Is there a war instinct?

Humans are also literally the apex hunter on the planet. We can successfully hunt and eat any other predator if we choose to. Even nearly perfectly evolved hunters like sharks, lions and tigers are merely food and decorative pelts to us. A right of passage for some human children to be considered adults is to track, hunt and kill other apex predators.

Humans have no natural predators. Zero. Think about that. Anything that may have once threatened us, we've out organized, out planned, and out thought on the way towards global dominance. Even superficially similar co-inhabitant species like Neanderthal could not survive in a world with Humans. Today, only microscopic creatures threaten us, and we once again organize, plan and think about ways to defeat these creatures.

Even with stone-aged levels of technology we spread to every corner of the world, in every known climate and ecology, in large numbers, and thrived. The only thing that is dangerous to humans is other humans. And we've even arrived at the point that, with no considerable effort at all, we're capable of wiping out every living thing that inhabits the surface of a world.

Despite having poor biting power, diminished canines, running (poorly) on our heels, lower than average strength and no claws. We are the the most dangerous creature in the known universe.

Any human trait observed across cultures, time and languages must be considered a universal human trait in the same way all make dogs lift their legs to pee on things.

The writings of Shakespeare are relevant today as the day they were written. That's because they cover the human traits of love, jealousy, war, gossip, pride and others.

The reasons humans go to war is plainly evolutionary. Those ancestors that raided other tribes and stole their resources (and women) left successors who also had those traits. The peacenik human ancestors are all in the earth, never to be heard of again.

That's not to say its hopeless - human traits can be tempered through society - such as limiting murder to that explicitly sanctioned, and introducing laws and concepts around monogamous marriage to prevent single ruling families introducing polygamy and dominating the genetic results. Those things promote peace and harmony but war will always be with us.

I used to be a lot more starry eyed about this but I've come to realise how temporary and fleeting peace really is.

The only societies that have really prospered are those that have established walls and dedicated resources to making sure they are effective. And I don't mean actual city walls - I mean barriers to conquest.

Bonobos are about as close and they are hedonistic little buggers. Judging by the internet, I have a hard time believing that sex is a pure invention, given its universality across space, time, and our most closely related genetic relatives.

Human war is not some local territory thing though is it? It's far more complex, as are human social interactions.

People love to make the war-chimp-humans-shrug connection, but aren't willing to make the sex-bonobo-human-wink connection??

There is a form of hipster-like love for the "authenticity" of humans as they were tens of thousands to millions of years ago. Just because we want to believe something is baked into our DNA doesn't mean that those tens of thousands to millions of years can be waved off so easily.

Chimps have evolved over the same time as humans. That we don't party like chimps implies that this line of reasoning with zero "war-DNA" evidence is bogus. Show us the genes. Which part of the tiny % difference btw bonobos, humans, and chimps explains all of this?

War is a completely predictable consequence of (a) our intelligence, which recognizes (b) the existence of scarce resources and (c) the fact that violence is sometimes an effective strategy for obtaining them. Organizing into groups to do so is just matter of thinking about tactics for a second, especially since we're already pretty group-oriented. There's no reason that war shouldn't be constantly, independently re-invented.

Ditto.

Ants have also practiced warfare against one another, for perhaps a longer time than any other species: http://www.wired.com/2010/08/gallery-ant-warfare/ (Sorry for the wired link, I couldn't find the original primary source I read concerning the subject)

On a side note: I feel like the title crosses "not too or interesting", goes past "interesting or revolutionary!", and somehow winds up in "just plain wrong/easily dismissible". His subtitle makes it even worse: "Many evolutionists believe that humans have a drive for waging war. But they are wrong and the idea is dangerous."

Less an attempt to persuade, and more like preaching to the choir, who ever that maybe.

So, you're assuming Chimpanzees are acting on instinct, rather than culture?

That's a fair point on the use of that literary cliche. Yet, the main thrust of the idea is valid. Peace is a relief against from which special events (wars) are defined. Whether it's valid AND important to his thesis is doubtful.

I argue that we don't have a war gene, but we do have genes that are related to our experience of fears, aggression, etc. and the power of these are more easily manipulated to create societies prone to war than to peace. Despite large groups of peace-loving people in most societies, violent subgroups will wage wars and turn fear into profit. You don't see the peace-lovers standing up against the war-mongers in a way which would stop the bloodshed.

False binary coming... Would you spend a trillion dollars on raising the most helpless and hopeless up on a ladder of living standards or spend that same trillion stamping out shadows and bogeymen amongst the same people?

Who needs evidence? If the meme feels right then that is all that matters.

Thanks, that was an interesting article. Yet, in the light of the OP, it also seems to be tied to specific American culture. It seems that there are societies (like in Europe) where going to war doesn't have so much that connotation of "being a man". Maybe they just do the ritual differently, for example, in Nordic countries, by trekking and hill-climbing.

Now that I think about it, I am not sure this article is in disagreement with OP. The OP argues that war is a capacity, not some given natural trait. This article claims that people have need for "the ritual of manhood", whatever that is, but doesn't claim it has to be "going to a war". So even Junger may consider the war to be a capacity.

Right.

Specific quote that highly relates to the OP: "He tells me about a primatologist friend of his who studies chimpanzees. He began to study how chimpanzees wage war. “He was literally told by a fellow academic, ‘You’re undermining the cause of peace,’” Junger recounts."

"Human beings do not have an instinct for war" is the HTML doc title as well as the url, so the submitter didn't make anything up.

But since the question is more neutral, we'll change it.