Subject: Re: Warfare as Sacrifice
From: James Garrabrant <a03jamga-AT-student.his.se>
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2004 22:39:04 +0200


Richard:

But hey, you're just begoing the naturalistic fallacy.
According to the evolutionary perspective it was acceptable to allow a few 
million on one's side die, because:
	- there was a belief in victory,
	- that there was a veil of ignorace over who would die,
	- that that were was a belief that the sacrifice of a few men would be 
best for the survival 	of the group.

I suppose this boils down to that the genes aren't aware of terror. I 
suppose if I were a biologist and my theory starts breaking down here I'd 
cite Ernst Jünger's "Storm of Steel". After all, the terror experienced is 
not understandable, it's a "queasy feeling of unreality".

"The incredible forces in the hour of destiny, to fight for a distant 
future, and the violence it so surprisingly, stunningly unleashed, had 
taken me for the first time into the depths of something that was more 
than mere personal experience. That was what distinguished it from what I 
had been through before; it was an initiation that had not only opened the 
red-hot chambers of dread but had also led me through them."
- Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel

Enjoy.


>> 	Nine-million soldiers perished in the First World War and did not
>> pass their genes along. The way the leaders of nations sent nations to  
>> their
>> death, the bizarre nature and quantity of the slaughter, borders on the
>> psychotic.
>>
>> 	To attempt to rationalize such a destructive form of behavior, to
>> assume that it actually made sense (from a biological or any other
>> perspective) is to deny the terror that one would experience if one
>> encountered what actually happened.
>>
>> With regards,
>>
>> Richard Koenigsberg.