As we were reading these two essays in class, I couldn’t help but notice the contrary perspectives on these two essays. It’s a classic scenario of same story, different perspectives. The First essay, “The Moral Equivalent of War” by William James, he began by explaining how life was before the war. “The earlier men were hunting men, and to hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males, loot the village and possess the females, was the most profitable, as well as the most exciting, way of living” (pg.1). He believes that people deserve the peace that we had before war. He also believes that humans are belligerent and that trait has been bred into us along by saying “thousands of years of peace won’t breed it out of us…” (pg.1). If we look into the perspective of the second essay, “Can real men live in a peaceful society?” By Eric MacKnight, he explains that men had softened after the war, as he claimed “The bourgeois men were too soft to make good soldiers” (pg.1). He also brings up that war is a necessity when it comes to hyper masculinity. Without war there is “marginalization and condemnation of hyper-masculinity in bourgeois society, because the consequences of men violating bourgeois taboos around masculinity range from the personal (e.g., assaults, domestic violence, rape) to the collective (e.g., gangs, fascism, and war)” (pg. 3).