War is a type of social autoimmune disease
Recent events have shined a spotlight on the horrors of war in a part of the world that hasn’t seen such events in quite a while, and I can’t help but think of the role of philosophy in these matters. What kind of philosophy drives people to start a war, to perpetuate war, knowing full well the human and environmental cost?
Let us imagine that we are driven purely by logic and reason, and that all of the arguments based on feeling do not concern us.
Now, for the vast majority of us, reasons for why not to engage in war are plenty, so many that they are not worth mentioning. But let us imagine that we are not the majority — let us imagine that we are driven purely by logic and reason, and that all of the arguments based on feeling do not concern us. I know that this is a repulsive viewpoint to take for those of us who can afford the luxury of living in the ‘free world’, and have had even the briefest brush with the human costs of this latest war — but I believe that this is a necessary step in defining what war is in a way that includes the feeling and unfeeling, and in offering a completely logical and rational argument against it.
That being said, war has been long hailed as an instrument by nation-states. A blunt instrument by some, a crude one by others, a shunned one for the past few decades, one to be used as a last resort or only in special circumstances, but an instrument nonetheless. I would like to offer a different viewpoint, that I think would provide a completely logical and rational reason against the use of war, applicable to anyone who debates engaging in it, so long as they consider themselves rational. In doing so, we will paint an entirely new philosophy of war.
We need to begin by defining what society is. The dictionary states that a society is a collection of individuals living as members of their community. I’d like to offer a different viewpoint. In particular, the viewpoint below:
The picture on the left is that of a species of yellow moss growing on stone. The picture on the right is that of mostly Europe, viewed from space.
The moss viewed on the left is really a collection of cells, all working together to keep the moss ecosystem alive. In a similar fashion, the worldwide human society can be viewed as a collection of humans, all working together to keep society alive.
Now, that is not to say that individuals humans that are part of society don’t matter — they matter tremendously. Each one of us is part of society, IS society, and each one of us helps to make society tick. (In fact, cells are also thought to be incredibly complex, if tough to study their actions due to their size — so much so that some researchers consider cells, including mycelial cells of the kind that make up moss to be conscious )
The idea of seeing a human society as an organism made of people is called the social organism theory, and it has a long tradition — from Herbert Spencer in the 19th century to Emile Durkheim in the 20th century and beyond. More recently, I spun up a modern version of the theory in my paper: Is Human Society an organism made of many animals?
Now I won’t go into the details of the theory here — it’s sufficient to just look at the right-side of the picture above, and imagine that the worldwide human society, which covers the landmass of Earth, is an organism made of people, similar to the moss seen on the left.
In that context, what is war?
To answer that, allow me to share another picture with you:
The left side of the picture is a view of war-torn Mariupol in Ukraine, taken recently. The picture on the right is an image of a person with psoriasis. Like the moss from the previous collage, the human body is also a collection of cells — 37.2 trillion of them, according to the latest estimates. And psoriasis, In simple terms, is a disease where the body’s T cells attack skin cells, killing them off. Diseases where the cells of the immune system attack another group of otherwise healthy cells are known as autoimmune diseases. There are quite a few types of autoimmune diseases — from rheumatoid arthritis to Graves disease.
Now, to be clear, I’m not saying that the horrifying attacks on Ukraine are similar in gravity to psoriasis for the human body - it was just an example that was simple to visually illustrate. All I’m saying is that war can be objectively thought of as a societal disease. In medicine, diseases are conditions that, at the most basic level, damage cells and the tissues that cells form — from organ tissues to tendons and joints, and everything in between. In a similar way, war can be seen as an acute societal disease that kills off humans and destroys the structures that they create, such as buildings, machinery, etc. And because war manifests itself as one grouping of humans that attacks another group, it is a close parallel with autoimmune diseases.
What are the effects of war, when looked at through this biological perspective?
In classical biology, diseases of any kind are seen to make the organisms immuno-compromised, and lower the biological fitness of the organism (that is, its ability to survive in its environment and reproduce). This makes it more likely for the organism to succumb to selection pressures. For humans and other animals, selection pressures include predation, environmental changes, and securing basic resources, like food and water.
What are the selection pressures for human societies? Well, we’ve already seen climate change taking its toll. Then there’s the risk of having an asteroid crash into Earth — we’ve had two close calls with small asteroids at the end of 2021. NASA estimates that we have identified only half of all of the asteroids that may pose a danger to Earth. There is also the potential for a supervolcano eruption. Then there are the challenges of moving away from pollution, of dwindling resources — from food (some researchers suggest that we may run out of fish by 2048) to freshwater, energy, and more.
Many of the ‘selection pressures’ that operate at the level of the global human society are massively complex and require the cooperation of all areas of human society to tackle. When a society is at war, that becomes much tougher to do. An analogy would be having to think of ways to solve a complex problem that you are facing — It would be much tougher to solve when you are sick than when you are healthy because your energy and thinking would go towards the disease, much like how our society is focused on the war to the detriment of tackling other issues that concern the whole of society.
What this means for those thinking to wage war
It means that when you decide to wage war, you are lowering the biological fitness of the global society you are part of, which makes it less able to tackle the complex selection pressures that it faces. It doesn’t matter what the motive for war is — all motives fall flat in the face of this very real biological fact. This is the philosophy of war that I propose, and that we should aim to promote. In what situation would you, as a population of 37.2 trillion cells, deem it acceptable to develop an autoimmune disorder that wreaks havoc on a part of your body? None. You would wish that your cells had other mechanisms to deal with whatever situation they faced amongst themselves because such a disease can make you less able to survive and reproduce, not to mention that, if it can also spread beyond the initial location, it can spell doom for your entire existence. So too should we not seek to engender a social autoimmune disease, since it lowers the biological fitness of the global society that we are all part of.
In what situation would you, as a population of 37.2 trillion cells, deem it acceptable to develop an autoimmune disorder that wreaks havoc on a part of your body? None.
Past societies did not have enough information to understand their place in the biological universe as a society. We do, and we should take that information to heart. Nature doesn’t care — it can be nurturing, but it can also be brutal, and when its brutal side comes knocking on our society’s door — be it holding natural disasters, resource limitations, or other unforeseen circumstances in hand, we best be prepared to deal with them as a global whole. The alternative can spell annihilation — and being burdened with a social autoimmune disease like war to boot certainly doesn’t help.
