What is love?

Dear Lily,

As an English teenager, you will have been bombarded with images of romantic love – at the cinema, in magazines and on television. You will be encouraged to think that the way to happiness lies in finding Mr. Right.

Much of your life will be a quest for love. What is particularly unusual about the world of passionate love which we idealize is not that we feel such emotions, but that we make them a pre-condition for marriage.

Romantic attachments, an overwhelming love and desire for another, can be found in all societies. Often this is between members of the opposite sex and often the feelings are strongest in the period around the arrival of sexual maturity. So 'love' is not confined to what we would call 'love marriage' societies.

Yet in most societies, as in India, China and much of Africa and the Near East, where marriage and the bearing of children is the basic political, economic and social mechanism for the future, marriage is too important a matter to leave to the individual. Self-centred and irrational emotions should not dictate who should have children with whom.

While teenagers may sing love songs and even, in some societies, have sexual relationships, marriage and child-bearing have to be arranged by older members of the family or professional matchmakers. Elaborate economic exchanges are organized and individuals are exchanged between groups. Marriage is arranged on the basis of relationships between the older generation. Individual feelings have nothing to do with marital strategies. Someone does not choose when or who to marry. This is done by others.

I remember my shock when, even after knowing all this in theory, I went into a friend's house in a Nepalese village and asked him what he was doing the next day. He said he was getting married. I congratulated him, but commented that he had not mentioned this the day before. He replied that this was because his parents had only told him that morning that it had been arranged. I asked him whether his bride was pretty and nice. He said he had no idea as he had never met her.

Where did love come from?

Contrast this to the long literary and legal tradition in England. From Anglo-Saxon poetry, through medieval love poetry, to Chaucer, Shakespeare and the great poets and novelists, English literature is awash with love, and its relationship to marriage. It is the single most important theme. This is not just the flirtation of youngsters. It is endless reflection on this strange, irrational, overpowering, feeling that can sweep one human being into a life-long, unbreakable commitment to another. Endless advice, letters and sermons revolve around the theme of how to recognize and react to love, and how, without love, a marriage cannot work.

Nor is this just a literary phenomenon, some idealistic and airy-fairy convention unrelated to real life. We can look at village records, court cases and legal treatises in the past. These show that a boy of fourteen and a girl of twelve could get married without a priest and without the presence of the parents for much of the period up to the sixteenth century. The decision as to when and who a person married was not a family or community one. It was an individual matter. A close emotional partnership with a 'married friend', a companionship to provide mutual help and to overcome loneliness was too important a matter to be left to the decision of others.

Of course there were exceptions. At the level of the aristocracy there were often battles between parents and children. No doubt this also happened at a lower level as well. And of course many people routinely look for shared interests, social compatibility and financial potential in their future partner. Yet behind all of this is a system which is concerned about the weighing up of emotion and practical advantages, of choices between various desirable goals.

Why marry at all?

In the past it was very difficult to stay single. The Yanomamo people of Venezuela always know when a man is a bachelor because he is dirty, his hair uncut, badly fed, often sick. Without a wife he is hardly a person. Likewise in many societies unmarried women after the age of twenty are barely conceivable; they are poverty stricken, unprotected, a shame to their family. Basically, in order to obtain the pleasures of life, including the blessing of children, people had to marry. Most people in the past saw no alternative to marriage, even if this often condemned women in particular in many societies to a life of drudgery, perpetual child-bearing and physical and verbal abuse.

England has long been exceptional in tolerating, even encouraging non-marriage. My forbears, four hundred years of Fellows of King's College, Cambridge University, were not allowed to marry (on pain of losing their Fellowship) but were looked after by servants. Up to a quarter of men and women in the seventeenth and eighteenth century in England never married. Marriage was an option. For the English, on the whole, children's marriage plans could be embarrassing, annoying, disappointing or heartening. Yet, in the end, it was up to them. It was their life.

Now there is a widespread move away from permanent relationships and marriage, particularly among women. In Japan, India, Europe, America, even China, many young women are reaching their thirties and forties without marrying or having children. They live comfortably, have good jobs and are quite affluent. They realize that marriage, child-bearing and subservience to a man would threaten this, it seems like a form of imprisonment or sacrifice. The question for many women nowadays is not why should one stay single, but why should one marry and have children. Even though most of us dream of that soul-mate who will love us above all the world, unless someone absolutely special comes along we are not prepared to settle for the second-best.

Many marriages of my parents' generation and above occurred and were maintained under parental and wider social pressures. Better marriage than ostracism and a slight feeling of failure, of being the last 'unbought tin on the shelf'. But it is different now. It is quite possible that, beautiful though you are, you will not move beyond boyfriends to a life-long partnership. In this you will be one of the wave of new, independent, ambitious women who stand alongside men as equal but somewhat alone in the world. Your motto may well be, 'who needs a man'?

You may think that this is something new. Yet when we visited an ethnic group in south-western China recently we found a society which for some centuries had given up marriage entirely. The men were away for up to half the year carrying goods down to India. The women were left in charge.

Out of this arose a situation where marriage, if it had earlier existed, totally disappeared. When a boy reached puberty at between thirteen and sixteen he would be encouraged to find a female partner in another house. He would then start a pattern which would continue until old age whereby he went off in the evening to sleep in his partner's house.

Each courtyard house was planned so that there was a main area where the older woman and the young children, that is all the children born of the women of the family, lived. Along another side were the animals, pigs and cows. The third side had enough bedrooms so that each adult female who was in a relationship with an outside visiting partner could have a room. They were visited at night by these partners, who left at dawn to return to their own female relatives' house where they ate and worked.

There were no problems of property or inheritance since the land and house belonged to the whole female headed group and all children born within it. If a partnership ended, the children stayed with the women and the biological father was not expected to contribute to the child's upbringing. There was no marriage ceremony, no word for marriage, no words for relatives through marriage like brother in law or sister in law.

Not very dissimilar are the west Indian and other patterns of mother-centred households found in the Caribbean and many parts of the world. Here the woman stays in a house and brings up the children, living temporarily with a succession of men who beget one or more children and then move on. Some have ascribed this to the weak economic position of unemployed men, others to the legacy of slavery or of an earlier African family system tracing relations through the women. Whatever the reason, the patterns of temporary unions and children who live together, though they do not share the same parents, is increasingly widespread.

What has love got to do with marriage?

One important component of our own marriage pattern was Christianity. The distinctive nature of Christian marriage was early established, the basic features being present by the ninth century. This was a religion that encouraged non-marriage (celibacy), one to one marriage (monogamy), a freedom of choice and a severe sexual code prohibiting sexual relations before and outside marriage.

The ideals of celibacy, the late age at marriage, the battle between biological desire and religious injunctions are clearly a part of the pattern of romantic love. Passion was herded into marriage, sex and marriage were synonymous in a way that is unusual in world civilizations. Biological urges were channelled into art and fantasy. These special features were present in western Europe for many centuries before the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century.

In closely knit, family based societies any obvious display of emotion between husband and wife would clash with other family relations. Many of us have noticed that we become inhibited if we are with our relatives. When wider family links are strong, marriages are arranged and affection between husband and wife is a secondary force.

The rise of love marriage is linked to the degree of involvement of the small family in wider family ties. We now know that the family system based on a close partnership between the husband and wife was present in England from Anglo Saxon times onwards. There is little evidence that wider family groupings were important in everyday life among the mass of the population. Romantic love was a system which could both flourish and hold together this individualistic society.

If family groups do not arrange marriages, why marry at all? One reason was that to have sexual relations outside marriage was considered a serious offence in the Christian world. Linked to this is the idea that the 'passion of romantic love' binds people together in long term associations which would otherwise not occur. Rational, profit-seeking, individuals might not settle down into fixed relationships at all were it not for the 'institutionalized irrationality' of romantic love. We might see this as a necessary drive to ensure the nurturing of children by a couple. It encouraged longer-term bonding, rather than just a brief sexual coupling.

Is love blind?

Choice, whether in the market of marriage or other goods, is always difficult. The information is always insufficient, the variables too complex. It is bad enough buying a new computer or television, when one often has to trust the salesman and a hunch – but if it goes wrong it is disposable. Choosing a partner for life is infinitely more complex and the guesswork involved is immense.

Some external force of desire is needed to help the individual to choose. Hence passionate 'love' overwhelms, justifies and provides an apparently external and compulsive authority. On the other hand, love within marriage is not necessarily as passionate or 'irrational'. It can be calm, calculating, very like any other 'work'. Yet if a decision is made to sever a relationship, the loss of that mysterious 'love' is often given as the justification.

Love thus seems to be at its most intense when uncertainty and risk are greatest, in that phase when humans have to choose. When they make the most momentous decision of their lives, which will turn a contractual, arbitrary, relationship into the deepest and most binding in life, love steps in as though from outside, blind and compelling. The heart has its reasons, even if the mind is perplexed.

So we might suggest that the pattern of romantic love, both before marriage and within marriage, is the result of a number of forces. The biological urge to mate, based on a deep attraction between males and females is universal. But the way in which cultures encourage, use, or discourage it varies enormously. In the majority of societies, the feelings have not been encouraged, marriage and love are not connected, and marriages have been arranged. This has made it possible to knit people together by family links.

How does love fit into our lives?

It is certainly ironic that as societies become more bureaucratic and 'rational', so at the heart of the system there grows an impulsive, irrational emotion which has nothing to do with making money. There is a desire for the totally overwhelming, irrational escape into romantic love.

Romantic love gives meaning in an otherwise dead and cold world. It promises that fusion with another human being which is so conspicuously lacking in the lonely crowds of autonomous individuals. It overcomes separation and gives the endlessly choice making individual a rest, a categorical imperative which, momentarily at least, resolves all the doubts and indecisions.

The desire, to have, own, possess, fits well with those similarly irrational desires to accumulate, possess and own which are the basic drive in the economic world. In the modern world it is obvious that consumer society has harnessed the romantic passions to sell goods. The marketing of love has raised this emotion to a high cultural pinnacle. Love provides the promise of freedom, of a deeper meaning in life, perhaps even a return to the innocence of the lost paradise of Eden.

Description:

Friendship - where it comes from, how it works and what effects it has on our lives, compared also to patron-client relations etc

Who are our friends?

Dear Lily,

Many of your thoughts and emotions throughout life will revolve round friends. Why is friendship so important in our life? In most societies, the people we inter-act with are largely a matter of luck; they are family, neighbours, members of the same caste. They are not chosen. They are, furthermore, not our equals. If they are relations, they are senior (parents, older siblings) or junior. Likewise if they are members of another caste or of the opposite sex they are by birth superior or inferior. The idea of meeting many of our equals is out of the question. If friendship of a kind develops it is likely to be lop-sided.

What is lop-sided friendship?

Patronage is lop-sided friendship, that is to say where the two sides maintain their relationship because of their differences. One provides certain assets, the superior may provide political protection, the client flatters or supports him in his schemes. The relationship is general and long-term, not like the specific and limited transaction with a bureaucrat or shop-keeper. It has some warmth and a hope that it will last.

This system of patron-client relations is very widespread in the world. It is the main way of getting things done outside the family. It is particularly prevalent in the countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and the middle East and in places like South America which were colonized by the Mediterranean powers. It even spreads into the relationship with God or the gods. There are patron saints or gods to whom people pray when they are trying to get benefits in certain branches of Christianity or Buddhism.

Each patron usually has a number of clients. People try to have several patrons in useful places to help them obtain favours and to protect them against other powerful individuals. The patron is often encouraged to take an honorary family position by being made a spiritual relative, a god-mother or god-father.

Do you have patrons?

Having a real friend, on the other hand, whom we must not exploit or use to further our own ends is a curious phenomenon. It tends to be found in societies where there are a lot of roughly equal people and where there is so much movement that we constantly meet potential new friends. It is predominant where most of the important things in life do not come through the manipulation of personal relationships. Almost all we need in life is provided through an impersonal bureaucracy, the relationship between buyer and seller, underpinned by the legal system. Only in such a situation, where we do not have to manipulate contacts in order to survive, can we afford the luxury of disinterested friendship.

What is peculiar about Britain for a long period is that patronage has been relatively unimportant as a way of organizing personal relationships. There have been what we call 'patrons' of art or learning, and others who control jobs and other benefits. But if I asked you who your patrons were and who your clients, you would look puzzled, just as many of your predecessors for hundreds of years would have been surprised at such a question.

Just as patron-client relations are weakly developed in the white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant parts of the United States, so they have been relatively weak in England for many centuries. With the exception of some ethnic groups and a few branches of politics, the arts and professions, or in some criminal organizations, the system of patronage is just a pale shadow of the world of the Godfather and mafia.

So if family and patronage do not hold people together in England, and romantic love can only glue us to one other person at a time, what can provide the link between us? The short answer is friendship. This is why so much of your time at school was devoted to the making and unmaking of friends. Throughout your life, much of your happiness and success, or loneliness and failure, will depend on your ability to make 'friends', momentary or long-term. So what is this peculiar thing which is described by this Anglo-Saxon word?

What is friendship?

The essence of friendship is equality. It must not develop into that inequality of power and gifts which is the essence of patronage. If it does, it will be destroyed. It must also be based on liking, mutual interest and shared feelings and thoughts. To 'like' someone is very different from 'loving' someone. I have heard people say that they love their parents (or their brothers and sisters), but do not really like them much. This is quite possible and, in the end, both are important. What is certain is that pretended friendship, where there is nothing in common and nothing to share, does not work.

Friendship is not a static thing. It is like a river, only meaningful if it is heading in some direction. It must always be developing, changing and expanding, absorbing new experiences. As someone once put it, 'The English do not have friends; they have friends about things'. A shared activity or need is behind friendship. There are so many people in the world. Why spend time with just this one? Because one enjoys their company, they are 'good fun', amusing, supportive, kind. As we shall see, this often finds its strongest expression in playing games with them.

Friends must not be manipulative and calculating. Friendship abides by a central rule of ethics, namely that 'we should treat people as ends in themselves and not as a means to an end'. If you feel a friend is 'using you', then the friendship ends. Just as true love and beauty cannot be bought or sold, so friendship cannot be purchased. You cannot go to an agency and buy or hire a friend, while you certainly can hire a person's mind or body for a particular task.

So friendship is about the long-term liking of two equal people for each other. In England this can be between people of the opposite sex or of different ages. Men can be friends with women, adults with children. Even husband and wife can be 'friends' as well as companions and sexual partners. This is a very old pattern. The historian Eileen Power described how medieval life is 'full of married friends'. To a certain extent, the English can even be friends with their pets. As the novelist George Eliot the novelist put it, 'Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms'. Pets are the only kind of friend we can buy, but even they have to be respected.

We have to work at friendship; it neither comes naturally nor does it remain without constant attention. Friends can be likened to an orchard. They have to be carefully planted, pruned and protected. They cannot, however, be turned into private and exclusive property. You will find throughout your life that one of the most difficult things is to share friends and sometimes to lose them.

Friendship often clashes with other ties, especially to our family and particularly our love partner. Yet when it works, it can be one of the deepest of all relationships. As a little girl you used to listen with me to Handel's famous aria, based on the biblical story of the lament of King David over his murdered friend Jonathan. Handel's music captures the depth of their love.

How do friends communicate?

Often the best form of communication with friends is, surprisingly, silence. Friendship is not only about what we do say, but even more importantly about what we do not. True friendship occurs when 'information' is conveyed by absences. The striving is to convey as much as possible indirectly, 'between the lines'.

The reason why such negative communication is important is that it requires a greater closeness than positive communication. The greater the distance between sender and receiver, the more the need for explicitness and directness. Only when two or more people share an enormous amount can the much more economical negative communication take place.

All speech is an exercise of power because there is a speaker and a listener. So the more blatant and explicit the message, the more difficult it is to exercise discrimination, that is free will, in receiving the message. An explicit order, as in the army, is the worst; it is flatly coercive, binding, demanding obedience.

On the other hand, the kind of indirect, negative, allusive communication which is a peculiar characteristic of friendship allows ideas to flow and feelings not to be bruised. He or she is presented with an opportunity to draw conclusions, "Perhaps you would like to consider..." This approach has several advantages. It avoids infringing the integrity of the other person; acts are apparently entered into with free will, as the contracts of rational actors. Thus we do not say 'you must do this', when asking a friend for a favour, but 'I wonder if you could possibly...'

This strategy is necessary where free and independent individuals are inter acting. In an advanced, open and balanced society where fear is minimal, cajoling, requesting, persuading is all that can be done. People are not slaves, or even clients. They have to be enticed very gently and indirectly into proper friendship, and they cannot be forced to remain. They can refuse friendship or take their friendship elsewhere.

What is respect for other people?

Friendship is based on respect and courtesy. Courtesy and politeness mean putting ourselves into the place of the other person, to 'see ourselves as others see us'. We practice a form of empathy or sympathy which is impossible except between people who believe themselves to be, in essence, close enough or equal enough to have some sense of the other's feelings or predicament.

Yet courtesy and politeness are also distancing mechanisms, for while they establish a certain common closeness, they then keep people at arm's length. They can be used to emphasize the other's separate needs and wants, their personal social space. This can be a form of honouring of the other's identity. The Chinese philosopher Confucius alluded to the difficulty of the balance when he said, 'the most difficult people are women and servants. Getting too intimate to them costs you your dignity, while distancing them causes complaints.'

This idea of the social space surrounding an individual is an important one. It is central to our individualistic concepts of who we are. The trampling on the social space of those weaker than ourselves, making another forgo his own time, space or desires to accommodate our own, is one of the chief devices, in most societies, for gaining power. Wasting another's time, as in the many occasions where people are made to hang around for hours, is just as effective as physical abuse. Yet true courtesy is just the opposite of this; it is respecting that social space, keeping our distance while showing concern.

When should we touch others?

The 'social space' is partly symbolic and invisible and hence dealt with through gestures, postures, language. But it is also partly physical, and hence can be observed in body distances. The range of body distance varies with the degree of intimacy and equality that is thought to exist in the relationship.

At one extreme is 'untouchability', whether literally (as in the caste system) or through keeping one's distance, as when a nobleman finds it distasteful to be close to a commoner. Neither of these two extreme situations are what we commonly associate with Britain, though there are some exceptions.


At the other extreme are what we find in certain tribal and peasant societies. Here there is, within the group, very little social and physical distance. So people will often stand or sit disconcertingly close for a westerner's tastes, while some Africans find westerner's aloof and stand too far away.

In some societies there seems to be little appreciation of privacy, separateness, the need for a protected zone of intimacy into which no one intrudes. I remember vividly the shock of living in a village in Nepal where the door was open and people dropped in constantly and commented on everything I was doing. They followed us on our trips out of the village when we were trying to create a little personal space, and even going to the toilet out in the fields was an arduous exercise.

It is therefore interesting that many of the English effect a compromise, more or less the same physical distance is maintained for everybody, whether they are intimate or distant from us. Everyone stands under one law, the law of compromise, not too far apart, nor too close. They should be close enough to show engagement and involvement, but not so close as to cause embarrassment and intrusion. And, on the whole, we consider an intrusion into our personal space without an invitation odd and possibly threatening.

The questions of personal space are a delicate compromise, and as times and influences change they become confused. Twenty years ago I would have considered it very strange to kiss female friends or acquaintances on the cheek or to hug men, but now these continental customs have spread widely. I constantly find myself wondering how to behave.

It used to be so easy, a hand-shake at the start and end of a meeting with a friend. Now I often wonder when and how we should kiss or hug. The problem is even greater across cultures. To kiss on the lips in public in Japan is an obscene gesture, even when the couple are married, and even touching another in public until recently was rather indecent. A bow and a name card on first meeting; thereafter just a bow or smile.

Yet even the simple hand shake is a delicate art. It symbolizes friendship, equality, mutual grasping, in other words involvement and the taking of a calculated risk (of being rejected) by stretching out one's hand. On the other hand, the arm is extended and fends off the other, it is not a drawing together as in the embrace. It is a stiff gesture; let us be friends, but let us also keep our distance and respect our mutual independence. The hand-shake and an older form of rather restrained middle-class Englishness went together well.

Two friends are like magnets. They are mutually attracted, yet if they get too close, there is repulsion to a safer distance. Friendship is thus a balancing act, like a ballet or dance. It is both spontaneous and to be worked at, both natural and artificial. Like happiness it comes unexpectedly and cannot be forced. It is usually the side-effect of other interests.

Humans are very social animals and love to love and be loved. To be able to feel warmth in the company of good friends or mates is an unusual pleasure. It helps to overcome some of the loneliness of our rushed and individualistic lives. We are no longer islands, but part of a continent. We find mirrors for ourselves in others, support and help in difficulties, the pleasure of giving when we have too much. Some of the moments I shall always treasure are when, as true friends, you and I explored the world together, enjoying a new garden, a visit to the Natural History Museum, or discovering the fairy tales of the Grimm Brothers, with a joy which could not have come if we were on our own.

Description:

The role of games, particularly team games, and of leisure more generally around the world, seen from anthropology and history.

Why play games?

Dear Lily,

When you were small you particularly enjoyed treasure hunts and dressing up. Almost all the time you were playing elaborate games of 'make believe' with your younger sister. You lived for much of the time in a fantasy world.

Watching you, I was reminded that humans have been defined as homo ludens, Latin for 'playful humans'. For while this playful characteristic does not distinguish us from all other species, it has been particularly developed in humans. The enormous consequences you can see all around you in the mania for competitive games, gambling and sports. It also shows itself in behaviour in many parts of our life which we do not normally think of as 'games' or 'sport'.

There are games of skill and those of chance, of single combatants against each other or of teams, involving different artefacts and different rules (balls, cards, dice). Each tends to work in a slightly different way and to appeal to a different part of our psychology.

Why play?

Humans are strongly motivated by curiosity and by a basic playfulness, a desire to compete, fantasize, imagine, struggle. This playfulness is very marked in children, but continues throughout life. The bundle of characteristics involved, the desire to win, to dominate, to outstrip the opponent, the delight in good performance, the satisfaction in co ordinated muscular or social movements, the pleasure in the calculation of risk. All sorts of different elements are involved.

A game is a sort of experiment outside time and space. In a game individuals or teams who start almost exactly equal, play according to the same rules, end up with one temporarily vanquishing the other. It creates difference out of uniformity. It is dynamic and progressive, creating variability out of similarity, artificially creating conflict. It divides and separates people who were previously joined and equal. One person has the top hat in 'Monopoly', buys up Park Lane and Mayfair and becomes a rapacious landlord for as long as the game lasts, while another person gets the boot and Old Kent Road.

Much of this is opposed to what happens in many civilizations in India, Africa or China where people attempt to control and downplay open competition in social life. Rituals, that is orderly, standardized repetitive behaviour, are dedicated to reducing confrontation and variations. Thus rituals tend to create a temporary phase of equality and closeness in unequal civilizations, they join people and create unity.

We see a games-like process at work in many of the central institutions of a modern society, the Stock Exchange, Houses of Parliament, the Law Courts as well as on the actual games field. All of these take the form of bounded games, worked out in an arena which allows regulated conflict. This helps change to occur without disrupting the wider society.

Within the particular 'field' of the game, during a limited time span, people can behave in odd and often irresponsible ways. They can wear odd clothes (huge helmets, white trousers), they often hit each other (boxing) or tackle each other (rugby) or throw things at each other (cricket). Or they may shout at each other in an aggressive way across the floor of the House of Commons, or be very rude to each other in a court of law, or run around madly gesticulating as in the Stock Exchange. Yet such behaviour is limited. At the end people should shake hands and become friends again, for it is 'only a game'.

Who plays?

From at least the sixteenth century, the English became the leading inventors of competitive team games. If we think of the present games of the world, almost all were invented or modified in England; cricket, football, rugby are the most famous.

As well as games, England became a great country for sports, horse racing, dog racing, mountaineering, hunting, fishing and shooting. Likewise the English were and still are great hobby-mongers. George Orwell noted that 'we are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, cross-word puzzle fans.' Yet the English were only part of a European pattern, for the French, Italians, Dutch also form part of a 'playful' civilization.

We might assume that this kind of enthusiasm for games is universal. Yet my first impression is that until a few years ago it was limited. I have been told that there were until recently no competitive team games in Japan. There were instead a number of activities which it is very difficult to classify. They are not exactly games, for they seem to have a solemn and ritual component. Hence they are often described with a term such as 'martial art'. Even the famous tea ceremony is neither a game, a hobby, an entertainment nor a ritual, but a little of each.

These activities lie at an intersection between art, ritual and game in a way which makes them feel strange. They include a number which have the ending 'do' (ken-do, ju-do) which means 'the path' or 'way' and implies a semi-religious aspect, and others such as su-mo wrestling or pachin-ko (a kind of bagatelle) which do not feel quite like a game. There were no ball games in which teams 'fought' each other.

It is only in the last hundred years or so that the competitive team games of the west have bounced, kicked and batted their way round the world, creating an universal addiction. So everyone is mad about football and many other people are crazy about cricket. The recentness of this change suggests that games only work under certain political, economic and social conditions. A degree of political and social equality are both a cause and consequence of the development of team games. They can be suppressed as leading to disorder and they can soon become a form of political activity. The Indians took up cricket with added zest when they realized that they could beat their white masters at it, and also legitimately stand around in a field for hours without being told they were being lazy.

When they spread they can also be radically altered. When the Trobriand islanders of the Pacific took up cricket, they changed almost all the rules so that each side had dozens of players, dressed in war dress, and hurled objects at each other. In another part of New Guinea they have learnt to play football, but they go on playing as many matches as are necessary for both sides to reach the same score.

Is science a game?

Playfulness often consists of trying out moves, making wild guesses, following intuition and hunches, leaving the logical path, taking risks, not becoming too solemn or wedded to a particular idea or strategy, innovating and experimenting. Successful science often requires a good deal of playful, exaggerated, humorous, outrageous, speculation and testing. By definition, the major advance will occur in unexpected areas and these are often reached by leaps of the mind. The overly serious, logical, thorough, highly disciplined mind often misses the significant, strange, clue that gives a new insight.

A trained Confucian scholar or Buddhist monk may be less likely to make the break through than an overgrown undergraduate full of fun, games and pranks. Francis Crick's book about the discovery of DNA is significantly called What Mad Pursuit. The ideas were so far-fetched and incredible that most people would have dismissed them as a joke.

One of the great problems in the pursuit of knowledge in most societies is that it threatens too many vested interests. Probing the mysteries of nature may bring power, a threat to the rulers; it may undermine previous knowledge, a threat to priests; it will alter status positions, a threat to the elders and higher social groups. When Galileo pointed out that the earth revolved round the sun rather than the other way round, he was forced to publicly retract his statements under threat of torture.

The boundedness which we find as a central aspect of games, and which we also find essential in law, politics and the economy, is equally important for science. Very often those engaged in strange pursuits are hounded out as magicians or sorcerers. But, particularly in the less controlled areas of Protestant Europe and America, scientists could engage in their particular part hobbies, part-games, without fear of angry mobs. They could pursue them in the hope that their skill and ingenuity in this particular 'game' against the greatest opponent (a cunning Creator who had concealed the clues in Nature) would be recognized by others for its virtuosity.

Why do children play?

Playing games is usually strongly encouraged in schools. This is partly to strengthen the muscles and to use up surplus physical energy. Yet team games are also believed to improve social skills. The essence of a team game is to balance selfishness, the desire to shine and triumph, with sociality, the desire to make one's team win. This balance is also one of the most difficult things to achieve in much of social life. When to keep the ball and when to pass it to another is an art which stretches out into many of our activities. The balance between co-operation and self-assertiveness is well taught within the structured environment of the rules of a game.

It is also believed that games enable people to learn how to demarcate their lives. While the game is on we abide by certain rules. Then the whistle blows and we no longer have to. Learning how to handle defeat (it took me some years not to weep bitterly after losing a game) and feel relaxed with someone who has outwitted or outplayed you is an important art.

Likewise the subtle art of playing within the rules, but using as much scope and skill within them as possible, is one which is handy in almost every branch of later life. You have to learn the rules of your trade or occupation, but if you just stick to these without creative thought then you will end up as nothing special. If you break them and are caught the result is even worse. How can you keep to the rules yet excel? Skill, personal tricks, long training and perceptive observation of others are among the things needed. The concept of 'spin', which makes the ball behave in odd ways in cricket and disguises the real motives of politicians when they deal with the public, is one example of this.

What is the fascination of games?

People enjoy playing games because they are animals who like to compete and dominate; to play, strive, outwit, win, are all important survival tools. But there is more to games than this, particularly team games. Members of a cricket, football or bowls team play together, often socialize together and either create or express their friendship in this way. Friendly rivalry over a game of chess or in the squash court may also cement friendship. Matching minds and bodies or depending and sharing with other members of the team, both give great satisfaction.

Friends play together and the stress on learning games at school is also meant to be a lesson in friendship. Like friendship, play is not directed to a practical goal. It is 'just a game', but to refuse to play is a rejection.

Equally intriguing is why people watch games and sport. The extraordinary growth of spectator sports, undoubtedly deeply influenced by television and by the way in which sport, alongside sex, is the main way of selling goods, is one of the marks of our world.

The historian of technology Lewis Mumford suggests that modern sports may be defined as 'those forms of organized play in which the spectator is more important than the player'. It is a spectacle, in many ways closer to drama or ritual than to playing a game.

The crowd become part of a chorus, emotionally and psychologically bending together, taken for a moment out of their ordinary lives and worries. Like spectators at the contests of gladiators and wild animals in Rome, or its modern equivalent, the bull fight, or even the circus, the crowd cheers and boos. Even in the privacy of their home, people dress up in their team's colours, drink lager and pretend that they are part of the crowd, as they watch the television.

Being in a crowd makes us brave. We can shout and say things we would normally be too timid to express. It is often the time when we can make our prejudices and passions known, whether for our country, our political opinions, or our hatreds, in a way which as single individuals we find impossible. It is not surprising that all dictatorships love assembling partisan crowds and setting them marching and singing and shouting.

Mass sport and private play are forms of conspicuous consumption. Many modern societies have a great deal of leisure and people fill up their spare time, and often demonstrate their new found affluence, through games. Often they do this publicly. But equally often privately, in the world of computer games and internet rivalries.

The increasing leisure time often created by machines must be filled. Playing in various ways is what humans like to do in their spare time. So if anything is the new 'religion' of the world, it is football. More money, emotion and activity is now generated by sport, games and hobbies than anything else on earth, except war. Indeed war, to some of its proponents, is the sublimest form of game. It adds the spice of the risk of death to the usual thrills of other contests. On the other hand, for many people it is better to fight in the world cup than in the trenches.

Description:

A consideration of violence, both physical and symbolic, including personal violence, vendetta, secret organizations etc., from an anthropological and historical viewpoint.

Is violence necessary?

Dear Lily,

In English, violence has a relatively narrow meaning, referring mainly to violent physical actions. It means using an unnecessary and unwanted amount of physical force against another. The 'unwanted' is important since much of life consists of the use of force. When a child is lifted off the ground, when a doctor or dentist do their work, when we play many games, force is involved. Yet we do not call this violence. If we punch a face, knock out the tooth or embrace a person against their will, then we call it a violent act. Always physical force is involved.

The French word violence includes a much wider set of meanings. Here both physical, social and what is called symbolic violence is included. For example we can talk of the symbolic violence contained in language, architecture, gestures, painting, government directives, class or gender. The very grand building I inhabit next to King's College Chapel is designed in a way which instills awe into visitors, just as the lofty Chapel itself compels some feeling of reverence onto all those who enter. Many of these instances do not directly involve the use of physical force, yet they exert pressures on an individual which may go against her will and interests. In this Letter I will use the broader, French, meaning of the word.

Do we have to hurt each other?

There are very few human relationships in which there is no violence. Even if they do not control their children with physical force, parents almost always use symbolic violence to discipline them. They tell them to shut up, to obey what they say or else. They exercise control by using presents and gifts and even by the indirect violence of excessive love or guilt inducement. There are threats and encouragements; force is below the surface all the time. It is part of the inequality built into parent-child relations and it can easily move from what is considered justified control to 'abuse', that is the over-use or inappropriate use of power. It is a delicate balance.

In many societies the relations between parents and children are so unequal that the use of both symbolic and physical violence is often not considered 'abuse'. In traditional Roman or Chinese society, the power of the father was such that he could kill his children if they were disobedient, or torture his wife if she was insubordinate. In some societies a brother may be duty bound to kill his sister if she threatens the family honour by having an affair. The levels of what we consider to be abuse are often very high indeed. In some places violence is almost an obligatory form of male behaviour, showing that you are a 'true man'.

Yet it would be wrong to think that there has been a steady movement from the early stages of society where violence in the family was common to modern societies where it is frowned on. A number of hunting gathering societies have almost no inter-personal violence, while levels in many places in the so-called 'civilized' world are extremely high. In the three years I spent in a Nepalese village, I have seen physical violence in only one family over a short period of time. Otherwise I have not seen a single person hit a child, or a wife beat a husband, or the reverse. There is very little symbolic violence; little threatening, shouting, bribing. People, from infancy onwards, are nudged into certain actions or thoughts by gentle, if consistent, pressures and suggestions.

In England a fairly radical change has been occurring over the last two generations. The inequalities within the family are being challenged. There is talk of laws being introduced to ban all corporal punishment whether in school or the home.

Yet elsewhere the amount of inter-personal violence seems to grow. Crimes of violence, robbery, murder and rape, appear to be on the increase. The media is full of violent images, both in fiction and in the news. So people have a sense of anxiety about the threats of attack, even if these fears often bear little relationship to actual trends or crime statistics. In Japan or England the hundreds of thousands of people who are killed or maimed in road accidents are hardly noticed, but if one little boy kills another, or two schoolgirls are murdered, the whole nation is traumatized.

Why are we cruel to other animals?

Humans are just one species of animal. They share over 98% of their DNA with chimpanzees. Yet they often imagine themselves to be a different sort of creature, in some way superior, a view upheld by Christian theology. There is thus an ambivalence in human's treatment of other animals.

It is difficult to see a single developing pattern in the attitude of humans towards other animals. In many early societies there seems to have been a belief in a good deal of overlap. Humans could turn into animals and vice versa, myths told of these changes and animals had human spirits. Then, with the domestication of animals some thousands of years ago, other species became both closer and further from humans. As they brought in the cats and dogs, penned the sheep and cows and goats and buffaloes, so animals paradoxically became separated off from humans. Often a three-fold classification developed.

Pets, that is companions of humans such as cats and dogs, as well as those they rode such as horses, were the inner circle. They were like children or very close relatives, dependent and submissive. Physical incorporation of pets through eating was forbidden. A second ring was formed by domesticated animals; sheep, cows, yaks, buffaloes and pigs. They were like cousins, close, but not family. They could, and usually were, brought close into one's life by eating them. Finally there were wild animals, who were like enemies or non-kin. These were again divided into the edible, deer, wild game of various kinds, and the normally inedible meat eaters like leopards, tigers, bears and wolves.

So for thousands of years humans and animals were both inter-dependent, but also separate. In particular, certain religions assumed that a human-like God had created different species. In the Christian myth, God had created the animals on one day and humans on another. He had made Eden and filled it with animals and placed a man as its ruler. Animals were at the disposal of humans and they were created as formed and separate species.

The whole idea of a vast gulf between humans and animals collapsed in the middle of the nineteenth century when Charles Darwin outlined the long-term evolution of species and showed that humans were but one late, and minor, branch of a tree which included all the others. Ever since then we have become increasingly aware of how much we overlap. Almost all the things which were supposed to divide humans from animals have vanished. Some animals use tools, have a sense of humour, use simple forms of language, have self-awareness and perhaps even a sense of their own mortality. They feel, think, hope and fear.

As it becomes daily more obvious that animals suffer and think much like us, it might have been expected that there would be a growing sensitivity and care towards them. There are signs of this in organizations to promote vegetarianism or to prevent cruelty. Yet they just touch the edge of the problem. For it would not be difficult to argue that, as we witness the extinction of many species and the factory farming of animals and fish, there is more exploitation and systematic cruelty in the world now than there has ever been. We still manage to suppress our affinities to whales, pigs, cows, chickens and continue to torture, slaughter and eat them.

As we consume our steaks, sausages, hamburgers and fried chickens, millions of us have little idea (or interest) in the conditions of our fellow creatures. Perhaps it will not be until some new and superior species emerges on earth, some computerized android, which breeds humans in tiny cages, force feeds them, drains their bile, eats them, that we will seriously begin to crusade for the abolition of animal to animal cannibalism. Meanwhile the greatest predators on earth munch their way through the animal kingdom. For we are caught in the dilemma that we are a meat eating species, which gains much of its protein from consuming other animals. It is impossible to imagine that we will change, but we may, with sufficient will, find ways to minimize the pain we inflict on our fellow species.

Why do people join criminal gangs?

Criminal organizations exist because they serve a purpose. In the case of many of the mafia-like organizations, the criminal gangs run an informal or 'black' economy which enables the formal or 'white' economy to work. The normal market, in Russia, India or traditionally in southern Italy, does not operate properly. There is little trust in the legal institutions which are supposed to underpin the market. The police, bureaucracy and politicians are widely believed to be corrupt. There is often inefficiency and over-regulation. Nothing gets done without huge efforts and bribes.

In this situation the mafia, through the bonds of loyalty and fear, through the concepts of omerta (honour, keeping one's word), and the punishment of deviation, provide the assurances and the security which the state cannot provide.

If one loses a valuable object it is no good going to the police who are inefficient and corrupt. Far better to engage the 'brotherhood' of the mafia who will put out the word and very soon the stolen object will be hastily returned and the thief punished. Or again, to do a deal, make a contract with another unrelated person, whether it is just to buy or sell a cow, or to build a new road or airport, it is essential that the other party be under some pressure to honour the deal. So the mafia is used as a general guarantee.

To avoid time-wasting and money-wasting obstacles, licenses, customs obstructions and regulations of various kinds, the mafia will smooth the way. The national and international reach of cosa nostra, 'our people', will overcome all difficulties.

The mafia ensure this by a blend of physical and symbolic violence. Occasionally the mafiosi are sent out to use the bullet, the knife or the fire-bomb, but most of the time the threat is enough. The dark glasses which stop the human contact through the eyes, the large, dark, bullet-proof car, the prickly pear leaf left as a calling card, the head of a favourite animal on the pillow, certain menacing tones and gestures, make offers of protection difficult to refuse.

The mafia tends to operate in the grey area between the legal and illegal. The inhabit the land of debased human desires, in gambling, drink, sex, illegal sports and drugs, which the State both tolerates and tries to eliminate at the same time.

Why do communities attack each other?

Of course ethnic and religious violence has been present in humans societies for thousands of years. When we hear about the terrible Hutu-Tutsi massacres in Africa, the Muslim-Hindu violence which periodically erupts in India, the awful events in Kosovo and the Balkans, we seem to be living in a world where the tide of inter-communal violence is rising. Yet when we remember the massacre of up to a million Armenians in the early twentieth century, or the millions of Jews in the genocide of the middle of the century, it seems likely that we could go back through history to find endless examples of this violence.

It appears that whenever people are held together by a sense of 'we', through notions of religion or race, then these concepts can suddenly become a dividing line. 'We' are humans, 'they' are sub-humans, no different from the animals which we torture and slaughter at our will.

What is perhaps most distressing and perplexing is that people who previously seemed to get on very well and be tolerant of each other's difference can so quickly become deep enemies and commit terrible atrocities on each other. One week there is chat and coffee with a neighbouring family, the next they are demonized, so that to rape their daughter or chop off their son's hand seems a reasonable thing to do.

Humans are clearly very malleable and suggestible. There does not seem to be an innate and ever present enmity which suddenly 'erupts'. There are differences which normally do not matter or cause strong feeling. Yet when the feelings are manipulated by a Hitler, Stalin or Milosevic, or through a wider changing political context, fear is whipped up and sane, tolerant, people, become fanatical. The instincts to protect the family and community, of vengeance at perceived wrongs, become mobilized, and in a few hours your friends become your foes.

It is not unlike the psychology of witchcraft, where someone's smile can very easily change from friendly to seemingly sinister if you suspect them of being a witch or an outsider. It would be a great service if someone could design an 'ethnic and religious hatred defusing kit' which could be applied as these terrible situations begin to catch fire.

What is State violence?

A State is the organization which has the monopoly of the use of violence. There are two major forms of this. One is against other states, which we call war. The other is the organized violence against its citizens practiced by almost all States. There is the symbolic kind, the fascist architecture, thought control through propaganda, giant parades and nationalist music. There is also the development of penal and legal institutions which often divides up the population into the free and the imprisoned.

In relation to imprisonment by the State, it is worth remembering that this punishment has varied over time. In most traditional civilizations it was too expensive to keep people locked up for 23 hours a day in a cell. So they were punished in other ways; mutilated, sent to the galleys, put in tread-mills, sent to plantations and labour camps. Some were enslaved. Only affluent civilizations have been able to imprison large numbers of their citizens or to keep hundreds waiting on death row. That the Americans can afford to keep one in every 200 of their citizens in prison suggests a very rich and, some would say, unimaginative and cruel society.

Given the wealth and attitudes in many modern States, there is a tendency for prison populations to grow rapidly as time passes. It is less bother to lock people away than to try to deal with either the roots of crime or to rehabilitate. So the British prison population inexorably creeps upwards and the profits of the increasingly privatized prison service grow. The reputation of politicians who are 'tough on crime' is enhanced.

The waste of human potential and the basic unfairness of creating an environment of hopeless degradation and then blaming the criminals, is ignored. The State tends to become a prison machine. It can easily become a surveillance State, its public places filled with closed-circuit cameras, its wealthy private citizens living in guarded and walled estates, its police increasingly heavily armed. To fight violence, violence of a slightly different kind is used.

So we end up with the grim fact that like all species on earth, humans are necessarily violent. They cannot survive without predating on nature and on each other. Some religions such as Buddhism and some sects such as the Quakers exhort their followers to renounce all violence and live in peace. This is a worthy ideal. Yet the moment we breath or walk we destroy other creatures.

It is all a matter of degree and of intentions. Quakers, or members of the Jain religion (who wish to avoid causing all suffering, even to small insects), try to avoid inflicting pain. They are clearly different from those who deliberately practice violence. Next time you eat some meat or kill a slug, it is worth considering what you are doing and whether it can be called violence.

Description:

War throughout history and across the planet - some of the different types and some of the causes and consequences.

What is war and why do we fight?

Dear Lily,

Many people have wondered whether human beings are naturally aggressive. If they are, does this explain why warfare has played such a large part in human history? For anyone looking at the whole history of human beings would conclude that after eating, sex and playing games, killing or maiming other humans is the most common of our pastimes.

Like other animals, humans have an instinct to survive. If this suggests to them that fighting and killing will help, then they will usually do so. Many also fight for pleasure, a rough game of excitement and competition which appeals to most of us. You know this, well enough, Lily, if you remember the fighting games we played when you were young, and pretended to be a tiger, raptor or other sharp toothed beast.

Some very peaceful hunter-gatherer societies have been found in south America, Malaysia and elsewhere. They do not know of war and are peaceful within the group. Periodically mighty civilizations such as China and Japan have experienced several hundred years of almost complete peace.

Yet, if we survey the whole of human history, we find that the use of physical force against other animals (including other humans) is a practically universal feature. Now that women have begun to be recruited into the front-line of armies, you might find that you yourself are killing people in a war.

Yet simple aggression, or love of fighting, or desire to survive, cannot be seen as the main reason why most individuals have been caught up in warfare in the past. Most wars for many centuries have involved unwilling combatants. The politicians and generals decide, the troops, through fear, need, loyalty or hope for booty, apply themselves to capturing or killing the enemy.

Individual aggression has little to do with it. The pilot who released the atom bomb over Hiroshima was not, in all probability, feeling aggressive. He was just doing his job, no more 'aggressive' than the driver of a car changing gear or a farmer planting seed. Clearly wars would not happen if humans were actively programmed against the use of all physical violence. On the other hand, no animal would survive for long in this competitive world if they were so programmed.

What is war?

We need to distinguish between active and passive war. Active war is a period of armed conflict, with acts of direct physical violence, 'hot war' as we might call it. Passive, or as we call it 'cold' war is the use of threat and counter-threat, with little actual fighting. This is a period of constant anxiety, fear, threat, something the world witnessed between 1945 and 1989 and which it has re-invented for itself with the 'War against Terrorism'.

A second major distinction is between permanent and limited war. Another name for permanent war is 'feud'. In feuds, every act of violence automatically generates the conditions for counter-violence, an 'eye for an eye' as the Bible puts it. It is like a see-saw. Every killing alters the balance, which has to be re-dressed, but when violence is answered with violence, the situation is again unbalanced. This kind of unceasing warfare or feud is the characteristic form in tribal societies. It is from one such society, the Highland Scots, that the word 'feud' or 'deadly feud' was taken.

Such feuding is to be found among the Bedouin, the tribes of Afghanistan and central Asia, or famously in Albania and the Balkans. Mountains, deserts, rough country where people keep animals and there is little central political control are the classic areas for feud.

The other form is that found among forest-dwelling tribesmen, whether the head-hunters of the Assam-Burma border, of the Philippines, of Amazonia or elsewhere. Here there is a pattern of constant raiding and inter-village war, often accompanied by head-hunting. 'Blood for blood' and the taking of human heads as powerful trophies are the signs of this perpetual warfare.

Why is there this ceaseless fighting? In trying to understand it, it is important to distinguish between the 'functions' of such warfare on the one hand, for example that it may keep the population density down to an appropriate level for the resources, and the reasons given for the warfare by the people themselves.

These reasons nearly always involve concepts of honour and shame, the lust for glory, manliness, the need to defend one's own group and its status, the need to avenge insults. This is a world of constant, intermittent but irresolvable feuds because there is no mechanism for concluding the quarrels, no central authority accepted by all, just a shifting world of alliances and distrust.

People engaged in most of these feuds have limited aims. Usually they are not concerned to conquer territory or eliminate the enemy, but rather are content to burn down some houses, steal some food or heads or women or whatever is valuable. It is an elaborate, violent, game, often with its own intricate rules and forms of honour. Many see analogies with the kind of activity in places like Israel and Palestine today.

Why do countries fight?

Another major type of war is the pitched battle, winners and losers, a beginning, a middle, an end. While they are limited in time, they are often far less limited in the destruction they cause. These are the wars of what we half-ironically call 'civilized' societies. That is to say they emerged some five thousand or so years ago with the rise of territorial states.

These are the wars of the Macedonians, Greeks, Romans, Turks, Mongols, French, British, Americans and so on. They have starting and ending dates such as 1914-1918, 1939-1945. They begin on one day and end on another. Within the war period the fighting is often far more 'total' than in the tribal wars. They are fought to defeat or conquer another bounded state, and this often involves huge-scale slaughter and destruction. It is not uncommon for millions to die in such a war, both from the fighting and from the famine and disease which they bring with them.

These wars are fought for rather different reasons than the feuding ones. There may be symbolic reasons of hurt pride, jealousy, revenge as in feuds. Yet the two main reasons are fear and greed.

Fear is indeed a powerful force. The enemy is a threat, so one should attack before they do. This was a widespread motive and justification for almost all 'civilizational' wars until recently. During the second half of the twentieth century, a new principle of international law was established which banned pre-emptive strikes on sovereign nations. Recently some powerful western leaders have revised the oldest justification for war by declaring that if it is in a country's self-interest to attack another which it feels might one day become a threat, this is justified. It is a move which takes us back to a world based on fear, arms races and pre-emptive strikes.

The second main motive is greed, that is to say the almost universal fact that while there are many losers, there are always some winners. These are the arms manufacturers, some bankers, the successful warriors, some politicians. There is greed for power; a good war bolsters political power and deflects one's critics. There is greed for land and other resources through conquest.

The constant wars of aggression of Empires, from the ancient Babylonians or Chinese, through the Romans and Habsburgs, British, up to the current Americans, are well known. This tendency of States to engage in almost constant warfare is strengthened by what one might call the 'reverse domino' effect.

In the normal 'domino effect', as in the 'war against communism', it was argued that to lose one country, for example Vietnam, could cause all the dominoes standing in a row nearby (e.g. Cambodia, Laos, Thailand), to 'collapse' into communism. In the reverse effect, as soon as one territory has been annexed, it puts great pressure on the successful conqueror to consider taking over the next.

One example comes from the history of the Roman Empire which, in order to protect its ever widening territories, was drawn into annexing ever more. The British Empire was the same. In order to 'protect' India, the British felt they had to take control directly or indirectly of its borders, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Nepal, Assam, Burma. Soon British eyes were upon China and even Japan.

There is no standing still with Empires. Either they push outwards or sink beneath the onset of the 'barbarians' on the frontiers. America has increasingly been caught in this trap. Past failures can be overlooked, as in the case of Vietnam, and the people aroused again to further attempts to wipe out the threatening hordes.

How do weapons change warfare?

Another difference between 'unlimited' or feuding warfare and limited but total war is technological and organizational. Feuding wars are fought seasonally, part time, by an amateur sub-set of the male population. Civilizational wars tend to be fought all the year round (except when the climate prevents this), often by professional (conscript or mercenary) armies. The amount of training, the nature of the discipline and the internal hierarchies differ.

Furthermore, over time the weapons began to change. Most wars in history have been fought with simple weapons, bows spears, swords. Yet in due course the evolution of state systems led to the development of a new order of weapons. Then the scene changed.

Gunpowder weapons transformed warfare in western Europe from the fourteenth century. Through a strange quirk, in the country which had invented them many centuries earlier, namely China, they were in effect soon banned or not used. Indeed, four-fifths of the great civilizations on the earth up to the eighteenth century, the Islamic States, China and Japan, all banned the use of gunpowder weapons. Only in western Europe did cannon and small-arms using gunpowder develop. It was partly this divergence which finally gave Europe the destructive advantage with which it colonized almost all of the planet between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Can war be good?

War has been almost universal in human history over the last fifty thousand years. The constant feuding wars probably inhibited the growth of civilizations in various ways. Minor gains were destroyed, populations remained relatively sparse and spread out, the ecology was protected but few major innovations could occur. As soon as a group became prosperous and relaxed its war-like discipline it was destroyed by the warriors from poorer but more war-like neighbouring groups.

For many thousands of years the world saw the warlike, feuding, societies on the margins fight the settled, agrarian, civilizations at the centre. The greatest contest of all was between the pastoral nomads of central Asia, the Mongols, and the settled agrarian peoples whom they overran in China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

In this vast, thousand-year, clash of two forms of human organization, the Mongols destroyed vast civilizations and ruled three quarters of the Asian land mass up to the eighteenth century. Their technologies of destruction, principally the horse and Mongolian bow, were superior to the war technologies of settled States until about 1700. It was only the development of more sophisticated gunpowder weapons which gave the west the final advantage.

So, for a very long period, apart from honing male physique, encouraging heroic poetry, adding some footnotes to the art of war, improving horse breeding, and giving certain peoples a sense of purpose and heroic glory, war probably did little for human development. In the balance, the losses far outweighed the gains.

In one area of the world, however, war led to technical progress. The small kingdoms of western Europe were constantly at war from the middle ages on, and a rapid form of political 'survival of the fittest' developed. Very rapid developments in architecture, boat construction, navigation, metal working and some branches of physics and geometry emerged out of this desperate competition.

If Europe between about 1400 and 1800 had been as peaceful as China or Japan it is likely that much of the rapid increase in reliable knowledge and technical efficiency would not have occurred.

Without the advances in cannon boring made through these centuries, the steam engine cylinder could not have been made and no industrial revolution based on steam could have occurred. If we measure human progress by man's capacity to control the physical world, then war of the west European kind did lead to a sort of progress. Yet this has to be placed against the horrors and miseries.

What are the disasters of war?

War is the first of the three great checks to population. It was not mainly the slaughter on the battlefield that inhibited growth, but the almost inevitable side effects. As foreign armies marched to and fro across northern Europe during the Thirty Years War, about a third of the population died, mainly from starvation and disease. Armies needed to live off the land and soldiers seized the stored grain and seed-corn, destroyed the ripening crops, killed the livestock, burned the tools.

It is also in such times that disease multiplied. With body resistance reduced by under-nourishment, and with large hordes of soldiers and camp followers coming in from outside carrying new germs, the peasants died in their thousands or sometimes millions. Epidemic diseases, in particular typhoid, cholera, plague and typhus, spread. Endemic diseases such as dysentery and malaria increased hugely. The most vulnerable, the old, women, children, will usually be the first to die, but almost everyone is vulnerable.

Tribal groups that have previously had no contact with the outside world are most at risk. Nineteen out of twenty million of the native population died when the Spanish conquered what is now Mexico. Most did not die at the end of a sword, but through famine and disease. Likewise hundreds of thousands died in North and South America and the Pacific of smallpox, influenza, measles and other diseases against which they had no immunity.

It is very doubtful whether the wars of 'civilization' have done anything to improve either human intelligence or physique in a selective way over the last five thousand years. They have caused horror piled on horror, a catalogue of atrocities and inhumanities which make any sensitive and informed person despair.

Does war enslave us?

Nowadays those who start wars are even more remote and isolated from its horrors than they were in the past. So they may feel that they do not share in the personal cost. Yet this is not true. For war has invisible costs, hidden injuries, less manifest than the rapes, mutilations, deaths, sickness and starvation, yet as deadly to the civilizations which engage in war as the physical scars.

The feuding wars of tribal societies tend to create equality by keeping groups in balance. If one group gains a temporary advantage, it attracts predatory attacks from neighbours, and is returned to the average position. On the other hand, the wars of civilization have a strong tendency towards creating inequality, both between the contending groups, and within them. The immediate effect of war is to make the conquered into slaves, prisoners, permanently in thrall to the conquering power.

Another effect was that after the emergence of states, a caste of warriors, often armed knights who could afford expensive weapons, arose and dominated the rest. As a result a weak, unarmed, mass of the population was crushed by the warriors with their superior weapons and castles. War both justifies their privilege and made any questioning of their right to bear arms into an act of treason.

Furthermore the movement towards a centralized state is made much more likely by war. War against outsiders justifies higher taxes and the maintenance of a standing army. It encourages the development of a large bureaucracy to administer the state's taxation, the suspension or elimination of civil liberties and the destruction of all those who criticize the government.

The effects of war in turning Rome from a vibrant Republic into an autocratic Empire has often been noted. Victory was as disastrous as defeat. All opposition or questioning of the State and its motives was banned. What was demanded was unquestioning loyalty, unthinking patriotism, 'my country right or wrong'. Thus the core of liberty and equality are quickly undermined by war.

Are there exceptions?

This anti-democratic tendency applies most strongly in continental Empires and States where a constant fear of invasion by one's neighbours is ever present. The fact that England, Japan, and for several centuries the U.S.A., could be conceived of as separate 'islands', not threatened by neighbours, gave them a respite from this fear.

In the case of England, the country was very often at war. Yet much of the fighting was an optional activity, taking place on other people's territory (for a long time in France). When extra taxes were needed for such activity, it gave the moderately powerful subjects a chance to bargain for more rights and freedom from their rulers (who had no standing army). Hence wars tended to increase liberty. This is part of a wider pressure; warfare from the time of Napoleon onwards has been a powerful instrument in widening the franchise because of the state's dependence on mass armies and conscription.

The U.S.A. in the nineteenth century did not need to be afraid, so its inhabitants could not be blackmailed into suspending their liberties. September 11th 2001 symbolized the start of an era when the United States became virtually joined to the continent of Eur-Asia. Or so it feels to many Americans. So America, used to peace, is now perpetually at war, even if that war is against a nebulous enemy.

In this new war, democracy is felt to be constantly under threat. America now has a huge and expanding standing army and navy. It feels it must make pre-emptive strikes against threatening neighbours, even if they are thousands of miles away. There is a temptation to dismantle the sets of checks and balances, the rights to freedom of speech and thought, the jury system and other processes that protect the rights of individuals. We are almost all the losers in this new perpetual war.