The first essay I would like to focus on is “The Moral Equivalent of War”, by William James. James argues that despite wars brutality, it still creates positive qualities in the soldiers, such as discipline and courage. His idea is that even though war is destructive and ugly, its qualities such as comradie can be used for good deeds. He is of the opinion that the aggressiveness that can be found in every person, that it was left there for us by our ancestors, essentially making it a part of the human nature that cannot be removed (L.16-18). He says that, without war, life would be “insipid”; that it would be boring. But is war really what makes life worth living, what makes it interesting? This is what James seems to say: “War is, in short, a permanent human obligation” (L. 42-43). Nevertheless, he acknowledges war´s savagery, and mentions that peace cannot be achieved without “preserving some of the old elements of army-discipline” (L.58), saying that discipline and order is men need.
In “Can real men live in a peaceful society?” by Eric MacKnight, he argues about how much war is really needed to let out “hyper-masculanity”, as he calls it. He uses that term to describe a “strong, handsome warrior that loves the battlefield even more than he loves women.” The same can be said for hyper-femininity: “beautiful, sexy, and unfaithful.” (p.3). He describes the idea of a new “bad boy” as a result of the 20th century, saying that he combined the “traditional masculine virtues with a dedication to home and family” (p.2). As James did in his essay, he also mentions his idea of a mandatory conscription for all young men, to maintain the discipline of the war and let out this hyper-masculine side of them in a beneficial way. Men were once raised with the idea of chivalry, which was originally invented to “tame the violence of the men”, since only prison or castration seemed to work to appease mens violent nature. But this idea seems to fade, which leads to the question – will war and violence remain with us as long as we are human?