By Pam Hersh
Just a week after I resolved to be less of an angst-filled whiner and more of a cheerleader about the state of the world, I became engulfed in war, actually a Small World Coffee conversation about war., Rather than engaging in unproductive ranting about presidential politics, my friend Miguel Centeno and I chose a less stressful topic — bloody conflict, inspired by a book he wrote., Mr. Centeno, Princeton University Sociology professor and chair of the Sociology Department, and Princeton University Research Fellow Elaine Enriquez, co-authored a book titled “War and Society.” Just published by politybooks.com, the text looks at war’s role in human history through the eyes of sociologists whose perspectives made my head spin., Since I was determined to sweep out the negative for the new year, I set forth my terms to Mr. Centeno. I wanted to hear something positive about war, or nothing at all. Expecting silence, I got a lecture., “War is a social fact… We must appreciate that war is responsible for some of our highest achievements” in science and technology and organizational management, as well as for our deepest held values as a society,” Mr. Centeno said., He added that the organization required to conduct war is intimately tied to the organization of statecraft. The technologies of destruction have often come from, and been translated into, technologies of development and productions. The highest awards in the military celebrate values we hold to be positive and life-affirming — honor, courage, selflessness, love, altruism, and devotion to entities greater than the individual., I never have experienced war first hand, but for several years I worked closely with members of the military who fought in Vietnam. I agreed with Mr. Centeno’s conclusions about the positive aspects of war. The values and skills my military co-workers exhibited were inspiring. But at what cost? One co-worker functioned with one limb, another was addicted to painkillers, a third was unable to face the world without anti-depressants. They each mourned the deaths of dozens of their friends. There has to be a way other than war to celebrate and nurture positive values, I countered. And then came Miguel’s zinger., “War is normal. There is an irrefutable connection between civilization and conflict,” he noted. “War is no aberrant phenomenon.” War, he said, is historically, culturally, and geographically quite common. Thus war is no exception to human behavior that can be explained by outliers and peculiarities, but rather a fundamental part of what organized societies do. “The vast majority of human beings enjoy being in groups, and most of these groups need an adversary to keep their group together and strong,” he said., In spite of my nothing-negative ground rules, his comments then tuned negative. War is about violence, physical assaults on human beings, designed to damage, mutilate, and destroy the bodies of enemies. He made a point to differentiate a real war intended to violently do harm to others versus the euphemistic term of war applied to concerted efforts to solve problems, such as the war on drugs or the war on poverty., “What makes war sociologically fascinating is that it makes horrible brutality part of a rational course of action for huge numbers of people, people who would otherwise not act out in particularly lethal ways,” Mr. Centeno said. “Understood as a social phenomenon, war is about how human beings are made to do the impossible and bear the unbearable.” War is natural, is horrible, creates human bonds, kills, inspires progress, and tears down societies, he said., The paradoxes about war have only intensified in recent times. The last few decades present new paradoxes of war. On the one hand, we have not had a repeat of the massive bloodletting of the world wars. On the other, military and political violence has increased in many parts of the world. War is omnipresent but unfamiliar to most, particularly in the United States., When Mr. Centeno, a native of Cuba, came to America at the age of 10 and lived with his mother in a housing project in Erie, Pennsylvania, he was no stranger to political conflict and economic hardship. But an intellectual curiosity and personal determination were the positives that emerged from his background and propelled him to an Ivy League education (Yale) and a life of exploring states, societies and conflicts., I am happy that Mr. Centeno’s life has evolved in a way that enables him to devote his brain power to the complicated and paradoxical topic of war. Since we can’t ignore or dismiss war, I guess the best strategy is to understand it, appreciate the positive and work to mitigate the negative. That’s a strategy I can apply in other arenas of my personal and professional life.
