IS THERE A MORAL EQUIVALENT TO WAR?
By Kenneth Phifer

War is the origin of Mother's Day.
Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the most stirring Union song of the Civil War, The 
Battle Hymn of the Republic, in the wake of that war suggested the idea of a Day 
for mothers that would be dedicated to peace.  Anna Jarvis actually brought 
about the official observance of the day in the early 20th century, partly as a 
way to continue the process of healing the scars of the Civil War.  In time this 
purpose has largely been forgotten.  Indeed, Jarvis spent the last years of her 
life trying to end the commercialization of the holiday.
My remarks today are offered in the spirit of what Howe and Jarvis had in mind 
for this special day: a day when mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, all 
citizens young and old might reflect upon the horrors of war and what can be 
done to bring them to an end.
Although this sermon was planned long before the bombs began dropping in Kosovo, 
that conflict reminds us that war is a very present reality.  I recognize the 
moral ambiguities involved in that situation.  While I am opposed to the 
bombing, I can understand the reasoning that leads some to favor it.  Having 
served in what was then called "a hot spot in the Cold War."-Berlin-I am not 
unaware of the dangers involved in military conflict.  Having a son who is a 
career Army infantry officer, I am not unappreciative of either the pride with 
which our soldiers serve or the fears that mothers and fathers have for their 
children who are in service, particularly those who may be in harm's way.  I am 
not a detached observer of war and its culture.
The question about war that I am going to address this morning is the one raised 
by William James in an essay published in 1910, "The Moral Equivalent of War." 
Like Julia Ward Howe and Anna Jarvis, James was moved by the Civil War to a deep 
sense of revulsion at the destructiveness of war.
Describing himself as a pacifist, he undertakes in this essay to discover if 
there is some human enterprise that would inspire the virtues of war without the 
accompanying horrors.  He confronts all the arguments of his day that proposed 
that war is either inevitable or necessary: God is testing us, war is a 
biological and sociological necessity inbred into the human personality, certain 
manly virtues will be lost if war is ended.
The question his essay posed when it was first published and poses even more 
urgently at the close of this century is whether there really is a moral 
equivalent to war.
War is hell.  War threatens individuals and groups, cultures and civilizations.  
War is frequently random.  Across the decades of this century, it has changed 
its face from casualties being 5% civilian to casualties being 90% civilian.
I was told in basic training that the purpose of war is "to seek out and destroy 
the enemy." War training involves dehumanizing those whom we are fighting so 
that they become not people who have a different point of view but "the enemy," 
usually called by some derogatory nickname.
War has taken the lives of more than 150 million people in this century.  Close 
to three million children have been killed in wars since 1989, and three times 
that number maimed, traumatized, or made into refugees.
War is terribly destructive.
War is hell.
Yet there are clear virtues associated with the military life and its purpose of 
fighting wars.  These virtues include in James's essay "fidelity, cohesiveness, 
tenacity, heroism, conscience, education, inventiveness, economy, wealth, 
physical health and vigor." They also include "intrepidity, contempt of 
softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command ... a tradition of 
service and devotion,...physical fitness, unstinted exertion, and universal 
responsibility.
Jesus taught us that no one has greater love than the person who is willing to 
lay down his life for another.  So Douglas MacArthur was not exaggerating when 
he said that "however horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is 
called upon to offer and give his life for his country, is the noblest 
development of mankind."
War can be noble.
      Is there, can there be, a moral equivalent of war?
There are two reasons why it is important that we find a way to answer Yes to 
that question.
First, the destructive capacity of nuclear and biochemical weapons is, even in 
the post-Cold War period, a serious threat to human existence.  New 
configurations of sovereignty, new and new-old claims to land, desperate 
defenses of ideological systems, and the sometime sheer cussedness of human 
beings also contribute to making our situation perilous.  It is not safe to use 
war as the means by which we resolve difficulties.
Secondly, we need to learn the moral equivalent of war because, in the words of 
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, "the next major threat to our existence is the violent 
decay of our civilization due to violence-enabling in the electronic media." 
Col. Grossman has written a fascinating study of why and how we kill in war and 
in peacetime.  ON KILLING is subtitled "The Psychological Cost of Learning To 
Kill In War and Society."
Grossman is deeply concerned about the fact that "the same processes the 
military used so effectively to enable killing in our adolescent, draftee 
soldiers in Vietnam ... (are) being indiscriminately applied to the civilian 
population of this nation." The basic mechanism of control in such processes-
fire only under authorized command - is absent.  The result is a dramatic 
increase in assaults by youths.
Grossman provides ample details about the way youth are de-sensitized to human 
suffering and encouraged to take arms against their troubles.  He points to 
violent films and their association with pleasurable activities like eating, 
drinking, and being on a date.  Such films usually feature heroes who are 
contemptuous of the law and who violently do what they perceive as good.  He 
points to violent interactive video games and pop-up human figures on firing 
ranges as further ways we stimulate young people to link shooting and assaulting 
with fun and as the only way to solve problems.
Writing three years ago in words pertinent to this moment, Grossman comments 
that guns have always been in American homes, but now young people are bringing 
them to school.  The reason, he suggests, is "the systematic process of 
defeating the normal individual's age-old, psychological inhibition against 
violent harmful activity toward one's own species."
Primarily this is done for the sake of entertainment, in order to sell goods and 
services.  Nothing in America is more sacred than consumption, including 
violent, de-sensitizing consumption.
Grossman may not be correct in all his details, but he is surely correct in his 
larger points.  He is saying the same thing that Geoffrey Canada, our Klein 
Lecturer three years ago, was saying, the same thing that Sissela Bok in her 
recent book, MAYHEM, is saying, the same thing that Marian Wright Edelman has 
been saying for years: that society has become more callous towards its young, 
that most of us are not paying sufficient attention to the violence our children 
are surrounded with in movies and television and videos and music, that violence 
among young people and children is increasing at alarming rates.  We need to re-
sensitize our children and re-shape a society in which violence is truly as 
American as apple pie.
There is hope that we can find a moral equivalent to war.  This hope is found in 
an increasing body of theory and facts that indicates that we are not inherently 
aggressive, that we are not anxious to kill one another, that war is more of an 
aberration than it is a natural part of human make-up.  This evidence is not 
conclusive, but it is certainly suggestive and therefore not an unreasonable 
basis for hope.
In contrast to the theory enunciated by Konrad Lorenz in 1966 that aggression is 
an instinct that cannot be suppressed only at best re-channeled, Edward 0. 
Wilson, the founder of sociobiology, argues that aggression is a " specialized 
response that evolves in some species and not others." Wilson uses evidence from 
a growing number of field studies that seem to show that aggression is a 
"density-dependent response."
As population increases, it will be affected by one or more of several factors, 
such things as predation, disease, the loss of fertility, and a propensity to 
emigrate.  Whether aggressive behavior actually evolves is dependent on the 
interplay of these other factors.  Even if violence does occur, the ways in 
which it emerges vary widely from territorial defense to dominance hierarchies 
to physical attacks and sometimes cannibalism.
There is no compelling evidence that humans are trapped by their instincts or 
their evolved behaviour into relentless, inescapable violence.
One of our closest cousins is the bonobo ape.  Frans de Waal, in his recent 
book, BONOBO: THE FORGOTTEN APE, says quite simply that "in everything they do 
they resemble us ... Behind the ape's eyes, one can feel a powerful personality 
that resembles our own, both emotionally and mentally." Given that we share over 
98% of our genetic material with this ape-as we do also with the chimpanzee-it 
is not surprising that in many ways we resemble each other.
In one very important way the bonobos are much cleverer than we and the chimps 
are.  They are not murderous.  They can be violent, but they rarely are.  As de 
Waal points out, "the peacefulness of bonobos rests on their ability to 
recognize the value of social relationships." Their way of expressing that value 
is sex.
Sex, according to de Waal, is "the glue of bonobo society ... sex occurs in 
virtually all partner combinations and in a unique variety of positions." Sex is 
about reproduction, but it is also about affection and pleasure and appeasement.  
De Waal makes clear that sex is the key ingredient in peacemaking among the 
bonobos.  Sexual behaviour is a way to defuse tensions, or, as de Waal puts it, 
"they use sex to divert attention and change the tone of the encounter." Sexual 
behaviour is a way to ease social strains and competition among two or more 
bonobos,
In the 1960's, a lot of the peace people said, "Make love not war." That 
principle works for the bonobos.
Given how close to them we are, that is good news in an evolutionary sense for 
us, even if their particular solution to social tensions is not the one we 
choose.  The point is that choices can be made.  As the sociologist Elise 
Boulding put it, "peace, like war, is a social invention."
We are not condemned by biological or sociological destiny to be eaten up by 
violent behaviour.
All of this is theory, persuasive theory to be sure, but theory.  Let us look at 
some hard human evidence that points in a similar direction.
There are little indicators like the huge crowds that greeted seven Nobel Peace 
Prize winners when they came to the campus of the University of Virginia last 
November.
There is the courageous example of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany who 
refused to serve Hitler or to fight in wars because they did not believe in the 
shedding of blood.
Always there are some people in every war who say simply that they will not 
kill.  They are willing to die for their beliefs but not willing to kill for 
them: the early Christians, the Friends and the Mennonites, the members of the 
Tasaday tribe of the Philippine Islands, and others.
It is possible to be fully human and not use violence.
Part of the strong evidence suggesting that we really do not want to kill each 
other is an abundant collection of studies of men at war.  I remember in basic 
training hearing about the low numbers of men who had actually fired at the 
enemy during World War II. (Our drill sergeant made it plain that we would all 
fire our pieces.) I did not then know how dramatic those numbers were.
Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall studied firing rates among American troops in 
the Second World War very carefully.  He found that only 15-20% actually fired 
at the enemy.  Col. Grossman analyzed data from wars throughout history and 
suggests that this is not an uncommon firing rate.
Mostly men at war do not want to kill, even to save their own lives.  As 
Grossman puts it, the reason for this is that "to kill we must remove the human 
element." Firing rates in Vietnam were much higher because of new training 
methods which conditioned that human element out of the soldiers.
The hope in these findings is that we really do not want to kill.  We have to be 
taught how to overcome our natural inclination to want to like and to be liked 
by other people.  Here is a firm basis on which to build a peace culture that 
could offer a moral equivalent to war.
Further evidence is found in the chilling statistic mentioned by Col. Grossman 
that "war is an environment that will psychologically debilitate 98 percent of 
all who participate in it for any length of time." The other two percent, he 
says, are already insane, aggressive psychopaths, before they ever enter upon 
war.  The types of mental problems experienced by the 98 percent, identified by 
scores of researchers, include fatigue, confusional states, conversion hysteria, 
anxiety states, obsessional and compulsive states, and a variety of character 
disorders.
Those who do kill will, in Grossman's words, "be forever burdened with blood 
guilt." Soldiers from different eras and of different nationalities spoke of 
this burden in these words: "I reproached myself as a destroyer"; "I murdered 
them"; "I dropped my weapon and cried"; "I vomited until the rest of the boys 
came up"; "Killing is the worst thing that one man can do to another man ... 
it's the last thing that should happen anywhere."
Sociobiological theory, evidence from our genetic cousins, evidence from the 
interest in peace and from the way soldiers shy away from firing at other human 
beings and recoil from what they have done when they do fire argue persuasively 
for the possibility that a moral equivalent to war can be found.
No more than William James do I think I know what that moral equivalent really 
is.  But if we are ever to discover or invent it, we must have the faith that we 
can do so.  We must put forth ideas for consideration.  Herewith three ideas to 
reflect upon as steps towards the development of a moral equivalent of war.
First is James's idea of national service.  He called for "a conscription of the 
whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the 
army enlisted against Nature." His vision was of youth being sent off to mines, 
fishing fleets, road-building, tunnel-making, and other arduous labors by which 
our society has built up its cities and transportation and other elements "in 
the immemorial human warfare against nature."
Our ideas of what would be appropriate national service for all young men and 
women are somewhat different, but the idea of service is not at all foreign to 
us and crosses the political boundaries.  The Peace Corps is the most popular 
and enduring of several governmental, religious, and private groups and agencies 
that enable people to render service.  Some of the energy now going into war and 
preparations for war could be deflected by a national program in which all youth 
would be involved.
To be effective, such a program of national service would require a bold leader 
who could catch the attention and inspire the imagination of both lawmakers and 
the citizenry.  This idea could have great impact in developing a sense of the 
importance of sacrifice, of working for a larger goal than my own welfare, of 
learning discipline and a sense of community, all things James hailed as 
military virtues we need to preserve, all things that in my opinion most human 
beings fervently desire.
Another path we might follow towards a moral equivalent of war is one suggested 
by Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, in his commencement 
address at the University of Michigan just a week ago.  He spoke of the only 
good peace being peace with justice.  He talked of peace and justice within the 
boundaries of a state as being of as much importance as inter-national peace and 
justice.  He talked about "warriors for peace."
Annan spoke from a planetary perspective, in recognition that nation-states can 
no longer be the ultimate arbiters of right and wrong, only the whole global 
community.  He is, I believe, more ready than I am to use armed force to 
accomplish the goals of the world community.  But there are other ways.
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, for example, has wistfully wondered what would have 
happened if NATO, rather than dropping bombs, had parachuted doctors and nurses 
and various humanitarian aid workers into Kosovo, announcing their intention to 
do so beforehand.  Their purpose would have been to protect, by their presence, 
the people of Kosovo.  They could have offered aid where that was required.  
Most importantly, the could have made clear to Milosevic and his followers the 
world's unwillingness to stand idly by while he perpetrated ethnic cleansing, 
but equally made clear that while we would die for our principles, we would not 
kill for them.  The power of such an example might have been overwhelming.
Non-violent resistance to evil was no small part of what won the civil rights 
struggle of the 1950's and 1960's.  It was also the strength of the Peace Teams 
at City Hall one year ago today.
I do not suggest that such actions are easy, nor that they will never result in 
tragic violence.  I do believe that the long range impact of such armies of 
peace will be less killing, less destruction, and wider paths into 
reconciliation.
Space is the third idea.
Thirty years ago Norman Mailer and Joseph Campbell, among others, were writing 
of the mythic qualities of space travel and exploration.  This is a transcendent 
goal that reaches so far into the future that no eye can see where it will end.  
It is a worthier goal than any nation-state or ideology could possibly proclaim.
The discipline required to do the work necessary for serious and sustained space 
travel is akin to that demanded of our most elite military troops.  It is work 
of high danger-as the deaths of various astronauts have made clear.
It is engaging work, as every one of us who has listened to the various 
transmissions from space and sat tense as we waited for a landing knows.
It is work that calls for contributions from every people on the face of the 
globe.  If we choose to move out into space, we must do so not as Americans, not 
as Europeans, but as a human community.
The magnitude of this enterprise is enormous, dwarfing any military venture ever 
undertaken or planned.  The value of it for human solidarity far exceeds 
anything ever dreamed of in earth-bound projects.
Some of you are probably saying that this is the stuff of science fiction.  You 
are right.  Science fiction writers have used their fantastic imaginations to 
body forth civilizations on distant planets, faster than light travel, and 
inter-galactic trade and warfare.  But not a few of these science fiction 
writers are themselves scientists.
Furthermore, Scientific American's last quarterly issue was devoted entirely to 
"The Future of Space Exploration." The physicists, engineers, and entrepreneurs 
who wrote the articles describe how we can send people to Mars, use light sails 
in outer space, develop an interstellar internet, explore the sun and Venus and 
Mercury, tap the water in near-earth asteroids, and reach out to the stars.  In 
all these projects, we are gaining knowledge that can benefit people who never 
go off-earth.
Here is a mission far more worthy than "seeking out and destroying the enemy."
Here is a vision calling on the best that is in us.
Here is a large scale adventure demanding a sense of solidarity with each other, 
high discipline as we learn how to function in space, a sense of the 
transcendent and the mythic as we move tentatively into the vaster realm that is 
our galaxy and beyond.
I would far rather put my tax dollars towards space exploration than have one 
dollar more go for purposes of war.  I believe the spiritual and the economic as 
well as the political and humanitarian benefits of such a venture make it worth 
our while to pursue it.
These are ideas only-national service, planetary peace teams, and the adventure 
of space-ideas for directions in which to look for a moral equivalent of war.
William James was right to say we need this, because war is madness and deadens 
the human spirit even as it kills the human body.
We do not want to go to war.  We do not want to kill each other.  We want to 
like each other and share with each other and be in community with one another.
That is what a moral equivalent of war could help us to accomplish.  It is a 
good reason on this Mother's Day to look seriously at James's question and to 
think how each of us might answer it.

Copyright 1999, Kenneth Phifer
All rights reserved.