Why Men Fight: A method of abolishing the international duelRussell, Bertrand
Philosophy
Why Men Fight: A method of abolishing the international duel
Russell, Bertrand
Liberty; Property; Social problems; State, The; War
The other source of good relations between individuals is a common
purpose, especially where that purpose cannot be achieved without
knowing its cause. Economic organizations, such as unions and political
parties are constituted almost wholly by a common purpose; whatever
instinctive liking may come to be associated with them is the result
of the common purpose, not its cause. Economic organizations, such as
railway companies, subsist for a purpose, but this purpose need only
actually exist in those who direct the organization: the ordinary
wage-earner need have no purpose beyond earning his wages. This is a
defect in economic organizations, and ought to be remedied. One of the
objects of syndicalism is to remedy this defect.
Marriage is (or should be) based on instinctive liking, but as soon
as there are children, or the wish for children, it acquires the
additional strength of a common purpose. It is this chiefly which
distinguishes it from an irregular connection not intended to lead to
children. Often, in fact, the common purpose survives, and remains a
strong tie, after the instinctive liking has faded.
A nation, when it is real and not artificial, is founded upon a faint
degree of instinctive liking for compatriots and a common instinctive
aversion from foreigners. When an Englishman returns to Dover or
Folkestone after being on the Continent, he feels something friendly
in the familiar ways: the casual porters, the shouting paper boys, the
women serving bad tea, all warm his heart, and seem more “natural,”
more what human beings ought to be, than the foreigners with their
strange habits of behavior. He is ready to believe that all English
people are good souls, while many foreigners are full of designing
wickedness. It is such feelings that make it easy to organize a nation
into a governmental unit. And when that has happened, a common purpose
is added, as in marriage. Foreigners would like to invade our country
and lay it waste, to kill us in battle, to humble our pride. Those
who coöperate with us in preventing this disaster are our friends,
and their coöperation intensifies our instinctive liking. But common
purposes do not constitute the whole source of our love of country:
allies, even of long standing, do not call out the same feelings
as are called out by our compatriots. Instinctive liking, resulting
largely from similar habits and customs, is an essential element in
patriotism, and, indeed, the foundation upon which the whole feeling
rests.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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