNA. If we give up classes and the struggles for resources, there would be no more war!

But Mother, you are not giving me the full picture. What do you mean about the social system, classes, power, possession, etc.?”

The mother continued:

“…one may claim that all aggression springs from the frustration of man’s biologically determined drives and that, since all forms of culture are frustrating, it is certain each new generation will be aggressive and the aggression will find its natural and inevitable expression in race war, class war, nationalistic war, and so on.”

The child:

“So, war is either inevitable: 1) One views war as a stepping stone towards greater ends, or 2) war could be obsolete if social systems are to outlaw classes, power, possessions, etc., which is pure fantasy.”

The mother:

“…warfare of this sort is an invention like any other of the inventions in terms of which we order our lives, such as writing, marriage, cooking our food instead of eating it raw, trial by jury or burial of the dead, and so on … At some point in his social development man was undoubtedly without the institution of marriage or the knowledge of the use of fire.”

The child: “So war is an invention like fire. It cannot be avoided.”

The mother:

“War is not even so much as fire. Whereas fire is ubiquitous in today’s world, war is not so.

…The case for warfare is much clearer because there are peoples even today who have no warfare … the Eskimo {Note: Inuit ^[2]} are perhaps the most conspicuous examples…

…the Lepchas of Sikkim described by Geoffrey Gorer in Himalayan Village are as good. Neither of these peoples understands war, not even defensive warfare.”

The child:

“Unbelievable. But I understand. It is because they had no worries. They had no concept of war because there was no reason for war. Everything was served on a silver platter.”

The mother:

“…other points of view…might argue…that they had never been frustrated and so had no aggression…

Not so.

…Fights, theft of wives, murder, cannibalism, occur among them … When a traveling Eskimo entered a settlement he might have to fight the strongest man in the settlement to establish his position among them, but this was a test of strength and bravery, not war. The idea of warfare, of one group organizing against another group to maim and wound and kill them was absent.”

The child:

“…isn’t this because the Eskimo have such a low and undeveloped form of social organization? … Doesn’t the absence of war among the Eskimo, while disproving the biological necessity of war, just go to confirm the point that it is the state of development of the society which accounts for war, and nothing else?

If they lived in complex societies, there would be war.”

The mother:

“No, there could be war even without a complex society.

…The Andamans also represent an exceedingly low level of society; they are a hunting and food-gathering people … But they knew about warfare … Tiny army met tiny army in open battle, blows were exchanged, casualties suffered, and the state of warfare could only be concluded by a peacemaking ceremony…

…among the Australian aborigines … The student of social evolution will seek in vain for his obvious causes of war, struggle for lands, struggle for power of one group over another.”

It can be observed:

…If a people have an idea of going to war and the idea that war is the way in which certain situations, defined within their society, are to be handled, they will sometimes go to war … If they are a mild and unaggressive people, like the Pueblo Indians, they may limit themselves to defensive warfare … people like the Lepchas, having no natural defenses and no idea of warfare, will merely submit to the invader…

…So simple peoples and civilized peoples, mild peoples and violent, assertive peoples, will all go to war if they have the invention, just as those peoples who have the custom of dueling will have duels and peoples who have the pattern of vendetta will indulge in vendetta…

…A people can use only the forms it has. So the Balinese have their special way of dealing with a quarrel between two individuals: if the two feel that the causes of quarrel are heavy they may go and register their quarrel in the temple before the gods, and, making offerings, they may swear never to have anything to do with each other again…

…in other societies…they cannot register their quarrel with the gods … [It] is not an invention of which they know…

…there are tribes who go to war merely for glory, having no quarrel with the enemy…

…if, as was the case with the Bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana, it is artistic ability which is necessary to win a girl’s approval, the same young man would have to be carving rather than going out on a war party.”

The child:

“…But, once we have said this, have we said anything at all? … once the invention is made, what are we to do about it? The Indian…did not

return to his primitive weapons … [despite seeing the] white man exterminating the buffalo … Once an invention is known and accepted, men do not easily relinquish it. …What hope is there of persuading nations to abandon war, nations so thoroughly imbued with the idea that resort to war is, if not actually desirable and noble, at last inevitable whenever certain defined circumstances arise?…”

The mother:

“…In answer to this question I think we might turn to the history of other social inventions … Take the methods of trial which preceded the jury system: ordeal and trial by combat … it went out because a method more congruent with the institutions and feelings of the period was invented.

…if we despair over the way in which war seems such an ingrained habit of most of the human race, we can take comfort from the fact that a poor invention will usually give place to a better invention…

…For this, two conditions at least are necessary. The people must recognize the defects of the old invention, and someone must make a new one …a belief that social invention is possible and the invention of new methods which will render warfare as outdated as the tractor is making the plow, or the motor car the horse and buggy.”

The child:

“I have two questions. It has been demonstrated that simple societies can know warfare or not. However, all complex societies know warfare. Simple societies can do without warfare, but can complex societies do without warfare?

My second question is whether war can actually be comparable to the invention of the wheel, of which some societies do without. Is this not naive?”

The mother:

“…”

END

—

Unfortunately, Mead leaves us here. My own thought is that as most of our world is composed of man-made social constructs. It is not too big a stretch to say that warfare – in which an army advances onto others, could also be a social construct. Furthermore, humankind has demonstrated more malleability and adaptability – the ability to transcend limits – than arguably the majority of life on earth. In addition, it is indeed possible to change social circumstances. Open questions are always there, and that is the one thing that can be said to be universal among the human species, alongside their need for sociality and oral traditions.

(A third question is the ethics of interfering/intervening in another culture, as a “functional” society could become “dysfunctional” due to interference, but we will save that for another day.)

^[1] Mead, Margaret. “Warfare is Only an Invention — Not a Biological Necessity.” The Dolphin Reader. 2nd edition. Ed. Douglas Hunt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990. 415-421.

^[2] The name Eskimo could be considered ignorant and insulting; Inuit is preferred although this itself denotes many cultures. Nonetheless, Eskimo was the name back then.