MacMillan purports to tell a society absolutely saturated in war culture (and a readership she can predictably count on to lap up page after page of war fascination with no particular point to it) that. Not a single one of these books examines the deadly economic trade-offs, the billions of lives that could be benefitted by reducing war spending, the climate damage of the war industry, the justification of government secrecy, the erosion of rights, the spread of hatred, or even in any serious way the deaths and injuries created by war. news coverage, to engage in mass-slaughter is to do something. Not a single one of these books touches on the powers of nonviolent action. Is Rousseau or Hobbes right about human nature? Yes! Is Steven Pinker right or wrong that war is vanishing even though the facts say just the opposite? Yes! The rest just piles super-brief anecdotes into themed sections superficially presenting every war-related topic under the sun, mostly with no connection to making any argument, and with any controversial topics presented in an extravaganza of bothsidesism run amok.
A fraction of the book makes the war-is-good-for-us case. Margaret MacMillans book is not quite as goofy as Ian Morriss, but thats because most of the book is filler. Those reasons why war is good for us are no longer deemed acceptable, but new ones are being substituted that are exactly as ludicrous and they are given exactly as much respect as the old ones used to be, at least in the United States. In Teddy Roosevelts day war was good for us because it built up the race and speeded the eradication of the inferior races. corporate media and academia and the institutions that give out book awards. But nutty and self-justifying as this new genre might be, youd never question it at all if you only heard about it second-hand through fawning U.S.
#DONT SEE MY AUDIO BOOKS IN IBOOKS ACCOUNT PLUS#
Plus nuclear weapons cant kill us all anymore but Iran endangers us all by building them however, missile defense works! All this terrific news is dampened a little by Morris guarantee that World War III is just around the corner unless you gain the understanding that that is a good thing which perhaps you will when, as Morris forecasts, computer programmers meld all of our minds into one.Īccording to celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, because 17th century Europe invested in science by investing in warfare, therefore only through militarism can any culture advance, and therefore conveniently enough astrophysicists are 100% justified in working for the Pentagon and taking credit for dreaming up a military weaponry Space Force.Īmong those who knew better in a less war-mad era was Carl Sagan. See there? Ignored effectively! Also vanishing from the globe, according to Morris: wealth inequality! Also there is no climate crisis worth worrying over.
Interstate wars Morris claims, with no evidence and no footnotes, have almost disappeared.
#DONT SEE MY AUDIO BOOKS IN IBOOKS ACCOUNT HOW TO#
And when a society is large enough it can figure out how to ignore all the wars it is waging and achieve bliss. decades ago) and Neil deGrasse Tysons Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military.Īccording to Morris, the only way to make peace is to make large societies, and the only way to make large societies is through war. genre that includes Ian Morriss War: What Is It Good For? Conflict and Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots (Morris came to the U.S. The book fits into the growing and exclusively U.S. The New York Times loves the latest war-is-good-for-you book, War: How Conflict Shaped Us by Margaret MacMillan.