Hello. So far, we've established a couple of things. First, war is not a natural thing. War is not something that simply reflects human nature. We are not programmed for war. War actually takes consciousness. It takes planning. And I keep saying it takes organization. We have also established that war is an extremely unpleasant activity. I probably did not have to convince you of that one. We saw in the last class the horrors that these soldiers face. Now we are faced with the true sociological question. Given that it is not natural, given that it is not instinctive, given that is has to be, in a sense, produced socially, and given that war is such an awful activity, how do we get people to do this? How do we, in a sense, make warriors? What is the process of making warriors? Well the simplest way is coercion. That is that we don't try to make warriors, we simply try to create situations in which people have no choice but to fight. So, for example, many formations such as the phalanx are really designed to enforce discipline. Are really in a way of assuring that this discipline occurs. One by making everyone very visible. To by making them conscious of the others dependent on them and three there seems to be some human reassurance of being around others. So these kind of formations partly have to do with strategy but also have to do with trying to keep one group together. Trying to force these individuals to become that collective whole which can then perform these incredible tasks. Even more straightforward is the corrosion of some special troops that are there in order to make sure that nobody leaves the battlefield. Cavalry sometimes plays this role, sometimes you will see officers charging after their men in order to make sure that none of them retreat. The most infamous example is in the NKVD troops that were specially designed. To serve as a reminder to the Soviet soldiers that they could not retreat. That should they retreat, their possible death in the face of the Germans would be replaced by an absolute certainty of death if they retreated. Waffen-SS troops in Nazi Germany. Also played the same kind of role, making sure, again, that this coercion prevented people from deserting. Almost all tyrants have used some kind of coercion. The Persian armies were largely made of slaves, for example. Or at least that's the way the Greeks, portrayed them and chose to portray them. But slave armies are really relatively common. Tyrants seek to impose this danger, impose this coercion on parts of the population, and then use these parts of the population against others. The problem is that coercion only works in very limited circumstances. Coercion might work as in the case with the phalanx. For example, or coercion might work in the case of the NKBD troops, or might even work with the slave army. But it's clear that armies that are not motivated, that do not believe in their own goal, that do not believe in their own role. Will not perform as well as those who are similarly motivated. That coercion will go so far. And coercion will go so far particularly in battlefield settings where it's for a short duration and everyone can be observed. When you get into the modern battlefield in which has, it can last for days, or weeks, or even months. And we require small unit autonomy that kind of coercion becomes more impractical. So we return to the question how do we get people to do this? What is, how do we create the ideal soldier? Now, the ideal soldier exists in literature, but what we find is that it basically, most human beings don't want to do this. The vast majority of human beings, even the ones who are being coerced are the or the ones who are not being coerced. Really do not want to engage in this. They are not the ideal warrior. They are not Achilles. Achilles fights because he wants to, because he gets joy out of the fighting. Most soldiers do not. Humans, by nature, are venal and fearful. So why would we expect these people, these venal, human beings, to engage in this element of self sacrifice? Now there have always been attempts to create and identify the ideal warrior type. In some societies the creation of a warrior is a big part of the training for masculinity. And again this goes back to the gender discussion we had before. That young men, as they grow up to be men or adults, are also taught to be soldiers. Most societies favor the use of unmarried young men. That is that this seems to be the demographic that is ideal for creating these kinds of obedient cogs in a military machine. Unmarried young men. Have a greater perhaps a greater sense of their own immortality. They might have fewer links to those back home so they're, they're loss or they're sense of losing something if they die. Or their sense of being lost in the battlefield as opposed to being home, might be decline. And of course, young men possess a very, very important attribute, which is the physical condition. The physical condition that allows them to behave. In this manner and to withstand the kinds of pains we're talking about. Moreover, these same young men might be the least able to resist, often because of incentives, of the rewards that come to warriors. The rewards that come with adulthood, and also because they are still somewhat dependent on the society of their families, they are in a position, not only are they ideal physically. maybe, perhaps, ideal emotionally. But, also, they have the least room in order to escape and the possibility that they will fight. [BLANK_AUDIO]
