On War and Happiness
People engage in war to seek glory, power and wealth. I believe this shows that achieving happiness is complicated. And people often act in erroneous ways.
Acquiring a certain amount of money does not guarantee satisfaction in life. The same problem comes with living standards. Compare a person in the US with one in Asia. The person in the US probably has much more money and a higher standard of living. Who is happier? It depends.
No man is qualified to declare what would make another man happier or less discontented.
As Ludwig von Mises wrote in Human Action, we cannot know what other people value. One person may exchange income or living standards for more time at home with a larger number of children. Another may seek material wealth and abandon the pursuit of family. It is not our place to decide which path is more valuable — except in as much as it directs our own personal choices.
I believe war comes after a failure of understanding. One must understand the things that make himself happy. Otherwise his actions will be random; he is unlikely to find success in achieving happiness.
Man may think money and power are the only things that make him happy. He values other things solely in their capacity to increase his money and power. This man understands himself from a very limited framework.
So might such a man act in ways harmful to others? Of course. One acquires money and wealth from stealing. One obtains a great deal of power before murdering another. Mises explains further:
the concept of action does not imply that the action is guided by a correct theory and a technology promising success and that it attains the end aimed at. It only implies that the performer of the action believes that the means applied will produce the desired effect.
So is this murderer likely to find happiness? The psychological state of men returning from war suggests this is unlikely. Thieves are no different. Stroll the halls of any penitentiary. I suspect one will find stories of neglect, regret, anger and pain. One would hear few stories of joy. I suspect the same holds true of Stalin, Hitler and Tojo. Bush too.
People enjoy helping others. We are a social species. This lies at the heart of cooperation. So I believe that a person will do something to increase his satisfaction with life, even if it increases someone else’s
satisfaction more.
January 24th, 2009 at 19:19
Unfortunately I do not think that the inhumane exercise of power is in any sense irrationale. I don’t think people who do that are necessarily pariahs or emotionally ill.
Some people are essentially without empathy and the exercise of power in a hurtful way is no different than turning a light switch on or off. I think perhaps 1% or so of the population are sociopaths. Such people may be controled but never cured. I believe this condition is genetic.
There is a much larger % of the populace, at the minimum 10%, who while not totally without empathy are able to justify and rationalize to suit the occassion. Natural self interest in them overwhelms other natural tendencies to consider others when making decisions. Perhaps all peopple are like this and we all vary to a matter of degree not to a matter of kind. Still rationalized self-interest overtaking appropriate social behavior is very strong in at least 10% of people. Such people are not immune to peer pressure but they are constantly seeking to circumvent it when convienent.
A third group are the criminal. Whether this group is emotionally ill becomes a definitional question. But I think there is a significant % of the population that is significantly sadistic. I’ve know people who would rather steal something than earn it because they get an extra kick out achieveing a forbiden activity. To them it is much the same as winning a game. There is joy in domination. Achieveing an unethical result is domination.
War presents a fourth problem. Waging war may be hard wired into us. Chimpanzees and other primates do it and it certainly seems to be part of nearly every culture’s history. This is not to say war is inevitable because there are many hard wired behaviors that can be overcome by learning and design but it is not an easy thing. When the us versus them label is successfully made them otherwise normally moral and cooperative individuals can turn unreasonably aggressive. This is a dangerous situation indeed.