My reflection of “The Moral Equivalent of War” and “Can Real Men Live in a Peaceful Society”

In The Moral Equivalent of War I see that William James assumes that men have this, war-like urge in them that can not be fought back. He believes in wanting peace but he says “Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won’t breed it out of us…”, which says that we are born with a set of a sense of brutal, strong, dominance. That the history has shaped our human nature and engraved it into our future  along with another quote near the end, “The martial type of character can be bred without war…”. William James is basically saying that with or without war, men are eager savages at heart, they can develop these traits throughout their journey, both good and bad, they can learn discipline and courage along with venerating savagery. Next, in Can Real Men Live in a Peaceful Society, Macknight describes how textbook chivalry has been destroyed due to social media, as men would brush off a “woman in peril”. He also says how men in the bourgeoise society have become too… Soft, after the war as if all that hardness disappeared. Then stated that women in the bourgeoise society would look for these so called “bad boys” just to come to the realization that they are terrible people, mean and brutal men that couldn’t live in a peaceful society. Something I feel worth mentioning is that I was pretty surprised to see but it was said that people were thinking to castrate violent, out of line men, just like they do dogs, to try and tame them again.

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