I knew Man was doomed when I realized that his strongest inclination was toward ever-increasing homogeneity—which goes completely against Nature. Nature moves toward ever-increasing diversity. Diversity is Nature’s strength. Nature loves diversity.
In the Hebrew Bible, in Genesis 6:7, the first “war on nature” is launched by an angry God who destroys his Creation—animals, birds, insects, fish, forests, mountains, and meadows—because of the “wickedness” of humans. But God came to regret the destruction, as recorded in Genesis 8:21–22: “I will never again curse the ground because of man…. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. For all the days of the Earth, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
Unfortunately, humankind failed to make a similar pledge.
Permawar—Human Nature and War explores the interaction between human nature and the war on nature by asking, “Are there innate forces in the human spirit—or social and cultural influences—that predispose individuals and groups to choose killing over cooperation?”
In a darkly prescient 2006 essay posted on OpEdNews, University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen raised an intriguing question: “Can a nation have a coherent character?” When he searched the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for a clue to “America’s national character,” one category jumped out: “Narcissistic Personality Disorder.” NPD’s signature traits include “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy.” So perhaps it is no surprise that, ten years after Jensen’s diagnosis, Donald Trump bellowed his way into the Oval Office, boastful and belligerent, and set about gutting environmental protections and financial regulations to unleash the forces of carbon-fueled capitalism.
According to Politifact, the United States spends more on its military than the next eight militarized countries combined. Yet, despite massive increases in military spending, the United States has not won a war since 1945, nor has it managed to bring democracy or freedom to any of the many nations it has attacked or occupied over the past seven decades. Instead of drawing useful conclusions from this sorry history, Republicans and Democrats alike have asked Americans to accept a future of “generational” wars. “Disaster capitalism” has turned combat into a form of commerce. Wars are no longer avoided, they are provoked—often through fictitious “false flag” incidents designed to mislead and stampede the public. Meanwhile, a small, powerful elite reaps massive dividends by investing in armaments—including nuclear weapons.
In a January 2017 report titled An Economy for the 99%, Oxfam revealed that eight super-rich men controlled $438 billion—as much wealth as 3.6 billion of the world’s poorest people. At the same time, the Pentagon’s FY 2016 budget was $521.7 billion. Redistributing that wealth could make every homeless person in the United States a millionaire, concluded Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani of ThinkProgress in a May 2016 article. The $400 billion tab for Lockheed Martin’s underperforming F-35 Joint Strike Fighter could have allowed the National School Lunch Program to feed 31 million American children—for 24 years. And yet, with one-fifth of America’s children malnourished, both political parties continue to prioritize the feeding of Pentagon contractors—including $1 trillion to create “a new generation” of nuclear bombs over the next thirty years.
The Roots of War examines foundational forces that underlie the militaristic mindset—including patriarchy, machismo, and misogyny. Other factors include: linear thinking that divorces the human mind from nature’s rhythms; a celebration of competition and combative sports; and a torrent of Hollywood blockbusters that promote fists and firearms as problem-solving tools. And whenever force rules the day, Nature takes the hits.
As the United Nations Environment Programme has noted over the past sixty years, nearly half of all internal conflicts involved battles for control of natural resources. Millions of people have perished in bloody skirmishes over diamonds, timber, oil, and gold. Now, as global temperatures and tensions rise, drought, floods, hurricanes, and disease are driving new “resource wars.”
The Business of War examines militarism as an economic force. As America’s most decorated Marine once revealed, “War is a racket”—a system that is ruinously expensive to the people who shoulder the costs but incredibly remunerative to the hidden few who reap incredible fortunes despite never having to shoulder a rifle.
With the global economy staggering under burdens of unpayable debt, war has become an economic stimulus program. Despite a towering federal debt topping $14 trillion (according to a September 2016 Congressional Budget Office estimate), Donald Trump, in his first week in office, called on Washington to lavish even more money on “our depleted military.” (A September 2016 study by Brown University’s Watson Institute predicted interest on the US debt could top $1 trillion by 2023 and exceed $7.9 trillion by 2053.)
Meanwhile, the War Economy keeps its eye on the future—cultivating the next generation of soldiers by putting toy guns and violent videogames into the hands of children.
The Aftermath of War tracks outcomes that can be grim and long lasting. Ten percent of the 2.7 million tons of Allied bombs dropped on Europe during World War II failed to detonate and continue to threaten modern towns and villages. Blasted metal skeletons of ships and planes litter bays and beaches across the South Pacific. Exposure to toxic burn pits, radioactive debris, and chemical agents have claimed the lives of thousands of military men and women while civilians fight to survive the cancers caused by fallout carried downwind from America’s atomic playground at the Nevada Test Site. On South Pacific islands exposed to fallout from U.S. nuclear tests, horrified mothers gave birth to “jellyfish babies.” In the crowded hospitals of Iraq, women from Fallujah and other cities blasted by U.S. depleted uranium weapons continue to deliver deformed babies—children born with the wrong number of fingers, legs, arms, eyes, and heads. Combat veterans struggle with PTSD, trying to block the grotesque memories of violent deaths while considering the relief of suicide.
Fortunately, nature is resilient—despite wounds to the land that can outlast decades. One of the best examples of nature’s ability to heal is found in the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas. Since 1953, land-mines, barricades, and armed sentries have prevented human encroachment inside the DMZ’s 400 square miles. Protected from human presence, the DMZ has become a “new Eden,” one of the most flourishing and biodiverse wilderness areas on the planet.
The success of this Korean no-man’s-land brings to mind Rainer Maria Rilke’s wistful observation: “If we surrendered to Earth’s intelligence, we could rise up rooted, like trees.”