In many parts of the world, war is a game in which the individual can win counters—counters which bring him prestige in the eyes of his own sex or of the opposite sex; he plays for these counters as he might, in our society, strive for a tennis championship. Warfare is a frame for such prestige-seeking merely because it calls for the display of certain skills and certain virtues; all of these skills—riding straight, shooting straight, dodging the missiles of the enemy, and sending one's own straight to the mark—can be equally well exercised in some other framework and, equally, the virtues—endurance, bravery, loyalty, steadfastness—can be displayed in other contexts. The tie-up between proving oneself a man and proving this by a success in organized killing is due to a definition which many societies have made of manliness. And often, even in those societies which counted success in warfare a proof of human worth, strange turns were given to the idea, as when the Plains Indians gave their highest awards to the man who touched a live enemy rather than to the man who brought in a scalp—from a dead enemy—because killing a man was less risky. Warfare is just an invention known to the majority of human societies by which they permit their young men either to accumulate prestige or
avenge their honor or acquire loot or wives or slaves or sago lands or cattle or appease the blood lust of their gods or the restless souls of the recently dead. It is just an invention, older and more widespread than the jury system, but none the less an invention.
But, once we have said this, have we said anything at all? Despite a few instances, dear to the hearts of controversialists, of the loss of the useful arts, once an invention is made which proves congruent with human needs or social forms, it tends to persist. Grant that war is an invention, that it is not a biological necessity nor the outcome of certain special types of social forms, still, once the invention is made, what are we to do about it? The Indian who had been subsisting on the buffalo for generations because with his primitive weapons he could slaughter only a limited number of buffalo did not return to his primitive weapons when he saw that the white man's more efficient weapons were exterminating the buffalo. A desire for the white man's cloth may mortgage the South Sea Islander to the white man's plantation, but he does not return to making bark cloth, which would have left him free. Once an invention is known and accepted, men do not easily relinquish it. The skilled workers may smash the first steam looms which they feel are to be their undoing, but they accept them in the end, and no movement which has insisted upon the mere abandonment of usable inventions has ever had much success. Warfare is here, as part of our thought; the deeds of warriors are immortalized in the words of our poets; the toys of our children are modeled upon the weapons of the soldier; the frame of reference within which our statesmen and our diplomats work always contains war. If we know that it is not inevitable, that it is due to historical accident that warfare is one of the ways in which we think of behaving, are we given any hope by that? 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 least inevitable whenever certain defined circumstances arise?
In answer to this question I think we might turn to the history of other social inventions, inventions which must once have seemed as firmly entrenched as warfare. Take the methods of trial which preceded the jury system: ordeal and trial by combat.[253] Unfair, capricious, alien as they are to our feeling today, they were once the only methods open to individuals accused of some offense. The invention of trial by jury gradually replaced these methods until only witches, and finally not even witches, had to resort to the ordeal. And for a long time the jury system seemed the one best and finest method of settling legal disputes, but today new inventions, trial before judges only or before commissions, are replacing the jury system. In each case the old method was replaced by a new social invention; the ordeal did not go
Trial by combat allowed the accuser to challenge the accused to a duel, which would "prove" the alleged offender's guilt or innocence.
out because people thought it unjust or wrong, it went out because a method more congruent with the institutions and feelings of the period was invented. And, 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 some one must make a new one. Propaganda against warfare, documentation of its terrible cost in human suffering and social waste, these prepare the ground by teaching people to feel that warfare is a defective social institution. There is further needed a belief that social invention is possible and the invention of new methods which will render warfare as out-of-date as the tractor is making the plow, or the motor car the horse and buggy. A form of behavior becomes out-of-date only when something else takes its place, and in order to invent forms of behavior which will make war obsolete, it is a first requirement to believe that an invention is possible.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
What underlying assumption about human nature does Mead reject in this essay? What evidence does she supply for rejecting this assumption?
What arguments does Mead support through the examples of the Eskimos and the Lepchas? How do these two tribes differ? In what way are they similar? Which are most important for her argument, their differences or their similarities? How do the examples of the warlike Andaman Pygmies and Australian aborigines complement her arguments?
What factors does Mead see as determining whether a civilization will wage war? What kinds of changes would be required to eliminate this tendency?
What exactly does Mead mean by categorizing warfare as an "invention"? How does this idea change the traditional view of war? How does it give humanity hope of eliminating war?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Compare Mead's view of human nature with that of Edward O. Wilson in "The Fitness of Human Nature" (p. 356). Would Wilson agree that war is not a biological imperative? Explain.
How does Mead's view of human nature compare with those of Mencius (p. 78), Hsun Tzu (p. 84), Hobbes (p. 94), or Machiavelli (p. 405)?
Mead studied with Ruth Benedict (p. 112). How might Benedict's theories about the cultural formation of human nature have influenced Mead's assertions about the nature of warfare?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Evaluate the effectiveness of Mead's argument. Does the evidence that Mead presents justify her article's claims? Could other factors account for that same evidence?
Define the terms "war," "violence," and "aggression" from Mead's perspective. How does her use of these terms account for some of her differences with one or two other thinkers in this chapter?
Consider Mead's contention that social inventions are often replaced with better inventions that solve the same problems. Write an essay speculating about the kind of invention that could achieve the same ends as armed conflict.